Warning: This episode includes derogatory epithets used in an artistic context. Listener discretion advised.
Writers Guild of America Award Ceremony Presenter: Ladies and gentlemen, the great, great John Waters.
Joe Skinner: John Waters is an iconic writer and filmmaker who’s spent decades honing the fine art of bad taste.
John Waters (Archival): Thank you, Writers Guild of America East, for validating the lunatic fringe of cinema, and recognizing that a lifetime of penning trashy screenplays is something to celebrate. I clawed my way to the top of the trash heap.
Joe Skinner: When Waters says “trash heap” – he means it. The John Waters universe is as campy and raunchy as possible, filled with memorable characters like drag queen Divine in Pink Flamingos, who has been proudly named “the filthiest person alive.”
Pink Flamingos: Could you give us some of your political beliefs?
Pink Flamingos: Kill everyone now. Condone first degree murder. Advocate cannibalism. Eat [censored]. Filth is my politics. Filth is my life.
Joe Skinner: Another classic character is Hairspray’s Tracy Turnblad, who charms TV producers and steals boyfriends while campaigning against segregation.
Hairspray: Aren’t you a little fat for the show?
Hairspray: That’s enough, Amber.
Hairspray: I would imagine that many of the home viewers are also pleasantly plump or chunky.
Hairspray: Oh, come on, the show’s not filmed in cinemascope.
Joe Skinner: In his decades as a writer and filmmaker, John Waters has always been a provocateur. He pushes the boundaries of what’s acceptable and gets you to laugh about it. But the nature of who John Waters is provoking, and how he is provoking them, has changed a lot since his first cult films in the 1970s. Those early films were seen as outlandish and offensive by the general filmgoing public. But how do you stir the pot like that in 2023 – in a world way it sometimes feels like we’ve seen everything and nothing can shock you. Waters embraces this challenge, and with his new novel, Liarmouth, he’s certain he will find his new censors.
John Waters: Censorship is not gonna come from the dumb white men that used to give it to me because they gave up on me a long time ago.
Joe Skinner: I’m Joe Skinner, and this is American Masters: Creative Spark. In each episode, we bring you the story of how artists bring their creative work to life. For today’s episode, I called up John Waters remotely while he was up at his longtime summer home in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to break down the process and inspiration behind his first novel, Liarmouth.
John Waters: I first have to have a title. I always need a title.
Joe Skinner: John started writing his novel in much the same way he wrote many of his films – coming up with that very first thing the audience will see when they’re browsing at the bookstore or looking up on the billboards.
John Waters: I’m from Old Exploitation for Art Theaters. You always have to have the ad campaign. So I’m, I’m always thinking up the title basically, and that really inspires me. I always design a cover of some kind just when I’m writing to have some visual image. This was a couple different head shots of different movie stars put together, and it ended up being a fictitious person, but it was a woman with a snarl on her mouth that was kind of great looking and had attitude and looked like she would be a liar. Then I sort of have to know the genre I’m satirizing, then I have to know all the characters, and then I start thinking about the plot, which is the only thing that makes it a hit. And you sort of do have to know the end, even if you change it. You do kind of have to know the end when you start.
Joe Skinner: In classic John Waters style, the characters in Liarmouth are eccentric and break just about every available social norm. The book centers on conwoman Marsha, an airport suitcase thief.
John Waters (Liarmouth Audio Book): Marsha is better than other people. She knows that. Smarter, too. Maybe not about the needless crap they tried to teach her in school, but about important stuff, like how to put things over on other people, who think they have the right to speak to her before being spoken to first. The ones who make unashamed eye contact as if it were their god given right to invade her privacy.
Joe Skinner: There’s also Marsha’s mother, Adora, a plastic surgeon for pets. And of course Marsha’s daughter, Poppy, who runs an underground trampoline park for a group of addicted “bouncers.” Waters describes her as-
John Waters (Liarmouth Audio Book): The most relaxed, healthiest, and yes, happiest when she’s midair and free from the financial troubles of running her privately owned business that used to be quite lucrative until those idiot International Association of Trampoline Park officials shut her down. Was that unfortunate children’s birthday party that ended with 3 injuries, 2 of them serious, really her fault?
Joe Skinner: John found seeds of ideas for these characters from friends, and also from observations at the center of human depravity – the airport.
