Troubled Waters still runs deep
“I know people who have murdered people,” John Waters says with that wry smile of his. “I have friends who have murdered people.
“I think that if someone’s done something very terrible they can make a good friend,” he adds. “Because if you’re willing to forgive them for that night – which is something that they cannot forgive themselves for – it’s very bonding.”
Talking murder with Waters is hardly shocking. This is the film director who elevated trashiness to high art while tugging the fringes of popular culture toward the center.
His latest effort, hosting Court TV’s first scripted show, ” `Til Death Do Us Part” (Mondays, 10 p.m.), seems to personify Waters’ place in culture right now.
The show might air on mainstream TV, but its satirization of spouse-killing is typically Waters weird.
Waters wasn’t always ready for prime time. His 1972 film “Pink Flamingos” is chock full of unspeakable images and was rated X when it was released. Yet, one recent evening, an uncensored version of it was airing on the IFC channel, part of many basic-cable plans.
And Waters’ 1988 movie “Hairspray,” which features a rotund drag queen in the lead, was seen as campy when it was released. But it became a hit Broadway show so popular that it’s being made into a movie again – with John Travolta as the cross-dressing lead.
As the Groom Reaper on “`Til Death Do Us Part,” Waters guides us through half-hour dramatic vignettes based on true crimes about married couples who off one another.
He doesn’t write or direct – he’s merely the on-air talent – and it shows. The program doesn’t quite hit the marks that one anticipates from the Waters brand.
But here and there are touches of the sort of lampoonery that he specializes in: A father, whose only redeeming quality in his wife’s eyes is making the kids their school lunches, bludgeons her with one of the tin pails; the self-help mantras that propel a woman to lose weight and want to leave her husband are the same ones that motivate him to butcher her.
Waters’ personal fascination with crime goes way back.
“I was a Court TV reporter for myself before there was Court TV,” he says, “because I went to trials on my own.”
He even camped out overnight to take his mother to the Watergate hearings. Waters says he’s drawn to the drama of it all.
“The only thing you can’t get on Court TV is that you overhear stuff outside of the courtroom and in the elevators,” he says.
“Both sides have to leave the courtroom at the same time as the victims and the relatives and the relatives of the criminals.
“And sometimes they accidentally get on the same elevator.”
The birthday bunch
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner is 81. Naturalist Jim Fowler (“Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”) is 75. Actress Michael Learned (“The Waltons”) is 68. Country singer Hal Ketchum is 54. Actor Dennis Quaid is 53. Actress-model Paulina Porizkova is 42. Actress Cynthia Nixon (“Sex and the City”) is 41. Actress Keshia Knight Pulliam (“The Cosby Show”) is 28. Singer-actor Jesse McCartney (“Summerland”) is 20. Actress Kristen Stewart (“Panic Room”) is 17. Actress Elle Fanning (“Because of Winn-Dixie”) is 9.