John Waters thinks lesbians loved the gay hockey drama “Heated Rivalry” for this surprising reason

The "Pope of Trash" dished on his storied film career while speaking with Bowen Yang on the "Las Culturistas" podcast.

Why are so many lesbians big fans of Heated Rivalry, the steamy TV series filled with gay male sex scenes?

Is it because the series is based on novels that were written by female author Rachel Reid and reflect a woman’s sensibility, as some have suggested?

Related

“Heated Rivalry” stars score cheeky ads in a tough environment for LGBTQ+ visibility

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During a recent episode of the weekly Las Culturistas podcast, hosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers and their guest culture consultant, writer and filmmaker John Waters, had some other ideas.

“Did you watch Heated Rivalry?” Yang asked Waters about the gay hockey romance show that debuted last fall on HBO Max and the Canadian streaming service Crave. “That I feel like is appealing mostly to women.”

“It is, which is amazing to me,” Waters replied. “I’ve always heard, and I asked butch lesbians if this is true and they said yes, that butch lesbians like to watch gay men’s porn. I don’t get why.”

 “My therapist is a lesbian,” Rogers said. “She, every session, without fail, brings up Heated Rivalry to the point where I’m therapizing her. I keep being like, ‘So you’ve brought it up again.’”

“They’re not supposed to bring up their personal life,” said Waters, who convenes “Group Therapy” sessions for superfans after his spoken-word performances. “You should get your money back.”

“She always relates in an interesting way,” Rogers said. “She is a lesbian who’s into Heated Rivalry.”

“But that’s not hardcore,” Waters said. “That’s softcore. They’re going to watch it. And I asked [butch lesbians] why and they said they want to have the big d**ks themselves and imagine it. I guess. I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Penis envy?” Yang wondered. “That’s a form of penis envy.”

“Size envy,” Waters suggested.

“I think it has to do with safety, to be honest with you,” Rogers said. “I think it has to do with watching, like, a love and a sex that has nothing to do with you and therefore it’s kind of like, ‘I feel detached from it and it’s kind of nice.’ I think that’s why so many women are fanatical about Heated Rivalry. Not to say that gay men aren’t, but it’s different…There’s like a passion towards the show [on the part of many women viewers.]”

“Good. It’s a new audience they didn’t count on,” Waters said. “I bet the test screenings didn’t predict that.”

Penis envy and the porn-viewing habits of butch lesbians were just two of the subjects that came up for discussion when Waters, who is gay, joined the hosts of Las Culturistas for an hour-long chat shortly after his 80^th birthday on April 22.

Las Culturistas translates from Spanish to English as “The Culturists” or “The Culture Lovers.” Since they launched their podcast in 2016, Yang and Rogers have invited a wide range of guests to weigh in on the latest news and trends in pop culture.

This was the first visit for Waters—dubbed “the Pope of Trash” by queer author William Burroughs—and he didn’t hold back on quips and commentary about current events, movies and other subjects. In the process, he lived up to his reputation for being a master storyteller with his patented mix of wisdom and humor. He’s given numerous interviews lately, but this one covered more ground than most.

• About his 80^th birthday: “My God, it was so overhyped. People were yelling ‘Happy Birthday!’ to me on the subway. Strangers.”

• Epstein Island: “People have said to me: ‘Did you ever go to Jeffrey Epstein’s [island]?’ What would I do there? P**sy Island? I would be hiding under a desk. No, I didn’t go there.”

• Melania Trump’s movie and a missed opportunity: “Why did not drag queens go to the Melania documentary dressed as her and shout out stuff like Rocky Horror? Wouldn’t that have been the most hilarious protest?”

• Changing a flat tire: “If I had to change a flat tire or die, I’d have to die. If I had to open the hood of my car or die, I’d have to die.”

• Operating TV remotes: “It’s so hard to turn on the TV that I have to have three assistants there to help me or I’ll be duct taped to my bed…I yearn for three channels, rabbit ears, and tin foil.” 

• Getting his first-ever poem published in a national magazine at 80 (a poem entitled “Catch” in The Atlantic): “Now I’m officially a beatnik!”

Under the two-on-one format, Yang and Rogers set up their guest with topics to discuss and Waters took it from there. Yang called Waters “my favorite director, ever.” The conversation ricocheted from subject to subject, the way Waters does at his spoken-word performances.

