The Manson Family, Mommy Porn and Love Maps: Still Waters Runs Deep

(This interview first appeared in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art.)

The holy grail of the interviewer is ferreting out the nugget, the defining truth, the revelation that we have, like big game hunters, captured our prey (on paper or video). For me, the best interviews are nosy and messy and reveal a curiosity about the human condition and a generosity of spirit. These qualities define artist John Waters’ work as a filmmaker, author, television personality, raconteur – and interviewer.

On stage last June at Waters’ annual “Filmmaker on the Edge” interview at the Provincetown International Film Festival, the 68-year-old Baltimore native asked Naked Lunch Director David Cronenberg if he’d done drugs with the source material’s author, William Burroughs. “No,” the Oscar-nominated Canadian replied, “I think at that time, he was just doing methadone.” Waters confessed, “I smoked pot with him.” Whereupon Cronenberg genially one-upped his interrogator, saying he’d accompanied Burroughs to Tangier, Morocco and witnessed the beat writer’s reunion with writer/composer/subject Paul Bowles after 17 years apart. Talk about a collision of hipster culture: That was an interview!

What is most impressive about Waters, besides the fact that he could charm a crack stash from a Baltimore junkie straight out of The Wire, is how he seamlessly mixes high and low culture, from tea-bagging to the mainstream, popular singer Johnny Mathis. And, for those who just know him as the director of outsider art Pink Flamingos and mainstreamed Hairspray, the hyper-organized multi-hyphenate is a voracious reader, his annual top ten films list appears in highbrow Artforum and his last two books, Carsick and Role Models, were New York Times Bestsellers.

Every winter Waters takes his pencil mustache and trademark Comme Des Garcon jackets on the road with “A John Waters Christmas,” an outrageous holiday stand-up act. It even played in Poughkeepsie, where I had the out-of-body experience of being at the absolute epicenter of cool in that upstate town. After the show, I went backstage to congratulate Waters in the claustrophobic institutional green room and encountered Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig, who had come backstage to praise Waters’ show – and share Baltimore stories. James Bond and “The Pope of Trash,” together in 144 square feet of space . . . . You don’t need hallucinogens to find the life circling John psychedelic, a mix of high and low, old world courtesy and trash talk and bold-faced names.

When Waters picks up the phone, having apologized for being fifteen minutes late, he says: “I’m having a bad day but I won’t take it out on you.”

Columbia Journal: Anything big?

John Waters: Nothing I will remember in a week.

Recently I was discussing Birdman with Alejandro G. Inarritu and the Oscar-winning writer-director said, “The definition of intelligence is the capacity to have two completely opposite ideas living at the same time and at the same time to be capable of functioning, the battle with a double nature.” Could you describe yourself in those terms?

Having two completely different ideas is the only thing that ever interests me. Everything I ever write about I don’t understand. To me I wrote about things that I can never fully understand. Even [Manson “Family” member] Leslie Van Houten: It’s a different thing to make a movie about murdering than doing the deed. It’s difficult to have the huge success Johnny Mathis did without racism and never going off deep end. I’m always interested in people that have more extreme lives than I have, good or bad, and things that are not easy, or why they acted the way they did. That’s the human condition.

In your books, there’s a way in which storyteller and interviewer are linked – it’s visible in Role Models where you often interview subjects while exposing yourself (metaphorically).

Well, I do interview people in both books, Role Models and Carsick. I employed journalism to go find [outsider pornographer] Bobby Garcia and Leslie. It’s personal journalism. There’s a lot of research but I’m still telling stories.

In the Leslie Van Houten interview in Role Models you discuss flying into “the Manson flame.” And you wonder in retrospect: “What on earth were you thinking?” What drives you, John? In the Manson Family case, it seems like an alternate reality, as in there but for the grace of God go I or, the inverse, Leslie could have been acting opposite Divine in Baltimore not stabbing Mrs. LaBianca in Hollywood.

