{"id":561965,"date":"2026-08-07T16:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T16:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/561965\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T16:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T16:48:11","slug":"john-waters-on-turning-80-dirty-jokes-hosting-mosswood-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/561965\/","title":{"rendered":"John Waters on Turning 80, Dirty Jokes, Hosting Mosswood Meltdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJohn Waters<\/a> turns 80 this year. Mosswood Meltdown, the gloriously disreputable Oakland punk festival he has hosted since its inception, turned 12. <\/p>\n

\n\tSomehow, neither shows much interest in acting its age.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery July, a few thousand devotees descend on Mosswood Park for a weekend that feels equal parts punk festival, comedy show and a John Waters cabaret extravaganza. Waters emcees every act on both stages (this year\u2019s lineup included Iggy Pop, Bikini Kill, Pavement and Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein\u2019s Ramones tribute band, The Return of Jackie and Judy), introducing them with the sort of filthy one-liners that have become as much a part of the weekend as the music itself. This year, for example, he anointed Pavement \u201cthe cock and balls of indie rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWaters has become the festival\u2019s unofficial patron saint. Standing behind increasingly absurd podiums \u2014 a fake game-show lectern one minute, an elegant dinner table with a dead rat as the centerpiece the next \u2014 he writes every introduction himself, testing material that often finds its way into his touring stage shows months later.<\/p>\n

\n\tBetween introductions, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the Pope of Trash backstage to talk about turning 80, writing jokes every morning and why he\u2019d still rather spend an evening in a dive bar than at the Folsom Street Fair.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAttendees at last month\u2019s Mosswood Meltdown.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulian Le Ballister, for The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s the intersection between your shock factor and punk?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think we were always punk, all my work from the very beginning. Even when hippies were peace and love, I made Multiple Maniacs, a film that glorified insane violence. I always made fun of whatever the liberal values were, because I\u2019m a liberal, my audience is liberal, so we made fun of that. Those films were punk always, before there was such a thing. In Pink Flamingos, when they had that dyed blue and red hair, we had to bleach their hair out to white and then dye it with magic marker and India ink. Today your mother buys that color dye at the Rite Aid. And the only person who is the correct heir to the throne is Johnny Knoxville. The Jackass movies are the closest to Pink Flamingos, and the new one is worse. He\u2019s now the filthiest person.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you continually evolve while keeping that signature shock?<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s my job. Every day I think it up. I write every day in the morning, and I have to think up things, that\u2019s my job. I have pads, I have notes, little joke files, like Bob Hope did. But I don\u2019t have any writers; they all had twenty writers. I\u2019ve never made a movie I didn\u2019t write. I never would. So every day I just have to think of something. To do that, you have to read a lot. You want to be a director, go see every movie. You want to be a writer, read every newspaper, read.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re turning 80 this year. What accomplishment are you most proud of?<\/p>\n

\n\tThat I\u2019ve been able to have this career, doing what I want, for sixty years. Hollywood\u2019s been fair to me. I was always understood, I always had an audience. The critics who hated me, we used that, they helped me. Censors helped me. Everybody who tried to stop me was better than a press agent. Now the Academy gave me a museum show, that\u2019s amazing to me. The National Registry picked Pink Flamingos. I always say, what was that screening, what did they say? They said, \u201cthe singing asshole.\u201d Well, this would be perfect, we should give this the registry award. I don\u2019t feel any kind of revenge, I\u2019m just honored by it. I\u2019m eighty years old, I\u2019m still older than Iggy. And when William Burroughs died, that was the last person who used to always be older than me in the room.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJohn Waters hosting for his 12th year.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulian Le Ballister, for The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat do you think about the young generation of creators and risk-taking?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, they\u2019re taking more risk. The new sexual revolution makes mine look tame. I keep telling them, we don\u2019t know how to masturbate to them; you have to teach us. That\u2019s a real thing we need to learn. Everything else is new that people have to accept. So I learn new things all the time. I talk punk dirty in my show today; later I give a whole spiel about new punk rock sex you should have. We\u2019ll see if any of it catches on.<\/p>\n

\n\tDoes it encourage you when you see microbudget filmmakers suddenly breaking through?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think it\u2019s absolutely great. Before that I always said, what movie ever got a start on the internet? None, until a month ago, where two of them did and became the biggest hits, grossing $180 million. Now every Hollywood studio says, \u201cWhy can\u2019t you make a movie for $30,000?\u201d I\u2019m mad at those directors, but I give them great credit. Be careful though, because the studio will hire them away and give them a hundred-million-dollar budget to make a comic book movie. It\u2019ll fail, and their career will be over. It happens constantly.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you know when a joke works?<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s my job, to make people laugh. If they don\u2019t, it\u2019s a terrible feeling. I haven\u2019t had that happen in a long time. A lot of the stuff I say here will end up in my next show. I rewrite it once a year, part of this will become the Christmas show. So every joke I said here today, I\u2019ve never said before. It\u2019s a test.<\/p>\n

\n\tAre you working on any film or series projects?<\/p>\n

\n\tI had Liarmouth, my novel, it was optioned. I wrote the script, they loved it, Aubrey Plaza was going to star, but the budget was too expensive, so it didn\u2019t happen. I have another movie, a children\u2019s Christmas animation called Fruitcake, who knows, that\u2019s fallen through a couple of times too. I have lots of books coming. I have more jobs than I\u2019ve ever had in my life, so I\u2019m not looking for a new one.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Return of Jackie and Judy \u2014 a Ramones tribute band \u2014 before their set. From left: Toko Yasuda, Corin Tucker, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulian Le Ballister, for The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n

\n\tAre we living in a more John Waters world than we used to?<\/p>\n

\n\tReality TV is the one thing I never watch, I have no interest, because they\u2019re all hairhoppers, people I don\u2019t want to ever know, much less care what their lives are like. I pitched one here, we could have one, \u201cHousewives of Squatters,\u201d or \u201cPickpockets at Burning Man.\u201d That, I would watch. I don\u2019t care how those people live, so I don\u2019t watch it. Gore Vidal said the best thing about TV, he said, \u201cI hate watching it, but I love being on it.\u201d I don\u2019t even know how to turn on my TV, I have three assistants, it\u2019s so hard, I start crying. I miss tinfoil and rabbit ears. So to me, I like to read at night. You can\u2019t watch much television and also read a good book. You can\u2019t do both. I much prefer writing, I can memorize lines that I wrote way better than lines other people wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tGay bar or punk bar?<\/p>\n

\n\tOh, punk bar. I\u2019m much more at home there than at the Folsom Street Fair. I don\u2019t have the outfits for the Folsom Street Fair, and leather looks stupid on young people, I think. The gay people I like would be here, they think gay culture is a little square, which it is. They have terrible music.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo I like gay people who can\u2019t get along with other gay people. I like punks who can\u2019t even get along with other punks. I love each minority that can\u2019t fit in with their own minority, and then they hang out with all the other people who can\u2019t fit in their minority, and those are my people. Those are the people who have given me this career for sixty years, and I thank them for it. They get younger and younger, I do recruit. It\u2019s true, what they say.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCrowdsurfing at the Mosswood Meltdown<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulian Le Ballister, for The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Waters turns 80 this year. Mosswood Meltdown, the gloriously disreputable Oakland punk festival he has hosted since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,153751,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-561965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-john-waters","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}