AMERICA FINALLY CAUGHT UP to John Waters. The man who started writing and directing slaphappy shock films for cult tastes in the 1960s has now seen two of his movies turned into Broadway musicals; the Tony-winning Hairspray, which began life here at the 5th Avenue Theatre in 2002, is still running strong. When we talked to him in June before his Seattle Arts and Lectures appearance, a capacity crowd was waiting to hear him speak after a tribute screening of his Cecil B. DeMented during the Seattle International Film Festival.

It must be difficult to make subversive cinema when you can pack a respectable joint like Benaroya Hall. “No, I’m never trying to do anything but make you laugh,” Waters shrugged. “I have to reinvent myself—what’s funny today and what was funny 40 years ago aren’t always the same.” In person he’s more gentleman wit than provocateur. Only that pencil-thin mustache gave a hint of the rogue who’s been riling conservative sensibilities for decades. “I’m working on a movie called Fruitcake I’m going to shoot in the fall,” he said. “It’s a children’s Christmas movie. Well, it’s a John Waters children’s Christmas movie. It’s mostly all children in it and Johnny Knoxville’s the father.”

While Waters isn’t easily shocked by movies, it does happen. “Usually when I say a movie shocks me it’s because it’s so horrible,” he quipped. “ That shocks me—that somebody got the movie made.”

The recent Hollywood musical version of Hairspray, in which Waters had a cameo as a flasher, did disrupt his airline travel. “For a while it was on every fucking flight I was on,” he groaned. “And that was a new experience. Especially when I flashed and people would look over at me—the pervert sittin’ next to ’em.” The mustache flattened out across his upper lip in secret satisfaction.