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John Waters
A tight chat with artist and director John Waters.
JAMES: How are you, JOHN? Have you managed to avoid getting Covid so far?JOHN: Yes, so far, but you know I would never discuss my health, so even if I did have it, I wouldn't tell you!
JA: Oh! Okay...
JW: I'll know if I'm sick, and then I'll just die. That is what I believe is the righteous way to make a final exit!
JA: You don't like to make a fuss, then?
JW: No, but it depends. Sometimes I like to make a fuss in a good way. A fuss doesn't always mean causing a problem, but it can mean whining, and I don't like to do that.
JA: I heard you're donating 372 works from your personal art collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art. So, you're clearly not a cheapskate!
JW: For me, it seems like it would be a very good place for it to go. If I kept it all, my heirs would have to pay a lot of taxes. Who wants that? I've even made a joke of it, saying one of the things the museum has to do is name the bathrooms after me. And they won't get the collection until I'm dead, so I still get to live with it.
JA: I liked the sound of the piece by KARIN SANDER, which was just a blank canvas that had been left outside by her dealer to gradually get covered in mould...
JW: That is the best one. It could just disappear and it was expensive. It's the perfect piece of contemporary art.
JA: It is also very easy to produce.
JW: I wrote about some of her art pieces because I am a fan, and she traded me another piece from that series where she gives you a blank canvas and you put it somewhere. So, I put it in my yard, out back. Then I went back to get it six months later and whatever it was by then, that is the piece. Well, an animal had slashed through it, so I got a FONTANA piece done by a fox!
JA: That sounds great!
JW: It was great, and now it's hanging in the garage.
JA: Are going to keep hold of that one?'
JW: Oh no, that is going to the museum too.
JA: Something that runs through a lot of your own art practice is the reuse or recycling of images from films and TV shows...
JW: I mix them together and sometimes I don't even know where the images are from anymore. It is all about collaging, editing and telling a new story which none of the directors - including myself - meant to be taken that way when we made the original source material. Sometimes I think there is only one frame in an entire movie - including ones that I made - that is worth see-ing. I try to find that and show that in an art gallery. You go to a movie theatre to watch a whole movie. You go to an art gallery to see one frame!
JA: When are you next coming to London, JOHN?
JW: I don't know! I love my trips to London. I love staying at Covent Garden Hotel on Monmouth Street.
JA: When you're not travelling and you're back in your home sort of routine, what are you like with food and cooking? Do you save and reuse your leftovers?
JW: I do save my leftovers; it always tastes better for lunch the next day. Sometimes I will have a whole meal of leftovers, if I have cooked four or five nights in a row and I have lots left over. Yes, I am all for that.
JA: What's your speciality dish?
JW: I don't know if I have a specialty dish. The easiest dish in the whole world is called WHORE'S PASTA. You just use garlic, olive oil and anchovies in pasta with parsley. It is delicious.
JA: I've had that before. It's tasty yet economical. Would you throw any leftovers in the microwave the next day?
JW: Sometimes I use the microwave, yeah, but it is better heated up in a pot.
JA: Which work of art do you think best demonstrates a similarly thrifty mindset?
JW: Well, certainly RAUSCHENBERG, when he did all of those cardboard pieces which are so fabulous. That would be the one that instantly springs to mind.
JA: He did the really great painting on an old bed, as well, didn't he?
JW: Yeah. Also, MIKE KELLEY, where he would just take old, found veterinarian cards from the death of your cat and throw them in a cardboard box with some old cat toys from a thrift shop. Or, he would put a rug on the floor with dirty old stuffed animals all over it. So good!
JA: DIVINE released that great track 'Born to be Cheap' in the early '80s. But can cheapness really be entrenched at birth, or is it an acquired behaviour?
JW: It depends. My mother used to say about someone, "She's so cheap," meaning that she was trashy looking. Cheap, meaning trashy, is kind of a good term, but it's not used that much today.
JA: I don't think it is, really, no.
JW: Even that word "camp." I mean, camp is a word I would never say out loud, and no one I know would use that word. But the word trash is just American humour; it's just funny.
JA: Aside from DIVINE, who epitomises fabulous cheapness?
JW: I think the best kind is those women in the '60s with the most extreme bouffant hairdos, who didn't realise how much like freaks and lunatics they looked! They were middle-class, basically, but looked far more extreme than punk rockers ever did. Even today, when I find pictures and old yearbooks and stuff, I think "Oh my god!"
JA: And who is the pinnacle of terrible cheapness?
JW: Well, it would be Trump. I don't even want to talk about him, but he did have really bad taste. It wasn't even funny.