Legendary filmmaker John Waters throws lewd 80th birthday in Berkeley

John Waters is rebelling simply by being here. “I never thought I’d be 80,” he told the audience at Berkeley’s UC Theatre, just a week or so shy of his actual birthday. “[Life] goes quicker. You don’t get enough time.” 

But the world’s wickedest octogenarian wasn’t in much of a rush during his new one-man show, “Going to Extremes: A John Waters 80th Birthday Celebration.” On April 11, the “Pope of Trash” took to the pulpit —  a lectern with a picture of himself in a pink pope robe and cap — for a stream of consciousness-style series of musings on the state of the world. The part-time local’s demented, spoken-word Boomer brain rot tackled everything from LGBTQ culture and aging to punk, politics and all manner of bodily functions. 

“Go ahead, suck the helium out of those balloons, bitches,” he enthused. “It’s a John Waters birthday. I may be older, but together on this special day, we will smolder.”

For longer than many of us have been alive, Waters — the Impresario of Indecency, the Duke of Dirt, the King of Kevorkian Comedy — has been embracing his contradictions, freakishness and up-yours attitude. And because he only celebrates his birthday every 10 years (“you have to give yourself the party, you can’t expect someone else to do it after a certain age”), Waters’ 80th was the perfect occasion for reflection and advice.

“[I’m] looking forward to spreading my filth in Berkeley, a town that put the R in radical but still needs a little R as in rotten,” Waters told SFGATE via email ahead of the show.

In his trademark alliterative, propulsive and often outrageous style, Waters delivered a birthday sermon about the things he’d like to reinvent, scenarios he’d reimagine and the things we should make more extreme to suit his worldview. Among the latter: adventure parks (“roller coasters with free poppers for every rider”), haunted houses (which could include a “hetero horror section” where ghosts play the Grateful Dead), and travel (“purposely arrive 10 seconds before the flight door closes, just to experience a new kind of adrenaline rush”). Oh, and the flight should only shows movies with airplane crashes. 

“Pick one and panic,” he said with a withering smile. 

If we could stop talking about the weather as an extreme, John Waters would be delighted. 

“Rain, big deal. I got enough sense to come in out of it,” he said, as if taunting the already-soaked weekend. “Snow [is] butch rain. Sleet: bisexual rain.” 

Though mostly based in Baltimore (where the weather is objectively more extreme), Waters has long kept an apartment in San Francisco and has hosted Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland for over a decade. He simultaneously teased and praised local culture throughout his sermon, nodding to local drag performer Peaches Christ and the legendary Cockettes, as well as the C.H.U.D.s at People’s Park in the ’70s and his visit to a punk show at San Francisco’s short-lived Deaf Club.

“Recently I saw a San Francisco restaurant … that boasted the only meat served was slaughtered by gay farmers,” Waters quipped to uproarious laughter. “Is breeder beef the new no-no? I’ll go further: bread baked only by pickled pervert pastry chefs.”

As any aging artist might be inclined to do, Waters also reflected on his lengthy filmmaking career. “Pink Flamingos” is responsible for the worst ending and the best costume (specifically Divine’s red fishtail dress designed by Van Smith); “Multiple Maniacs” contains his most gratuitous shot: a drug addict shooting up in a church for no apparent reason. “Desperate Living” had the most cringe-worthy plot point and “Polyester” the worst writing. Waters considers “Hairspray” to be his most subversive work for the way it wormed its way into conservative and normie spaces.

If John Waters’ fans weren’t already watching his oeuvre for life advice, the birthday boy offered a smattering of sentiments for aging audiences to pack in their hanky pockets. Among his choice counsel: “Take LSD, but only if you’re old — you don’t have Alzheimer’s, you’re just tripping!”

He encouraged the audience to “show more contempt for the aging process” by dressing old on purpose and coloring your hair gray before it’s time. “Men, shave in receding hairline. Babies, draw on liver spots. Trans, wear faux pot bellies. Get varicose veins tattooed on your legs!”

There’s no old folks’ home in Waters’ own future, though; he angrily rips up the brochures when they arrive at his house — “no sanatorium for me or face lifts — just facials!” Waters is committed to being a zaddio —  a daddy for people who are zonkers — and leaning into his next group of admirers: hospice hags. 

Fear not; John Waters will never retire. He just gets “clearer and clearer in my demented vision of filth” and is energized by the worldwide cesspool of fans keeping him alive.

“Yes, I’m lucky to be this extreme, this supreme, this unesteemed, but you can be too,” Waters said to cheers, before offering the following instructions. “Bite off more than you can chew and gobble it down. Spread yourself so thin you sneak through the narrow gates of conformity. Blow yourself out of proportion as you blow others. Transform and transgress yourself to perverted perfection.”

John Waters cannot be stopped. His perverted, perturbed personality only grows with age as his sense of subversion continues to shine. He delighted in sharing that his next, biggest act of cultural insurrection on the mainstream would occur on the small screen: John Waters will soon be a guest on “The View.”