Entertainment
INTERVIEW: JOHN WATERS (1983)
Mon, Mar 10, 2003 12:00 am
Story by Larry Sloman
Photo by Peter Hudson
HIGH TIMES’ originally published this interview in its January 1983 issue, when filmmaker John Waters was still years away from recreating himself with counterculture comedy classics such as Hairspray (1988), Serial Mom (1994), and Pecker (1998). At the time, no one could have guessed that the young director best know for his self-described “exercise in poor taste,” Pink Flamingos (1972), would go on to inspire a hit Broadway show as well as being named The Baltimore Sun’s 2002 Marylander of the Year.
"If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation."
Those are the words, and the self-professed artistic credo, of John Waters -- the Cinematic Sleaze King of Baltimore, Maryland, the Self-Crowned Nabob of nausea, the Sheik of Shock and Schlock, the Emperor of Enemas and the American cinema’s one-and-only Prince of Puke -- this last title earned on the strength of the never-to-be-forgotten climax of Pink Flamingos, where Waters showed his superstar -- a 300-pound, balding transvestite named Divine -- getting down in the street on all fours and wolfing down a pile of dogshit (thereby locking up the title of “The Filthiest Person Alive”).
Water’s incredible movies -- ranging from juvenilia like Hag in a Black Leather Jacket and Eat Your Makeup; to such full-blown and fully ripened masterpieces as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble; all the way up (or down) to the recent Polyester (costarring “dream couple” Divine and Tab Hunter, and released in odorama) -- have redefined all past concepts of “bad taste” in cinema. He and his wild and weirdly talented “stock company” (which also includes Edie the Egg Lady, saturnine Mink Stole and the ethereal Mary Vivian Pearce) have plunged into the nether realms of tastelessness, boldly striking backward where no explorer has ventured before. In Water’s world those old movie staples, sex and violence, are fused with grotesque table etiquette, abominable bathroom habits, rampaging lust and disgraceful misbehavior of all kinds.
HIGH TIMES editor Larry “Ratso” Sloman -- whose own habits are so depraved and unspeakable that he obviously finds in Waters a kindred spirit –- decided to meet the Sleaze King in his stamping grounds, Baltimore. There he found a polite and quiet-spoken, apparently typical middle-class young man with a pencil-thin mustache, whose mild appearance seemed to belie the unforgivable cinematic atrocities he has wreaked upon an unsuspecting world.
WATERS ON CENSORSHIP
High Times: Have you been harassed at all from Moral Majority types because of your films?
Waters: I would welcome the Moral Majority to hassle me. It would help at the box office. But they won't pick on me because they know that the people who enjoy my films are lost causes to them anyway.
Now, if I was on television where I could reach their angelic children who might be influenced by me, maybe they'd harass me. But the whole Moral Majority thing is so weird. I don't know how much influence they really have. I have never met a person anywhere in my life that believes in that. It's a hype. Besides, those people haven't been to a movie in ten years. The ones that want movie censorship never go to movies.
High Times: You had some trouble through the years from the local Maryland censor woman.
Waters: She helped me. She was a press agent for years. I don't miss her. She was a moron. I could work, kill myself for two years making a movie, borrow all this money, and then go down to the Censor Office and ask this woman's opinion who couldn't even speak English.
I used to have this fantasy that when Desperate Living was banned the whole cast would go down and chain ourselves to the furniture. And with my cast there would have been some good news photos of cops hauling us out. But then I figured it would end up costing a fortune, and we were a little too old to do that kind of thing. But I'd have given anything to see their faces when four-hundred-pound Jean Hill chained herself to their desk.
High Times: How do you feel about all the sociological arguments that people imitate what they see on the screen?
Waters: I think if a film can make you kill someone it's a great movie. If a film can be that powerful, to influence your life that heavily, it must be a pretty good movie. I think that the theories are a crock of shit. There are always people who can say, "This tree told me to kill somebody." If you're going to worry about that, then you can't have entertainment.
JOHN WATERS INTERVIEW [cont.]
WATERS ON HIS FAVORITE HOBBY:
High Times: I understand that when you're not writing a script or shooting a movie, you travel all around the country attending trials.
