The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is poised to correct that with a career-spanning exhibition at the Academy Museum. Set to open to the public on Sept. 17 — with screenings scheduled through October of underground classics like 1972’s Pink Flamingos as well as wholesome fare like 1988’s Hairspray.

John Waters: Pope of Trash promises to both celebrate and canonize Waters as one of Hollywood’s most deliriously brilliant outsider voices.

Waters: I’m in San Francisco where there’s heat wave, which is so bizarre for August. Who was it that said, “I never talk about the weather unless it stops me”? I thought that was a funny line. Gore Vidal said, “No one has ever asked me about the weather. I’m too smart.” Really made me laugh, too. Those are my two favorite weather quotes.

San Francisco these days? 

Let’s just say it is an incredibly beautiful city. I have apartment here, so I live here. I spent my wild youth here. It’s great movie town. It’s still an incredibly beautiful city that is going through some definite Morkville changes.

It surprised me, but I was flattered. I don’t feel any kind of “Ha ha — I told you so.” I just think it’s amazing and just an example for any kid that starts out being obsessed by doing something that everybody tells them they can’t do. Eventually, if you just have sense of humor about yourself, you’ll survive and people will grow to respect what you’ve done. You mustn’t brag about yourself. You have to laugh at yourself first if you’re in show business, and I think that gets you a long way.

Exhibit: material maintained in archives?

I’ve heard that. God bless William Burroughs for calling me “the Pope of Trash.”

Did religion play a big factor in your own life growing up?

Well, they get it wrong sometimes. My mother was Catholic and my father wasn’t, which in the 1950s was called a mixed marriage. And that was tough. I am a tragic example of all kinds of education. I went to a very good private grade school, a public junior high and a terrible Catholic high school. And then I went to a college anybody could get into, and then I got into NYU and got thrown out for the first pot bust at a college campus. But things change. I got my dearest friend’s child help getting her into NYU by writing a letter this year to them saying, “Don’t worry, she’ll be a better student than I was.”

Your crime?

Pot. There was even a book by Richard Goldstein called1 in 7: Drugs on Campus. I’m in there in a chapter called “Pot on the Asphalt Campus.” It wasn’t NYU’s fault, really. I never went to class. I went to 42nd Street and saw the movies I wanted to see every day. And so then I got thrown out, and they said I needed extensive psychiatric treatment.

And then I came home and made Roman Candles [in 1966] after I’d already made Hag in a Black Leather Jacket [in 1964].

So I knew what I wanted to do. You don’t have to go to school if you know what you want to do. You go to school when you don’t know. And they wouldn’t let me be what I wanted to be: the filthiest person alive. Today they might, if you went to a rich-kid school.

You could make a snuff movie and get into Harvard.

Pink Flamingos was always in midnight shiws

Pink Flamingos was just on TCM. Can you believe that? And my favorite thing, the little blurb said, “Fat woman lives in trailer.” I love that! That is the best blurb I have ever gotten in my life.

Why does it have to be shown at midnight now? It’s on television, which is amazing to me. They had singing asshole on Turner Classics. I’m trying to picture families channel surfing. “What’s that, Dad?” “Oh, nothing. Art. It’s art, honey.” Academy-approved art!

Your casting?

That’s also due to Pat Moran who has been my casting person for always, and she’s won a couple Emmys for The Wire and Homicide and all. I invented stunt casting a little bit in Cry-Baby, but I never did that again. I tried to have every crazy part in it played by a star from a different era. They were all good in it. I never had anybody in it I didn’t think was good. I thought Pia Zadora was great in Hairspray. I hired probably like Kathleen Turner and Melanie Griffith and Sam Waterston — people that were known as playing in real Hollywood movies — and asked them to do mine without ever winking at the audience. That’s why if ever I succeed at making funny movies, it’s because my direction is: “Say this as if you believe every word of it.”

