Watch This: At Home with John Waters
Posted in: watch thisJohn Waters followed his “Zen-like” cross-country hitchhiking adventure (research for his next book) with a busy summer. In June, the filmmaker, writer, artist, and curator took to the stage at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall to honor Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo on the occasion of her 2012 CFDA Award. “I wear Comme des Garçons the same way Andy Warhol wore $100,000 women’s necklaces underneath his Brooks Brothers turtlenecks—to be fashionable in secret,” said Waters in his remarks, which are excerpted in this month’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar. “Only you know you spent money when you wear Rei’s creations. In fact, some of the more fashion-impaired public actually feel sorry for us!”
In July, Waters knocked ‘em dead on the left coast, where he performed a one-man show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery (treat yourself to Linda Yablonsky’s take on it here) and later collected the annual Outfest achievement award. Meanwhile, Frieze caught up with him at his Baltimore home to discuss sex, death, God, and the art world. “[T]he Pope of Trash has found an escape hatch from his own instantly recognizable cultural legibility in the hermetic domain of contemporary art,” notes Frieze’s Drew Daniel. Here’s the highlight reel:
Thirsty for more Waters? Pick up a copy of Role Models (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a self-portrait told through chapter-size portraits of everyone from Kawakubo to Johnny Mathis, or watch Paul Holdengräber‘s 2010 chat with Waters at the New York Public Library.
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“In a good fashion photograph, the girl, clothes, location, and light all come together. It fuses perfectly, and you can create a character and narrative that is totally believable, however extreme or fantastical. If this sounds seamless and effort-free, it’s not. It’s hard graft, often involving working and reworking the clothes and ideas in your head, worrying away at the characters, developing the concept, visualizing it, discarding ideas, and building the blocks little by little. And I have lots of disasters. My first-ever trip, for example, with Cindy Crawford and Patrick Demarchelier, was inspired by a picture I’d seen in National Geographic of Ladakh, in the most northern and remote part of India. It had no hotels and was near impossible to access: the only route being via military-owned plane or by car (a two-day trip through the Himalayas on an often impassable road). Having no experience of trips, I thought this would be wonderful. I was sure the team could sleep in tents and wouldn’t mind sharing hair and make-up; I doubted they needed running water, either! The weirdest thing was, they didn’t, and I haven’t looked back—although I wouldn’t dare presume on their good will in quite that way now.”
Zoom zoom. David Speranza will go from two wheels to four as he moves from Rodale’s 
• Do you enjoy the work of Damien Hirst but wish that it came with a Whopper? Have it your way in London, where the Burger King in Leicester Square has a spin painting—the artist’s “Beautiful Psychedelic Gherkin Exploding Tomato Sauce All Over Your Face, Flame Grilled Painting” (2003)—on view for the rest of the year. Turns out that Hirst is chummy with the owner of the franchise, which was recently remodeled as a ‘Flameship’ to showcase the brand’s flame-grilling cooking method, according to 
