John Waters

Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.

I've always been close to my family. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews, but I'm a good uncle.

My mother's brother became the undersecretary of the interior for Nixon, which did cause a little drama in my family because I was going to riots and everything, but he turned out great and gave us a nice cheque for an AIDS benefit we had for the 'Serial Mom' premiere.

Hairspray' maybe did change people's minds, and that's how you get your political enemies to change their minds - by making them laugh and making them look at something in a way they haven't seen it. Not by preaching and cutting them off and being a separatist.

Underground, raw movies that come out of nowhere and change everything - they aren't slick-looking. But I have nothing against slick-looking as long as the scripts are funny.

I don't believe that we should never not talk to people we don't agree with politically. If you can make that person laugh, it's the first step to getting him to listen to change their mind.

My mother was Catholic, my father not. I went to Catholic high school. Every form of education failed me. I was trouble.

In sixth grade, I went to a very good private school, and I did learn there. I learned how to read and write. If I had quit school in sixth grade, I would know as much as I know today and would have made one more movie. By the time I got to college, I was so bored and angry.

My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, 'I don't need to have a celebrity party this year. I'm going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.'

New York was scarier than Baltimore ever was. It was terrible in the '70s. I'm glad they cleaned it up. I got mugged; I had to go to the hospital. Every time you went out, you got robbed. It was horrible. You can't imagine.

I used to run away to New York from Baltimore all the time. I would get on the Greyhound bus and tell my parents I was going to some sorority weekend... I'd even make up fake permission slips, come to New York, and just ask people on the street if I could stay with them and go see midnight movies.

At my age, you can go either fat or gaunt. I've gone gaunt.