John Waters believes in keeping his holiday wishes simple.
“I think if you can be with your family, get through the Christmas season and not kill each other, that’s a blessing,” he says.
The sardonic filmmaker with the beady eyes and the pencil-thin moustache is best known for such outrageous cinematic assaults on conventional morality as Pink Flamingos and Polyester, even though in recent years he’s reached out to a larger public thanks to the success of the musical version of his 1988 movie Hairspray, both on stage and screen.
But you still might be surprised to hear he’ll be bringing his own particular “smutty sleigh ride” to our fair city tonight for A John Waters Christmas at the Phoenix Concert Theatre. It’s an opportunity for the sultan of sleaze to hold forth like a composite Dickensian ghost on Christmases past, present and to come.
It makes perfect sense to Waters, however, who has been touring this “Yuletide dog and pony show” around North America for the past few years because, “I have been obsessed with Christmas all my life.
“Oh yes,” he laughs wickedly on the phone from his home in Baltimore, “me and Johnny Mathis.”
Waters embraces most of the holiday traditions of his native Baltimore, including the gastronomical oddity of serving sauerkraut with turkey, which he does at the enormous festive dinners he throws for family and friends every year.
Of course, hanging over everything is the memory of the famous Christmas from his childhood when the tree fell on his grandmother.
“At the time, I thought it was a fairly harrowing event,” he recalls dryly, “even though I was more concerned whether or not any of the presents had been broken.”
Still, it lingered in his subconscious for years and finally burst forth in his 1974 movie Female Trouble, during the famous sequence in which Divine bludgeons her mother with the Christmas tree for failing to buy her the right pair of black cha-cha pumps.
Yet it seems the Waters of today has made peace with the holiday season, despite (or maybe because of) its commercialism.
“Sure, the stores make lots of money,” he admits, “but so do all the criminals, because people are carrying lots more in their wallets and purses.”
So it’s all good, except he does draw the line at “the ever-increasing trend toward ludicrously overdecorated houses. I prefer to go to the more pitiful neighbourhoods and see their touching attempts at making things look cheerful – electric bulbs spelling out `Merry Christmas’ with most of the letters missing.”
And what really gets his ire going is watching “people becoming living members of Nativity tableaux and running around dressed up like Joseph and Mary. Some people even dress their babies up like Jesus. In my neighbourhood, people steal kids like that and hold them for ransom.”
Waters prefers to turn his dress-up thoughts to Santa Claus and encourages people “to look at Christmas in a sexual way. Why, you could have Santa in an S&M outfit, or dressed up as a Daddy Bear, or even a kind of bitchy, snotty, effete sort of Old St. Nick. It’s your holiday, baby, make it your fantasy.”
One of his favourite parts of the season is getting (and receiving) presents, although he hastens to point out “it’s not about how much money you spend, but about how many wicked thoughts you put into what you buy.”
This year, for example, Waters’ friends have had a field day because – as he puts it – “I have the hots for Alvin the Chipmunk and, for me, the idea of a new Chipmunks film opening is pure porno.”
So far, the best present Waters has been offered is from an animator who produced a still from the movie that he had doctored to depict Alvin enjoying himself in, er, a very personal way. “Nothing’s gonna top that one, baby,” Waters giggles satanically, “absolutely nothing!”
It truly seems Waters loves Christmas, warts and all, but what does he suggest for those individuals who have problems with the season?
“I advise people to find the parts they can enjoy and throw out all the rest. Look, when I was a kid, I hated going to church and watching people get all wound up about the holidays, so now I just play it cool.
“To me, it’s a time to be with friends, have fun, eat too much and have fun. Period. And if those little elves turn you on, baby, well you just go and grab one of them for your very own.”
After a year in which Hairspray became a hit movie musical and Cry-Baby seems on its way to Broadway success, it appears to be a good time to ask Waters if he ever thought his life would turn out the way it did.
“What did I know about anything?” he chuckles. “I was an idiot savant with a lot of weird friends, living in a trailer. I was just telling the only kind of stories I knew how to tell.”