John Waters: I did have a friend that once told me his girlfriend stole suitcases in airports. But that was it. I never knew any details, anything about it, but that germ of the idea stuck with me. And then I kept exaggerating and thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it. And since I’m on planes practically every day, I had really a lot of time to research it while I was traveling. I’m not writing on the plane but I am watching and spying on people and listening to conversations and God, people dress terribly on airplanes after Covid. They wear torn off pajama cutoffs and dirty t-shirts and flip flops. Get dressed!
Joe Skinner: And once John had his full cast of characters in mind – he was ready to write.
John Waters: It was like any kind of writing. I had to go in that room and do it every day. I get up at six, I write 8:00 to about 11:30. I’m completely sober. I have a lot of cups of hot English, breakfast tea, black. I use legal pads. The kind I like right here, I’ll tell you, I use uh, gold fiber Ampads, and, I have Bic pens and clear scotch stick tape, and that’s how I write everything, every book, every movie I’ve ever done. And no music. I have to be by myself. I mean, someone else can be in the house, but they can’t be in the room that I’m working in. Everybody knows never to call me in the mornings.
Joe Skinner: The process of writing Liarmouth really involved getting to know Marsha, Poppy, and Adora – as they all traveled to Provincetown in an attempt to kill each other.
John Waters: I’m fascinated by behavior I can never understand. I love to look at people that think, why would they do that? Or especially when they’re so serious about it, and Marsha has absolutely no sense of humor about herself. That’s why I think she’s funnier, because she actually completely believes in every ludicrous idea that she has. That she is dead right, and the rest of the world is wrong.
John Waters (Liarmouth Audio Book): Marsha hates anything old. Antiques, vintage, collectibles, it’s all dirty to her. Used, stained with other people’s fluids, children’s tears, unwanted sperm, stray mucus, even unrequired food. Odors are an unwanted invasion of her superiority. An interruption to her focused life. She has never worn deodorant in her life.
John Waters: You wouldn’t want to hang out with her in real life, but you might like to hear about her. Uh, you just wouldn’t want her to be your friend and you’re glad she’s not in your family. I do generally care for all my characters, even the worst ones. Even the ones that lose. In my book. I like spending time with them. I like thinking them up, and I become each character when I’m writing it. So I live as those people actually for a couple years when I’m writing the book.
Joe Skinner: And while living as his characters, John Waters is writing, and rewriting, and writing some more – Liarmouth often sounds like a stream of conscious narrative that he could’ve just spoken out loud and improvised, but in reality it’s written very carefully.
John Waters: I just get through that first draft, which is the hardest thing. And then I don’t keep reading it over and over. I just keep going and then I read the whole thing and want to kill myself. And then I think, Who wrote this? But all i can say is that it’s re-written probably 8 drafts. So it is carefully worked out, I think, I mean, I do re-write a lot, and each time it gets better and better and each time you do change things and you change a punchline, you change a joke, you add things each time it gets better and better. Then when it doesn’t get better, you’re done.
Joe Skinner: Once he finished the book, John was a little nervous to share it with the world.
John Waters: I figured with this book, I was really afraid when I turned it in because it’s, I think, one of the craziest things I’ve ever written. Ya know, I didn’t have a sensitivity editor because she wouldn’t call us back once we sent it to her.
Joe Skinner: He’s not exactly sure what that ghosting from the sensitivity editor means about the contents of Liarmouth. But he did get an idea when he recorded the audiobook and realized just how obscene some parts of it were.
John Waters: When I’m reading it aloud and look over at the horrified technician’s face that has never heard one thing about me. I’m really sad my parents are no longer with me, but the only good thing about that is that they don’t have to read Liarmouth. There’s a lot of sex talk and there’s a great little book I use a lot, and I’ve said it before. It’s called The Big Book of Filth, and it’s a little, it’s a glossary of every filthy term you can think of. It’s really good for a writer, I would say, to get it. I would say “fudge dragon” I got from that book. And that’s a pretty hideous one that I’m not gonna say on your show what it is, but you’ll have to read the book to figure that out. So certainly, I was nervous at what the reaction would be when I turned it in because I had absolutely no idea. It could’ve gone either way.
John Waters: I wrote horror stories at summer camp, and would read them around the campfire. And the kids freaked and called their parents. When I was 12 years old, I had a puppet show career that I did at children’s birthday parties, and I did them a lot, sometimes two or three a week at the height of my career. I liked the idea that I could tell stories, I could make the kids scream. I’m doing the exact same thing that I’m doing now. It hasn’t changed that much.
