The inimitable John Waters has taken his outrageous humor on tour for the holiday season with a new Christmas show, and Atlanta is among the select cities where he’ll perform. “A John Waters Christmas” returns to Variety Playhouse on Dec. 19, and he is eager “to reinfect the lunatic fringe with holiday jeer.”
The director, author, artist, as well as fabulous storyteller, joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes by phone to share some of his infectious seasonal spirit.
Interview highlights:
A surreal kind of Christmas cheer in our world’s strange circumstances:
“I think that everybody, even Al-Qaeda, knows about Christmas. You can’t escape it. So even if you hate it, if you wanna destroy it, if you love it, whatever, you can’t avoid it. It’s coming at you like an out-of-control bulldozer,” Waters said. “Some people love it like I do. Some people hate it, and I get why. And some people are mad because they aren’t Christians, so why would they have to celebrate it in the first place? I just like the extreme, so it makes everybody emotional, and my show is how to deal with it no matter what kind of person you are.”
He added, “Especially this year, when everything seems like it’s gone wrong. Nothing is right back from COVID. It’s still… like the end of the world. Nothing’s working right. So how do we be optimistic in this? And in the beginning, I wail and moan like everybody, but then I drink the Kool-Aid, and I come back and say, ‘You know how we’re going to fix everything? With lunatic optimism,’ and that’s always the answer.”
John Waters hates weddings:
“I’ve never had fun at a wedding in my life, gay or straight. I find them just insufferable. I think you should go get married at town hall, or with an Elvis imitator or something. But the ones where they spend a fortune and are so serious about it, and they play that horrible music, and you have to do all this stuff. I go to them. I even was in a TV show called ‘Til Death Do Us Part,’ where I played the Groom Reaper,” said Waters. “It was based loosely on true stories where the bride or groom eventually kills one another, and I’m at the wedding in the opening, and you don’t know which one it’s going to be. So that was a perfect part for me. I was hoping that people would never invite me to their weddings, because they think that they were going to kill each other later. But it didn’t affect that.”
A John Waters guide to lovable subversion:
“I make fun of the rules that so-called people who believe that they’re ‘outsiders’ live by. I don’t make fun of the rules that we fled. I make fun of the rules that we currently live under. The thing is, I always made fun of myself first, and you have to be able to learn to do that if you’re going to make fun of others,” said Waters. “You just can’t be self-righteous. That’s the one thing where you always lose, because people join the other side. You don’t make your enemy feel stupid. You make them feel smart, even if they are stupid, and then you can trick them into coming to your side by making them laugh. Never make somebody feel stupid. That’s when they turn against you.”
A John Waters guide to holiday gift-giving:
“If there is anything I hate, it’s ‘whimsical.’ Please don’t ever give me a whimsical gift. Practical? No. That’s when you put in your children’s stocking deodorant and shaving cream. No. That means your children are going to rebel really quickly if you do that,” Waters explained. “Homemade is always good. Homemade is good, but what’s best is if you found something really cheap that the person would really love, because it meant that you spent hours looking through thrift shops and everything. And to give somebody something that really costs a lot of money, it’s kind of in bad taste, I think, because it seems like you’re trying to buy their love at Christmas… Gift cards means you think the person is stupid… unless they’re in prison, then that’s a very nice thing to give.”
“A John Waters Christmas” is on stage at Variety Playhouse on Dec. 19. Tickets and more information are available at https://www.axs.com/events/429267/a-john-waters-christmas-tickets