But he wasn’t an expert on everything.Although he wrote a book of essays entitled Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, Waters admitted he’s a little hazy about one subject—the difference between furries and plushies.

“Aren’t plushies lesbians?” he asked. “I’m not sure. I don’t get that… I went to Plushie Night accidentally once in the Eagle in Baltimore and it was mostly lesbians.”

The standard definition is that furries are people who identify strongly with an animal, either a real one or an imagined species, and integrate this connection into their daily lives. People in the furry community may dress up and roleplay as anthropomorphic characters, a practice called suiting or fursuiting.  

‘Plushie’ literally means stuffed animal, and the word has been used to describe people who collect stuffed animals or have a strong attachment to stuffed animals. In furry culture, a furry is sometimes referred to as a plushie if they are especially innocent or young in personality or appearance.

Under these definitions, neither of these identities is inherently sexual; it’s not a matter of gender or orientation. Part of the appeal of suiting, furries say, is that when they’re in character wearing a suit, they’ve created or chosen to express who they are, and they aren’t being judged for their human characteristics. Others don’t know their race or age or gender or body type. They’re free to act as their ‘fursonas,’ and that may or may not involve sexual activity. Many say this is a freer form of self-expression than when they’re not dressed up.

In any case, Waters said, he’s not into it.

“You can be whatever you want,” he said. But “who wants to get dressed up like a f**king stuffed animal and have sex?… It’s too hot.”

“It’s so warm, yeah,” Rogers said. “But then I think probably something else takes over in the brain that it’s satisfying where you don’t think about how it’s hot. You only think about how it’s satisfying.”

Waters isn’t a fan of adult babies either.

“Adult babies, lock those f**kers up!” he said.“If you’re sitting in a bouncy chair at 60 weighing 200 pounds, lock them up! I ain’t marching for them.”

Other sex-related discussion topics included S&M, bears, and whether Japan has any Eagle leather bars.

“There’s a very specific subculture of bears in Japan,” Yang said, authoritatively. “They have Eagles. They have multiple Eagle locations.”

“Well, the Eagle’s everywhere,” Waters said. “There’s just not a young person ever in one. Because S&M does look stupid on young people.” 

Waters noted that his movies have done well in Japan, especially Pecker, which starred a young Edward Furlong.

“Pecker was a huge hit because they love Eddie Furlong,” he said. “They love hairless, androgynous men.”

He passed on some dating advice.

“A them told me that when you go home with somebody now, you don’t know what you’re going to get,” he said. “They said, whatever it is, it’s politically correct to call it a ‘bonus hole.’”

As might be expected with the writer and director of 16 movies, much of the talk was about Waters’ film career and the movie industry in general. Here’s Waters on:

• Getting praise and adulation: “I built a career on bad reviews. Now when I get good ones, I’m shocked. I take them with no irony…. I don’t feel like Janis Joplin when she went back to her high school reunion after she was famous and people were still mean to her.”

• The state of movie criticism: In the past, “bad reviews mattered. Today, it doesn’t really hurt you that much. Critics don’t have the power they used to.”

• His audiences: “My audiences, if it’s in Iowa or New York, they’re the same. They’re smart. They dress well. They’ve seen every movie. Because you don’t have to go anywhere anymore. You can stay where you are and make it better.”

• Hairspray getting a PG rating: “I was shocked, just because it was Divine and I. And then New Life [the distributor] at the time was shocked too. They wanted me to put the word ‘s**t’ in so it would get a PG-13 at least. I said, ‘No. Let’s keep it. That’s the shock. That it is PG’…I think it would get a G today.”

• The message of Hairspray: “Tracy [Turnblad] stands for anybody ever that was hassled for being different in any kind of way, who takes what they were hassled by, exaggerates it, and wins. That’s all you can do. If they use something against you, own it, grab it, say, ‘Yes I am,’ and then make it work.”

• Landing Johnny Depp for Cry-Baby: “I went to him because I knew he was like Justin Bieber at the time. He was on the cover of every teen magazine but he hated that image. [I said,] ‘Stick with us. We’ll get rid of that.’ And we did.”