Waters: Yeah. I missed Gacey's trial, I was shooting then. But I'm going to go to Kathy Boudin's trial. That's the next biggie. I think it'll be splashy. I wonder if she'll snitch. I wouldn't blame her--she's in a lot of trouble.
High Times: I understand her father is really upset about the whole thing.
Waters: Well, it wasn't like she was a girl scout all her life. I mean she did blow up the house, didn't she? I think it'll be a pretty good trial, the kind of trial that'll last way too long. It'll probably be easy to get into after awhile. I've always enjoyed the Weathermen. And now, in 1982, it's so weird to see them in a courtroom. Especially if they're screaming out stuff and refusing to stand up when the judge comes in. That always makes for entertainment.
High Times: Did you go to the Chicago Seven trial?
Waters: No. I went to the MOVE trial, though. The black Philadelphia group. I loved them so much. They all got life and stuff, but they were really good in the courtroom because they would stand up and scream, "Fuck you." Everything. The judge had to be so patient, and all of their last names were "Africa". "Miss Africa," "Mr. Africa," it was just so ludicrous. But they were incredibly good-looking. They had the dread locks, but I mean really radical ones. And all the girls had little pocketbooks that said, "I live in Africa," meaning the state of mind. They were hand-embroidered.
I loved their unity together. They really believed in what they were doing. I always like crackpots who are willing to go to jail the rest of their lives for crackpot theory. They have my respect.
High Times: Son of Sam. You didn't think much of him.
Waters: He was boring. I loved it until they caught him. He's so ugly. He had no charisma as a murderer. I think they at least have to look good. The case that has obsessed me the most was the Manson case. They wanted to scare the world and they did. Not that I approve of what they did, but they did really scare people. It finally ended the hippie movement, thank God.
I went to the Watergate trial. I actually heard the tapes. I went with my mother. That was the hardest trial of all to get into. We waited from midnight until two in the afternoon in the rain for it. But it was worth it. I was there the day Nixon called Mitchell the big enchilada. You should have seen Mitchell's face when he heard that. Aggh.
High Times: What was the weirdest trial you've been to?
Waters: One in Baltimore--the penis collector. He had a little lunch box full of them. Creative. Then there was the nurse that shoved turds down her patient's mouth.
High Times: She obviously had seen Pink Flamingos.
Waters: They didn't ask her. That was a good trial. I was the only person in the courtroom, and the district attorney looked at me like, "Oh, great." Her defense was that she had her period that day.
High Times: Did you go to the Johnny Holmes trial in L.A.?
Waters: No, I would have loved to. He'll make out well in jail. One thing, Johnny Wadd won't have any trouble in jail.
High Times: So what's the source of all these dark obsessions?
Waters: I've always liked villains. People that were villains in real life and not just in storybooks or movies. That would fascinate me, the banality of evil. It's such a true cliché. These murderers, just one second in their life and they're famous! But they're just like normal people.
High Times: What's great about your films is that you take these horrific things from real life and twist them into humor.
Waters: In all my films people laugh at things that would be so cruel to laugh at if they happened to somebody you knew. But it's so ridiculous and exaggerated that you can't really think it could possibly happen that way. It could. People could throw acid in your face, it happens all the time. But the thing that interests me most about the trials is how they handle the sudden glare of publicity. It's really true that anyone can become famous overnight. Look at Hinckley.
High Times: He did it for Jody [Foster].
Waters: Poor Jody. Divine said, "I wish it would have happened to me. What is she thinking about? I would have been blowing kisses in the courtroom screaming, "I love you John!" That stuff interests me. If I didn't make films I think I would have been a criminal lawyer or a reporter.
High Times: You vote a lot?
Waters: I try to vote as much as I can.
High Times: Five, six times, I read.
Waters: Well, I've calmed down. I used to vote a lot each election. Every city I was in, because it made the newspapers more interesting. I felt more civic-minded if I voted six times in an election. I love to vote.
High Times: Yeah, but then they have your name and you can get called for jury duty.
Waters: I certainly wouldn't mind that. I'd be so happy.
