BUZZFEED - Key Persons
Anna Betts is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Anna Betts at anna.betts@buzzfeed.com.
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John Waters has two smiles. One is a polite "thanks for coming to my home" smile, which I saw when he ushered me in. The other is a little Cheshire cat grin that spreads across his face, slowly, like an ooze, usually when he is about to say something perversely funny. Over the course of the two hours I spent in his home, it was thrilling to see him erupt in that smile over and over again.
There are 9,000 books in Waters' home - in this one, at least; he has more in his New York apartment and Provincetown house. He also has a film archive elsewhere, where many of his prized movie possessions are kept. He claims all of his books are cataloged online so he knows which ones he owns. Does that mean he can find a particular book if he's looking for one in his house? "Ehh," he said, guiding me up a twisting staircase, past some decals of kittens on the wall, to his bedroom, which is almost preternaturally tidy and unremarkable, its queen-size bed tucked tightly with crisp white hospital corners. Conversely, one of his bathrooms appears to just be a storage room for colorful blazers and nothing else. Another crawl space was just for windbreakers. Waters has so many desks I lost count, but I only saw one television, which appeared to be 40 years old.
As he continued his tour, I glimpsed a sliver of a recognizable face on a canvas. "Oh, a Michael Jackson portrait," I said.
Airport attire aside, Waters is not one to cast the first stone. "I try to get people out of jail who committed murder. Who am I to judge someone for touching a woman's ass while running for election?" he said with a flourish of his hand when I asked about, ugh, cancel culture. "Look, I hated Bill Cosby before rape. And Harvey [Weinstein], am I sorry he's in jail? No. He always said no to my movies anyway."
Scaachi Koul is a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.