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John Waters:…For 'Cecil B. Demented', I had to shoot exactly what the scripts said because that was the only way I could make it. I mean, I wish I had more time to shoot. You know that was the amount of time we had, so we had to do it in that amount of time. It was well-produced, we had a second unit. That was when I would say "Cut!" — they would say "Action!" — For the scenes of cops jumping out, that kind of thing. So it was run really quickly. And we couldn't really do overtime because we had a budget, because it was a four-union movie. I mean it was real teamsters. But in Baltimore they have John Waters teamsters. The ones that choose to make my movie instead of just any movie. I like the teamsters, you know.
Audience: How would they react?
Waters: They were fine about it. And the film commissioner is sitting right behind the actor that plays him. So they gave us all the stuff to use. They were really good about it.
Audience: … Is the Hippodrome still around?
Waters: The Hippodrome is a long gone but that it is exactly what it looks like, except that inside was actually the town theatre because the hippodrome has so much asbestos inside that we thought that Melanie might balk. We asked her to do so much, we couldn't ask her to get asbestos poisoning on top of it. But they are trying to redo the Hippodrome, all these theatres were the theatres I grew up with in Baltimore. I saw the premiere of Cleopatra at the Hippodrome, and at the end it was a big blaxploitation theatre…I think I was the last paying customer - I mean real rats ran under your feet - people just put their feet up and laughed. That kind of thing just added to the horror movies. That was the real karate theatre, the real drive-in…
Audience: How has the non-filmmaking crowd reacted?
Waters: No, no it opened in New York, and it's been playing in America during the last week … It's doing well so far, but I don't know, I'l find out later.
Audience: I'm just curious because it has so many insider filmmaking jokes…
Waters: But you know any everybody knows now how the movies are made because of the E! network and Entertainment Tonight. My father uses the phrase 'per screen advertising' now…So there might be a few jokes that are insider jokes but that's ok. Maybe somebody will ask who they are…Some of the kids in the movie didn't know who the directors were… Because I purposely didn't put the young directors because there are a lot of young film directors. They have to be around more than 10 years to get a tattoo… The only one missing is Herzog. I should have had him on there but I don't know, Fassbinder may need to be remembered more because Herzog is still alive. But you are right that there are film jokes there, certainly, like when she is pulled away and she says: "Call Jack Valenti"… he's the head of the MPAA. But that is OK. In Polyester they had a Marguerite Duras festival at the drive-in. I am sure not everybody knew her. She is not exactly a household name in America. That's the tattoo I'd have, Marguerite Duras. Imagine if you went home with somebody and he took his clothes off and he had a Marguerite Duras tattoo or a Patch Adams tattoo. That would really be kinky. But Melanie was a good sport. The only argument I had with her was how her hair was going to look after it was on fire. She was the Revlon woman too, so she would leave in the middle of the shooting to go to Revlon ads, which was really schizophrenic. Because she had a Revlon ad: "Age. Defy it!" So this is not exactly 'the look' you know.
Audience: I noticed in other films you have a lot of reference to the Manson family, and I was wondering if you have any plans to include any members of the Manson family.
Waters: No, and I have to be really careful when I talk about that so it's not taken out of context. I am friends with one of the women from the family, Leslie Van Hauten, and I hope she gets a paroloe date, she is totally rehabilitated if you believe that people can be rehabilitated. The prison says she is, her psychiatrist says so, everyone says she is. Everyone says she can get out except what governor is going to sign the papers to let a Manson woman go? I visit her everytime I am in California. She could be sitting right here and you would never ever know. She was a terrorist herself at the time. She takes full responsibility for it. She said that if everybody else who had life without parole didn't ask to get out then I wouldn't either, but others do. It will never go away, it will always be the most notorious case and that is the only reason that they don't release her, is because it is so notorious. … Squeaky still believes in it. Steve Grogan has been released for 10 years and did very well. You know the parole board said she dug herself a very deep hole when she was young, which she certainly did. So I would never do the Manson thing. Although the influence is certainly in this movie, I mean all the stuff about that case. I went to the trial. I was obsessed by the case, certainly my whole life basically.
