Cable channels played Cry-Baby on a steady loop at 2 a.m. I first heard of John Waters around 2003, when I was in junior high. What if he was surly? Or what if he was boring? Most famous people don’t live up to our heady expectations, and if Waters was a little more tempered in person than his freak charmant public persona, no one could blame him.
Waters couldn’t have known, but while on the Acela to Baltimore, where he has lived his entire life and where many of his movies are set, I was worried I’d have exactly that kind of moment with him. “I still love Little Richard, but there’s a thing where people say never meet your idols. He didn’t have the mustache, he wore conservative suits, said anti-gay stuff,” Waters said. Little Richard wasn’t the campy, sprightly figure Waters was hoping he would be. But the conversation was a bit of a bust. “He had just put out an autobiography where he talked about being a drag queen, he mailed people bowel movements - he was right up my alley!” Waters told me. In 1987, Playboy commissioned John Waters to interview his idol, Little Richard.
