Marc Malkin, who has a terrific Planet Gossip site on E!Online, has been running parts of a conversation he had with John Waters this week. What jumped out at me was the openly gay Waters reaction to Isaiah Washington going to some kind of rehab to get treatment for the homophobic remarks he made about co-star T.R. Knight. Waters says he wants to know what kind of rehab is it that Washington claims to have gone to for help.
"It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard," he says. "Is there a racism rehab, too? Can the KKK people go there? Only in L.A.!"
Marc chatted with Waters in his Chateau Marmont hotel suite just a couple of days before the premiere of his new court TV show"'Til Death Do Us Part."
Waters first gained fame by shocking moviegoers with his outrageously funny—and dirty—"Pink Flamingos" and went on to make "Hairspray" and "Cry-Baby" among others.
"I look through my cable guide and, each month, at least four or five of my movies are on TV," he says. "Pink Flamingos is on the Sundance channel, which in many places is regular cable. It's not even like On Demand. So, many families will sit there together and up comes a singing a--hole!"
Inthe 1980s movie "Hairspray," the role of Edna Turnblad was played by cross-dressing Divine. It was then played by Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway production and will be played by John Travolta in the new movie musical version due out this summer.
"It's great," Waters says. "I'm about to be a grandfather. It's the third generation."
What would Divine think of Travolta taking on her part?
"He would snatch the part right from John's cold, dead fingers," Waters says. "But Divine would be 60 now. In my last movie [A Dirty Shame], he would have been Big Ethel—the grandmother!"