Audience: When I was leaving California I wanted to stop by where Manson was staying but I figured I wouldn't have much to say to him…
Waters: You can't get in there, I promise you. The family can't get in. No, maybe you could get in but … I wouldn't if I were you. He is just now like somebody you would move away from in a bar. But certainly all this sixties radical stuff, I read all those old books when I was writing this and I took all those ridiculous political slogans and put them in the movie business. What if people were that insane about movie politics, if genre audiences fought other audiences, which may be could happen in Cannes. That would be the only other place really. We were talking yesterday with the other class about the director who used to put those loudspeakers on top of the car…I had this in Polyester and here, also…because who would ever do that, just put those loud speakers on the top of the car and drive around like saying stuff? I have never seen anyone do that.
Audience: They have that in Miami…
Waters: Do they do it there? For advertisement?
Audience: For activism.
Waters: Really? For what, like free Elian?… You know they already made a movie about it, it was playing in Cannes, the Elian Gonzalez story, it's already been made. That is an instant movie, I like that. Anybody else?
Audience: As I told you last night, I am from Maryland and one of the comments I have after watching your films, there's hardly anyone that has a Baltimore accent.
Waters: Oh, well in my old movies they really have them. And some big actors now want to give me a Baltimore accent. Oh, please I always had to have them, I don't want them you know. I think any accent is distracting to an audience, really. In Pecker, Bess Armstrong did sort of a Baltimore accent when she was playing the social worker that came in. And certainly in my older films a lot of people have them. People say Newwooo. I think that to do it on purpose would be kind of annoying. Even the movies they never like accents, the only accent that's allowed is a Mafia accent, that New York accent, but really regional accents are almost always frowned upon in movies because they confuse audiences that haven't heard it before. It sounds very foreign to an American audience. That is why I don't have them. But in Baltimore the one thing you can count on if there is a whole group of extras and I say to them 'OK on action, everybody jeer this guy… all yell "Aiisshole!" ' All Baltimore audiences in every movie they do that. Big Baltimore accent "Aisshole!" Oh, this fly here, I hope this is not a comment on the subject matter.
Audience: How do you react when you see guys putting your stuff on the web, putting illegal copies on the net through Napster or something, because it seems to be the same subject matter as your movie.
Waters: It would be that, but I am not Cecil B. Demented. I came here and I stay in a nice hotel. If I was Cecil B. Demented, I would be sleeping in a cardboard box with a little digital camera trying to look up people's skirts as they went by me. Cecil is so insane that he doesn't have an editor, he doesn't believe in post-production, there's is none. He's like Duras, he doesn't care if you see it. So Cecil would be for that. I am not. We have a website for this, a very complicated web site. But certainly the web is the new outlaw land. Certainly it is the place with no rules, anymore than the wild wild west. You can libel people, I mean, I am horrified. Here is the worst that happened to me on the web. I was in a bar and then I went home. On the next morning on the web it said John Waters took a pee, didn't wash his hands and shook hands with people afterwards. I was speechless. You really can't go out anymore. Certainly I am for the terrorist aspect and all kids that are terrorists are certainly drawn to the web with "I love you virus!" and all that stuff. I think that is very appealing. I get it. But I am a hypocrite. Yes, I want my films to make money, otherwise they won't let me make the next one. Now if there is some way if they figure out, which they will, to be part of distribution, the web will be eventually the new video and that's how people will see movies. I am actually now in the middle of a case of MPAA stopping two pirates of my old movies. But I understand your urge to want to. And if I was at your age I might do it.
Audience: Now you have Avid, the program that can give you a rough cut immediately - what was the time frame between shooting and seeing a pre-edited version?
Waters: I saw an assemblage about a week later, but the editor was in New York the whole time working and then I went to New York. So basically, I guess that it could have done when I was in Baltimore but when I wanted to edit it in New York because it is just easier with all the added service, all that kind of stuff. But it is quick. It is amazing how all the editors have to learn that overnight or they are out of business, it was like when talkies came in. And you either figured out how to do it or you didn't work anymore unless you are Martin Scorsese's editor. The only bad thing about Avid is that sometimes you cut the takes too short and when you see it projected you have to go back and make them a little bit longer. It's harder to tell without projecting it.
