GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

SECTION B

APRIL 22, 1994

Evenings Out

Dredging the Waters one more time: An interview with Serial Mom director John Waters

by Charlton Harper

It's nice to know that when fame really hits big, there are those who remember the little people. Or at least the little people in the media. With Serial Mom now taking over local theaters, you can't turn a channel or a page without stumbling across director John Waters' maniacal mug. What follows is my own brief fifteen minutes of rubbing up against the King of Trash himself. Lucky for him he was safely on the other end of a long-distance telephone line.

Charlton Harper: John, have you ever been to Cleveland?

John Waters: Yes I most certainly have. I gave a lecture there once.

We have some great hair here in Cleveland.

I bet you do.

First of all, I loved the movie, so I'll put that out of the way.

Oh good. That's always nice.

Do you feel that reality has caught up to you, or do you think that you've caught up to reality?

Well, I hope it has because then it would be easier to get budgets to make my movies. (He laughs) It certainly was always what I thought was funny. I've always just tried to do that. That's the only barometer I can really do, is try to keep going and make the movies that I think are funny.

At the same time, I recognize that they have to make money or else it will be much harder to make another one. So, I hope so. I hope all the lunatics that are getting used to all the serial lunacy that's going on in the world will see the movie. Certainly I've made a comedy where you sort of root for her. You should feel a little guilty that we've made serial killers our new heroes. So here's a real one.

Is it easier making a film now that you have that kind of Hollywood backing? It's always very hard. It's not hard for me to make a movie. I mean it's hard work, but I know how to do it. What's hard is always getting them to say yes. The first time to make it, the second time so they let you get it to the screen the way you want it edited. Those are the two major battles for me within the Hollywood system. I always make the movie I tell them I'm going to make. I know how to make a movie. I get along with stars, so that isn't a problem. We had a very pleasant shoot on the making of Serial Mom. Kathleen Turner was a real pro. She got into the part. I didn't have to talk her into anything. She couldn't wait to make that obscene call. And you can tell.

The cussing is great.

It's almost Tourette's syndrome. (He laughs)

Do you still have a lot of freedom? You say you make the film that you pitch to them and so they know what they're getting.

They know what they're getting. The test screening thing is always when trouble happens. But it was the usual Hollywood debate about this, and does this go too far. It's weird, because generally the stuff that does go too far always gets the biggest laugh. I mean that's what people want when they see one of my movies. But sometimes you get somebody in a test screening that has no idea what they're seeing and they would never see this movie. So, "Who cares what they think" is my motto. What I care about is the people that like the movie, if they have any problems with it. I'm always interested in that. I might not necessarily agree with them but that is, I think, at least constructive criticism.

There are the things that you might think went too far, but didn't. I couldn't stop laughing when she pulled that liver out of the guy.

No, we never had a problem with that because everyone always laughed. If you cut that short however, it would be real violence. It wouldn't be funny. Because it's there, it became slapstick. It's almost like a banana peel. It was on her arm and she slips in it and she tries to wiggle it off. It was important for me to actually see Kathleen Turner through a glory hole. That's a first, don't you think? And certainly a lot of audiences won't even get that.

Did the movie write itself? There is so much richness in reality now. Well I wish movies could write themselves, but unfortunately no. I always had read so many true-crime books about this, and for so long, that the current trend didn't have that much effect on it. I've always been interested in this. It just so happens that suddenly a lot of the stuff is coming true. The parody you write today is tomorrow's headline.

Speaking of true-crime books, what's a good one you've read lately?

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a pretty good one. And there's this one case that I read about, I think it's called Hush Little Baby, and it's really a hideous case. It's about this girl that always wants to get pregnant. She's not, and she tells her whole family she's pregnant, her husband, everything. She even gets fat, she gets hysterically pregnant. It's been ten months and she just goes to a maternity ward, follows a woman to her car, yanks the car keys out of the ignition and cuts her baby out and takes it home with her. Uggghhh. Yow.

Inside

"Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive."

An Interview with

Laurie Anderson on page 2

Continued on page 3