‘I don’t get canceled, really’: John Waters on his career, conservatives and taboos

John Waters knows what makes a “John Waters movie,” but he isn’t sure movie critics do. “I hate those movies, because they just mean they’re gross, or they have one drag queen in it,” Waters tells me over the crackling receiver on his San Francisco landline. Waters has spent years creating universes where people are as bad as cable television cop shows and the latest conservative talking points would have you believe. You’ve almost certainly heard of him through “Hairspray,” his 1988 film staring Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad, an overweight teenage girl who helps integrate Baltimore public tele...