Audience: When you do a cut, your editor follows your storyboard…
Waters: I don't have a story board except for the action stuff. On this they follow the script. I shoot exact script. I am the opposite of Cecil, I don't go in and say 'I have a vision'… That is a producer's nightmare, those words. That means 'over budget', right. There goes the schedule, right. So that is the only way I can do it, to really have it planned.
Audience: Now you can use videos…
Waters: I have always had videos since Polyester I think. So you are looking the whole time at the TV, with all the masking and everything…producers try not let you have play back because that will slow it down. Play back does because everyone has to gather around and watch it and it takes 10 minutes. So they always try to have it only on big action days when you have to look at the shot to see if it really worked. And stunts you shoot them, if you get it once that's it because the second time costs alot more. I always think that they purposefully try to fuck up the first time. But we had a really good stunt guy I worked with before. And it's weird, all the stunt shots I can see it completely that it is a stunt person but most people never can. It's somebody with a wig on. And I did ask Mink Stole to set her hair on fire in Pink Flamingos, I don't know what I was thinking about, I was on marijuana. And she said yes and as the day got closer she said 'how am I going to set my hair on fire?' I said: "We are going to put gasoline on it and throw a bucket of water on it." and thank God she finally said no. She'd look like 'Mask' and I'd be in prison. But so then we later decided to pay tribute to that by asking Melanie Griffith of course it was a stunt woman whose hair was set on fire and not Melanie Griffith. I didn't have the nerve to say 'Oh Melanie…'
Audience: Was she alot of fun to work with?
Waters: She is fun, yes. She is a movie star, I mean, and I pay a lot of attention to movie stars, that's how you get along with them. But she understood the humour of it, she wasn't a diva really. The only thing was funny, the hotel told us that she had stopped cussing or she would have to leave. She would say Where the fuck is my meal? and families would Oh god… just like in the movies! I think that it was maybe method acting, she was getting into the part, just to make me laugh. She was great, I had a good time with her.
Audience: Who was the boy in the wheelchair?
Waters: He was just a kid our casting woman found, and he was at the premiere with his Mom. I noticed he did his mother's hair between takes, which I thought was quite a sign of the future. He was a really nice kid. He enjoyed doing it. When they get to play bad kids in the movie they love to do that.
Audience: Was Melanie your first choice?
Waters: Yes, this time it was. When at first this movie was going to happen a couple of years ago before Pecker, I had written it before Pecker and UGC was financing it. They wanted an actress I won't name who wouldn't do it or couldn't do it. It fell through. So I was scared to try to get it financed. So I wrote Pecker and came back and then Canal Plus came in. How it happens is that it is a green light depending on casting and they have to approve of who plays Cecil's part, Melanie's part and Alicia's part. So you want to go to somebody that you think will say yes because when they start hearing people turn it down they get nervous. And that is how it falls through. And all movies fall through because of casting. That is the easiest way for movies to fall through. Because they all believe, they look at this goddamn thing in the Hollywood Reporter that rates this thing every year and they believe that. They believe that you can pick people and have a hit. Which everybody knows is not true because you look at every actor and actress, they have hits and flops, but you go along with it. And so I thought, well I just have seen her in 'Another Day in Paradise' where she plays a junky and she shoots up in the neck and I thought "Well she is taking some chances here." I think she was always funny in comedies. Her best work is, has always been in comedies. I knew that she started making films with her husband so he might be sympathetic to the cause, which he was, he was very, very nice and I had a meeting with her. One of those typical Hollywood meetings where you go to her house and she lived at that time right up the street from O.J….I just couldn't imagine what a nightmare that must have been. And the big movie star gates opened. She had two sports cars in the driveway, a big staff, and she answered the door in a skin tight black leather levi's, skull T-shirt and no make up. And I though "All right, confidence here!" This is a great kind of a movie star that will, I think, understand the humour of it. So we met and talked and it happened very quickly. Kathleen Turner happened very quickly too. The thing I learned is what a lot of agents do is tell you that their client will do it when they know that they will not. They will not even show it to them. But they want to give their client offers even though they know that they will say no. Because with the big stars an offer means if they say yes you have to use them, you hire them. So they like to give them a couple of offers a week even though they know they are not going to do it. So first you think "Oh great …" but then you realise that they never were going to do it. Their agent is just using you. So there is a lot of Hollywood games you have to figure out how they work. That is one lesson I did learn.
