If you weren’t invited to a Christmas party at John Waters’ house this year, you’re not alone.
The Baltimore-based writer and filmmaker told a sold-out audience at Baltimore Soundstage Thursday night that he’s not having his party this year and probably never will again.
For years, Waters’ Christmas party was a highlight of the holiday season for those lucky enough to go – “one of the city’s most coveted invites,” as The New York Post once put it. Longtime friends of Waters mixed with celebrities from his movies and the art world and others for an event that celebrated both the holiday season and the end of his multi-city spoken-word “John Waters Christmas” tour.
People looked forward to it so much that when Waters was hospitalized for treatment of a kidney stone in 2016, his party went on without him. His absence made headlines around the world. “It was a very weird Friday evening, a John Waters party without John,” one guest said after the party.
But with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Waters’ parties went on hold, as did many other events. The last one was in 2019. The 2023 version would have been today, the Friday after the final stop on his holiday tour.
On Thursday, Waters said he’s not likely to bring them back.
“You can’t have a Christmas party this year really because who wants 200 people — COVID’s still out there — breathing on you?” he said during the show.
“I don’t have it anymore,” he added during a Q&A session at the end of his show. “I stopped it because of COVID and then also, I don’t know, how did I ever do that” at the end of a month-long holiday tour.
“My party would have been tomorrow night, after I just came home from this,” he said on Thursday. “I did it for 50 years…. I think it’s probably never going to happen again.”
Even though he’s not having his party, Waters said, he’s happy to be home in Baltimore, which he always makes the last stop of his tour.
Besides traveling from coast to coast this year, Waters fit in time last week to travel to Canada and film a co-starring role in Season 3 Part 2 of the “Chucky” television series for the SYFY and USA networks.
“Seventeen shows in 14 cities in 21 days and here we are,” he said on closing night. “It’s so, so great to be home.”
The night was 90 minutes of rapid-fire jokes, stories, and ruminations about a wide range of subjects– from gender politics and the non-binary sexual revolution, to words you can’t say anymore, to celebrities who died on Christmas (George Michael, Eartha Kitt, Dean Martin), to Barbra Streisand’s 900-page memoir, to his fantasy date with Justin Bieber that never took place, to how long it’s been since he last smoked a cigarette.
He has clearly been thinking a lot about teeth and oral cavities. He swears by Waterpiks. He wonders what tooth fairies do with all the teeth they collect. He thinks toothless roofers can be cute. He compared Queen Camilla’s teeth to Edith Massey’s.
Waters spoke about designer clothes and the fashion trend in which people “pay a lot of money to look poor.” His own wardrobe, he said, includes Commes des Garcons designs with holes in them, a suit that appears to have cat hair all over it, a suit that looks like it was splattered with mud, a white sports jacket with grease stains and one that appears to have stab wounds in the back. He said a good look for a man is not to wear expensive jewelry or clothes bearing designer labels, but just one understated item. “Put on a rubber band,” he suggests. “You’ll be a sex magnet tomorrow.”
One year, he said, “I asked Don Knotts for a date. He was alive of course.”
“Why is gay music so bad?” Waters asked.
He really liked the program description for “Pink Flamingos” when it was shown on Turner Classic Movies recently. The entire plot summary was: Fat woman lives in trailer. “That is the best thing anyone has ever written about my movies,” he said.
In keeping with the season, many of Waters’ observations were Christmas-related, including his advice about one subject to avoid at all costs during Christmas dinner.
“If you talk about pickleball,” he said, “you shouldn’t be invited again.”
He said former First Lady Melania Trump’s all-black Christmas decorations one year were “the end of good-bad taste.” They “weren’t even funny,” he said. “They just paralyzed you with how…awful they were.”
He thinks the Oscar awards should be broadcast on Christmas Eve — and volunteered to be the host.
Waters said his favorite local band is Beach House, but he also likes Future Islands, Snail Mail, Dan Deacon and others.
He thinks it’s important that talented local artists stay in Baltimore, not move away.
“What you have to do is not leave,” he told the audience. “Stay here. Make it better. Stay here and then other people will move here. Don’t leave.”
Although he’s knocked airlines in the past – his 2022 novel, “Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance,” was about a woman who steals luggage at the airport — he praised them in his show, saying that not one of his flights this fall was cancelled. He did frown on people who do Number Two in airplane restrooms and on straight men over 50 who wear short pants on plane trips.
Speaking of “Liarmouth,” Waters made no announcements about casting decisions for the film adaptation he wrote and aims to direct. But he said the project is moving ahead, now that the writers’ and actors’ strikes are over.
“I’ve written the script and I turned it in and they like it and we’re doing a budget,” he said. “Who knows? We’ll see. We’ll see.”
He insisted he still isn’t ready to retire at 77 – or even slow down.
“I jump up every day to go to work,” he said. “People say why aren’t you going to retire? Because I wish I believed in another life after, but I don’t. So I want to see every person, every movie, read every book, go everywhere in the world…. That’s why I think travel is so important. That’s why I continue to do this show.”
Waters ended the night by suggesting a last-minute Christmas gift for anyone still out shopping for a child. He noted that he follows WATCH, an organization that raises awareness about dangerous toys and other children’s products, often ones with batteries that could cause choking. WATCH stands for World Against Toys Causing Harm.
Instead of singling out a toy on WATCH’s list this year, Waters showed the audience his gift recommendation for 2023 – an edible light for the Christmas tree. In its packaging, it looked like the sort of bulb that might have been on the tree Dawn Davenport pulled down on her mother in “Female Trouble” when she didn’t get the Cha Cha heels she wanted, black ones.
“I got this at Eddie’s [grocery store] – a Christmas light you eat. Give that to a child,” Waters said, and tossed it into the audience.