High Times: Sorry, I forgot.
Waters: They'd never let me on a jury. Are you kidding? They'd question me, "Have you ever been in a courtroom?" "Well, I've traveled thousands of miles at my own expense to go to them, yes. Every day I go to court." Forget it, they'd never let me on a jury.
WATERS ON DRUGS
High Times: You wanted me, to ask you about drugs.
Waters: I know my drug views would be very anti your magazine. But taking drugs at my age is like being a punk after you're twenty-five. It looks silly. Drugs are part of growing up, like getting pimples. But afterward I think pot does make you stupid. It makes you settle for less. When I was growing up I took so many drugs. I'm not sorry I did. I never had a bad experience, but then I was lucky--I moved on. Whereas other people I know didn't, and they're drug addicts. I even took morning glory seeds like some giant parakeet.
High Times: So you're saying kids should take drugs and then give them up? That's a different idea, that's for sure.
Waters: Sixteen to twenty-one. Those are the ripe drug years, but after that, echh. That's like having a mohawk at thirty.
High Times: Besides pot, what drugs were you familiar with?
Waters: I used to do a lot of speed growing up. I felt like taking speed again after I read the Edie Sedgwick book. But I'm too old for that.
High Times: Have you gone on to other drugs like Valium?
Waters: I always hated downs. Valiums make me mean. When I was a teenager I wanted to shoot heroin to see what it was like. The first time I did it someone shot me up and this huge black bubble grew in my arm. I thought, "Oh, isn't this pretty for school." I mean, drugs were just too much trouble. Now if I want anything it's a martini straight up. I figure it looks prettier than a needle or carrying around things in tinfoil.
High Times: Coke?
Waters: Cocaine makes me just want to drink and talk a lot. To telephone poles. "Hi, look in refrigerator. Cold in there?" It really gets me ridiculous. I have friends that take drugs. But I wouldn't vote for them to become legal. I think pot takes away from ambition.
High Times: The pot that people are smoking today is much stronger than the pot that was around when you were smoking.
Waters: No matter how much I liked it I could never say to someone, "I'd like some Maui Wowie." I would be so mortified to say that to someone. The high could never compensate.
High Times: But you recently smoked grass with William Burroughs.
Waters: Well, from him how could you not? It would have been a sacrilege. He has the most incredible sense of humor. We did a thing together in Washington. He read, and I showed Desperate Living, which I thought was a good mix from the old wave.
High Times: What was smoking with him like?
Waters: All I could remember was thinking, "Here I am sitting smoking pot with William Burroughs." I used to read him in high school when I was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher. So it made me feel happy. I felt I had chosen the right direction to go in.
High Times: Did you have any profound insights on acid?
Waters: No, thank God. That would have been a bad trip, if some profound thought had come to me. It didn't change my life, it just made it more fun for the week. Maybe it changed me a little. It made me take everything even less seriously than I already took it. I think it gave all of us that worked together a sense of humor about ourselves.
We never thought what we were doing was going to change the world. I don't want to change the world. I like everything that's bad in the world. The worst stuff, that's where my material comes from. I'm no missionary.
But profound? How about Divine doing Dionne Warwick imitations two hours into a trip, with shower rings for earrings and an old dirty towel wrapped around his head for hair? That's about the most profound thing I can remember.
WATERS ON HIS EARLY DAYS
High Times: In retrospect, are you embarrassed by your early long-hair incarnation?
Waters: I was never a hippie. I had long hair and I went to the riots, but just because they were good
High Times: You come more from the beat tradition, right?
Waters: That was the first way I rebelled. Beatnik. Moondog. I'd run away to New York to see the beatniks, then I'd think, "This is the way I want to go." They were glamorous to me. I read all about them. I knew their sense of humor and their interests and it was everything I identified with. I read Genet. I was thirteen, living in a suburban-type home in Baltimore, so I couldn't go to North Beach, but I read about it all the time.
High Times: How did you get into that scene?