Kim McGuire as Hatchet-Face from Cry-Baby 

She was great. And that was Van Smith’s genius, the guy that did the makeup for all my movies, because she had an interesting face, but nothing like that. It was a good start — but he distorted it. He distorted it so much. And now when I go to signings and all, somebody always shows up as Hatchet-Face. It’s a look. We never said the word “ugly.” We never said the word “unattractive.” I don’t believe in that. I believe that you should exaggerate what people are against and turn it into a style — and then it’s beauty and you win.

McGuire enjoyed being known as Hatchet-Face?

She was in David Lynch’s next project, an ABC sitcom that ran just 7 episodes. He hired her afterwards. She was a good sport about it. She didn’t look like that in real life. She looked strange in real life, but certainly not like that. And she didn’t go around wearing Hatchet-Face makeup in real life. She was playing a character. She was mentally healthy enough not to adopt it in her personal life.

Edith Massey?

She was an outsider comedian. I don’t know that there’s many. She was my Gracie Allen. Audiences loved her. She was outsider actress. She didn’t get it, but she liked being in a movie. She had hard time memorizing her lines, but she loved being movie star. She ran a thrift shop. So it was just like a fan club. People came in and gave her stuff to sell, and audiences really liked her. Even Andy Warhol, when he met her said, “Where in the hell did you find her?”

She’s one of your superstars

She was my outsider actress. She was a character actress. That’s what she was.

Friendship with Divine?

I grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, and Divine’s family moved up the street from mine, maybe six houses away. They had child’s nursery school. Divine was their only child, which I always thought was questionable advertising. He was in high school, but he got beat up. He got hassled. He was overweight, kind of feminine nerd. And the rage he built up from being abused so much by students and teachers led to Divine– character that he was not like at all. But then I created and wrote lines for him and made up this image to scare hippies, basically.

Divine

Divine wasn’t trans. He didn’t want to be a woman. He wanted to be Godzilla and Elizabeth Taylor put together. He never walked around in drag. He’d be for that movement, but he wore expensive men’s suits, and that’s what he was striving for. RuPaul — who has been around as long as we have and I really salute him for making drag totally acceptable by middle class — but one of the reasons for RuPaul’s success that nobody ever mentions is he also had great look out of drag. Most drag queens do not concentrate on that.

Interesting. So it’s kind of like doubling your money. You get two looks for one.

A lot of drag queens don’t even want to be photographed out of drag.

RuPaul?

The most ludicrous one is Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

I did that at the height of my lunacy and they did it for real. And I had Pat Moran come over in evening gown and a tiara to borrow a cup of sugar. And my assistant answers the phone and says, “Line 2: Mother Teresa.” And they ran it completely with [host Robin Leach’s] voice in it and everything. They were really good sports about that. But I know the different tours of my house. I don’t do them anymore. My mother always told me it’s bad taste. You only let people see your house when you’re about to sell it.

Appreciation of the odd ephemera–and Paul Reubens

I knew Paul, certainly, and I have dinner party every year with photographer Greg Gorman in L.A. I had it last week and Paul was supposed to be there. He was there every year. His recent death is very sad. And he was right up there with Howdy Doody and Lassie in the history of American television, if you ask me. A great gentleman who celebrated the delightful.

Leslie Van Houten is free, have you spoken to her?

I will never comment on that again, because that’s for her lawyer to do. She’s out. It’s over. You’ll never hear from that person again.

Book Liarmouth into Movie

But I can’t talk about it. It’s the Writers Guild strike.

Sam Brinton, Department of Energy official caught stealing suitcases from airport carousels?

I saw pictures of him. I think he read the book.

I got way more random checks at airports after the book came out, too. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. Maybe it’s my paranoia.

Brinton looks like a character out of your movies.

Well, if you’re going to steal suitcases, I wouldn’t go in bad drag. Get a stylist at least.

Getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

I’d just like to have the lowest person that comes to Hollywood — that’s ugly and wants to be a movie star or untalented and wants to be a director — and have them walk over my star and feel a little bit of hope. That’s what it’s for.