John Waters and his "Role Models'

The renegade filmmaker John Waters spoke to a full house at the Free Library, promoting his latest book, Role Models. Waters, a.k.a The Pope of Trash, first made a name for himself in the 1970s with a string of infamous films, including Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. Starting in the late 1980s, he became a bit more mainstream, with films such as Hairspray, Cry Baby and Serial Mom; and the past decade has seen Waters become something of a brand.

Hairspray was first turned into a Broadway musical, which was subsequently rendered as a film in 2007, with John Travolta playing the role of Edna originally created by Divine on film and Harvey Fierstein onstage. Waters hasn't made a film of his own since 2004, and so he has spent more time at his second job as a writer and conversationalist par excellence.

Role Models, a continuation of his earlier books, Shock Value (1981) and Crackpot (2003), finds the author reminiscing about his life in Baltimore, his early trash films, and his continuing obsessions with the transgressive, the filthy and bad taste.

The stunning quip

If you've never heard of Waters, or if you know him and detest him, you will nevertheless be impressed with his ability to conduct a conversation. He's an interesting storyteller with a stunning ability for the brilliant and, of course, transgressive quip. He can be hilarious to listen to. But the Free Library event, I would have to say, was "Waters lite." Of course Waters was promoting his book in a public forum, but a bit of the edge was missing.

Happily, instead of lecturing his audience (which he did at Bryn Mawr College earlier in the year), Waters was interviewed onstage by Gary M. Kramer, author of a book on gay cinema and a contributing writer for various national newspapers. The interview format brings out the best in Waters, especially if the interview becomes an actual dialogue.

Kramer, however, proved less adept as an onstage interviewer than as a journalistic interviewer. An earlier interview published in the Philadelphia Gay News, conducted in Waters's native Baltimore, was a witty and insightful read. The Free Library interview, in contrast, was a bit too obsequious and nostalgic, perhaps sentimental.

Fawning audience

But Kramer isn't solely to blame. Except for the drunken university students seated behind me, the standing-room-only audience projected a similar, if not even stronger, fawning and uncritical attitude. And, in the end, Waters's title— Role Models— does beg for a certain type of conservative hero worship.

So Pink Flamingos it wasn't at the Free Library, and I realized that I'd have to read the actual book in order to see what Waters could deliver in the year 2010. If nothing else, Waters is an efficient promoter of his material, and he did render a synopsis of his recently published book.

Thus the audience learned of his hero worship of 1950s-era music icons Johnny Mathis and Little Richard and his eventual landing of interviews with both. In these he discovered that Johnny Mathis was a Republican; nevertheless, it is Little Richard's paranoia and misunderstanding of his own image, which seems to bother Waters the most.

Why read at all?

The most interesting moment for me came when Waters discussed his chapter titled "Bookworm, " in which he detailed his love of reading and the immense library in his Baltimore home. Having just seen professor and philosopher Martha Nussbaum the week before at a Free Library event attempting to make a case for the humanities (Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities), I felt that Waters made a much better case for why we should read literature, or even read at all.

Reading, Waters suggested, is transgression; it's confrontational; it's an art form in itself. Combine it with difficult, banned, or perverse books and you get something close to Waters's supreme existential moment.

Taking notes in the bookstore

Afterward I decided to conduct the transgressive reception that was missing at the lecture and went to the bookstore to peruse Role Models. That's right— I didn't buy it. I sat down on the floor with it as if it was a dirty magazine and took notes.

Because that's the other thing that Waters makes clear: It's not how you do it (reading), what you do it with (books), but where you do it (bookstores and libraries) that's also part of the titillating transgression. Waters deserves a place next to Orton and Borges for his ability to transform bookstores and libraries into cool places.

Turning immediately to the "Bookworm" chapter, I was struck by the restatement of what I had just heard at the lecture:

"You should never just read for "'enjoyment.' Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "'hard books.' Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for God's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "'I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth.' Fiction is the truth, fool!"

As you can probably gather from this quote, Waters writes much as he converses, and hence after a while the writing does become a bit too comfortable and standard. Yet Waters does deliver a real gem with his chapter titled "Outsider Porn." In it he details his interest in and interviews with Bobby Garcia, who became famous for filming Marines engaging in acts of fellatio, and David Hurles, who photographed criminals and psychopaths in homoerotic poses. Even Philadelphia's own Uncle Ed Savitz gets a mention.

This chapter is maybe the closest we get to the experience of a John Waters movie: It's a journalistic documentary of outsiders— deviants who, at the same time, are broken mirrors of Waters himself, endlessly and intriguingly reflecting his inner, trashy, wonderful self.