You're Driving Along and You See a Guy Hitching. Turns
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Photograph Jonathan Hanson John Waters wants a ride You’re driving along and you see a guy hitching. Turns out, it’s the director of Hairspray! David Farley joins the cult filmmaker on to hear why he decided to hitchhike across America, and joins him on a trip to Divine’s grave Thumbs up!: John Waters hitches a ride to ‘Disgraceland’ – what he calls his burial plot John Waters ohn Waters is stand- Hitchhiking is nothing new to Waters. He by the church. That’s when my mom first got ing on a residential regularly hitchhiked home from school when an inkling there may be something wrong with street a block from he was a teenager in Baltimore. And then in me.” He laughs. “That was the church that his Baltimore home Provincetown, on Cape Code, where he still caused the rage that inspired Pink Flamingos.” holding a hand- maintains a home, he regularly thumbed it And, in turn, Pink Flamingos caused further made cardboard to a beach 10 miles away because he couldn’t rage. Released in 1972, the boundary-breaking sign with the word get a parking permit there. He’d often go on movie was called “one of the most vile, stupid, “Disgraceland” “hitchhiking dates” where he’d take a friend and repulsive films ever made,” by Variety scrawled across it with him. On one such occasion, a driver magazine, a charge, I suspect, Waters doesn’t in black ink. With asked: “Are you John Waters?” John nodded mind at all. Pink Flamingos launched Waters hand outstretched and then, pointing to the backseat, said: “And as the reigning monarch of midnight movies and his thumb in the that’s Patty Hearst.” in the US, and the emperor of underground air, wearing a black Waters and I were not heading to a beach. cinema. And while his films slowly became suit jacket and a pur- Instead, we were going to Prospect Hill cem- better in terms of production value – such as ple tie to match his etery, where his longtime friend and early Serial Mom, Pecker and Cecil B Demented – he purple-tinged slip- star of his films, Divine, is buried. Divine, aka never stopped playing with moral ambiguity, on sneakers, he keeps Harris Glenn Milstead, a larger-than-life drag or questioning the “family values” conserva- his eyes locked on queen, died from a heart attack at the age of tive politicians liked to boast about. Waters’s the road, looking for 42 in 1988, just a week after the premiere of work insists that there’s an America out there oncoming cars. Waters Waters’s film Hairspray. Prospect Hill is also few people dare speak of. He was, and still is, has a few monikers: the where Waters himself has a plot, as does his this America. Pope of Trash and the King of friend (and actor in many of his films) Mink This is why his excursion is so appealing Bad Taste. He should have a new Stole. “We call it Disgraceland,” he tells Grant and refreshing. It would be like finding celeb- one: the Patron Saint of Hitchhiking. and me in the car.” Hence the handwritten rity psychologist and TV presenter Dr Phil or “This is where I walked out of the house cardboard sign. (He had a second sign with a newsreader from Fox News hanging out in one morning and began the journey,” says the “London” scrawled across it.) Brooklyn watching an indie band. You’d do filmmaker. “I had this idea to hitchhike from Waters chats to Grant, inquiring about his a double take and wonder if your drink was here to my apartment in San Francisco and life. In just a few minutes we learn that he laced with something. During Waters’s hitch- it wasn’t until this point, standing here, that moved here from Las Vegas. We learn of his hiking adventure he came into contact with an I thought: ‘What the hell are you doing?’” love life. He tells us about his various career America he has largely eschewed for most of The result of what the hell he was doing is changes. He now runs a food-truck business. his lifetime. If you live in a big city in a cosmo- Carsick, an account of his journey, written by “See,” Waters interjects, looking back at me. politan environment of the east or west coasts, the man who made such outlandish films as “These are the people it’s easy to avoid corpo- Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. It’s a book that pick up hitchhik- rate-chain-store-laden in three sections: the first two are fictional- ers. It’s a special breed America. You can almost ised