![]() Even defecation infuriates her because she didn’t get to think it up. I don’t know anyone that could hate their body as much as Marsha. ![]() But she was a character that I totally made up as somebody who would be different from what political correctness is today, and different to anything my friends feel. I think that she would feel comfortable in my world, certainly. JW: Well, I think she would be able to get along with Serial Mom or Dawn Davenport. Has she been living inside you for some time? NL: Liarmouth 's lead character, Marsha Sprinkle, is wonderfully appalling. They can laugh at themselves and the seriousness of their peers’ battles. My fans have helped me all of these years because they are angry and they have a good sense of humour. There are lines in Liarmouth that certainly go over that edge of what you can get away with, but so far I think people are reading it in the exact same tone that I give everything. But they have the right to do that, so you have to watch what you say. And that thing can be more remembered than a whole book. JW: When you say anything out loud in a show, one reporter can write it down out of context. Do you think the line of what you can get away with is different in a spoken-word show? Can you get away with more because it’s in the moment? NL: You’ve also just published a brilliantly irreverent novel, Liarmouth. I make fun of things I love, and I think that’s what has enabled me to get away with this for 50 years. But good humour has always walked that ledge of what you can get away with. I don’t do a lot of African American jokes. I don’t do a lot of Holocaust jokes when I’m not Jewish. JW: I think you have to be extra careful. NL: Do you feel as though you can make fun of anything, as long as you have the right intentions? I’m also giving you a humorous take on how the world has completely changed since Covid: how humour has changed, fashion has changed, sex has changed, everything. It is trying to understand the new rules of every outlaw society I’ve ever lived in since the moment I first rebelled, which is probably the first time I heard Elvis Presley sing. Actually, I make fun of the things I love. John Waters: When you say targets, that means that you think I’m attacking. Nick Levine: What are your main targets in False Negative ? If it’s anything like this interview, you can expect observations that are pin-sharp, articulate, and playfully provocative at all times. He’s also bringing his latest spoken-word show, False Negative, to London's Barbican Hall for back-to-back Friday night shows on June 10. The fact Waters gives his antiheroine an almost cutesy-sounding name – Marsha Sprinkle – only makes her more shocking. He’s recently published his debut novel Liarmouth, a gloriously sordid romp about an amoral femme fatale who makes her living by swiping suitcases from airports. Now 76, Baltimore-based Waters continues to move with the times by sending them up in his own transgressive way. It’s safe to presume no Hollywood remake of Pink Flamingos is coming any time soon. Hairspray has since been adapted into an enormously successful Broadway musical and glossy Hollywood blockbuster that put John Travolta in the dragged-up role originated by Divine. But Waters did this in his 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos, and never looked back.īy the time he made 1988’s big-hearted comedy Hairspray, Waters was inching ever closer to mainstream success. No other film director would devise a scene where an outrageous reprobate played by the greatest drag queen of all – Waters’ longtime collaborator Divine – eats an actual dog poo. For nearly 60 years he’s offered a uniquely subversive form of social commentary by bulldozing through contemporary notions of American “good taste”. John Waters has been called many things: the Prince of Puke, the People’s Pervert, the Pope of Trash.
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