Waters: I met people that lived in my neighborhood that didn't hang out in my neighborhood. That was the key. Beatniky people with Cleopatra eye makeup and fishnet nylons. They had poetry readings at this beatnik bar downtown. I would go to the bar but I couldn't get in because I wasn't twenty-one, so I'd sit in the alley, right outside the door. And for some reason my parents would drive me there and let me off.
High Times: Let you off so you could hang out in the alley?
Waters: Yes, I thought that was nice. I'll never forget-my mother said, "Is this camp or slums?" I guess my parents realized it wasn't going to work for me the other way, being a jock in a fraternity. So this was the first time I was ever around drugs, homosexuality, beatniks, all of it mixed, totally mixed. It wasn't a gay scene, it wasn't a drug scene. It was completely mixed. And that's when I first started making the movies. Eight-millimeter black and white, no editing. They were terrible. We'd show them in these coffeehouses.
High Times: You talked in your book about sickniks?
Waters: We would just go to a public park where families went, but the girls would really dress for the occasion. Thrift shop outlandish. This was before there was even the word "hippie." When the hippie movement came around, all of the people I knew hated it. They thought we were being co-opted. What is this horrible trend that is making us look normal? So we used to go to these parks, and everyone would get loaded on pot and liquor and they would see us coming, twenty-strong, and families would literally pick up their picnic baskets and run to the safety of their cars.
Also, the people that I hung around with were very big on robberies, they were antique thieves. So it was really a ring of pot heads and people that stole Oriental rugs that was the nucleus of my first downtown friends.
High Times: You were tripping a lot when you were making the first films?
Waters: Not while I was doing them. I was tripping about once a week from '66 to '70. Real strong acid. I don't know if I got any ideas from it, but it helped me further break the suburban mold. Divine, all of us, did it together and it brought everyone much closer, I think. We hung around together, sort of like an extended family.
High Times: Sounds like the love generation.
Waters: It does. But then again, what it brought us closer to do was hideous violent movies. Instead of ending the war, we wanted to start a war. That's the difference. I took acid about two years ago. I hadn't done it in ten years and I thought maybe it would-be like a tune-up, but it was just boring. I couldn't go to sleep, I kept seeing all these colors jumping around. It wasn't new, anymore, it was a rerun.
HIGH TIMES’ originally published this interview in its January 1983 issue, when filmmaker John Waters was still years away from recreating himself with counterculture comedy classics such as Hairspray (1988), Serial Mom (1994), and Pecker (1998). At the time, no one could have guessed that the young director best know for his self-described “exercise in poor taste,” Pink Flamingos (1972), would go on to inspire a hit Broadway show as well as being named The Baltimore Sun’s 2002 Marylander of the Year.
"If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation."
Those are the words, and the self-professed artistic credo, of John Waters -- the Cinematic Sleaze King of Baltimore, Maryland, the Self-Crowned Nabob of nausea, the Sheik of Shock and Schlock, the Emperor of Enemas and the American cinema’s one-and-only Prince of Puke -- this last title earned on the strength of the never-to-be-forgotten climax of Pink Flamingos, where Waters showed his superstar -- a 300-pound, balding transvestite named Divine -- getting down in the street on all fours and wolfing down a pile of dogshit (thereby locking up the title of “The Filthiest Person Alive”).
Water’s incredible movies -- ranging from juvenilia like Hag in a Black Leather Jacket and Eat Your Makeup; to such full-blown and fully ripened masterpieces as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble; all the way up (or down) to the recent Polyester (costarring “dream couple” Divine and Tab Hunter, and released in odorama) -- have redefined all past concepts of “bad taste” in cinema. He and his wild and weirdly talented “stock company” (which also includes Edie the Egg Lady, saturnine Mink Stole and the ethereal Mary Vivian Pearce) have plunged into the nether realms of tastelessness, boldly striking backward where no explorer has ventured before. In Water’s world those old movie staples, sex and violence, are fused with grotesque table etiquette, abominable bathroom habits, rampaging lust and disgraceful misbehavior of all kinds.
