After leap to the mainstream with , he found himself in bizarre circumstances: He’d made a box-office success, a home-video smash, and his next film would be produced by Imagine Entertainment and released by Universal Pictures.
That film, the 1990 “Cry-Baby,” failed to duplicate the success of its predecessor, but it developed a cult following thanks in no small part to its star Johnny Depp. As such, the film’s popularity has earned it a 4K/Ultra HD reissue via Kino Lorber that will hit shelves May 28.
Waters was so excited about seeing his film receive this specialized treatment that he agreed to make the promotional rounds for its release. When IndieWire hopped on the phone with him, he detailed the origins of the film and his love of its music, discussed his faith that the musical version will eventually make it back to Broadway, and reconfirmed that so far no one is willing to pony up to make
Esta entrevista ha sido ligeramente editada para mayor claridad.
IndieWire: The first reason that I wanted to talk to you about the reissue of _Llorón_Es, quien detalló su trabajo en la banda sonora de la película.
John Waters: Who?
Dave Alvin.
Oh, Dave Alvin, of course! All I heard was Alvin, and I thought you were talking about Alvin and the Chipmunks, and I was going, “That’s not este movie!” Yeah, Dave Alvin was great! We had real royalty working on this music for the movie, and I think they did an amazing job.
Absolutely. He told me in particular about how much he enjoyed the opportunity to write with .
¡Sí! Los dos, ¿estás bromeando? Quiero decir, crecí en la música de esa época. Quiero decir, "Cry-Baby" de las hermanas Bonnie fue el primer disco que compré en mi vida, y mis padres lo odiaron. Y eran chicas blancas cantándolo, pero fue más, "Shooby-Dooby-Da, Doo-Wop ..." Así que hicimos la ... Rachel Sweet Cover, ¿verdad? No tengo todos los crédito frente a mí. ¡Yo debería! Pero todas las personas que hicieron la música original para la película sabían totalmente de dónde venía. Y los respeté mucho y me emocionó que el supervisor de la música, Becky[Mancuso], got them to do it.
Johnnie Ray, 1954; Elvis Presley en "Jailhouse Rock", 1957 (Fotos: Everett Collection)
Dave said in particular that you told him specifically that you were looking for “hillbilly bop,” and he said, “I felt like I was one of very few people who knew in an instant what he was talking about.”
Sí, porque esto era ... como, "Hairspray" era 1963, justo antes de que los 60 realmente sucedieran, y "Cry-Baby" fue justo antes de que ocurriera el rock 'n' roll. Entonces, en la vida real en ese período, Johnnie Ray había sacado de Frank Sinatra. Era una pequeña ventana antes de que Elvis cambiara todo. Pero, ya sabes, el rockabilly, lo que era sorprendente es que cantaron música negra de Hillbillies, como fueron llamados en ese momento, y country-Western, y lo pusieron todo junto. Y hoy los cantantes de ritmo y blues están cantando country. ¡Así que ha completado el círculo!
I’ve read somewhere that it was someone who lived in your neighborhood when you grew up who was the inspiration for the character of Cry-Baby.
Yeah, there was a guy across the street who the neighbors all thought was a juvenile delinquent. I made friends with the younger brother so I could spy on him. And I don’t know… I was thinking the other day, because another interviewer did ask me about it: He’s probably not alive, because he’s older than me, and I don’t think he looked like he was on the way to success… But I could be dead wrong! But I hung around with his younger brother, and it was the first time I ever played strip poker and smoked cigarettes. Not in a gay way. There wasn’t anything gay about it. Just teenage rebellion.
Entonces, ¿qué te hizo decidir transformar esa memoria en un guión?
Because it was the first rebellion. I always say that the first thing that you are obsessed by and love that your parents hate, that’s when you begin your artistic career. And I always liked rebels. LIFE Magazine corrupted me. They taught me about beatniks, they taught me about bohemia, they taught me about drugs, they taught me about gay people… They taught me about everything that I wasn’t supposed to know about! So the library corrupted me… and a good library debería be able to corrupt young people! I used to look up things that would say, “See librarian.” And I would steal the book. Because they wouldn’t give it to kids! Like Tennessee Williams’ stuff.
But I did really learn! I mean, I couldn’t ask my parents about some of these things, but if I went to the library, they thought, “Oh, he’s studying! Isn’t that great? He wants to go to the library!” Well, first of all, the library also had active bathrooms. In a gay world. Always it did in those days. Now, I didn’t say I was using it when I was in high school, but I knew what was going on there! So you had a gloryhole on top of it! I don’t think that happens too much today.
