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Then again, not many people are John Waters. And for that we should all be either grateful or sad.
Independent filmmaking legend Waters, once dubbed the Pope of Trash by William Burroughs, was centre stage at a packed Garneau Theatre last night for Shock Value: An Evening With John Waters, one of the highlights of this week's Local Heroes International Film Festival.
Dressed in a dapper dark suit that made him look like the world's hippest mortician, the director of such films as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and Cecil B. DeMented had the Garneau's obviously adoring audience in the palm of his hand from the word go, delivering a 75-minute monologue on subjects that ran the gamut from the making of his own films to his love of Don Knotts.
"Every kid needs someone bad to look up to, and I hope I can be that to someone here tonight," Waters said early on, drawing his first of many boisterous rounds of applause.
While using his own filmography as a reference point for his monologue, the relaxed and engaging Waters branched off into recollections from his youth, remembrances of his actors and the sorry state of truly shocking cinema today.
Coming from a childhood where he couldn't fathom why Dorothy didn't want to stay in Oz with the flying monkeys and gay lion ("I was the only kid in the audience who couldn't understand why Dorothy wanted to go home to that smelly farm and that aunt who dressed badly"), Waters talked about his early cinematic heroes, including gimmick king William Castle and the notorious Kroger Babb, who once released knockout gas through a theatre's ventilation system so the next day's papers would be filled with lurid headlines about patrons being taken away from the cinema by ambulance.
"I wish I had the nerve to do that tonight," Waters said.
Many of the director's best anecdotes can't be printed in a family newspaper, though he did share many of his fondest (and funniest) memories of the late Divine, the key player in his group of actors. Memories which include the filming of a scene in 1969's no-budget Mondo Trasho, in which Divine had to crawl through pig manure while wearing a gold lame dress, a sight that inspired the resident porkers to spontaneously, er, become amorous with each other.
"Do you know how much I'd have to pay an animal wrangler for that?" Waters said.
"People see these early films and they say, 'You must have been on drugs when you made that.' Well ... we were."
Keeping in the spirit of Waters' stream-of-consciousness monologue, that statement led to a recollection about an incident last year in which Waters accidentally smoked crack. (He thought the proffered apparatus held another less potent substance.)
"Oh God! I felt like Whitney Houston! I thought, am I an addict now? Am I going to steal from my parents?"
Despite the abundance of hearty belly laughs - Waters' commentary would have made a professional stand-up comedian rethink his career choice - he did touch on his aspirations for the young filmmakers of today, whom he hopes will make the kinds of movies that will shock the establishment, much as Waters himself did 30 years ago.
"I remember the day we got the PG rating (for Hairspray)," Waters said. "I hung my head in shame."
During the question-and-answer session afterwards, Waters proved he's as quick on his feet while improvising as he is when delivering prepared material. When local playwright Adrian Lackey asked Waters how he avoided the draft, Waters didn't miss a beat.
"I said I was queer, I wet my pants and I was a junkie," he said. "It was easier than a trip to Canada."
The Local Heroes International Film Festival continues through Friday. For information on screenings or tickets, call 421-4084.