When teenage degenerate Dawn Davenport awakens on Christmas morning to discover her parents didn’t buy her the cha-cha heels she wanted, total anarchy ensues: She cusses them out, stomps on their presents, and knocks the Christmas tree onto her mother, who pleads, “Please, Dawn! Not on Christmas!”
That’s how John Waters’ 1974 cult classic Female Trouble begins. Despite the Davenport family’s miserable Christmas, it’s actually Waters’ favorite holiday. He loves it so much that every yuletide season, he tours the country with his hysterical one-man show, A John Waters Christmas.
Though beloved for writing and directing campy films like the trailblazing Pink Flamingos (1972) and the more commercially successful Hairspray (1988), Waters has also written six books, most recently Make Trouble, based on his 2015 commencement address at Rhode Island School of Design.
“Contemporary art’s job is to wreck what came before. Is there a better job description than that to aspire to?” he advised that year’s graduating class. “Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully.”
John Waters’ work has fucked up our world beautifully, and now he’s coming to fuck up Christmas. I spoke to the pencil-mustachioed Pope of Trash earlier this month, as he was putting the finishing touches on A John Waters Christmas. Prepare for unfiltered musings on dangerous children’s toys, gay reindeer, and “political abuse” whistles.