Johnny Depp y Traci Lords en "Cry-Baby" © Universal/Cortesy Everett Collection
Did you always have an eye on Johnny Depp for the lead?
Yes! Johnny Depp was at the height of his career on “21 Jump Street,” he was on the cover of every teen magazine, he was Justin Bieber… and he hated it! So I always said to him, “Why do you hate it? That’s the point, to get so famous that you can never leave the house!” And he couldn’t then. He could not go out. When we were shooting the movie outside, hundreds of girls would be running and falling backward and crying. They tried to buy his sewage underneath his trailer from the Teamsters!
He wanted to change all that by making fun of it, in a good way. And I think he did make the right decision. We did help him change that. Then Tim Burton came in and everything changed. But I must admit, I’m the one who finally got to show Johnny “Edward Penishands”for the first time.
¿Alguna vez se habló de Johnny haciendo su propio canto, o James Intveld era alguien que habías considerado?
There was_Habla de ello, y Johnny_can sing. It’s just that we weren’t sure of that. And maybe I made the wrong decision there. But I didn’t as far as James Intveld, who I think is one of the… Well, he is Cry-Baby in real life! He still is, in a way. I think he’s an excellent, amazing singer. He sang in “A Dirty Shame,” he sang in “Cry-Baby”… So he was just absolutely amazing. Every time I’m with him, I can barely look at him, I’m so impressed.
“Cry-Baby”
Were you ever hesitant about bringing Rickie Lake into a second consecutive film?
No, I felt bad for her because she was such a star [in “Hairspray”] and here she wasn’t. But she got right into it. She was a team player. Everybody got along really well making that movie. When you saw that cast walking into a restaurant, people ran. They didn’t ask for our autographs. They’d see Iggy [Pop] and Joey Heatherton… They didn’t understand it. Even in the hotel, they were nervous. Iggy tells a story about how his per diem got stolen in the hotel. Which is so Baltimore.
It was the first real Hollywood movie I made. I mean, New Line with “Hairspray” was Hollywood, but this was Universal. This was Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, of all people! Who was actually lovely to me. I wrote about it in [my book] “Mr. Know It All,” the nightmare of what happens with test screenings and all that. I ended up putting out the movie I liked and it didn’t do well when it came out. Then after “Hairspray” became a giant hit musical on Broadway, [“Cry-Baby”] came out on Broadway, too… and it failed _¡de nuevo!_
But still, so many people come up to me and say, “It was the first movie of yours I saw,” whether they were 14 or 8 years old, “and it changed my life, because I knew something was wrong in it, but I didn’t know _what_, pero sabía que estaba bien estar equivocado! Debido a Johnny Depp, siempre digo que más personas han visto esa película en la televisión en todo el mundo que cualquier película que haya hecho, probablemente. Pero hasta el día de hoy, ¡nunca ha entrado en ganancias! Nunca he obtenido una ganancia de níquel de eso. Pero todavía se reproduce, y estoy orgulloso de la película. Creo que se mantiene muy bien, y probablemente juega mucho mejor hoy de lo que sería entonces. Amy Locane ofrece una actuación brillante. Y a nadie le va bien al ser un Ingénue. Creo que ella es el único ingenio que estaba en una película de John Waters, de verdad. Realmente no podrías llamar a Mary Vivian Pearce un ingenio.
Mencionaste a Iggy hace un minuto. De alguna manera lograste hacer que pareciera aún más demacrado de lo que ya es.
Well, he loves to look like that. The older he gets, the nuder he is. I think his interview [for the new Blu-ray] was absolutely lovely. I’ve stayed in touch with Iggy, and what a great career. I mean, the ultimate punk, but a gentleman and just a true star. He and Debbie Harry. What can I say? Those two are just royalty. And they had a sense of humor about themselves.
Well, I’ll just say … It’s unforgettable. On a lot of levels.
Eso fue robado por completo de un libro porno gay de Bob Mizer, donde hizo todas esas cosas pin-up de todos los estafadores en Los Ángeles. Hay una imagen de alguien en un barril de la que lo robé totalmente. Pero cuando mostré esas fotos al estudio cuando estaba obteniendo el trato, no les dije de dónde eran. Y no podías ver ninguna desnudez.
Kim McGuire fue definitivamente un descubrimiento.
