John Waters has lost his subversive edge, said Jim Shelley in the London Guardian. Ever since the director was a teenager, he wanted to shock and terrorize polite society. “My parents never blamed the crowd I ran with,” he says. “They knew I was the bad egg.” When he began making films, he sought to break every sexual and moral taboo imaginable. His 1969 film Mondo Trasho begins with a scene of chickens being beheaded on a chopping block, and when his mother saw it, she burst into tears. “She said I was going to go crazy and die in a mental institution.”
But as he’s aged, his sensibilities have become practically mainstream; he confesses to loving the crooning of Johnny Mathis, and he’s even served on the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. “I don’t think the word ‘trash’ works anymore,” he laments. “And I would never utter the word ‘camp.’ My tax form should say ‘irony dealer.’”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
