A Dirty Shame opens Sept. 17 at the Senator Theatre.

John Waters is in hell—or at least, he says, it’s about that hot in Los Angeles. He left relatively temperate Baltimore behind on a recent Monday to fly to California for a couple of days of press-junket interviews (‘every five minutes, all day long”) to promote A Dirty Shame, his new bawdy, blue-collar sex comedy, which the Motion Picture Association of America slapped with an NC-17 rating. But he sounds cool and composed on the phone from his lodgings at the Chateau Marmont, where he’s been staying when in town for some 35 years. “It really reminds me of my old apartment at Temple Gardens,” he says, “except it’s in Hollywood instead of Druid Hill Park.” From Hollywood, he talked about Baltimore. (Lee Gardner)

City Paper: Who do you think is your audience at this point?

John Waters: For movies, I think it’s changed a lot. When I go do an appearance now, like at a video shop, the average age is 25 years old. Which is great for me, ’cause that’s the one thing you’ve gotta do if you’re going to keep doing it decade after decade. You have to get the new ones, ’cause your original fans don’t go out much anymore.

I think it’s just everybody that has sort of a weird sense of humor. I’ve always said I haven’t changed, but the public has some. But I have no idea how this film is going to be received. I didn’t count on the whole NC-17 thing, though I guess I get why it got it.

CP: In some quarters A Dirty Shame is being perceived as a return to the shock-tactic style of your earlier films.

JW: I didn’t really sit down before I started to write this and say, “This movie’s going to be more like my old ones.” I just made the next one. I wanted to do a sex comedy—like an old-fashioned exploitation movie [like the kind] that I grew up on. I hadn’t done that ever. None of the other movies were really about sex. Pink Flamingos had some sex it, and whenever I have sex in movies it’s ludicrous, but I had never made a movie with, as the MPAA says, “pervasive sexual content”—even though there’s no real sex in it.

It’s tricky to make a sex comedy today, considering half my audience died from AIDS.

CP: It seems like the standards for what’s shocking have changed so much in the time you’ve been making films . . .

JW: But it’s never the main thing I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make you laugh. And if you’re surprised, that’s good. Yes, eating shit was shocking, but I never tried to top it and I didn’t in this movie, either.

To me, this movie is a comedy. Is it shocking? There’s rude stuff in it. I guess I was surprised the first time I heard of some of these sexual underground things—“God, really?”—but I found it humorous, and it interested me. I always make movies about things I don’t really understand.

CP: It was funny to see sploshing finally get its 15 minutes.

JW: Had you heard of that?

CP: Yeah, I had seen Splosh! magazine at Atomic Books.

JW: Exactly. Atomic Books is definitely an influence on this movie. I get a lot of my fan mail there, and I always go there looking for ideas.

CP: Have you seen The Brown Bunny yet?

JW: No, but I’m dying to. I know [director Vincent Gallo], and I’m doing a panel with him in New York in October. He is the best—purposely an X rating, which is such a great way to fuck with the MPAA. ’Cause they made up the NC-17 to kind of rehabilitate the X, and no one wants an X except porn. He’s bringing the X rating back into art where it belongs. (laughs)

CP: But porn doesn’t really get shown in movie theaters much anymore . . .

JW: But it does! There are only five movie theaters in Baltimore [City], and two of them are porn—the Apex and the Earle.

CP: That’s true. Have you been keeping up with the recent beef between the Senator and the Charles?

JW: I’m Switzerland. (laughs) I refuse to get in that one.

CP: You say that New Line just wanted you to make a John Waters movie. This sounds like a strange question, but do you ever get tired of making John Waters movies?

JW: No, that’s what I always want to make. They’re just comedies, American comedies. They’re all filmed in Baltimore. They’re all about a particular neighborhood, which is the very first thing I cast in my movies since Hairspray. Hairspray was Highlandtown, Cry-Baby was West Baltimore, Serial Mom was Towson, Pecker was Hampden, Cecil B. Demented was—well, I don’t know where that was. This one is obviously Harford Road. . . .

I don’t know how to make another kind of movie. What am I going to make, a Scorsese movie? I don’t read other people’s scripts and I don’t wanna make a script I didn’t write. I guess that’s the only way I could not make a John Waters movie—the script is what makes it a John Waters movie.

CP: Do you still smoke?

JW: No, I don’t. Actually, I’m on day—I have to look, I have it written down here—I’m on day 615. I smoked five packs a day until I was in my 40s, then I quit for eight years. Then, I don’t know how, because I thought I would never smoke again, I somehow had one. And then I smoked every Friday night for a year—Friday only, which became complete torture. And then I didn’t smoke again, and then in Switzerland one Christmas, I smoked for four days, and I haven’t had one for 615 days.

I can’t smoke. I was never an alcoholic, I was never a drug addict, but that I am. The [12-step] meeting A Dirty Shame? I would have gone to one of those for smoking.

CP: Have you heard about the Atlantis?

JW: I heard—it’s closing! I heard that it might reopen on Eastern Avenue, which would be even better. Although, no, nothing could be better than [next to] the prison. But I think it’s a matter of economy. I think it’s going to be a titty bar. More money for tits than dicks, I guess.

I love the Atlantis. I’ve taken so many out-of-towners there. New Yorkers love it, ’cause all the places in New York are high-pressure, like hookers. You can’t have fun. This place you can take 10 people, you can take girls, you can take anyone. I still go there. It’s terrible, terrible news.

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