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But that doesn't mean that Mr. Mondo Trasho has mellowed out in middle age. Waters has an edgy new movie, a crazy farce about Hollywood and left-wing terrorism, ready for a Friday release. Waters still has a bite to go with his bark.
Consider how he insults real-life terrorists: "The terrorists in America are so right wing," Waters grouses in a whirlwind Toronto visit yesterday, "and they dress so badly. It's all that camouflage. At least left-wing terrorists have a 'look.' But the right-wing terrorists don't even know how to do it right. They just keep dressing like Paton."
KIDNAPS STAR
Waters' new film is Cecil B. DeMented, the story of a crazed Baltimore cult leader and guerrilla filmmaker (Stephen Dorff) who kidnaps a movie star (Melanie Griffith) to force her to act in his cult's new movie.
To clinch the absurdity of it all, Patricia Hearst, a former 'kidnap victim' who became a willing terrorist herself in real life, plays a small role as the mother of one of the cultists.
Waters, who knows how to dress for his own 'look' with his rainbow socks, sharply-tailored suit and trademark pencil-thin, Lothario moustache, has layered Cecil B. DeMented with a serious subtext, meticulously researched.
For example, it is easy to see DeMented as a comic version of Charles Manson, the cult leader who engineered a horrifying murder rampage in Hollywood in August, 1969. Among their seven victims was pregnant movie star Sharon Tate.
But, despite acknowledging the Manson connection, Waters prefers to keep his comments to a bare minimum on that subject. He is friends with Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten, is campaigning for her release from prison and adamantly believes she has been completely rehabilitated.
"Everyone says she's rehabilitated," he says of prison officials and psychiatrists, "but they won't let her out because she's too famous.
"It's hard for me to talk about that in this context (in regards to the movie) without in some way harming her. Because it is something I believe in without irony. And I'm not saying it for shock value. I'm not saying it for humour."
MANSON MEETS WARHOL
One film critic has already likened Cecil B. DeMented to what would happen if Manson had met Andy Warhol. Both figures and others inspired Cecil B. DeMented, says Waters.
"It was Manson. It was me. It was Warhol. It was Patty Hearst. It was the Baader-Meinhof gang. It was the Red Brigade. It was all of these things put together -- with irony. Believe me, I know this stuff."
So Cecil B. DeMented says something political about John Waters, the filmmaker says. "I love this movie. And it is political. Warren Beatty made Bulworth, which I think was his political fantasy. So this is my political fantasy. This isn't me, but he is a hero of mine. He is a superhero to me, on film.
"But I don't know if I'd even like him in real life because he's so humour-impaired and he's a megalomaniac and he's very immodest. In a movie, though, his seriousness and obsessiveness about his own career can be funny."