John Waters has been busy. On Sept. 17, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened a full-scale exhibition called John Waters: Pope of Trash. A day later, Waters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He’ll be at City Winery on Oct. 7 with a new show, Devil’s Advocate. When we spoke, he said he’d just finished writing it the day before. So the show is brand-new — or as Waters calls it, “fresh from the gutter.”
“I always change the show every year,” he says. “My stuff is so topical, and things change so fast. I might update it before I come there if something happens.”
We discussed the recent slate of anti-LGBTQ legislation in Tennessee, and the targeted attacks on the trans community. “I don’t know why that makes people so nervous,” he says. “Be whatever you want!” He’s talked to a lot of young people, and they’re not nervous about it. “The kids think it’s no big deal,” he says. “It’s amazing.”
“My favorite thing is that all parents now — I never thought I’d hear this — cry, ‘Can’t you just be gay?’”
Waters has been working with and showcasing drag queens in his work since the 1960s, most notably Divine, and he thinks any attempt to stop the culture by the Tennessee GOP is too late. “Today drag queens, because of RuPaul, are accepted in deep Middle America,” he says. “People love it.”
Frequent themes in Waters’ live shows are optimism, hope and humor. He believes that if you have a sense of humor, you will always be an optimist. “How you have a sense of humor is how you win any argument,” he says. “Not by making people feel stupid, not making your enemy feel stupid — even when they are.”
Devil’s Advocate is about the young people of today, who Waters says are constantly changing and becoming more accepting. He’s confused by the new sexual revolution — one he says makes the one he’s from look tame.
“It’s me asking questions,” he says. “The new generation has finally done what I tell them to do: Pick up things that make me nervous.”
About Nashville, he says, “I love the local color. I hate that it’s getting wiped out. I liked it when people would take me to the worst dive places. They were fun. I don’t really have time to do that anymore anyway, but I always have a nice audience there.”
Waters has built a career on being censored, which he says is a big help. “They waited too long, like all people that try to censor,” he says, talking about the so-called drag ban. “The same way it’s way too late to stop gay marriage. Even people that are monster homophobes know gay people now. It’s too late!”
Waters is looking forward to coming to Nashville and having a multigenerational audience.
“My audience is just minorities that can’t get along in their own minority.”
At the end of our interview, I tell Waters that I’ve read Peyton Place, which I heard was the first book he ever read. “Oh my God — the ‘V’ of Betty’s crotch,” he says. “That was the first thing I ever masturbated to. It’s probably the last thing I would masturbate to today. [Laugh] Put that in your paper!”
