JOHN WATERS MASTERCLASS

Being in the right place and time for other people’s misfortune often pays dividends. Last Friday night (17/8/07), I ended up with two places on the John Waters Masterclass at the NFT in London. How pleasing that the original ticket-holders had injuries/troubles/problems too severe to leave the house etc.

The wisdom of John Waters knows no bounds.

I should’ve smuggled in a tape recorder or at the very least a pencil, but I was too busy sitting stock-still with a grin plastered on my stupefied face to think of it. I couldn’t move through sheer happiness, and despite seeming like the most important words ever uttered, well, I forgot a lot of what was said. But here’s what stuck in my mind.


Myra Hindley
“I swear the only reason she got as long as she did was because she didn’t get her roots done. She’d be out by now if she’d had her hair fixed.”

Lindsay Lohan
John said Lindsay should have gone to acting rehab, for the magnificently awful I Know Who Killed Me. He claimed that the latest breed of ‘troubled’ starlets don’t interest him because they haven’t done anything worthy of the attention. He prefers the likes of his own stars, such as Patty Hearst and Traci Lords. Paris/Lindsay/Nicole/Britney - you're nothing without armed robbery/underage porn to your name.

Helicoptering…
John said he wanted to cover a new sexual practice in every movie, and explained that he was still discovering fetishes. The gay bar in Pecker, for example, recently started allowing its go-go boys to dance with erections – hence teabagging turned into helicoptering.

…and blossoming
But that’s nothing next to blossoming – the fetishisation of anal prolapses. Pictures are swapped online, and men compete for the biggest ‘blossom’. Ouch.

Baltimore
Of course Baltimore took up a lot of the evening, but one anecdote stands out. John recalled talking to a man in a bar, and after a while he asked him what he did. “You want me to tell you?” asked the man. “Yes,” said John. “I swap deer meat for crack,” replied his companion.

The future of Hairspray
JW was very tactful on the new Hairspray movie, and praised everything from casting to execution. He also explained how schools are starting to perform the musical, and it pleases him because it means the fat girl and the boy who drags up are getting the lead roles. He went on to talk about how his mother told him about a local school production, “and it was an all-retarded school. I’d really love to have seen it. I mean the fat thing, the gay thing, they’ve been done. All-retarded versions will bring back the edge”.

Oh, and he’s really into K-Fed, and would like him to be in his next movie.

And he was ordained as a priest during the filming of Cry Baby, so he could marry Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. Though that didn’t happen, he used his new ecclesiastical status to baptise Traci Lords.

It was pretty much the best night of my life. Rebecca