The world's filthiest filmmaker

In a scene from the 2006 Jeff Garlin documentary, "This Filthy World," John Waters, the star of the film, turns his narrow body to the camera and, with an ironic smile on his thin lips, croons, "This filthy world, it's a beautiful place, isn't it?"

If there's anyone who can make us believe that, it's Waters, the irreverent director of such cult masterpieces as "Pink Flamingos" and the original "Hairspray," who will speak at 8 p.m. tonight in McCosh 50 as part of the Public Lecture Series. His works - as a director, artist, screenwriter, comedian, actor and author - explore the dirtier side of human nature, but put it in such a light that one cannot help but admire it.

"I just like people ... and I believe in the basic goodness of people," he said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. "Goodness," however, can take many forms, and Waters's technique has been to find it in the most unexpected, and sometimes most grotesque, places. His work is purposefully subversive and highly aware of the social norms it is rejecting.

"You have to learn the rules to have fun breaking them," he said. And break the rules he has: From featuring "just one little turd" in "Pink Flamingos" to casting real-life convicts and porn stars in his movies, Waters has built a reputation as a cult icon who isn't afraid to do or say anything (Time Out New York recently called him "the crown prince of perversion"). "There are too many rules in the gay world," the openly homosexual Waters said. "I don't fit in there either. I fit in the punk world better."

His work has been successful among audiences and critics alike and has attracted big names - like Johnny Depp and Maggie Gyllenhaal - who have starred in some of his more recent productions. In addition, he has just returned from a lecture tour (giving the same "This Filthy World" talk he will give tonight) in Australia, where he sold out the Sydney Opera House.

Despite his dislike of rules, Waters in no way sees himself as an activist. "I don't want to act up - I want to act bad," he said. Though he supports gay marriage, he said, "I absolutely don't want to get married ... I don't want to imitate corny things straight people do."

Even as a child in Lutherville, Md., he exhibited this rebellious, unconventional behavior. He was kicked out of his all-male Catholic prep school, Calvert Hall High School, where "those Christian brothers discouraged every interest I ever had," he explained. "The only thing I can give them credit for is the rage that led to my early movies."

He left Lutherville at a young age, explaining, "I wanted to be a beatnik ... They don't have beatniks in suburbia." Waters and his friends preferred to hang out with bohemian types at bars and in the low-rent slum sections of Baltimore. "We were trying to find another life and we found it quickly," he said.

Growing up in Lutherville, he was neighbors with Divine and Mary Vivian Pierce, who would both later appear in many of his films. Divine is quite possibly the best-known and most successful transvestite persona of all time. A close personal friend of Waters, she was in many of his most famous films, including the original 1988 version of "Hairspray," which was recently remade in 2007 with John Travolta in the starring role. In addition, Ursula, from Disney's "The Little Mermaid," was made as a sort of tribute to Divine by Howard Ashman, who wrote the music for the movie and was a friend of Waters from Baltimore.

Indeed, Waters is known almost as much for the colorful characters he interacts with as he is for his own eccentricities. He described his upcoming book "Role Models" as "my memoirs told through people that have led extreme lives and that have amazed me." All these people have influenced his life in some way and taught him how to be "neurotically happy" - a state of mind he said is "very important," to be in, and which he defined as "knowing you're fucked up, but you're not going to change."

There are a large variety of people featured in the book, from Johnny Mathis to Tennessee Williams to a friend of his he wants to get paroled, but this is characteristic of Waters, who claimed he is "friends with all kinds of people."

"I think it's more interesting when your friends are totally mixed. So when everyone discusses their worst night sexually, the stories are more varied." (Waters refused to share on his own worst story, which he said only celebrities who "don't have any friends" would ever tell to the press).

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And what does it take to be able to be one of these lucky friends? "I know scary straight people. I know drag queens. I know women that have turned into men. But, that doesn't make them good or bad - it's their sense of humor that matters to me."

Correction: A previous version of this article misquoted Waters as saying that he "fit in the coke world better" when, in fact, he said he "fit in the punk world better."