Audience: Do you think Forest Gump II is a bad idea?
Waters: Yes. Maybe if it was called 'Gump Again', you know. I wasn't fan of that movie. When he started running I wanted to call the police. I didn't know what censor to call, but you know that movie is like the World trade center of movies. It would be a terrorist target. It was a huge hit, won Oscars and it got good reviews, so if you are a cinema terrorist that would be the perfect target. There may be a sequel of Forest Gump I don't know. I just thought it is the right one to make fun of, that could take it certainly. And Patch Adams I almost like. Because I felt like my grand mother watching Pink Flamingos when I saw it I was like "Oh, no!" I was scared. It shocked me. It is a shocking movie. Patch Adams. So, I secretly liked it. I liked to just have that poster in my office, and nothing else, can you imagine people's looks when they walk in? That's an enema ball, you know, it's an anal cancer comedy for children.
Audience: At the end of one of your films there's an interview where you say: "All I want is a mellow life…"
Waters: I don't think I said that word, 'mellow', I was on hash, you know, I can tell, I watched that interview and thought Jeez I'm talking slow, oh yeah I was on hashish, 'Huuhh…yeah…. I just want to keep makin' movies that I like…'
Audience: Not mellow, but 'I want to take it easy…'
Waters: I never took it easy. No, I have been kind of workaholic. People say to me 'Why did it take so long between movies?' I thought long, I never had even one day off, but the time to make a movie for me if everything goes well through the process is two and a half years, because I write them. That is a whole other long process to get through the studio system and then the casting and then the money and then edit it and promote it. It is a long, long process. And the only reason this was quicker is that I have written this before Pecker. So the script happened very quickly, it was done.
Audience: So what's next?
Waters: I have started to write, I have notebooks full of ideas, it called the 'Dirty Shame' and it is a kind of a blue-color melodrama about sex addicts in Baltimore and their search for dignity. And a 'dirty shame' … like when JFK junior died in a plane crash mothers would say "That is a dirty shame." When princess Diana died, That is a dirty shame. So I just keep on thinking of the trailer showing people's sexual compulsions and someone saying "That's a dirty shame." I am like an old exploitation guy, you know, you think of the trailer first and then you make the movie.
Audience: Was this first time you've written music?
Waters: No, I helped write 'Gas Chamber' with L7 in Serial Mom and I helped to write "Don't pick up the soap for anyone else but me". I have a string of hits. And I am a BMI member and I am always so shocked when I get 28 dollars from air play in Czechoslovakia. You think "This played on the radio? It never did in America!" I am always amazed at what station actually played it sometime. No you can never have too many occupations. Basically what I did is just to think the concept of the song and just the give the rappers like pages of, not so much the rhymes, some rhymes, but more like terms because most gangster rappers don't know like 'turnaround' and 'craft service'… those are not really in the rapper's rhyming dictionary. I had to lead them.
Audience: Do you see any new business models emerging for the independent filmmaker or with the new pattern of ownership and acquisition of the studios?
