There's a reissue of Tennessee Williams' 1975 autobiography, Memoirs, with an introduction by John Waters, which was reprinted in last Sunday's New York Times.
I enjoyed it because it was very witty, of course, but it was also quite similar to this interview I conducted with Waters in 2005. He was in New Orleans for one of his art exhibitions at the Arthur Roger Gallery, and I wanted to talk to him for an article about the upcoming Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The essays even begin the same way: "Tennessee Williams saved my life."
With every interview, there's always a "throw-out" question...the touchy subject that you save for the end, in case your interviewee decides to throw you out of the room. This whole interview was a "throw-out," because I had to start by saying "Your art is terrific, and I know you have a new movie coming out, but I really just want to talk to you about Tennessee Williams...." But Waters couldn't have been nicer about it.
Waters is so identified with Baltimore that most people don't know he lived in New Orleans for a while ("I moved to New Orleans because of Tennessee Williams, and because of the streetcar named Desire," he told me), in a house about a block from my old cottage, just off Elysian Fields Avenue.
Not so coincidentally, our other neighbors, at 632 Elysian Fields, were Stella and Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire; Tennessee Williams had put them down in what could charitably be called a blue-collar area. (It's now a barber shop, and the city hasn't even seen fit to put a plaque out front.) The streetcar was long gone, but Waters said that whenever he came to town, he always rode "the bus named Desire."
And now, post-Katrina, even the bus named Desire is gone too.
Comments