TORONTO - Something doesn't look right about John Waters. Something is out of place. As always, he is wearing a natty 1950s suit, a vintage Banlon shirt (white with black piping, a real beauty) and spats. He's got the same old pencil-thin mustache.
So what's missing?
It's the cigarette and holder. Tobacco is the one vice Waters has reluctantly given up, though he'd rather you didn't mention it.
"It was definitely part of being John Waters," says the filmmaker-raconteur. "But we're all older and wiser, aren't we, dear? Or just more scaredy-cat, really."
The last observation applies more to the public than it does Waters, who at 58 returned to the Toronto International Film Festival last week for the first time since 2000's "Cecil B. DeMented" with a movie that earned a rare NC-17 from the ratings board. It's called "A Dirty Shame," and it's a gleefully vulgar yet pointed little farce that pits the puritans of his hometown Baltimore - who proudly call themselves "neuters" in the movie - against a gang of sex addicts whose spiritual leader, Ray-Ray, is played by Johnny Knoxville.
Drawn into this latter group as result of a concussion - an idea Waters swears he based on something he read in a newspaper - is a blue-collar suburban housewife played by Tracey Ullman, who at one point had locked her daughter, played by Selma Blair, in her room after she underwent one-too-many breast-augmentation surgeries and refused to quit stripping at the local bar.
"You would think I would be proud," says Waters of the NC-17. After all, he can still quote the review of his breakthrough outrage, 1972's "Pink Flamingos," in which a critic compared it to an exploding septic tank. Instead, he's fretting that the same newspaper and others will not carry advertising for "A Dirty Shame" despite the fact they routinely run ads for movies that are released unrated.
Worse, he says, it means his movie will find no space on the shelves of retailers like Blockbuster and Wal-Mart when it is released on home video, which he says is what ultimately makes his movies profitable.
"Oh, it's beyond hypocritical, it's hysterical - the bad sense of that word," says Waters. At one time, he says, it wasn't unheard of for newspapers and trade magazines to run reviews of hardcore porn movies like "Deep Throat."
"And there's nothing like that in this movie," he says. "There's barely any nudity. Tracey would never, ever let anyone see her naked besides her husband. It's just more reaction to the political climate, which, of course, is one thing the movie's about."
Another issue "A Dirty Shame" takes on is how difficult it is to be really "dirty" in an era where pornography pops up on the Internet whether you want it or not.
Waters prefers the late '50s and early '60s, when anyone seeking titillation that ventured beyond the sanitary sophistication of Playboy had to, as he says, "go to the bad side of town, on an adventure."
In vintage film clips inserted throughout "A Dirty Shame," the director recalls those thrilling days of yesteryear, when theaters known as "grind houses" lured sexually deprived audiences to movies like "The Immoral Mr. Teas" and so-called educational films that showed families at nudist camps or women giving birth.
"Those baby movies probably put as many kids off sex as they turned on," says Waters.
Waters says the accessibility of porn has led to the sort of fetishes that he has poked fun at in "A Dirty Shame," all of which, he claims, are real sexual deviances, "if there is actually such a thing as deviant anymore."
Waters says he once knew someone who could get excited only when he was dressed like a baby. "A very sad case, actually, a life that ended very badly," he says. But the director claims even he - the man who brought cross-dressing into the open with the late cross-dresser Divine in his most commercial movies, "Polyester" and "Hairspray" - was shocked after discovering there was a sexual subculture that got its kicks licking tires.
"And some of them will only lick truck tires," he says, managing a look of incredulity.
To acknowledge his appreciation of his longtime distributor New Line (which releases Waters' films through its Fine Line art house subsidiary) and co-chairman Bob Shaye, Waters appeared before the Motion Picture Association ratings board to ask them what would have to be cut to get "A Dirty Shame" an R-rating.
"They said it was impossible, that it was the `tone' of the entire movie. Now, saying my movies have a `tone' is like saying Britney Spears has an idea. It's an undeserved, or at least accidental, byproduct.
"As good a relationship as I have with New Line, who have supported me on-and-off for years, the only reason it got made was because Johnny Knoxville wanted to be in it. He has `heat,' as they say in those Hollywood meetings. But to someone like me, of course, he is actually a subversive. Think about it. `Jackass?' He managed to make male nudity something that straight teenage boys could deal with. It's incredible."
Some might say it's almost as incredible as seeing 1970s political kidnapping victim, temporary terrorist and newspaper heiress Patty Hearst become a regular in Waters' movies. Or seeing "Hairspray," Waters' musical comedy about an overweight girl who helps integrate '60s Baltimore via an "American Bandstand"-style TV show, become a huge Broadway hit.
Waters is currently consulting on a Broadway reincarnation of the 1950s teen-romance satire "Cry-Baby" and pulls a piece of paper out of his wallet so he can announce the people involved in the show, which should begin previews next year.
It includes Adam Schlesinger, the primary composer in the rock band Fountains of Wayne, who is collaborating with Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" writer David Javerbaum on the score.
"My career curve has proved amazing even to me," says Waters, laughing. "Baltimore pariah-dom to Broadway impresario. All born of teenage boredom. Who could have ever imagined that?"