Waters: I think every Hollywood studio is looking for the next lunatic movie some young kid made, because of Blair Witch. You know they saw this movie that came out of nowhere and made a hundred and fifty million dollars. So they are open to anything now, they would show a snuff movie if they thought it would make money. What they try to do is all the studios set up this kind of arts department which never really works so well because they don't know how to market it, they can't help trying to market it for everybody in the world and the real way that independent distributors market things is not doing that, but just finding an audience that will go for it and getting to them. Because if you try to go to everybody then no one likes it. I believe in the test screenings. I am for them showing it to an audience and hearing what they have to say, but those cards, to me they never work. Because what they do is they go to the cards of the people who didn't like it and try to make it so that they will like it. Those people will never like my movies and if you change it those people that liked it, won't like it anymore. What you should do is go to the people that liked the movie and ask them what they didn't like. That I see, that is fair, but it doesn't work that way.
Audience: What about focus groups…
Waters: I did not on this one, because how could you really, at the end when Cecil says, you know, "I am going to detain you and put you in a focus group…". negates that! The first time I ever saw the movie with an audience was in Cannes, which was really scary because there is, you know, fifteen hundred people with a big opinion and a pen and a place to publish it. But I have seen it certainly with lot of audiences in America but the thing is there was no other footage. We shot on such a tight budget, how were we going to cut it, it was already only eighty-eight minutes. And I think all movies are too long, I mean, if they couldn't stop me my movies would be ten minutes long, I'd keep cutting!
Audience: Did your partners ever use research groups?
Waters: I am trying to think. We had one screening of Pecker, it was in Manhattan which they never let you do. Mostly they don't want you to because the audience is so smart that when they say "Do you like this movie?" they say Well, compared to what, to Citizen Kane? That's kind of way they think you know. I had huge fights with Serial Mom with the company, they wanted me to change the ending and have her convicted, and they first time they saw it they acted like they had just seen 'Pink Flamingos', they cancelled the test screening the next day because they thought it would be such a disaster. I said let's show it, the Writer's Guild in LA, get an audience. They loved it, they thought I was great… They said the next day 'that doesn't count, those are people who know you, so we are going to have a new screening in the biggest shopping mall in New Jersey and we can only recruit people that haven't heard of you.' I said "Why did you hire me then?' I just should have said 'Alright, they're not going to like it, don't waste the money.' Because they took me into some really enemy territory. I remember pulling up into this shopping centre in the middle of New Jersey next to a Sears and seeing people line up and thinking: "Ohhhhh this is going to be bad." and it was. And the next day they were happy. "See we told you!" Eventually they put it out the way I wanted it and it was OK. But it was perfect, right when the executives were standing there a kid walked up, not knowing that there were executives standing there, and said 'Don't change a thing! Don't let the executives fuck it up!'… But it's worse, I thanked the kid and got his name, later he wrote me and said 'but you really should cut out this one thing…' You can't win, this kid, he saved my life, and when I thanked him even he had an opinion…everyone is a critic … And these focus groups which everyone in Hollywood called "fuck us groups", basically, these are people to whom our executives would never speak to in real life, but suddenly every word they say is gold, is carved in stone. You see that alot of these people are performing. They have seen Roger Ebert too many times they want to come out and go 'Thumbs up, dude!' that kind of thing. And they write this down very seriously, you know. But I am for seeing it with an audience, you can tell when things don't work and if there is one thing that no one understands you can simply put in one little insert shot and that solves the problem. That's fine, that is the luxury of test screening of the movie. But trying to alter, to change it for the people who don't like it, they are never going to like it.
Audience: Even in LA, when they get these people will you come and argue with them?
Waters: I don't know if you ever could find an audience that hasn't been through this so many times that has been recruited so many times. They are so savvy to it. And then they say that they try to not let you see them, but they recognise me. So they keep like hidden in the projection booth …because the focus group is not supposed to see you but you are supposed to listen to them. So they turn around and go "John!" And I am not against finding out things, if you're going to have them, you can tell if something is too slow, if they don't get something. I have learned from these things. Like the Pecker one was fine, the only time we had a bad experience was with Serial Mom. They really wanted me to 'use a narrator of a younger person.' You can always tell when that there is narrator that there is trouble. Narration is very rarely in the script. It usually means it didn't work.
