I don’t like things you have to do, so neither does Marsha. I’m actually angry that I have to do that every day, too. She does need to have a bowel movement and she is not happy about it. She doesn’t need to have bowel movements like the rest of us. I love that you mentioned that lying gives her power, because Marsha has this air about her where she thinks she's superhuman. She lies like other people go to the gym. Marsha thinks lying makes her look prettier and that it gives her power. But I love to imagine people that would alarm me, or people that have weird obsessions. I think actually maybe fiction is the truth in the long run. Fiction is imagining the truth in a way that is your own and using it to tell a story, but it’s not lying. While writing your first novel, did you find that “lying” is more fun?ĭefinitely. Marsha Sprinkle, the lead character in Liarmouth, is addicted to lying she compares it to taking a hit of a drug. Always.”įrom his home in Baltimore, John Waters spoke with Them - off-camera, of course - about why villains have more fun and the undeniable allure of slapstick comedy.
Like the anti-hero in his novel, he tells me, “Anarchy. In Waters’ reality, you can champion a protagonist whose happy thoughts center around the death of a mother’s dog and “her ex-husband’s expression when she cuts off his sexual appendage.” For him, villains are heroes by another name, who have hopes, desires, and traumas just like anybody else and are just as deserving of a happy ending.Ībove all, Liarmouth unabashedly embodies Waters’ ethos of chaos.