[My parents] didn’t know what to do, really, but they didn’t freak out too much. They were confused by it. And what parent would be happy their child made Pink Flamingos? Really, none. …
Some of the people that I would bring home, my friends, [my mother] would be horrified, but she was polite. I remember when we made Multiple Maniacs [a 1970 film about psychotic killers who perform in a traveling sideshow] at my parents’ house and filmed the “Cavalcade of Perversion” [the sideshow act] on the front lawn. Divine came in afterwards in a bloody one-piece white woman’s bathing suit carrying an ax, and my mother served us tea, as if Princess Di had come over!
On getting paid for work that doesn’t get made
I have been paid three times to write sequels to Hairspray — real Hollywood money. I was paid to do a children’s movie called Fruitcake that I never got made, but I was paid to write it. So I keep getting paid to do them, but they don’t get made — which I feel fine about.
I’ve made 17 movies. It’s not like I haven’t spoken. … And at the same time, the books do better than the movies and I just need a way to tell stories. … But mostly with independent movies, a movie that routinely used to cost $7 million now they want you to do it for $2 million or $1 million. And I can’t go backwards! I don’t want to be an underground filmmaker at 73. I did that. I went through all that. And Hollywood treated me fairly. I don’t have any real complaints.
On collecting unusual contemporary art
I bought a painting — if you could call it that — by Karin Sander, a German artist I like, and what she did, she has never touched this painting or seen it. She gave her American art dealer a blank canvas, and told him to leave it outside in the Hamptons until it got mold all over it. And then the mold dried in kind of a beautiful way. It looks like a Robert Ryman white painting. But then the dealer said, “I can’t bring it in the gallery. And if you want to buy it, I have to get it treated.” So he got it treated, and then for me to buy it, which I did, I thought, “Isn’t this great? If I don’t have it treated it could wreck my house. It could make me sick. It could maybe kill my guests. It might disappear one day. It’s ugly, and it’s really expensive. And this is perfect! This is the perfect contemporary art!” … It hasn’t spread. None of my guests have been rushed to the hospital from it. But I liked the idea that it’s a dangerous painting.