I really didn’t interview Leslie. Mostly I used what people had said on the record. And the parole board did use the article against her out of context by saying, “why do you only want to hang around with famous people?” I did ask Leslie if I could write about her, mostly things that she had already said for the record because in a way it was my plea for her parole. But I think I show her in a different light hopefully.

It was a very different time.

Just be glad your kid didn’t meet Charles Manson. Many kids go through divorces and teen pregnancies. Leslie had the bad luck of being a teen in 1969, the most insane year ever, and meeting the most notorious madman pimp megalomaniac, at the same time when she was running from her family. The problem was that if she had never met Manson I think she would have been a studio executive living in LA. Even today, she could come to a dinner party that you or I would go to and no one would recognize her.

Do you think Leslie, who has now served forty-four years in prison, had a talent for passing, Manson Family member first, and then model prisoner?

No. I think the parole board used [even her good behavior] against her. If she responds to bad with Manson, then good in prison, she’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t …the only thing she can do is be better than she would have been if the crime hadn’t happened: teaching people to read, fighting AIDS, that’s all she can do. She does have a life. It’s not that she’s had no life. She has made the best one she could and continues in a situation in which most of would crack

I appreciate the self-awareness you display in that book. In that chapter simply titled “Leslie,” you pause for a mea culpa: “I wrote about our times, rather inappropriately and with little insight, in my book Shock Value.”

When I wrote Shock Value, I had dedicated Pink Flamingos to the Manson girls…it was later brought up against Leslie. [It was this] smartass thing, punk rock without knowing it was punk rock: Scaring hippies, making fun of them. I was more of a yippie. Manson was the ultimate hippie boogey man. Now he’s a Halloween costume.
I look back on it now, once I knew Leslie, and considered the victims. I taught in prison since then and wrote about it in Crackpot, and it made me see things in a different way, because of all the victims. Manson was so famous, and such a myth of murder. Was Manson the filthiest person alive? It was a huge influence. I made Pink Flamingos right after I went to the Manson trial. It’s a huge influence to this day. But I understand now that these were real people. I look back in horror. There was tragedy on all sides, not just the murdered. When I was making movies I wasn’t considering any of that real. It was the OJ case before it’s time.

Once I talked in prison and met victims, I realized these are real people and you have to be careful what you write about them. You can’t make jokes about it. I do make a joke about the wife of the Boston bomber – she has a boyfriend now and you don’t. She remarried and has a kid. I don’t feel guilty about that. I did apologize in that book – Female Trouble was dedicated to [murderer] “Tex” Watson. What was I thinking? The Manson family was everything your parents warned you about come true. You take LSD and you’re going to kill people. Before Manson, it was an idle threat. Once it was true, it scared the world and that’s why they’re still in jail.

I made movies about it. I had this outlet. I had Multiple Maniacs. The crime happened and I wrote we did it.

I saw Multiple Maniacs at the Film Society this year during their fantastic retrospective of your work. The feature was raw, rudely entertaining and alarmingly prescient.The Tate/LaBianca murders occurred in the summer of 1969, and the movie was released in 1970 with the characters played by Divine and David Lochary taking credit for the slaughter.

Making the movie was like predicting Manson without murders….The whole movement of scaring hippies was punk. It just hadn’t happened yet. We were closet punks dressing like pimp hippies.

All your adult life you’ve made transgressive art in the shadow of your parents. Now that, my condolences, both your mother and father have passed away, has that liberated you – or not? In Role Models, you recommend Lionel Shriver’s psychological novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, about a guilty mother named Eva and her murderous son, Kevin. Eva asks Kevin why he didn’t kill her, too, and you quote from the book: “When you’re putting on a show you don’t shoot the audience.”

That’s the whole point of my films: what parent would be liberal enough to be thrilled for her son in drag eating dog shit [like Divine did]? That was the whole reason Pink Flamingos was successful. Can you imagine if my parents saw this?….Now people bring their children to see Pink Flamingos. It’s amazing how things have changed even though I haven’t, really. My last film got an NC 17 rating. I try to keep up with the times. Carsick and Role Models were both on the New York Times bestseller list. I could have gone to jail for those books in the ’50s. Lenny Bruce went to jail for saying “fuck.” “Howl” was a huge case. It’s amazing what is on cable TV now that makes [Bruce and Allen Ginsberg] look pale.