Joe Skinner: A thread that runs through all of John Waters’ work is how outlandish it is. He’s called the Pope of Trash for a reason. One of his most iconic scenes involves a drag queen eating dog feces. But he’s not just being provocative because it’s fun. I mean, he probably is a little bit. It’s also to make a strong case for free speech.
John Waters: I’ve rioted for free speech. I think that you should be able to say anything. Even if it’s terrible, I know you have to put up with the worst ends of freedom.
Joe Skinner: But the nature of that free speech has changed a lot over the decades since he made his first films in the ‘70s.
John Waters: The rules I’ve always made my living from making fun of is the rules of people that consider themselves outsiders. Multiple Maniacs was made in the middle of the hippie movement and it made fun of hippie values even though the audience was hippies.
Multiple Maniacs (Archival): These assorted sluts, fags, dykes, and pimps know no bounds. They have committed acts against god and nature. Acts that by their mere existence would make any decent person recoil in disgust.
Joe Skinner: Multiple Maniacs pokes fun at the peace-and-love hippie movement by turning it on its head – with a plot that follows a traveling exhibition of obscene and disgusting acts, like eating puke. 50 years later, Liarmouth is taking aim at the liberals of today.
John Waters: I understand that I’m writing it for today’s world and that the censorship, who it would come from probably is college age liberals. I don’t know. The whole gay world used to be together. It was trans, gay, lesbians, everybody together. And now we’re all fighting with each other. I think it’s a mistake.
Joe Skinner: In many ways, Liarmouth is a critique of this particular shift in contemporary social movements. Movements that rioted for free speech decades ago, but now have all these rules in place. This satire comes through especially when talking about Poppy and her group of “bouncers,” who are addicted to bouncing on trampolines.
John Waters: There’s such a thing as a bouncist, someone that hates bouncers. At one point the people that are addicted to trampoline bouncing becomes victim of bouncing discrimination, which is kind of ludicrous. They’re in a rest stop and they’re bouncing, and some people start hassling them for being bouncers.
John Waters (Liarmouth Audio Book): Look, we don’t care about the law, Poppy butts in, before Adora can continue her possibly pointless debate. We are outlaw trampoline radicals on the run, Volta announces. And we need a ride, demands Lipa, like the leaping leader of the left she’s become. All of you, Poacher Bob asks, as he surveys the bouncers and shakers, who are struggling to maintain their movement so as not to alarm their potential rescuer.
Joe Skinner: Liarmouth is filled with little quips like this, both embracing and making fun of contemporary social movements and ideas of who belongs in them.
John Waters: But I think weirdly enough my films are politically correct because of who wins. The people that don’t judge others and believe in themselves, no matter what society thinks. It’s made of course, for liberals, but at the same time, I go on Fox News to promote it.
News Segment (Host): Welcome to this episode of Kennedy Saves the World. And today I’m going to save you from someone who steals your luggage every time it goes around the airport carousel…
John Waters: which I think was astounding and kind of amazing. So, it is hopefully for the humor for everybody, because that’s the only way we can listen to each other.
News Segment (Host): …And there isn’t as much a push for personal freedom now.
News Segment (John Waters): When I was young it was actually not out of the realm of senses to have sex with somebody different every single night, and now you need 5 lawyers to ask somebody for a date. So I have lived with all extremes.
Joe Skinner: So you believe in reaching across the aisle, I guess?
John Waters: Yeah, I’m not sure what I do once I reach across there, maybe pick their pocket or sneak something in their pocket is better, and that they don’t even notice, and then they carry it around with them. Infect them with humor. Humor on things that are touchy, people are touchy about. But is that wrong?
Joe Skinner: Thank you for going on this brief journey into the mind of John Waters. And of course, a huge thank you to John Waters for taking the time to talk to us.
American Masters: Creative Spark is a production of the WNET Group, media made possible by all of you. This episode was produced by Anna Ladd, and by me, Joe Skinner. Our executive producer is Michael Kantor. Original music is composed by Hannis Brown. This episode was mixed and mastered by Josh Broome.
Funding for American Masters: Creative Spark was provided by the Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, the Thea Petschek Iervolino Foundation, the Anderson Family Fund, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, and the Philip & Janice Levin Foundation.
