[John Waters - the "filth elder" of us all - made a triumphant return visit to London on Tuesday 11 November 2014 when he brought his This Filthy World: Filthier and Dirtier show to The Royal Festival Hall. I've been regularly contributing to Beige magazine lately and they asked me to do a scene report. You can also read this on their website]
Trust John Waters to lure the freakiest, queerest crowd assembled at The Royal Festival Hall since punk diva Siouxsie’s 2013 Meltdown comeback gig. Or the last time Diamanda Galas performed there. Or in fact since the last time Waters brought his acclaimed one man stand-up comedy show This Filthy World to town.
In his tight, rapid-fire
ninety minute set, the veteran cult filmmaker turned raconteur regaled us with
dirty stories like a joyous bad influence toilet-mouthed uncle (albeit an
exceptionally elegant uncle clad in Comme des Garcons). [Note: I've since been corrected that Waters' ultra soigné suit was by Belgian designer Dries Van Noten!]
Outing himself as a Lana Del
Rey fan, the trash auteur admitted
contemplating coming onstage and serenading us with her entire Ultraviolence album while maintaining direct
eye contact in an act of creepy performance art - but chickened out. Waters suggested
David Lynch should produce the dysfunctional ice maiden’s next album and argued
Lynch would be missing a trick if he doesn’t invite her to appear on the 2016 Twin Peaks reboot.
Perversely, Waters loves tarnished
pop idol Justin Bieber even more now
that he’s on the descent, admitting he’d love to cut an album of duets with him
like Tony Bennett’s and Lady Ga Ga’s.
Recalling his childhood,
Waters described how in kindergarten he’d tell his mother stories about the
peculiar little boy in his class who never spoke to his classmates and only
coloured with black crayons. When Mrs Waters enquired about this kid to his
teacher at a PTA meeting, the teacher exclaimed, “But that’s your son!”
Anecdotes about the making of
his notorious midnight movies were inevitable. Waters called outrageous late
maverick actress Susan Tyrrell - who loved freaking out the squares by loudly
announcing she possessed “the pussy of a 12-year old girl”- one of the most
terrifying women he ever met.
[Tyrrell, of course, played Ramona Rickettes in Waters' 1990 film Cry-baby. He mentioned the cast also included the notorious, troubled and frequently violent sex kitten Joey Heatherton. He talked about Heatherton being arrested in 1985 for physically assaulting a clerk at the passport agency office – and then just recently attacking a neighbour whose noisy juicer machine was disturbing her. “Don’t fuck with Joey Heatherton!”]
[Tyrrell, of course, played Ramona Rickettes in Waters' 1990 film Cry-baby. He mentioned the cast also included the notorious, troubled and frequently violent sex kitten Joey Heatherton. He talked about Heatherton being arrested in 1985 for physically assaulting a clerk at the passport agency office – and then just recently attacking a neighbour whose noisy juicer machine was disturbing her. “Don’t fuck with Joey Heatherton!”]
When his elderly mother asked
about the subject matter of 2004’s A
Dirty Shame (Water’s last film to date) and he replied, “Sex addiction”,
she wearily sighed, “Maybe we’ll be dead before it comes out.” His father shrugged
“It was funny but I hope I never see it again.”
Waters cited viewing putrid
1945 “sexual hygiene film” Mom and Dad at an impressionable age as a key influence on his own sensibility. An
embryonic example of sexploitation cinema, it played in Baltimore’s grindhouse
theatres for eight years. Starved for a glimpse of female nudity, the men in
the audience actually masturbated to close-ups of childbirth. Waters said
seeing this set him on his path as a filmmaker.
The tone sweetened when he
fondly reminisced about his two much-missed leading ladies, Divine and Edith
Massey. Explaining Divine’s persona as hybrid of Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla
conceived to scare hippies, Waters described filming his 300-pound drag starlet
crawling through mud on a pig farm in 1969’s Mondo Trasho. Once the cameras started rolling two of the pigs
spontaneously started fucking. It wasn’t in the script, but it added to the
magic. “Divine turned the pigs on!”
he marvelled.
Admitting he still wakes up
surprised that Divine is dead, he revealed that actress Mink Stole, his casting
director Pat Moran and himself have bought burial plots together adjoining
Divine’s and dubbed the area Disgraceland. Waters urged everyone to come and
fuck on their graves when they’re dead: “We’d love it!” His is actually a double burial plot and Waters suggested
if any rabid fan wanted to dig-up the remains of either Pier Paolo Pasolini or Jean
Genet and re-bury them next to him, he’d appreciate the tribute.
/ The photos below were taken by Mia of Amy Grimehouse /
Further reading:
My 2010 interview with John Waters for Nude magazine
My 2011 reunion with the Prince of Puke
When John Waters brought his Christmas Show to Royal Festival Hall in 2011
Full scene report from the Amy Grimehouse 12-hour John Waters Filth Fest on 29 March 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment