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Filmmaker John Waters Complains Trump Forever Ruined Bad Taste
"King of camp filmmaker John Waters complained in an interview published Saturday that former President Donald Trump has ruined the quirky, kinky allure of bad taste for all eternity. . .“As soon as Trump was president, it just ended the humor of it. He was the nail in the coffin,” Waters added.
“He’s the first person that had accidental bad taste that wasn’t funny.”
The cinematic queer visionary — who wielded his dark humor and camp aesthetic in decades of memorable movies from “Pink Flamingos” to “Female Trouble,” the original 1988 “Hairspray” and “Cry-Baby” — grumbled that Trump broke all the rules.
. . .“Usually, accidental bad taste is what camp originally meant,” he said. “But today, people try too hard. And I think that never works. Because true camp is innocent, it doesn’t do things on purpose. It takes itself very seriously.” . .
>> “A lot of stuff that happens is pretty hideous, and pretty unimaginable. But that’s what makes me feel good because I read a book to go into another world or enter someone else’s universe. Even if I’m horrified by it, I love that.” He becomes more passionate as he explains the core tenet of Liarmouth, and all his work: “I don’t buy fiction to make myself ‘feel good’ or go to the movies to ‘feel good’. People who say: ‘Oh, I go to the movies to feel good’… Well, I always move away from that person.”
>> Does his work, with all its feel-bad twists and turns, ever surprise Waters himself? “That’s my job, thinking up fucked-up things. That’s what I do for a living. So that doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is when I can make myself laugh out loud. Well, then I know it really is a good joke, because that’s very hard to do.” He chuckles again. The Waters chuckle, by the way, is a thing of beauty. It’s tempting to editorialise and say he has a filthy laugh but, actually, it’s more impish than that. He’s a puckish figure, capable of finding humour in some of the worst aspects of humanity . . .He does have red lines, though. “The things I’m shocked about are always stupid things, like this idiot racist who just killed people [in Buffalo, New York, last month]. I mean, that’s shocking to me, but not in a good way.”
Let's snag some lines from the interview by Catherine Bray [Check out the full interview.]
John Waters: ‘Trump ruined bad taste – he was the nail in the coffin’
____". . .If that’s the case, then Waters himself cannot be described as camp, as much as he is an eternal queer icon, because he absolutely refuses to take things too seriously. Is he worried about offending people? “Well, I think Liarmouth is weird but I don’t think it’s offensive in political correctness ways, and if it is, I’m making a joke about it. I am parodying everything. I think I’m parodying writing a novel in the first place, by even calling it a ‘feel-bad romance’, something that no one would put on their book.”
Liarmouth
is out now. John Waters’ show False Negative is at the Barbican Hall, London, 10 June
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HERE'S MORE FROM THE INTERVIEW:
". . .Even if you have never seen one of Waters’ dozen feature films, you’ve probably sensed his presence. For a director whose early work saw him tagged variously as the Pope of Trash, the Sultan of Sleaze, the Duke of Dirt, the Baron of Bad Taste, the King of Puke and Queer Confucius, he is blessed with a level of influence that belies his outsider status. Perhaps that’s because he’s not confined to the midnight movie circuit: a talented conceptual artist, he’s also an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. The Baltimore Museum of Art’s bathrooms are named after the man, for crying out loud.
But speaking to Waters, you would never guess you were encountering someone so revered. As per usual, he is in Baltimore, Maryland, where he has essentially lived for his entire life, enjoying his status as the city’s patron sinner. His manner throughout an hour spent chatting is mild, engaged and perpetually amused. Despite the title of his last nonfiction book, Mr Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, it doesn’t feel as though he is making any great claims to having things all figured out. Perhaps that’s because he’s just done something he’s never done before. Meet John Waters: debut novelist.
The novel in question, Liarmouth, is Waters to its core. Anything can and does happen, in an anarchic, zesty burlesque that takes the reader on a tour through subcultures as diverse as a rimming rights group, a plastic surgery outfit for pets, a feral pack of trampoline-addiction advocates and the underground world of baggage carousel suitcase heists. It is available now from all good bookshops.
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