• Profit participation: ”Hairspray was a hit for real. Cry-Baby was definitely not…I’ve never gotten profit participation from Cry-Baby or Serial Mom. They’ve never broken even. But they cost a lot of money.”

• Calling a movie a ‘cult classic’ or a ‘future cult classic’: “A cult classic is the worst thing you can say when you’re trying to get financing [for a movie]. That means five smart people liked it and it lost money… ’Future cult classic’ means it bombed… and you can’t make a cult movie happen.”

• Does he have filmmaker proteges? (Yang called them ‘filth proteges’): “Sure. I mean, there’s young people that don’t imitate me. The ones that do, I don’t like it. I don’t like the work. They’re just trying to be shocking without being funny or witty.  But there’s certainly young filmmakers that surprise me. They’re mostly French, like Gaspar Noé and Bruno Dumont… I loved Eddington. I loved ‘Sirat’…There’s still great movies out there, definitely.”

• Turning six screenplays into audio books and providing the voice for every character: “I play every role in all six movies, and I had to yell, ‘Do my balls, Mama.’ I’d look over at the technician thinking, ‘Jesus, I hope they were prepared for this.’ Because when you’re reading your own book and it’s dirty, it’s more mortifying. It sounds filthier when you read it out loud than when you write it or read it.”

• The kind-heartedness of his movies and why he hasn’t been cancelled: “I made fun of things I loved my whole life, not that I hated, and maybe that’s why…I started by making fun of myself by calling my films ‘trash epics’ and everything.”

• What an intimacy coordinator would say if Waters were filming the last scene of Pink Flamingos today, with Divine eating dog droppings: “I always imagine: Do you mind eating s**t? Is that OK?”  

• The autographed merch he sells at his spoken-word shows: “Have you seen the c** rags? The John Waters c** rags? I’m the only celebrity c** rag!”

Waters touched on some of the subjects he talks about in his spoken-word shows, such as fashion etiquette, being politically correct, and learning the rules of good taste from his parents.

“I was drilled good taste,” he said. “You have to learn those rules to make fun of bad taste, and so I thank my parents for that. My mother thought you should die if you wore white shoes after Labor Day. I’m still right wing on that…They were very opinionated and they taught me what was right and wrong, and I’m not sorry they did. I still use a lot of the stuff that they taught me.”

Waters said his parents were “horrified by the movies I made right up to the end, but they supported me doing it, which is amazing. And my parents had a happy 70-year marriage, so I give them great credit.” 

“What do you think of the people who are still debating what ‘camp’ is now?” Rogers asked Waters.

“That they’re old queens” and “the last movie they saw [starred] Rita Hayworth,” Waters said.

“I don’t know anybody that would say the word camp,” he continued. “That word was over after Susan Sontag wrote about it. It was like sitting in an antique store under a Tiffany lampshade talking about a Betty Grable movie. Then it became, I don’t know, trash. Then it became filth. Now it’s just American humor. It’s just funny.”

In another life, “I would have been a hacker,” Waters said. “Except they have bad clothes. They have poor posture. They’re just hunched over the computer.”

A big problem for hackers, he said, is that they can’t express themselves through fashion.

“There’s no rebellion look for a hacker because you’ve got to blend in,” he said. “The dark web, you don’t dress for it.”

Waters said he still goes to heavy metal shows and recently saw Nine Inch Nails in Los Angeles.

These days, “I’m always the oldest person” at a heavy metal show, he said. “Ever since William Burroughs died, I’m the oldest person at these events.”

Why does he go?

“I just like looking at the audience at all these shows,” he said.  “I just like to look at the kids…I just think they look great and they’re having fun…I just like to see the energy of it…I hate old people my age who say, ‘We had more fun’ [when they were young].’ No, you didn’t. You just don’t know what’s going on.” 

One place Waters doesn’t go is the baths.

“Can you picture me in the baths?” he asked. “I’ve never gone to the baths in my life. Walking around in a towel is not how I do well.”

Waters shared stories about people he has met and one he still wants to meet.

Not long ago, he said, he attended a “big fancy dinner” that honored Patricia Hearst, the publishing heiress whowas kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and took part in its armed bank robbery.

The SLA was a far-left militant organization active between 1973 and 1975. Hearst later appeared in five of Waters’ movies: Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, Cecil B. Demented, and A Dirty Shame.