adventures of his trip, “The Best That of person. More adven- It was in that church forget it exists. Could Happen” and “The Worst That turous and curious. that my mom first In Waters’s case, he Could Happen”. You’ve reinvented your- got an inkling there drank Coca-Cola for “In many ways the fiction parts of the book self numerous times the first time in two dec- are just like my movies,” says the 68-year-old. and there’s something may be something ades. He ate at McDon- He’s right: there are scenes with plenty of to that.” wrong with me ald’s and Applebee’s. He sexual activity (best) and scenes of horrific “Well,” Grant says, slept at low-brow chain car accidents (worst), picking up his favour- “to be honest, I wouldn’t motels. “Days Inn,” he ite porn star (best, naturally) and riding have picked you up confesses, “was the best with a vegan extremist (worst). There’s even if you weren’t John hotel chain I stayed at. a chapter where Waters writes his own death, Waters.” Holiday Inns were ter- a hilarious tale of a maniac who intends to “When I did my rible.” But the best parts murder every living cult filmmaker. cross-country hitchhik- were with the people And then there’s the third section – a non- ing,” Waters responds, he met along the way. fiction account of his actual trip, “The Real “most people didn’t “I always believed in Thing”. In this people drive past Waters, know who I was and the goodness of peo- at first under the impression he is a home- they picked me up.” ple”, says Waters. “I hate less John Waters lookalike – only to circle That’s partially true. it when people say back and find that it really is the director of Waters’s adventure ‘middle America’. It’s Hairspray. “Are you really John Waters?” was went viral while he was still on the trip thanks synonymous with ‘close-minded’. I didn’t find the common icebreaker – although a couple to the live tweeting of a Brooklyn-based indie that at all on my trip.” of times people wondered if he was the actor rock band called Here We Go Magic. “Just These days Waters is far more than a film- Steve Buscemi. picked up John Waters hitchhiking in the mid- maker: he’s an artist, a television presenter, And this is sort of what has just happened to dle of Ohio. No joke. Waters in the car,” went an author (Carsick is his ninth book including us now. A black Honda Civic slows to a crawl, their first tweet, starting a media frenzy about screenplays and photograph collections), as the passenger window unwinds and a man the director’s unlikely journey. well as a performer (he’ll be bringing a one- in his mid-30s leans over and yells: “Are you “Aargh!” Waters suddenly exclaims. He man show of his hitchhiking trip to the UK really hitchhiking?” Ten seconds later Waters points to a stone neo-Gothic church. “There’s next month). He says he has no plans for and I are in the car. I’m scrunched in the back where it all began,” he says. “When I was eight, another film, not because of lack of desire, with a child seat and the filmmaker is directing I refused at that church to pledge that I would but because the indie scene requires so much JOHN WATERS JOHN the driver, Grant, where to go. not watch certain films that were condemned more funding these days. “Besides that,” THE OBSERVER | 12.10.14 | MAGAZINE 43 John Waters he added, “I’m booked for the next year.” Waters is a famous control freak, schedul- ing even the most mundane aspects of his life in appointments. He even schedules hangovers and when he’ll allow himself to eat sweets two or three months in advance. This is one of the reasons he did the cross- country hitchhike. “I wanted something I couldn’t control,” he said. “Something I couldn’t plan.” ‘Someone wrote Satan on his tombstone once’: At first Waters, with trademark pencil- Waters at the grave of his thin moustache and a waifish frame often great friend Divine. His clad in Comme des Garçons, seems like one own plot is nearby of the most unlikely people on the planet to undertake such an endeavour. But hitch- hiking seems to have become more sub- versive than putting a drag queen as the lead in your movies. “People just don’t do hitchhike any more,” says Waters. “In Provincetown a few years ago, a couple picked me up and their young child kept saying: ‘Who is this man?’ He had no idea what hitchhiking even was!” “I think it’s dangerous to stay home,” he adds, “never going out and seeing the world and meeting new and interesting people.