John Waters Quotes
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I went through different looks. At one period, I was preppy because that's how I grew up. But then I had bleached hair in the front. And I used to wear - then I wanted to be a beatnik. It was hard to be a beatnik in suburban Baltimore. But I wanted to be one.
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Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.
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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.
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I want to be in a 'Final Destination' movie.
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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.
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There are schools for weird children now. There wasn't when I was young.
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I'd love to sell out completely. It's just that nobody has been willing to buy.
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I don't like reality TV. I don't want to look down on people.
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Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is.
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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.
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I do take a one-week vacation every year, and I go to London in the fall.
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My dad saw 'A Dirty Shame.' I felt bad about my father knowing what 'felching' was.
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Putting out compilation records, buying the right to music is incredibly complicated. You have to find the writer of the song and the publisher of the song - not the singer - and make two separate deals.
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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.
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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.
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I wrote about Herschell in my book 'Shock Value,' for which I interviewed him. We became friends; I had dinner with Herschell the last year before he died. He was elderly, but his mind was perfectly intact.
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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.
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I've always been close to my family. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews, but I'm a good uncle.
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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.
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Liberal censors are the worst. I don't remember any trouble with 'Serial Mom' or 'Cecil B. Demented' or any of them. Except 'Cry Baby.'
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In the beginning, my equipment, I would rent them from teamster-types, really. I don't know where they got the cameras - I think from the TV stations. But I don't know if they asked the TV stations.
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Around '62 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdos. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight. And people panicked. And it was called going 'Joe,' meaning Joe College. And people would say, 'I don't know. Should I be 'Joe'? I can't decide.'
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Science fiction is something I never understood.
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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.