John Waters
The Elder of Filth: Our John Waters Interview
I was early for my afternoon chatter with artist, filmmaker, cultural critic, and actor John Waters. Waiting outside his arts and crafts style house in leafy Baltimore, I tried to pinpoint when this cult creator entered my sphere. It’s funny when you can’t remember a time when you didn’t have the John Waters filth somewhere in your mind. I was a young lad when I first encountered Hairspray — growing up in South Africa in the ‘90s, it was that perfect meld of racial integration and camp, that a gay boy like me could just eat up. But his filth, absurdity, and sense of seeing things from a different perspective felt ever-present in my smutty way of being in the world. And ever-commenting, like Waters, I was also a “minority who cannot fit in with their own minority.” Some people, like John Wa...
John Waters Announces “Yuletide Massacre” Christmas Tour Dates
John Waters is hitting the road. The cult icon just announced US tour dates for “A John Waters Christmas — It’s a Yuletide Massacre,” a one-man show that puts the filmmaker’s surreal spin on the holy holiday. The trek kicks off November 29th in San Francisco and includes dates across the US through the end of December. In true Waters fashion, each concert listing’s website touts its own outrageous event description. “Both Santa and Jesus will send their regrets when this ho-ho-homo lets loose about reindeer virgin births, the illegally squatting Christ-child and chubby-chasing Mrs. Clause,” the inaugural date guarantees. “There’ll be no silent nights here!” the description goes on to promise. “This rapid-fire monologue for adult delinquents asks the holiday questions, ‘Was Joseph a virgin,...