Waters recalled a conversation he had with a guest seated at Hearst’s table at the fancy dinner.

“I said, ‘How do you know Patricia?’ and he said, ‘Well, she robbed the HiberniaBank which I owned.’ And he paid $5,000 to have dinner with her!”

The filmmaker defended Hearst, saying she didn’t plan the robbery.

“When she was in the SLA, I mean, she didn’t think it up,” he said. “She didn’t know where the bank was. But still, it’s amazing how things change.”

At another point in the conversation, Waters praised Hearst’s work as an actress, especially when her character in Serial Mom, Juror No. 8, gets bashed in the head with a telephone receiver by Kathleen Turner’s character because she wore white shoes after Labor Day.

“Patty really takes that hit well,” Waters said. “Even Kathleen said, ‘Better than any stunt woman I’ve ever worked with.’”

Waters said the only gun he ever shot was a machine gun.

“A biker, a straight biker I know, took me in his Cadillac limousine, broken down thing, and we shot machine guns in the woods, and it was fun,” Waters said.

“Your first gun was a machine gun?” Yang asked.

“Only gun,” Waters said. “With a real biker too, a straight guy I knew…He invited me.”

No sex was involved, Waters added.

“It wasn’t like that. He’s in one of my movies. He’s in Desperate Living. He plays Eater. He has the line, ‘You can suck my royal hemorrhoids, you fat pig.’ That’s his only line in the movie.”

Waters knows his limitations when it comes to guns.

“I’ll shoot myself in my leg if I had a gun,” he said.

Yang asked Waters about the use of guns in his movies.

In Pink Flamingos, “that gun that Divine shoots is a real gun with real bullets in it that the unit photographer happened to own,” Waters said.

Filming in the early 1970s, his crew didn’t take precautions the way crews do today, he admitted.

“We had no safety people. We’re lucky, you know. I mean, there was nobody standing in front of [Divine] when he shot it…Pistol safety was not one of his top things at the time,” Waters said.

At one point, the talk about bank robbers and gun-shooting appeared to mystify Yang.

“How do you find these bank robbers?” he asked Waters. “Do they come to you?”

Asked who he’d like to meet that he hasn’t already, Waters said he’s met “almost every famous person I ever want to meet” because he’s been around so long. The names he dropped ranged from Lily Tomlin and Lana Turner to Norman Mailer and Robert Motherwell.

“I’m not bragging but, just, I’ve been doing this,” he said. “I’m 80 years old. I’ve been doing it for 50 years. And that’s thrilling. It’s exciting. And they like to meet you too. It’s fun.”

In some cases, Waters said, he’ll mention in a show or book that he’d like to meet someone and it gets back to that person and they contact him.

For example, he recalled, “in one of my books, I said I wanted to meet [Lana Turner], and her hairdresser read it and showed her, and she called me.”

Waters also raved in a spoken-word performance about the gay country singer Orville Peck and the singer contacted him. Peck later put Waters in his “Legends Never Die” video, asked him to host two of his Rodeo concerts, and welcomed him backstage when he played The Emcee in ‘Cabaret’ on Broadway.

One holdout so far, Waters said, is Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers III), the white rapper who has a reputation for being homophobic because of some of his lyrics. Waters has talked in his shows about wanting to meet him.

“I’ve always said the only person left I want to meet is Eminem and he still hasn’t called me and I’ve said it for two years,” Waters lamented.

“What do you think is his deal?” Rogers asked.

“I’m all for him. Maybe he’s better than me,” Waters said.

“I highly doubt that,” Rogers said.  

Despite what some people may think, “he’s not homophobic,” Waters said. “He gave Elton John and David [Furnish]for their wedding matching gold cock rings. He’s not homophobic.”

“Is that part of the fascination for you?” Yang asked.

“No, I just like his record,” Waters said. “And I used to go to this redneck bar in Baltimore where… white guys dressed like black rappers hung out. And every time I walked in, they’d play ‘Puke’ by Eminem as a tribute to me.”

Some young people have been turned off by Eminem’s lyrics, Rogers said.

“I think as young gays, hearing him on the radio say things like ‘f**got’ and… stuff like that, I think it bothered us because we had our guards up,” he said.