HIGH TIMES editor Larry “Ratso” Sloman -- whose own habits are so depraved and unspeakable that he obviously finds in Waters a kindred spirit –- decided to meet the Sleaze King in his stamping grounds, Baltimore. There he found a polite and quiet-spoken, apparently typical middle-class young man with a pencil-thin mustache, whose mild appearance seemed to belie the unforgivable cinematic atrocities he has wreaked upon an unsuspecting world.
WATERS ON CENSORSHIP
High Times: Have you been harassed at all from Moral Majority types because of your films?
Waters: I would welcome the Moral Majority to hassle me. It would help at the box office. But they won't pick on me because they know that the people who enjoy my films are lost causes to them anyway.
Now, if I was on television where I could reach their angelic children who might be influenced by me, maybe they'd harass me. But the whole Moral Majority thing is so weird. I don't know how much influence they really have. I have never met a person anywhere in my life that believes in that. It's a hype. Besides, those people haven't been to a movie in ten years. The ones that want movie censorship never go to movies.
High Times: You had some trouble through the years from the local Maryland censor woman.
Waters: She helped me. She was a press agent for years. I don't miss her. She was a moron. I could work, kill myself for two years making a movie, borrow all this money, and then go down to the Censor Office and ask this woman's opinion who couldn't even speak English.
I used to have this fantasy that when Desperate Living was banned the whole cast would go down and chain ourselves to the furniture. And with my cast there would have been some good news photos of cops hauling us out. But then I figured it would end up costing a fortune, and we were a little too old to do that kind of thing. But I'd have given anything to see their faces when four-hundred-pound Jean Hill chained herself to their desk.
High Times: How do you feel about all the sociological arguments that people imitate what they see on the screen?
Waters: I think if a film can make you kill someone it's a great movie. If a film can be that powerful, to influence your life that heavily, it must be a pretty good movie. I think that the theories are a crock of shit. There are always people who can say, "This tree told me to kill somebody." If you're going to worry about that, then you can't have entertainment.
JOHN WATERS INTERVIEW [cont.]
WATERS ON HIS FAVORITE HOBBY:
High Times: I understand that when you're not writing a script or shooting a movie, you travel all around the country attending trials.
Waters: Yeah. I missed Gacey's trial, I was shooting then. But I'm going to go to Kathy Boudin's trial. That's the next biggie. I think it'll be splashy. I wonder if she'll snitch. I wouldn't blame her--she's in a lot of trouble.
High Times: I understand her father is really upset about the whole thing.
Waters: Well, it wasn't like she was a girl scout all her life. I mean she did blow up the house, didn't she? I think it'll be a pretty good trial, the kind of trial that'll last way too long. It'll probably be easy to get into after awhile. I've always enjoyed the Weathermen. And now, in 1982, it's so weird to see them in a courtroom. Especially if they're screaming out stuff and refusing to stand up when the judge comes in. That always makes for entertainment.
High Times: Did you go to the Chicago Seven trial?
Waters: No. I went to the MOVE trial, though. The black Philadelphia group. I loved them so much. They all got life and stuff, but they were really good in the courtroom because they would stand up and scream, "Fuck you." Everything. The judge had to be so patient, and all of their last names were "Africa". "Miss Africa," "Mr. Africa," it was just so ludicrous. But they were incredibly good-looking. They had the dread locks, but I mean really radical ones. And all the girls had little pocketbooks that said, "I live in Africa," meaning the state of mind. They were hand-embroidered.
I loved their unity together. They really believed in what they were doing. I always like crackpots who are willing to go to jail the rest of their lives for crackpot theory. They have my respect.
High Times: Son of Sam. You didn't think much of him.
Waters: He was boring. I loved it until they caught him. He's so ugly. He had no charisma as a murderer. I think they at least have to look good. The case that has obsessed me the most was the Manson case. They wanted to scare the world and they did. Not that I approve of what they did, but they did really scare people. It finally ended the hippie movement, thank God.
I went to the Watergate trial. I actually heard the tapes. I went with my mother. That was the hardest trial of all to get into. We waited from midnight until two in the afternoon in the rain for it. But it was worth it. I was there the day Nixon called Mitchell the big enchilada. You should have seen Mitchell's face when he heard that. Aggh.
High Times: What was the weirdest trial you've been to?