On that same topic, have you read or seen Fifty Shades of Grey

No, but I’m not against its success. It is mommy porn. Remember The Story of O? Spanking is not new to me. I’m thrilled that people are discovering bondage lite. It’s safe sex. You can’t get AIDS or pregnant. That it got an R rating really makes me think it must be terrible. It’s supposed to be so racy…. I wasn’t mad it was a hit. It only means to me that censors have gotten a little looser.

You went pretty deep into “hot lunatic porn sex” in your essay entitled “Outsider Porn.” In it, you interviewed pornographer Bobby Garcia, who was then living in a rat- infested house. As an interviewer, I often find it mortifying to ask about sex and romance, but you opened a door when you wrote: “‘But what about love?’ you may ask. That terribly exciting disease that, to me, feels like another full time job.'”

I’m not saying that I don’t take on that job once in a while. I do, still. But it is a full-time job, yes. And you try to learn each time if you can ever get it right. I don’t know if I can but I still try. In that same chapter, you discuss “love maps,” a term originated by the discredited Baltimore sexologist Dr. John Money and defined by you as “predetermined sexual types.”

What is your love map?

My love map is always someone unlike me. I don’t want someone to be a groupie. I like them to have a completely different life, usually always in Baltimore. They are more Blue Collar. I want to enter someone else’s life and learn something. A lot of gay men have boyfriends that look like them. Mine are never age appropriate. When I was young I dated older. As soon as I became 21, I went younger. Most of my men friends that are successful in the arts do not have age appropriate boyfriends. I am not talking chicken. Not talking Michael Jackson. Not the BBC scandal. They didn’t have a good record! When you’re 68, 40’s are young. Who knows, as long as it’s legal? Things work or they don’t. There is such a thing as wrinkle queens.

At 68, do role models still play a part in your life?

You can’t have role models when you’re 68. When you’re young you need the courage not to care and take a chance. I don’t need a role model now. You need one when you’re young and trying to be something that nobody wants …..[Now I see] how people handle old age having dealt with my mother’s death. I have a great respect for old people. The hardest job of all is dying. For Joan Rivers, she didn’t know she died, that’s kind of good. Andy Warhol was paranoid he was going to die. He was right. Nobody thought he was going to die so soon but he was.

What frustrates you about contemporary life now that Charles Manson is just a readily available Halloween costume?

My worst trait is impatience. I hate airlines. People that are vague about detail, people that are late: I hate lateness. People that don’t RSVP. Email sympathy letters when someone dies. The most: when people answer “K” to an email. That sends me over the edge. Did you really save that much time?

You often get asked when you are going to make your next movie. You routinely answer that financing is the issue.

I could easily do it but they said do it for 2 million dollars. I can’t go back. I routinely made 6 or 7 million dollar movies. People ask, ‘Why don’t you do Kickstarter?’ I own three homes. It’s a little much to be a beggar.

What’s your current obsession?

The Satanic Temple. I’ve been talking about pink masses where they turn the spirits of their hetero dead enemies gay. They fought for the laws that allowed religious things in state buildings like Christian creches, and then they put in angels plunging into hell. I like these people. They’re the closest to the yippies. I did meet them in Detroit lately. They want to make me an honorary member. They made me feel like Jayne Mansfield.

Their mission statements appears on their website, thesatanictemple.com: “The Satanic Temple (TST) facilitates the communication and mobilization of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for individual liberty.”

I miss religion that has a sense of humor. I fully support one that does. I don’t believe in Satan any more than the other. I appreciate activists that use humor to humiliate their opponents. Do I join The Satanic temple or not?

I can’t help you there. I’ve never been a joiner. Villagers with pitchforks frighten me in a way the Multiple Maniacs doesn’t. Thanks for the interview.

Thank you. You got me out of my bad mood.

I’m glad to return the favor after all the times you rescued me from mine.