‘Filth elder’ John Waters gets a Hollywood star — and an exhibition, too

Self-described “filth elder” John Waters unveiled his sidewalk star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday. “It’s about time,” said fan Kyle Montgomery, who attended the event. “The world is trash. He knew it all along.”

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Filmmaker John Waters spent decades creating what he playfully calls “filth” for the big screen: irreverent, campy movies set in his hometown, Baltimore. After decades of being proudly outside the mainstream, the subversive auteur is now enjoying some very mainstream Hollywood attention. To coincide with the opening of major retrospective of his career at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, this week he was also immortalized in Los Angeles cement.

“Here I am, closer to the gutter than ever,” he joked at the red-carpet ceremony for his sidewalk star this week. “The Hollywood Walk of Fame: You’re the best and I hope the most desperate showbiz rejects walk over me here and feel some sort of respect and strength,” he said.

Waters was surrounded by adoring fans and friends like Ricki Lake, who starred in his 1988 musical Hairspray, and the actress known as Mink Stole, who appeared in all 16 of his films. “The drains on this magic boulevard will never wash away the gutter of my gratitude,” he said. Waters posed for the cameras with a framed photo of his late parents, who he said had indulged his passion for filmmaking.

Waters has always been a proud outsider and a queer icon among American filmmakers. With his pencil mustache and sarcastic smile, he became an underground celebrity in the 1980s, and has…