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Pope of Trash, meet the king of compulsively watchable cable television.
As Ryan Murphy heads into the Emmy season with “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” and readies for “The Shards,” his Bret Easton Ellis adaptation set for August, the TV mogul sat down with John Waters in June for a wide-ranging Filmmaker on the Edge conversation at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Waters, a festival mainstay who’s been coming to Provincetown for 60-plus years, earlier screened his 1977 classic “Desperate Living” in a new restoration, while also attending screenings including the opening night presentation of “Stop! That! Train!,” whose director Adam Shankman previously, famously, remade Waters’ “Hairspray” as a musical.
Throughout the conversation, Murphy discussed his career path, highlighting challenges on series including “Popular” and “Glee,” which were criticized, he said, for being “too gay.” Murphy attributed his greatest successes to “Glee,” “American Horror Story,” and “The People vs. OJ Simpson,” and talked about the impact of bad reviews, especially on his show “All’s Fair” with Kim Kardashian, and how he makes projects that resonate with actors he admires.
“That got the worst reviews of all and the biggest numbers of all. That must have made you feel so… what?,” Waters said. “You said you don’t read the reviews but…”
“The thing about that show was… some shows, I mean, I really don’t care anymore,” Murphy said. “If you look at ‘The Beauty’ or ‘Love Story,’ I let the critics see all of the [episodes] and I was like, you know, come one, come all, say whatever you want, I don’t care… I thought it was interesting and kind of ridiculous that I don’t know how you can review a whole season of television when you literally have only seen one episode… If you look at my career historically, the things that the critics like are somewhat more earnest things”
“But a bad review doesn’t hurt. It never did!” Waters said.
“I think there was a time I was coming up where all the critics wore Dockers and only wanted to [watch] antihero shows. They love David Chase. They love ‘The Sopranos.’ They did not like women-centric things. They did not like anything that people would call camp because they didn’t understand it and they felt threatened by it,” Murphy said. “Now, when you’re going through that, and you’re a young person, it takes a lot of distance to know that. But, yeah, the ‘All’s Fair’ thing, I was like, that’s kind of funny. To her credit, the person who was so great about that was Kim Kardashian, who was so smart about the media. She was never hurt by it. She was like, ‘What? OK, great.’ And she went on her Instagram and said things. ‘Have you seen the critically beloved show?'”
“I like her because she knows she goes in women’s prisons and gets drug dealers out of jail through Trump,” Waters said.
Hard to believe they’d never crossed paths before, but Waters revealed that he actually met Jessica Lange because of his role as William Castle on Murphy’s “Feud” series, where Lange played Joan Crawford.
“I met Jessica Lange dressed as Joan Crawford, and I told her, ‘I was scared of you from “Frances!”,'” he said.
“With something like ‘All’s Fair,’ that show was made not to win awards or being considered seriously, but as an homage to something that I loved as a kid,” Murphy said. “Which was ‘Dynasty,’ and ‘Falcon Crest.’ Those didn’t get good reviews, but they’re still classics. More people watch ‘Dynasty’ today than ‘St. Elsewhere,’ and I was interested in exploring that kind of soapy, heightened, closed set. I was interested in doing something like that, so I didn’t take it seriously.”
Waters said he’s especially a fan of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” and praised Darren Criss’ performance as one of the best in any Ryan Murphy show.
English (US) ·