John Waters: The Trash Auteur Speaks Out — Way Out

At the heart of Waters’ electoral diligence lies a rather dark self-interest. “I don’t want to get the death penalty,” he says. “Every time you vote for someone, it eventually affects, in some small way, whether or not the death penalty comes in. And I might do something on a bad night that will get me the death penalty.”

Hoping to move the conversation back to cheerier ground, I ask who Waters thinks should be Barack Obama’s running mate. It’s the one time Waters is stumped. “Shirley Chisholm?” he ventures after a moment. “From beyond the grave?”

America's head trash collector: John Waters

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• John Waters
• 'Til Death
• Provincetown
• Criminal Sentencing and Punishment
• Capital Punishment

Talk inevitably bumps up against California’s recent legalization of same-sex marriage, and, again, uncertainty creeps into Waters’ voice. “I’m for anyone getting married,” he says, “but it’s not for me, because I wouldn’t want to have to pay alimony. Gay divorce and tattoo removal are the two biggest moneymakers. I’m more of a radical feminist than I’m a good homosexual.”

Like many people with an eye to the near future, Waters questions the timing of California’s gay-marriage love fest. “I wished it had happened after we got a Democratic president in,” Waters says. “Then no one could do anything about it. The time to do something like this is when an election is already over, then you can go, ‘Ha! Ha!’

“We’ve got to learn to stop giving Republicans red-meat issues before an election,” he adds.

For years, Waters has been a fixture on a kind of trash lecture circuit, where his one-man evenings offer glimpses into his obsessions, peeves and reminiscences. He plans to soon leave the dunes of Provincetown for the damp of Dublin and the heat of Europe, with his latest show. Repackaging my Obama VP question, I ask Waters if he’s ever thought of teaming up with a second person, Abbott and Costello–style, along the lines of the Timothy Leary–G. Gordon Liddy pairing of the 1980s, or the more recent Christopher Hitchens–Martin Amis double-hitter. “I don’t want to share the fee — no one does!” he says, quite sensibly. “Who would I pick? Who is my opposite — some Christian, I guess, but I don’t want to give them attention.”

Once more, Waters must reach into the grave for a running mate. “I guess,” he says, “David Lean would be a choice, because I could insult his insufferable good taste. Or Katharine Hepburn — she always got on my nerves and had no sense of humor.”