When teenage degenerate Dawn Davenport awakens on Christmas morning to discover her parents didnât buy her the cha-cha heels she wanted, total anarchy ensues: She cusses her parents out, stomps on their presents, and knocks the Christmas tree onto her mother, who pleads, âPlease, Dawn! Not on Christmas!â
Thatâs how John Watersâs 1974 cult classic Female Trouble begins. Despite the Davenport familyâs miserable Christmas, itâs actually Watersâs favorite holiday. He loves it so much that every yuletide season, he tours the country with his hysterical one-man show, A John Waters Christmas.
Though beloved for writing and directing campy films like the trailblazing Pink Flamingos (1972) and the more commercially successful Hairspray (1988), Waters has also written six books, most recently Make Trouble, based on his 2015 commencement address at Rhode Island School of Design.
âContemporary artâs job is to wreck what came before. Is there a better job description than that to aspire to?â he advised that yearâs graduating class. âGo out in the world and fuck it up beautifully.â
John Watersâs work has fucked up our world beautifully, and now heâs coming to fuck up Christmas. I spoke to the pencil-mustachioed Pope of Trash earlier this month, as he was putting the finishing touches on A John Waters Christmas. Prepare for unfiltered musings on dangerous childrenâs toys, gay reindeer, and âpolitical abuseâ whistles.
Just a little over a month till Christmas, how are you faring?
Oh my god. Well, Iâve already written all the upgrades for the show. I havenât learned them yet, so Iâm gonna start doing that Thursday. Of course, you need rewrites, because stuff happens every day now for months... but Iâm preparedâI will be.
So youâre prepared for your show, but do you feel like youâre prepared for the holiday itself?
Well, I come home the day after my tour ends, which is 19 shows in 18 cities in 21 days, and then I have a party for 200 people, and then itâs Christmas Eve, so I go somewhere, then I go [on] Christmas to my family, and then itâs over! [On tour] I see real people that are having Christmas, where Iâm having an imitation of Christmas. So itâs bizarre. Thatâs the only time it seems strange to me. But I still have to buy presents and [send] Christmas cards. Iâm signing them nowâI send out 2,000, and theyâre all hand-signed.
Why do you love Christmas so much?
Itâs extreme. You can be offended! I mean, if you say to some people, âMerry Christmas,â they might say, âWell excuse me, I donât believe in the virgin birth,â which is a fair thing to answer. Thatâs why I like the Satanic Temple, you know... [They erect] satanic nativity scenes in state capitols [next to] Christian ones, which I think is hilariousâphotographs of children looking confused at each one. I think thatâs a healthy debate for a child. We had a John Waters camp this year, and in it they made satanic Christmas decorations and bracelets and stuff. All done with humor, you know. I saw the [Church of Satan] when they had the real one in San Francisco, with Anton LaVey, and it was so hokey that even Jayne Mansfield got tired of it. I thought it was funny, because people would be outraged by it, when it was so obviously a scam. But I have a doll, an Anton LaVey doll, that someone gave me recently. I think they found it at a thrift shop. It was a good find.
Do you ever experience post-Christmas letdown?
Iâm exhausted from it. Itâs like making a movie, the Christmas tourâthereâs an end in sight. I couldnât tour like thatâI feel sorry for rock and roll bands that have to do that year-round. But I donât do it in a van. Iâm first class on airplanes and a car picks me up, and you know, as long as I can sleep in the hotel when I get there, Iâm fine. Because Iâm not used to night shifts, you know. I usually get up early and write in the morning every day.
Last year you told Stephen Colbert that all you wanted for Christmas was a club called Flip Flop where lesbians and gay men would have sex with each other, thereby inventing âa new strain of heterosexuality.â
Yeah. Hasnât happenedânot that I know of. If it does, it would probably happen in Provincetown. No, waitâSan Francisco, maybe.
Do you want something different this year?
I want riots, really. No, but I would say to college kids, âWhy are you studying? You should be in the streets!â I mean, with all thatâs going on, I really want activism. I want the hippies again, the people who use humor as terrorism, to come back and mortify the enemy. And this enemy is easy, they rise to the bait. You could easily humiliate them. So I want to publish all the porn that they all download. Where are these hackers when we need âem?
You know, Iâm not really for riots, but I had fun at riots when I was young... And the antifa, theyâre so dull... And I bought [a book about the antifa] hoping for Revolution for the Hell of It, but it was really dull. Youâve got to use humor, thatâs the thing theyâre missing! Revolution for the Hell of It was a really funny book that at the same time did make people demonstrate in a way that worked. You know, the idea when Grace Slick and Abbie Hoffman were gonna sneak into Nixonâs tea party and put acid in the [tea]? Well, this year, this group was going to throw acid at the guests arriving at the Trump inaugurationâeven thatâs a little extreme for me, I thought they meant LSD!
But then, god, you see Trumpâs music [taste]. I read that Melaniaâs gonna be touring with Wayne Newton. Iâm thinking youâre kidding, youâre really kidding. He should be impeached over musical taste alone.
Given Americaâs current social and political climate, have you significantly changed the material in this yearâs show?
I talk about riots, I talk about Trump... well, you know, the sexual harassment thing is so new. I think it goes on in McDonaldâs, thatâs the problem. In show business, itâs getting noticed because everybody has the platform to do it. But suppose it happens to you when youâre working in McDonaldâs? Suppose it happens in every single business, which I believe it does. How do they get justice?... I always wondered, how did anybody think [Anita Hill] was lying? I was on a plane once, in first class, next to this person, and I kept thinking, âWho is he? He looks so familiar.â And it was Clarence Thomas. But I didnât realize it until we landedâhe never spoke to me, he never was mean or anything, we just didnât talk. And then the plane landed and all the people up front go, âI canât believe you were sitting next to him.â And I thought, if I did know it was him, maybe I would have said, âExcuse me,â to the flight attendant, âthereâs a pubic hair in my Coke.â I donât know if I would have the nerve to say that. But that outraged me, because I did believe Anita Hill. How could she have made up the name âLong Dong Silverâ?
Do you have any advice for those of us who have to deal with bigoted relatives at Christmastime?
You go. You should go, and pass out whistles, and explain, âEverybody, letâs get through this.â And [if] anyone talks about politics, you blow a loud whistle. And that is abuse, itâs political abuse. And that way, nobody talks about it and maybe you can get through it. Because otherwise people are gonna knock over the Christmas tree. Everywhere, thereâs gonna be a lot of knocked-over Christmas trees this year. I think sometimes the only thing is to not talk about it with a family... youâre not gonna change, and theyâre not gonna change. I believe that we should try to at least make the other side laugh, and maybe you could make them laugh at those whistles. 
