JOHN WATERS's A Dirty Shame (due September 24) is an educational romp about head-injured Baltimoreans who develop insatiable fetishes of the kind that generally get you your own talk show on WPIX. As a result of that pudenda-laden plotline, I got to sip a lovely spot of tea at the Regency with Waters and his star, TRACEY ULLMAN, and discourse with them on subjects like Roman showers (projectile puking), sploshing (putting food in your private regions—even though people are starving in China), doing a dirty Sanchez (giving someone a light mustache of his or her own feces), and upper-deckers (don't ask; I just sploshed and I don't want to get nauseous).
photo: Dennis Kleiman
Dirty shamans Waters and Ullman
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"I just don't get tickling," admitted impish Waters, finally announcing where his threshold is. "And can tolerance go too far? Maybe with adult babies." (Though years after making Pink Flamingos, the auteur realized that putting Edith Massey in a crib had moved the plus-sized diaper phenom into the modern era!)
The distinctly grown-up Ullman, meanwhile, is a sexual firecracker on-screen, but a practical mother of two off. Her bloomers have been understandably knotted ever since insanely literal-minded journalists started asking her if she's really done all the stuff in the movie. "Oh yes," she told me, smirking. "I just came down from Wimbledon and I said, 'Let's do a dirty Sanchez.' I've been married for 21 years! I'm not into this! And if I were, I wouldn't tell you," she added, laughing.
Still, Ullman's hubby is game enough to have urged her to do the flick, though his logic was, "If you try to look attractive and do subtle things on film, it never works." Her son approved too, mainly thanks to co-star JOHNNY KNOXVILLE's involvement. "Johnny puts cars up his ass and then gets an MRI," Ullman deadpanned. "My son said, 'He's my role model!' "
So she went for baroque and multiple-orgasmed it up, doing the immortal cunnilingus scene on the very first day of fisting, I mean filming. It was wackier than a light fecal mustache. Whenever her pseudo-muncher (a computer expert on the side) took his head out from under her skirt for air, Ullman would ask him for downloading advice. "And when my vagina started talking, it was so much fun," Ullman enthused—an effect that Waters said was achieved by another guy sticking his hand under her frock and digitally impersonating a garrulous snatch. (Considering all the traffic down there, maybe she should have sploshed in some sandwiches and chips.)
"It's a serious message to women," insisted Ullman. "The American Pie movies are just about sperm jokes—blokes playing with their willies. This movie says there could be something in there for you, girl." (Besides yesterday's lunch.) Alas, Waters's mom didn't see it that way. When sonny told her the sexploitation-influenced plot, she wistfully replied, "Maybe we'll die first."
Nah, they'll all be fine; Ullman's already been through visionary directors, having played WOODY ALLEN's wife in the zany caper Small Time Crooks. "That was the first time I looked labial," she grinned. Waters agreed: "Your hysterectomy pants!"
Rather than offer lip of his own, Waters told me he's obsessed with "the 9-11 nympho" and left me with reminiscences of a guy he once saw at the late, lamented Hellfire club: "He was licking the floor all night with half a hard-on. I bet he's alive—though he might get colds and gum problems." By now, I had my own situation, having sploshed the entire mini-bar into my ass. The result was a combination Roman shower/upper-decker/triple lutz. Judges?
TUCK EVERLASTING
Moving on to some serious hairspray, Wigstock was "the unofficial kickoff party of the Republican convention," according to host LADY BUNNY, who introduced DUBYA's worst nightmare—a stage full of unapologetic drag queens who'd just been caught in the rain. The emphasis was on un-labial old-timers like BOY GEORGE and HOLLY WOODLAWN, but for the younger kids, there was a one-liner segment that was so sick and offensive that I simply have to repeat a couple of the jokes: "How do you turn a fruit into a vegetable? Have a tiger drag him offstage by his throat" and "Why does KOBE BRYANT always cry after sex? It's the Mace." (I should know; he tried to pull a dirty Sanchez on me just last week.)
The smut danced on when, as an onstage judge at the Jackie Factory's Hooker's Ball at Crobar, I was literally eight inches away from codpieced contestant VINNIE DAZZLE as he got on his knees to unexpectedly deep-throat the more-than-half-a-hard-on of promoter DANIEL NARDICIO and then spit. I was shocked—that he lost.
There was no sex at the MoveOn PAC gala at the Hammerstein Ballroom—just fun Bush-bashing commercials, and photogs yelling at HOWARD DEAN, "Over here! Far left, Mr. Dean." ("The far left? That's how I like it," he replied, laughing, not screaming.) The only weird moment was a comic's impassioned speech about how Repubs are so evil to want to prohibit gay marriage. Guess what, kid, KERRY's against it too!
JERSEY GIRL
Staying with the gay-marriage theme, I'm still lovin' the spin that MRS. McGREEVEY didn't know her philandering bozo hubby was gay. From LIZA to ARIANNA HUFFINGTON to Rock Hudson's wife, no one will ever admit, "I sort of knew. It was an unspoken arrangement made of convenience and power." That would sound so crass. Besides, many of these women convince themselves that the marriage is real and therefore are being sort of honest (albeit in a semi-delusional way) when they say, "I had no idea." But from now on, all y'all closet fag hags should check with me before exchanging vows, deal?