Audience: Would you talk a little bit about comparing this film to the early films and about the visual language in film, if you've changed…
Waters: Well I had just a little more money and learned a little more. Even this I shot really primitively, I mean with two takes and on the run with a steady camera, I could have never covered this traditionally. Like I did in 'Serial Mom'. Serial Mom is closest to a real studio movie, I had thirteen million dollars, I had enough time to shoot it. It looks the slickest, which certainly it should. It was about someone driven crazy by upper middle class suburbia. But this was about shooting on the run and everything. In my early days I certainly over-directed it to go over the top, to be like psycho-ward time, which was from the theater of the ridiculous and all that kind of stuff. As we generally changed I thought it would become funnier if I could get the best acting I could get with people trying to play with going over the top and some people still do. But I think that is the main difference, playing it more realistically certainly than the psycho-ward days of 'Desperate Women', where everybody is screaming at the top of their lungs and you have a headache from it. have a headache from that….Is that a real Betty Ford Clinic t-shirt? Oh. Well, I thought maybe they give them out, I don't know. Somebody told me that they went to Maine on vacation and that it was really fun, it was 'like the Betty Ford clinic, with drinks.' Which I thought was a really good description of a fun weekend. So Canal Plus, I am curious, when they do a French movie do they do testing in France, with the cards and everything?
Audience: The audience is different.
Waters: But even in arty films? Because I don't think they do that in America. Not really so much with the cards. It's only because of Fatal Attraction, that is the one that cursed all film makers because they tested it, it tested terribly, they changed the ending and it became a big hit. So from then on, it was the law. And it did work. It is the perfect example where it did work from the money point of view. I don't know what the other ending would have been like. I think it's everywhere, that is what I am saying I don't think there is much difference any more between independent and Hollywood, it is the same everywhere in the world. If your movie costs over one million dollars, you are going get tested, it is the same. Unless you go and make just your own money and you raise the money yourself in a limited partnership but then even when you do the distribution they still are going to do the same thing.
Audience: But the independent filmmakers are so absorbed in the system, with New Line and Miramax…
Waters: Well certainly, those guys test, everybody does…
Audience: It's certainly not like the beginning of New Line, when you could get something in…
Waters: Well when I first went to New Line they only had 'Groupies', 'Reefer Madness', and a couple others, and 'Pink Flamingos'. They didn't know what to do with it, they opened it in a gay porno theatre and my friend said 'everybody is in the bathroom, nobody is watching the movie.' So, it wasn't a good opening and then I knew that the Eljon was the right place because the Eljon had 'El Topo', which was the first big midnight hit, and whatever took its place was sort of handed down this mantle of the underground stamp of approval. So 'Pink Flamingos' started with just one ad, thirty people showed up and the next week it was sold out. Just people talking about it. That is almost impossible to happen today.
Audience: How did you come to do comic movies in particular?
Waters: Because comedy to me is short. There is no such thing as a long good joke. Comedy is how you change people's opinions. If you can make somebody laugh, they are disarmed and they listen to you. It is the only way I got through high school without getting beaten up. I could make the bullies laugh at authority. So basically if you want to change anybody's mind it is not good to start giving a political ground with seriousness, they will just block it right away. But if you make them laugh and be shocked a little bit, they suddenly will listen because they are confused. And they will laugh at something that they haven't laughed about before. So, I think that is what comedy can do. If you ever have to say anything, that is the best way to say it, in a comedy, I think you will get the most people to listen. For me comedy has always been protection. It has always been war, really, how you can fight anything is by making people laugh. It's how I judge everybody, my friends, what is sexy to me is if somebody have a sense of humour. Basically that is how I judge everybody by the sense of humour. And you have to have a sense of humour about yourself. I mean this movie is certainly making fun of me. I mean what edge do I have left, do I have to set my moustache on fire, is that only thing left? What is left now, because everything is hip now, every critic is cool, what is the edge? Everybody has this edge, dark humour is the American humour. We have taken over the world with this kind of humour. So what is left? What do you have to do? Die? Is that it? So I am thinking I am making fun of myself and once you make fun of yourself, you can make fun of others. And I think that you always have to make fun of something that you really like, for an audience to like a movie. If you really hate something, nobody wants to spend ninety minutes with something that you really hate. I mean, I do like the movie business, I have done that for thirty years. It is ludicrous, I have had a horrible moments, but certainly I 'd rather do that than anything else. I never had to get a real job. Even though the hours are much worse making movies. I did work in a bookshop and once I took surveys only nobody would let me in the house. So, I made them all up and I never got caught. So it was really an exercise in writing. I had to be thirty people everyday, their opinions.
