John Waters Dishes on Famous Friends, Star on Hollywood Walk

Openly gay cinematic schlockmeister John Waters opened up about everything from the exhibit dedicated to him at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Museum and his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to friends like Divine and Pee-wee Herman in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Casting his mind back to his student days at NYU, the 77-year-old filmmaker recalled skipping classes every day to see movies. When he got expelled – after being swept up in what he said was "the first pot bust at a college campus" – he simply embraced his calling as a filmmaker, shooting the early opus "Roman Candles" in 1966 (he'd made an earlier film in 1964 titled "Hag in a Black Leather Jacket").

When the conversation turned to his movies, "Pink Flamingoes" naturally came up. "Are kids too sensitive these days for a film like that?" THR asked, despite the movie showing, as Waters noted, on TCM. Waters recalled meeting Divine when "Divine's family moved up the street from mine, maybe six houses away," and recalled how, as a youth, Divine was subjected to bullying. "And the rage he built up from being abused so much by the students and the teachers led to Divine – a character that he was not like at all," Waters said. "But then I created and wrote the lines for him and made up this image that was made to scare hippies, basically."

Added the director: "And Divine wasn't trans. He didn't want to be a woman. He wanted to be Godzilla and Elizabeth Taylor put together." Noting that Divine "wore expensive men's suits" when not performing, Waters went on to compare the late actor to RuPaul, saying, "one of the reasons for RuPaul's success that nobody ever mentions is he also had a great look out of drag. And most drag queens do not concentrate on that."

The "A Dirty Shame" director discussed his oddball casting preferences and his deadpan directorial style ("my direction is: 'Say this as if you believe every word of it'"), and said of the makeup job worn by actor Kim McGuire in her role as "Hatchet-Face" in the film "Cry-Baby," "We never said the word 'ugly.' We never said the word 'unattractive.' I don't believe in that. I believe that you should exaggerate what people are against and turn it into a style – and then it's beauty and you win."

When the recently-deceased Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, became a topic of discussion, Waters eulogized the comedian, saying that he was "right up there with Howdy Doody and Lassie in the history of American television, if you ask me. A great gentleman who celebrated the delightful."

Revealing his feelings about the upcoming unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Waters told the entertainment outlet, "I'd just like to have the lowest person that comes to Hollywood – that's ugly and wants to be a movie star or untalented and wants to be a director – and have them walk over my star and feel a little bit of hope."

"That's what it's for," Waters declared.

The Academy Museum will open the exhibition "John Waters: Pope of Trash" the day before his star's inauguration on Sept. 17. Screenings of Waters' films will be part of the celebration, but it was the effort the Academy Museum put into tracking down rare artifacts from his career that impressed the filmmaker.

"It's like a snipe hunt," the "Serial Mom" director exclaimed. "They found neighbors of where we made 'Polyester' that I had no idea were still holding on to props from it."

Waters' recipe for success?

"[E]ventually, if you just have a sense of humor about yourself, you'll survive and people will grow to respect what you've done."