A Conversation with John Waters at the Jacksonville Film Festival

I was privileged to attend "A Conversation With John Waters" as part of the Jacksonville Film Festival on May 19, 2007. The conversation, which was a Q&A between filmmaker Waters and Bob White, Executive Director of the Cultural Council of Jacksonville, took place at the historic Florida Theater. There were approximately 250 people in attendance, which made for a very casual setting. Although the conversation was an hour long, one felt a thousand hours would not be enough to encompass the wisdom Waters has gained in his vast life experience.

White began by asking Waters about his recent and upcoming projects. Waters had just watched the entire dress rehearsal for "Crybaby:The Musical" on Friday May 18. Jerry Mathers, known to television audiences as "the Beaver," is playing the father in the play. Waters said that he did not know what to say upon meeting "the Beav" for the first time so he simply said, "Oh, I know David Nelson (another child star of the 1950s)." With the humor that would characterize the entire conversation, Waters said that in the play Mathers sings a love song to a man, which he called "poetic justice" for someone known as "the Beaver."

Waters also added that he has a children's Christmas movie called Fruitcake coming out but he did not want to jinx the film by saying too much about it.

Waters was amused by the scope of his fandom, as many people know him only from his Court TV show, "Til Death Do Us Part," or from his cameo in the movie Seed of Chucky. He is most often recognized on the subway for those two roles. And although he is known as "the king of filth" for films such as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, he came to mainstream attention with 1988's Hairspray. "People will say to themselves, 'we loved Hairspray; let's get another Waters movie' and then they call the police," he quipped.