John Waters at Outfest 2012: ‘Gay people gave me the confidence and freedom to be the person I am today’

It was one helluva Outfest opening night at the Orpheum Theatre last night. I was assigned to sit next to filmmaker Gregg Araki (The Living End, The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin) and we chatted a bit before things got started.

He wondered how it was that he got the Outfest Achievement Award before John Waters did and we laughed because we both kind of figured it was because Waters wasn’t available before.

‘Maybe they wanted to tie it into the 30th anniversary,’ Gregg said.

Well, both are such deserving recipients and no one was cheering louder than Araki when the great director of Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Polyester, Serial Mom and so many other films was presented with his award.

‘I want to thank everyone for letting me get away with this for 50 years,’ Waters said as he accepted the award from his Hairspray star Ricki Lake. ‘Really, seriously, gay people gave me the confidence and freedom to be the person I am today – right from the beginning.’

‘I’ve been lucky,’ he added. ‘My career has been understood right from the beginning. Even negative reviews I turned into a career. They gay people have always been there and together, we’ve learned that we turn pain into laughter. We will not only survive, we’ll win. And if we can laugh at the most hurtful responses we’ve ever had in our life, we’ll be the strongest minority of all.’

To read more about what Waters said, and his thoughts on using gay wit in achieving political goals, see my story over at Gay Star News.