“It didn’t bother me,” Waters said. “I thought it was like he was just causing trouble like we did… It was just, a white person being a rapper was so new and people hadn’t seen that…It was over the edge but, no, I always liked him.”

“You love something or someone who chafes something,” Yang suggested.

“Who does something first and changes how we think about things, which he did do,” Waters agreed.

Yang said he thought he and Rogers might be able to bring the two together, after the podcast is out. “I think we can make it happen… if Eminem’s people are getting this,” he said.

“Sing ‘Puke’ to me, please,” Waters kiddingly pleaded Eminem.

In addition to the celebrities he’s met, “I have great friends that are not famous,” Waters said. “My closest friends are not famous and I’ve had for 50 years. And I don’t trust people that don’t have old friends.”

But staying in touch with friends requires effort – and just being online doesn’t count, Waters said.

“You have to work at it,” he said. “You have to go out. You have to get your hair done. You have to see them in person. You have to go to their house…To be a real friend is work.”

Waters is also careful about what he says in public. 

“I don’t tell dirt about people that don’t want it. No. I never do. I never say mean things about people,” he said. “I learned a long time ago, because then I sit next to them at a dinner…I’ve had to sit next to critics who gave me terrible reviews. They’re uptight too. They don’t want to sit next to me at dinner. It’s an irresponsible host that put you there.”

“Or it was a devious host that was doing what they want to do,” Rogers said.

As for his personal life: “nobody knows,” Waters said. “I mean, I don’t hide it. But none of the boyfriends I have want to be in the press.”

At the end of every podcast, Yang and Rogers ask guests to take one minute and air their grievances in a segment called “I Don’t Think So, Honey.” It’s a chance for them and their guests to get something off their chests.

For this podcast, Rogers complained about the difficulty of buying products at CVS and Walgreen’s because more and more items are kept in locked cases. Yang compared Fire Island to Provincetown and said which resort he prefers.

Here’s what Waters said irks him about modern life:

I can’t stand the way some people talk. I hate it when actors use the word ‘journey.’ That’s not a f**king journey, winning the Spirit Award. Escaping from Ukraine is. I hate airlines when they say your flight is [cancelled] because of weather. There’s always weather. You mean bad weather. Or when the MPA [Motion Picture Association] says ‘Rated X for language.’ There’s always language. Are you talking about a silent film? I hate actors who say they’re humble: “Well, go down to the S&M bar and shut up and get smacked around.” I hate when people say “surreal.” If you’re talking about Dali, all right. Not some boring thing in your daily life. I hate it when weathermen say ‘wind chill’ and ‘heat index.’ That’s bulls**t words. I hate when gay people say, “This is my lover.” Who are you, Lady Chatterley? I hate it also when gay people say to me, “Hey, girl,” that I don’t know. “Excuse me, do I look like a girl? I guess I failed getting dressed this morning.” And people say, “Are you a top or a bottom?” It’s not a political party—I’m independent. And worst of all, when people say, “Can I take your ‘pitcher’?” No, my ‘pitcher’ is home with Kool-Aid in it. 

“How long would you have to know someone for them to call you ‘girl’?” Yang asked Waters.

“Never,” he answered.

Before his rant, Waters mentioned one goal he’d still like to achieve.

“When am I going to host Saturday Night Live?” he asked Yang, who left the show last December after seven-plus years. Yang started as a writer in 2018, became a featured player in 2019 and was promoted to repertory status before Season 47.

 “That would be genius,” Rogers said.

“You would be wonderful,” Yang agreed.

“I could write a good one with the crew,” Waters said, referring to the fact that SNL guest hosts collaborate with the cast and staff writers to come up with sketches for the show. “It’s the only time I could ever write with somebody else.”

“Oh my gosh. I’ll come back for that,” Yang said. “I would love that.”

The Criterion Collection recently released 4K digital restorations of two of Waters’ films, Desperate Living (1977) and Hairspray (1988). His next appearances include: Hosting the Mosswood Meltdown festival in Oakland, California, July 18-19; and performing his spoken-word show, John Waters: Going to Extremes, at Provincetown (Mass.) Town Hall on July 23 and the Ice Palace on New York’s Fire Island on July 25.

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