Waters: One in Baltimore--the penis collector. He had a little lunch box full of them. Creative. Then there was the nurse that shoved turds down her patient's mouth.
High Times: She obviously had seen Pink Flamingos.
Waters: They didn't ask her. That was a good trial. I was the only person in the courtroom, and the district attorney looked at me like, "Oh, great." Her defense was that she had her period that day.
High Times: Did you go to the Johnny Holmes trial in L.A.?
Waters: No, I would have loved to. He'll make out well in jail. One thing, Johnny Wadd won't have any trouble in jail.
High Times: So what's the source of all these dark obsessions?
Waters: I've always liked villains. People that were villains in real life and not just in storybooks or movies. That would fascinate me, the banality of evil. It's such a true cliché. These murderers, just one second in their life and they're famous! But they're just like normal people.
High Times: What's great about your films is that you take these horrific things from real life and twist them into humor.
Waters: In all my films people laugh at things that would be so cruel to laugh at if they happened to somebody you knew. But it's so ridiculous and exaggerated that you can't really think it could possibly happen that way. It could. People could throw acid in your face, it happens all the time. But the thing that interests me most about the trials is how they handle the sudden glare of publicity. It's really true that anyone can become famous overnight. Look at Hinckley.
High Times: He did it for Jody [Foster].
Waters: Poor Jody. Divine said, "I wish it would have happened to me. What is she thinking about? I would have been blowing kisses in the courtroom screaming, "I love you John!" That stuff interests me. If I didn't make films I think I would have been a criminal lawyer or a reporter.
High Times: You vote a lot?
Waters: I try to vote as much as I can.
High Times: Five, six times, I read.
Waters: Well, I've calmed down. I used to vote a lot each election. Every city I was in, because it made the newspapers more interesting. I felt more civic-minded if I voted six times in an election. I love to vote.
High Times: Yeah, but then they have your name and you can get called for jury duty.
Waters: I certainly wouldn't mind that. I'd be so happy.
High Times: Sorry, I forgot.
Waters: They'd never let me on a jury. Are you kidding? They'd question me, "Have you ever been in a courtroom?" "Well, I've traveled thousands of miles at my own expense to go to them, yes. Every day I go to court." Forget it, they'd never let me on a jury.
WATERS ON DRUGS
High Times: You wanted me, to ask you about drugs.
Waters: I know my drug views would be very anti your magazine. But taking drugs at my age is like being a punk after you're twenty-five. It looks silly. Drugs are part of growing up, like getting pimples. But afterward I think pot does make you stupid. It makes you settle for less. When I was growing up I took so many drugs. I'm not sorry I did. I never had a bad experience, but then I was lucky--I moved on. Whereas other people I know didn't, and they're drug addicts. I even took morning glory seeds like some giant parakeet.
High Times: So you're saying kids should take drugs and then give them up? That's a different idea, that's for sure.
Waters: Sixteen to twenty-one. Those are the ripe drug years, but after that, echh. That's like having a mohawk at thirty.
High Times: Besides pot, what drugs were you familiar with?
Waters: I used to do a lot of speed growing up. I felt like taking speed again after I read the Edie Sedgwick book. But I'm too old for that.
High Times: Have you gone on to other drugs like Valium?
Waters: I always hated downs. Valiums make me mean. When I was a teenager I wanted to shoot heroin to see what it was like. The first time I did it someone shot me up and this huge black bubble grew in my arm. I thought, "Oh, isn't this pretty for school." I mean, drugs were just too much trouble. Now if I want anything it's a martini straight up. I figure it looks prettier than a needle or carrying around things in tinfoil.
High Times: Coke?
Waters: Cocaine makes me just want to drink and talk a lot. To telephone poles. "Hi, look in refrigerator. Cold in there?" It really gets me ridiculous. I have friends that take drugs. But I wouldn't vote for them to become legal. I think pot takes away from ambition.
High Times: The pot that people are smoking today is much stronger than the pot that was around when you were smoking.
Waters: No matter how much I liked it I could never say to someone, "I'd like some Maui Wowie." I would be so mortified to say that to someone. The high could never compensate.
