I grew up in Baltimore, which is, you know, a city of extremes certainly, but my parents were very conservative. But they made me feel safe, and even though they were mortified at what I was doing, they encouraged it. I think because they thought, what else could I do?
— John Waters
Marriage equality is a hustler's feeding frenzy of gold-diggers. I campaigned for marriage equality in Maryland because I believe we should have the right to it, but I personally don't want to get married. I don't want to imitate the traditions of heterosexual people. I hate weddings: they make me uneasy.
My mother was Catholic, my father not. I went to Catholic high school. Every form of education failed me. I was trouble.
My early films look terrible! I didn't know what I was doing. I learned when I was doing it. I never went to film school.
My main residence is Baltimore. I have an apartment in New York, one in San Francisco, and I live in a rental in Provincetown in the summer.
I want to be commercial. I'm never the person who says, 'I don't care if people don't see my movies.' I always want people to see my movies.
Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.
Bergman movies were the most influential. They used to show at Goucher University, which was where my parents used to live. 'Brink of Life' was the first one I ever saw. Three pregnant women in a maternity ward and their misery - I love that. That is what I want to show at my funeral.
If I made a film today, it would certainly be on digital.
I like art. It's another way to rebel.
For a meal out, my number one restaurant is Peter's Inn. I first went there when it was an old biker bar. Believe me, when it was Motorcycle Pete's, that was fun. I had my 30th birthday there.
I've always been close to my family. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews, but I'm a good uncle.
My father was horrified by my movies, yet he lent me the money to make the early ones. And I paid him back with interest.
A hair-hopper is someone who pretends they're rich, who really wasn't brought up very wealthy but now tries to brag that they're rich, and they spend too much time on their hair.
I've been an art collector since the Sixties, and I kept it very separate from my showbusiness career. I've had art shows since the early Nineties, a museum show that travelled to four countries. I've had three or four art books; it's just another way I have to tell stories.
You have to think of a new way to make something new. And the biggest sin - you can never try too hard. You can never look like you're just trying to shock people, 'cause that's simple. But making people laugh is the hard part.
Always be prepared if someone asks you what you want for Christmas. Give brand names, the store that sells the merchandise, and, if possible, exact model numbers so they can't go wrong. Be the type who's impossible to buy for, so they have to get what you want.
I don't like reality TV. I don't want to look down on people.
My dad saw 'A Dirty Shame.' I felt bad about my father knowing what 'felching' was.
I'd be arrested if I still smoked because I'm the one who would be changing the battery in the airplane in the lavatory to take out the smoke detector. I would've been those people they warn you against.
The few movies I can even think of that I watch over and over would be the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton movie 'Boom!', 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!', and 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.' I wouldn't call any of them mainstream.
My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, 'I don't need to have a celebrity party this year. I'm going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.'
I used to run away to New York from Baltimore all the time. I would get on the Greyhound bus and tell my parents I was going to some sorority weekend... I'd even make up fake permission slips, come to New York, and just ask people on the street if I could stay with them and go see midnight movies.
Science fiction is something I never understood.
It's still possible to make movies. Not so much on YouTube. On YouTube, you wind up with an advertising career. What movie became infamous and a hit because of YouTube? Maybe there is one. I don't know.
Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.
People looked at my early pictures and called them the most disgusting things ever, and now 'Hairspray' is being done at every school in Britain and America.
My perfect day in Baltimore begins with getting my five newspapers. Then I would write.
My mother's brother became the undersecretary of the interior for Nixon, which did cause a little drama in my family because I was going to riots and everything, but he turned out great and gave us a nice cheque for an AIDS benefit we had for the 'Serial Mom' premiere.
They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.
I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.
I have so many other things going on that if 'A Dirty Shame' is my last movie, that's OK.
I believe that both Obama and Trump would describe themselves as outsiders.
Being a traditionalist, I'm a rabid sucker for Christmas. In July, I'm already worried that there are only 146 shopping days left.
I had a stage when I was 12 years old. I had a puppet show career. I wrote horror stories in camp, and all the parents called and complained.
I was creating characters early. People didn't beat me up. I scared them. I hated authority. I could also get people to do things; I was quite the early director. I could make people laugh enough to get their defences down - and then brainwash them.
I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, 'The cinematography was beautiful,' it's a bad movie.
I like to cook for myself or others, so I cook. I always read at night. Sometimes I go to the movies. I don't go out wildly during the week.
New York was scarier than Baltimore ever was. It was terrible in the '70s. I'm glad they cleaned it up. I got mugged; I had to go to the hospital. Every time you went out, you got robbed. It was horrible. You can't imagine.
I never got along in school, really - I already knew what I wanted to do. I have never in my life got a paycheck from anywhere in the world that asked if I went to school.
I like film books at the bottom of the barrel and art books at the top. 'The Ghastly One,' by Jimmy McDonough, is a hilarious biography of one of the most hideous directors who ever picked up a movie camera - Andy Milligan.
Do I like how digital films look? Sometimes, but sometimes it looks flat, and ugly.
At my age, you can go either fat or gaunt. I've gone gaunt.
The nightlife in Baltimore is very mixed. Any gay people I know go to the hipster bars; they don't go to the gay bars. Start your night at the Club Charles, and then you can meet people to go other places. The Charles has been Baltimore's favourite cool hipster bar forever.
I used to hitchhike a lot. I'd come home on the train from New York, and there'd be no cabs, but people would pick me right up and take me to my door because they recognised me. It was like a car service. I never really had a bad experience hitchhiking.
I always was a weird child. My mother told me the story that, in kindergarten, I would come home and tell her about this weird kid in my class who drew only with black crayons and didn't speak to other kids. I talked about it so much that my mother brought it up with the teacher, who said, 'What? That's your son.'
I can make a movie for $5M, which used to be a routinely low, independent movie, but there's no such thing as that any more.
I like the elitism of the art world. I think art for the people is a terrible idea.
I don't believe that we should never not talk to people we don't agree with politically. If you can make that person laugh, it's the first step to getting him to listen to change their mind.
I've been arrested several times. I've been known to dress in ludicrous fashions. I've also built a career out of negative reviews.
