From Utne Reader

May/June 1996

By Joshua Glenn

Baltimore filmmaker John " Prince of Puke" Waters was one of Utne Reader's original "100 visionaries" (Utne Reader Jan/Feb '95). His raunchy oeuvre-which includes Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977), and Polyester (1981)- betrays a deep fascination with trash culture, and his recent, more mainstream films-including Hairspray (1988) and Serial Mom (1994)-are equally jaundiced. Shock Value, Water's 1979 autobiography and manifesto of bad taste, has recently been reprinted by Thunder's Mouth Press. We asked him about his media diet.

Q.What magazines do you read?

Waters-I have at least 80 subscriptions, including everything from Film Comment to Film Threat, Town & Country to Jet, Playboy to the Advocate, and National Enquirer to the London Review of Books, not to mention Bon Appetite, Savoir, Adult Video News, Spy, Art & Auction, Vogue and British Vogue, Rolling Stone, Frieze, Coagular, New York Native, daily Variety and weekly Variety, Art & Antiques, the London Times Literary Supplement, W, American Photographer, Bright Lights, Time Out London and Time Out New York. Straight to Hell, Parkett, Artnews, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Observer, The Village Voice, Hollywood Reporter, The New Republic, The National Observer, Prison Life, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Review of Books, Interview, Detour, Premiere, L.A.Weekly, Paper, Life, Bomb, Spin, Vogue, People, Newsweek, Time, New York, The New Yorker, Details, Baltimore, US, Vibe, GQ, Colombia Journalism Review, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Movieline, Buzz, Box Office, George, Metropolitan Home, Publisher's Weekly, American Journalism Review, The Boston Phoenix, Out, Christopher Street, Aperture, Artforum, Sculpture, Flash Art, Gourmet, the Star, and the Globe.

I've had people from the Baltimore Public Library tell me, "You get more magazines than we do!" What can I say? I'm a media junkie: I have to keep up...

Q.Which filmmakers have had the most influence on you?

Waters-I really liked William Castle when I was growing up, especially his gimmicky films where plastic skeletons would fly out into the audience or electric buzzers would go off under the seats. Herschell Gordon Lewis invented the gore film genre, with films like The Gore Gore Girls, and The Wizard of Gore, and I love him for that to this day. Early Warhol films like Couch, Blow Job, and Empire were important to me. Of course I like Bergman, Fellini, Fassbinder, and Pasolini. And Walt Disney.

Q.Is there a film you'd like everyone to see?

Waters-Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In a Year With Thirteen Moons (1978), which is a tragicomedy about a transsexual who decides she wants to change back. I don't use the word genius much, but I think he was one, and that film was him at his most outrageous and his artiest and his least compromising, but at the same time it's one of the funniest and best films ever.

Q.Do you read any zines or newsletters?

Waters-People send them to me all the time, but besides a cult film fanzine like Psychotronic, which I think is amazingly knowledgeable, the only ones I really like are the young radical queer zines that bait my generation of gay men. They make me laugh.

Q.Which current trends in the media most trouble you?

Waters-Although everyone assumes I would love daytime talk shows, watching people being exhibitionist about their dysfunctions becomes tiresome quickly. In Hairspray when Divine says "Broad daylight! And here I am sitting in front of a TV!" that's me speaking. But I don't find them troubling: I think it's great that Ricki Lake has a hit show. I wish something on TV would trouble me, then maybe I would watch it!

Q.What are the sources of your best and most original ideas?

Waters-Most filmmakers live in New York or Los Angeles and have no idea what's going on in the real world, which is why I choose to stay in Baltimore. It's the only place I can really work. Overhearing conversations is inspirational, too. Yesterday I had lunch with somebody in a diner and I heard the woman behind me say, " She's needy, she's nasty, that's who she is: a bitch." That made me laugh. This is what I make movies about: People who are completely insane but think they're normal. - Joshua Glenn

Last updated on June 11, 1998 by Tina.