Katrina Fox talks dirty with director John Waters

One morning in Hartford Road, Baltimore, a middle-aged, sexless housewife called Sylvia Stickles suffers concussion and turns into a sex addict. She joins a cult of similar people with all kinds of sexual kinks, including her daughter Caprice, also known as Ursula Udders, and her gay 'bear' neighbours. Led by the enigmatic Ray Ray, their mission is to create a sex act that's never been done before. But not everyone in Hartford Road is happy about this. Sylvia's mum, Big Ethel, rallies the 'neuters' - pro-family-values folk who are determined to put a stop to the depraved carryings-on in their neighbourhood.

This is the synopsis of cult film director John Water's latest movie, a hilarious comedy called A Dirty Shame. Dubbed the Prince of Puke, Waters' career spans 40 years. His early low-budget movies of the 1970s starred an array of his colourful friends, including drag queen Divine, Edith Massey (Edie the Egg Woman), Cookie Mueller, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole, in outrageous plots such as competing for the title of Filthiest Family Alive, and pushed the boundaries of cinematic experience with the use of 'scratch n sniff' cards and a scene in which Divine eats dog shit at the end of Pink Flamingos. Waters later went on to make bigger-budget counter-culture Hollywood comedies including Hairspray, Cry Baby, Cecil B Demented, Pecker and Serial Mom.

A Dirty Shame has been described by some as reminiscent of his earlier work - something he doesn't necessarily agree with. "I get why you say that but I never made a sex movie before and it was obviously a satire of a sexploitation movie," he explains. "I guess I get compared with one different phase of my career, whereas to me Hairspray and A Dirty Shame are the same - they're all John Waters movies and have the same sense of humour, it's just a different subject matter and a different genre I'm parodying."

The new film stars Tracey Ullman, Selma Blair and Suzanne Shepherd (The Sopranos) and Waters admits he only uses casting agents now. "I never find people on the street anymore; however all the extras are real people. When you're a kid you make movies with your friends and even though it was my friends, it turned out to be like the Hollywood system - some of them the audiences liked better and they got bigger parts, like Mink Stole was always the resident character actress and Divine was always the star of those early movies. I think the screaming and the lunatic stuff was effective in those movies because they were so cheaply shot that they almost look like documentaries, so people thought the technical rawness of the movie - they were badly made, that's what that means - led to the fact that they seemed real, but Divine never walked around dressed as that character in the same way that Tracey Ullman isn't a sex addict."

While eating dog shit (it wasn't fake, Divine really ate shit that came straight out of a dog's arse) may seem shocking, even by today's standards, Waters insists his intention has never been to shock, but always to make people laugh. "It was more shocking times we lived in then - there are shocking things today but not in a good way," he says. "When I was young we had beatniks, hippies, punks, grunge, homeboys - what is there now? There isn't anything. So I was always making films to satirise the limits of whatever audience I had at the time and it's a different time now.

"Pink Flamingos was really a punk movie before anyone even knew what that was, including me, that made hippies laugh at their limits. I'm shocked by most movies I see because they're predictable. I never just try and shock, I try and make you laugh or be surprised, but even the ending of Pink Flamingos didn't just shock, because people laughed - it liberated people, it made drag queens cooler and scarier. Nowadays drag queens are edgy, but in those days they wanted to be pretty and be their mothers. I try to make people laugh and at the same time maybe change their opinions on other people's behaviour. I'm asking you to root for people that you might not always root for in real life."

Gay characters feature prominently in many of Waters' films, but like the other characters of varying sexualities, they're all parodies. So what does Waters, who's almost 60, think of gay culture today? "To me, gay is not enough," he says. "It's a good start but it's like saying everything black is good. I think progress in the gay community is admitting that a gay movie can be bad. I like gay people who don't fit in the gay world. My people are always minorities that don't even fit in their own minorities. I'm much more comfortable in a punk rock club than an all-gay club, even though I'm 100 per cent gay - I like it mixed, I like it when you don't know who's what. I like the kids today, they don't care who's what, they might be gay today and straight tomorrow. Some of these people are gay just for political reasons and I tell them to come in and they get nervous because they're trendsexuals - I think it must be hard because no matter what your politics are, it's not easy to give blowjobs or eat pussy if you don't want to. So I'm always confused about that - you can talk about it, but when it gets down to it, it's a hard thing to face."

And while he may support the concept of gay marriage for others, it's not something he'll be taking advantage of himself. "I'm from a generation of gay men who believed that the privilege of being gay was that you didn't have to get married or go in the army. Now gay people have more children than Catholics. I'm for gay marriage but I personally would never do anything so corny."

A Dirty Shame is a timely movie, what with the push from the right wing away from sex and towards family values, but Waters says he was pleasantly surprised at the treatment he and the cast and crew of the film received from Hartford Road residents. "Everyone in the neighbourhood was incredibly supportive. I was terrified, thinking they were going to be uptight when they saw the script and when we put penises on their trees and anuses on their bushes, but the families made us cakes when we did nightshoots and kept them awake all night."

Waters' parents, however, had mixed feelings about the film. "They were there on opening night [in the US] and I felt bad for them," he says. "My father said to me afterwards, 'Well it was really funny, but I hope I never see it again'. That was my favourite review - from dear old 87-year-old dad."

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