Kim McGuire as Hatchet-Face in “Cry-Baby”
Yeah, she was. Bless Kim. She died, sadly. But if you look at the footage, at the interviews they did with her, I wouldn’t have ever recognized her! She looked completely different. Now, of course she didn’t look like that in real life. We always called Van Smith “the ugly expert” and he came in and drew everything on in the most hideous possible way. But she totally embraced it. She was not vain and went completely the other way, with a great sense of humor.
Who would you say was your favorite piece of casting for that film?
Oh, nunca diría a nadie más que a Johnny Depp. ¡Porque hizo la película! ¿Estás bromeando? Él siempre solía decirme: "¿Me tienes un millón de dólares?" Porque eso es lo que tiene para hacer esa película. Lo cual estaba tan loco. Nunca habíamos tenido ese tipo de presupuesto. El primer día en el set, estás diciendo: "Oh, Dios mío, tenemos_food_?” It was an amazing experience for everybody. And it rained every day, so it was a hard movie to make. AEven today when I looked at this new print, I think, “How did we ever make that movie?” The action scenes… How did we ever do that? But it was just team players, like it’s always been. When they come with me, they go all the way. They give it the whole thing, everybody down to the Teamsters. There were even John Waters Teamsters in Baltimore, who only did my movies! They played poker with Polly Bergen through the whole movie.
Me sorprendió mucho ver a Willem Dafoe en la película. Había olvidado por completo que él estaba allí.
¡Oh sí! Y él fue genial. Te voy a contar esta historia, pero le he contado a otras personas. ¡Pero es bueno! El año pasado, estuve en Polonia haciendo mi programa, una gran audiencia agotada, y uno de los interrogadores era este hombre mayor que se parecía a Nikita Khrushchev. Básicamente, él era un viejo comunista. Dijo que estaba allí antes que todo, cuando era un país comunista, pero de alguna manera cuando era un niño tuvieron una impresión ilegal de_Cry-Baby_. Y él dijo: "Cuando vi a Willem Dafoe Slap Johnny Depp en el trasero, ¡supe que era gay!" Y toda la audiencia se volvió loca ... porque eso fue_not_¡Lo que cualquiera esperaba que dijera! Y fui a la derecha y llamé a Willem y le dije. Y estaba orgulloso.
¿Todavía se habla de tratar de hacer un_Pink Flamingos_ opera?
Hace mucho tiempo lo había. Recientemente, alguien lo preguntó al respecto, pero no salió nada de eso. Entonces, ¿quién sabe? Pero creo que sería bueno. Sabes, la dama gorda canta al final_and_come mierda! Definitivamente sería una buena ópera, porque las óperas se tratan de excesos y son demasiado dramáticos, por lo que una batalla de suciedad hecha como ópera sería_amazing!_
Colección "Serial Mom" Everett
Del mismo modo, ¿veremos una secuela de_Serial Mom_?
Not a sequel. But there’s been talk of it being a TV show, which I think would work best, because if it built to a kill once a month… And with political correctness being what it is, it’s perfect! She’d just kill for political correctness! If you look at that movie it was obviously my parody of true-crime movies, but nobody had really done that. And now you look and… Well, there’s stuff in there that’s just like the O.J. case, which hadn’t happened yet! I think “Serial Mom” is my best movie, we had the most money, Kathleen Turner is fabulous, and I think everybody’s great in it.
Mis películas, no se van. ¡Incluso si los odias! Y eso es gracias a Criterion, eso es gracias a todos estos grandes teatros de arte que quedan en todo el país, ¡los pocos! - Y para los jóvenes, que realmente los han descubierto. Porque no puedes salirse con la suya con tu audiencia original. Tienes que seguir obteniendo la próxima generación. Afortunadamente, lo tengo. Y creo[that’s]Porque no soy malo y me burlo de las cosas que me gustan. Siempre me estoy burlando de las reglas políticamente correctas por las que vivimos, no de nuestros padres.
I have to ask: Is there any update on the status of “Liarmouth”?
I’m not going to… [Starts to laugh.] Every time I comment on that, some article comes out that causes me _infierno_, saying we’re making the movie. I’ll say it one more time, and there is no scoop here, there’s nothing new I’m telling you, but… , I wrote the script, they liked it, Aubrey [Plaza]Le gusta el guión, quiere estar en él, quiero que esté en él, y cada persona dijo: "No, no tenemos un centavo del presupuesto". Ahí es donde está hoy. Ojalá eso cambie. ¿Pero la respuesta a partir de hoy? Eso es todo.