Film director, writer, orator and fringe patron saint John Waters visited Tampa Theatre Saturday night to present one of his entertaining talks and received a Lifetime Achievement award afterward from the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
The disturbingly adorable and unique statue, designed by St. Petersburg-based artist Calan Ree bore an inscription that read "Thank you for 50 years of strange and beautiful." Dalí Museum Executive Director Hank Hine, a longtime friend who dined with Waters at Anise Global Gastro Bar earlier, presented Waters with the award. Ree said she created the statue using ceramic, an antique oil can, seagrass roots, a sea pod, a rusty bottle cap and twine mounted on salvaged mango wood. Ree also contributed the "strange and beautiful" verbiage too.
Waters, seated a table across the street, in the blocked off area girded by a chain-link fence, greeted fans, signed books and other items (except one fan's bootleg copy of early film Mondo Trasho VHS, which he refused to autograph) and posed for cellphone pictures taken by local cabaret performers Coco and Homo.
As fans lined around the block for nearly two hours, exotica gurus Laura Taylor (of WMNF) and Drew Farmer (of Stolen Idols) spun a fabulous set that ranged from 1960s garage rock to tiki lounge music to the Chipmunks (one of Waters' favorites).
Waters set was the usual — a summary of his film career peppered with his urbane wit, observations on LGBT culture (a blouse is a "feminine top"; "never mind coming out — some people need to come back in") and irreverent bon mots.
Now 68, Waters says he has made preparations for his demise and will be buried in a plot next to Glenn Milstead, aka Divine, and a spot reserved for Mink Stole and one more loved one to be announced. He invited fans to have sex on his grave should he pass before them. The illustrious cemetery row in Waters' hometown of Baltimore would be called "Disgracedland."
Kudos to Margaret Murray and her staff for a successful night. More photos to come!