What do you do when the Pope of Trash declares that the very religion he founded is dead, ripped apart by suit-wearing Hollywood infidels who kneel only at the altar of the almighty dollar?

Well, you really don't get too concerned. Because if there's one thing legendary independent filmmaker John Waters doesn't take seriously, it's everything. Including the woeful state of sleaze in cinema.

It's a topic Waters might just touch on Sunday night in Shock Value: An Evening With John Waters, the de facto must-see event of this year's Local Heroes International Film Festival. The indie legend takes the stage at the Garneau Theatre at 7 p.m. to rant on whatever's been tickling his fancy from 30 minutes ago to 30 years back.

Bear in mind that when Waters moans about trash in movies, he's lamenting the lack of it. Or rather, the lack of good trash, the kind he pioneered in the '70s and '80s with groundbreaking films of artistic bad taste like Pink Flamingoes, Polyester and Hairspray.

"The golden age of trash is long gone," Waters said on the phone from his home in Baltimore, the city that has served as the backdrop for each of his films.

"As soon as Hollywood started doing it, it was over. The problem is basically that no one is trying to make shocking movies anymore except Hollywood. Think about it - underground films don't, independent films don't, even foreign films don't.

"Although, I'm happy to say that the film that won the Berlin Film Festival (this month) is a major-budget movie with real stars, and there's hardcore sex in it. Which will happen here. I want to see who'll be the first to do it."

Waters, it should go without saying, is enjoying his station in life. At 54, he of the devious grin, pencil-thin moustache and sensibilities that just can't be captured in trite descriptors like "campy" or "kitschy" doesn't have to prove anything to anyone.

"I think I've certainly done what I was put on this earth to do, which was, I would say, make trash 1% more respectable. I'm trying to just leave a good body of work, where you can pick any one of my movies, no matter what they're rated or what they grossed, and see what was obsessing me and what was making me laugh at that point of my life."

As a director, he has what many envy: The clout to raise the money he needs to make his films, a stable of willing actors that's ranged over the years from Divine and Patty Hearst to Johnny Depp and Melanie Griffith, and complete artistic control. Plus, the kind of stature in the world of film that allows him to be a role model for a new generation of eager shockmongers.

"That's youth's duty. To think of a new way to get on people's nerves, to horrify their parents," Waters said. "That's part of my lecture. I tell them how to do it. Try to give them advice. How to be creative juvenile delinquents!"

To that end, Waters has high hopes for the next generation of filmmakers, who have a whole new set of tools and obstacles to work with and skirt around. Films these days aren't given time to find a word-of-mouth audience the way they could when Waters was in his 20s. But on the flipside, young filmmakers have other ways of getting the word out, like the Internet.

"Now there's so many different ways that kids can do it. I'm for that," he said. "The next deviancy masterpiece will be somehow on the Internet."

Not that Waters, who writes all his movies longhand on yellow legal pads, fancies himself any sort of cyber-pioneer: "I've never touched (the Internet) in my life. My assistant, I make her look up all the perverted Web sites. I don't even know how to plug it in."

Still, he's a voracious consumer of media, from the printed word to the moving image. And, as such, he's probably as well equipped as anyone to comment on the state of risk-taking in film. His verdict? Bad taste has become just plain bad.

"The top export of America right now, in culture, is bad taste. Some of it is good bad taste and some is bad bad taste. But that is what American humour has become.

"In Europe everywhere they always bitch about American films, but they pay to see them. That's what I tell them when I go to Europe. Hollywood's the terrorist? You're the one that's buying the tickets. You're ruining your own culture."

Tickets for Shock Value: An Evening With John Waters are $20, available in advance through Tix on the Square or by calling 420-1757. (More on: John Waters).


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