High Times: But you recently smoked grass with William Burroughs.
Waters: Well, from him how could you not? It would have been a sacrilege. He has the most incredible sense of humor. We did a thing together in Washington. He read, and I showed Desperate Living, which I thought was a good mix from the old wave.
High Times: What was smoking with him like?
Waters: All I could remember was thinking, "Here I am sitting smoking pot with William Burroughs." I used to read him in high school when I was supposed to be paying attention to the teacher. So it made me feel happy. I felt I had chosen the right direction to go in.
High Times: Did you have any profound insights on acid?
Waters: No, thank God. That would have been a bad trip, if some profound thought had come to me. It didn't change my life, it just made it more fun for the week. Maybe it changed me a little. It made me take everything even less seriously than I already took it. I think it gave all of us that worked together a sense of humor about ourselves.
We never thought what we were doing was going to change the world. I don't want to change the world. I like everything that's bad in the world. The worst stuff, that's where my material comes from. I'm no missionary.
But profound? How about Divine doing Dionne Warwick imitations two hours into a trip, with shower rings for earrings and an old dirty towel wrapped around his head for hair? That's about the most profound thing I can remember.
WATERS ON HIS EARLY DAYS
High Times: In retrospect, are you embarrassed by your early long-hair incarnation?
Waters: I was never a hippie. I had long hair and I went to the riots, but just because they were good
High Times: You come more from the beat tradition, right?
Waters: That was the first way I rebelled. Beatnik. Moondog. I'd run away to New York to see the beatniks, then I'd think, "This is the way I want to go." They were glamorous to me. I read all about them. I knew their sense of humor and their interests and it was everything I identified with. I read Genet. I was thirteen, living in a suburban-type home in Baltimore, so I couldn't go to North Beach, but I read about it all the time.
High Times: How did you get into that scene?
Waters: I met people that lived in my neighborhood that didn't hang out in my neighborhood. That was the key. Beatniky people with Cleopatra eye makeup and fishnet nylons. They had poetry readings at this beatnik bar downtown. I would go to the bar but I couldn't get in because I wasn't twenty-one, so I'd sit in the alley, right outside the door. And for some reason my parents would drive me there and let me off.
High Times: Let you off so you could hang out in the alley?
Waters: Yes, I thought that was nice. I'll never forget-my mother said, "Is this camp or slums?" I guess my parents realized it wasn't going to work for me the other way, being a jock in a fraternity. So this was the first time I was ever around drugs, homosexuality, beatniks, all of it mixed, totally mixed. It wasn't a gay scene, it wasn't a drug scene. It was completely mixed. And that's when I first started making the movies. Eight-millimeter black and white, no editing. They were terrible. We'd show them in these coffeehouses.
High Times: You talked in your book about sickniks?
Waters: We would just go to a public park where families went, but the girls would really dress for the occasion. Thrift shop outlandish. This was before there was even the word "hippie." When the hippie movement came around, all of the people I knew hated it. They thought we were being co-opted. What is this horrible trend that is making us look normal? So we used to go to these parks, and everyone would get loaded on pot and liquor and they would see us coming, twenty-strong, and families would literally pick up their picnic baskets and run to the safety of their cars.
Also, the people that I hung around with were very big on robberies, they were antique thieves. So it was really a ring of pot heads and people that stole Oriental rugs that was the nucleus of my first downtown friends.
High Times: You were tripping a lot when you were making the first films?
Waters: Not while I was doing them. I was tripping about once a week from '66 to '70. Real strong acid. I don't know if I got any ideas from it, but it helped me further break the suburban mold. Divine, all of us, did it together and it brought everyone much closer, I think. We hung around together, sort of like an extended family.
High Times: Sounds like the love generation.
Waters: It does. But then again, what it brought us closer to do was hideous violent movies. Instead of ending the war, we wanted to start a war. That's the difference. I took acid about two years ago. I hadn't done it in ten years and I thought maybe it would-be like a tune-up, but it was just boring. I couldn't go to sleep, I kept seeing all these colors jumping around. It wasn't new, anymore, it was a rerun.