Audience: That's my next question. How do you write a comedy?
Waters: The same way you write anything…. I really get one hundred and twenty magazines a month, I read about seven newspapers a day. I read all the time, I never watch TV. I am media junky and I eavesdrop on people, I listen to conversations, I spy on people, I know all kinds of people because they tell me funny stories. I keep notebooks full of ideas and then I start to have a character on each page and I develop the characters. And I always know the concept of what the joke is, what the genre is, etc… This one is an action movie, the next one is a sex melodrama. You know, what the genre is that I am going to make fun of and work within. And then the hardest part is, once you have thought up all the characters, which is very easy for me to think up, you know, I had all their parents, I had a whole back story of how they met Cecil in a first draft. But I had to get rid of it because it would have been an epic. The hardest part is the narrative, which I firmly believe, from my old sixteen millimeter days, should be three thirty-minute reels, a beginning middle and an end. That's the way you get the deal. Because every studio knows that the narrative is really what people want. And so when I go pitch a movie to get a development deal, that takes the longest time to think up, this twelve-page treatment. And I do know everything. You can't bullshit. It is the ultimate homework assignment…and if they like it, sometimes you can buy a house. It is a really important assignment to turn in. But they can spot your bullshit … I have heard some people say :'And then something funny happens.' No, you can't say that! You really have to know everything and then I usually give them an ad campaign even though I know they are not going to use any of it. But just they are nervous about 'how I am going to sell this; because that is what they are always thinking about. So, and my first draft that I turn in is never my real first draft. It is my fifth draft. And then I just keep writing it, and the hardest thing is to get the first draft done. Just keep writing, don't look back. And I work everyday from 8 to noon, Monday to Friday, at 8:01 am I'm there, I am very obsessively organised about it. All my friends know not to call then, I don't answer the phone. And in the afternoon I do my business. When you really get into it, you start dreaming about it. And the best is at the end of each day when you are writing to know what you are going to write the next morning. And then you can dream dialogue, but you can't remember when you wake up, which is maddening. And I drive around the neighborhood. I make maps where everybody lives, I spy on people. I always figure where it is going to take place, what neighbourhood in Baltimore?It is very important to know where your characters are going to live and what you are going to sort of lampoon, what you are going to make fun of, if it is a comedy. And generally it has to be something, sex addicts, I don't believe there is such a thing, it just used to be called 'horny'. If I was a sex addict I'd go to meetings and look for failed ones. It is obvious you know. But anybody that has a compulsion they don't want is horrible in real life but can be very funny in a movie, especially a sexual compulsion that they don't want to do. So, we will see how funny it will be. It has to be more than that because that is a one joke movie, then you have to turn it into a layered movie.
Audience: How much time do you spend in Baltimore?
Waters: Well it depends. When I am writing I am there really a lot. This summer I have hardly been there at all because I've been touring with a movie and I spent some time on the beach…but Baltimore is my home. My house is there, my assistant is there. I have an apartment in New York, but that's it…Whenever I have to think about a new movie, Baltimore is where I go. but I can write anywhere, as long as nobody is around. I can't write with people in the house. And I have to have big legal pads and bic pens. It is very touching, a fan has sent me two pens and a legal pad…the letter said 'for your new script.' And I have signed everything that fans have given me, believe me I have signed everything…a girl took a Tampax out, smacked it down, it was bloody and I signed it. I've signed a colostomy bag, everything. They paid their admission. The guard went crazy on the Tampax. The security guard really freaked out. It was like this big … "Oh, oh,oh!"
Audience: How do you feel about Saas-Fee?
Waters: Well this is really like Mortville, like 'Desperate Living', that little town where you had to go when you are sentenced to impersonate Hansel and Gretel for the rest of your life. Because I always think that Hansel and Gretel are going to jump from behind a bush here or something you know. It is cute. I want to see the jail here, is there one? What is the underclass here? I have been to Switzerland a lot, I actually like it. I am like a Swiss person. I am so overly organised. I am like a Swiss person trapped in American's body. My hang-overs are planned on my calendar three months ahead of time. 'Drink' written on my calendar for Friday three months away. But certainly you all should make a movie while you are here. That would be good. You all could take over the town. Have a night of the living artists…has anybody here made local friends? You have?
Audience: Yes, we researched the atmosphere here and then started a little digital camera movie with Hansel and Gretel, squeezing for information about folklore, they're very nice here.
Audience: It is like controlled anarchy here, the pot is legal, I heard that too and…
Waters: You had better find out. When heroin was legal in Zurich I went to the junky part of town which was amazing. It was frightening. I think I was for it being legalized before I saw it. It is the worst idea I have ever seen in my life because it looked like: "Oh, what I can be? I can be a junky? " If you didn't know what to be when you were a kid and you were looking for something to join. And there were liberals "Would you like a needle?" It just seemed insane to me and it was like night of the living dead. It was thousands of them in this park you walk through.
Ulfers: How do you feel about what I perceive is a very pronounced anti-Hollywood, anti big movie sentiment in Europe? How also do you feel about should films be subsidised in order to produce quality vs. letting the market determine it?
Waters: Well, in some ways in America it would never work. The government usually tries to stop movies that are good, not give them money. It is the reverse. They would never give money to movies that I would like usually. While in Europe, I think they do. I think that in Europe they look at Hollywood as being the terrorist because they're putting their national film business out of business. But this is their own stupid fault. They pay to go and see the movies, if they didn't, they wouldn't. So it is not the underground or anything, its Hollywood that is the most incredibly successful film terrorist in the world, that is taking over every cinema chain, every country, everything with its mediocre movies. Europeans used to resist them but they don't anymore, and so we see very few foreign films in America. American independent movies took those screens basically. So in the old days it used to be that the foreign films in America were the ones that broke the taboos. And certainly is no longer that, I mean it could be again. Certainly in New York … but I would say even in Baltimore very, very rarely do foreign films play anymore. There used to be three cinemas that played them all the time. I think it's like that everywhere. So that's why I went to Europe to get the money. Although I like some, I like Titanic. I don't judge a film by its budget - there are terrible independent movies too, whiny and obnoxious ones. Budget has nothing to do with good or bad, I think. My favourite bad French movie was that one on the bridge. Oh, I love that movie. I felt that it is my favourite bad movie of the year. Oh my god, that set they built!
Ulfers: One short question… how did you get the people from the police school to collaborate?
Waters: That is the most ludicrous stuff, the people who play the SWAT team are the real ones. So at they end they were waiting for three days, they thought they were going to be in Rambo or something. And I said: OK in this scene you take Petey away, and he is sexually attracted to you. They said, "A ha". They were mortified, they thought they are going to get like to do something real big, here they just pick him up and he goes "Augggggguugghh." Yes, when Finch is jerking off, they were the real cops. I mean, I told them to do it, it was a take, they were acting but I think it wasn't too hard because they didn't know the script. Jesus Christ, what an assignment! They thought that they are going to be in an action movie and do some real gun power stuff. But they were good sports, they always were. But that is the good thing about Baltimore, they all have a sense of humour and still people are not so used to making movies, they will do anything you ask to make a movie which is still amazing to me. Knock on their door, 'you have to move your car John Waters is making a movie' 'Oh, OK'. I am amazed that they do. I am still amazed that the teamsters have jobs because of the fucked up ideas I have in my office, you know that it is amazing that these men have jobs because of something I thought up. It is strange, but in Baltimore everyone is so weird. The head teamster, his wife was my girlfriend in sixth grade. And I didn't find out for a really a long time and it was really strange.
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