Or camp flicks like 1988's Hairspray? That was the first film to win Waters mainstream attention, but mainly after it became a Broadway hit then returned as the 2007 blockbuster big screen musical starring John Travolta in the drag role of Edna originally played by Divine.
While Waters' movies since 1990's Cry-Baby with Johnny Depp haven't lacked for starpower, they sure haven't left much of an impression commercially or critically. His last, 2004 sex comedy A Dirty Shame largely sunk without trace.
And now says Waters, 65, from his office in his hometown of Baltimore, though he's got another film entitled Fruitcake ready to go, there's no one willing to back it. So it's off to work he goes, on his books and monologue shows.
"All of them are how I tell stories. So I haven't made a movie in a while right now and that is the only thing I can't get made. I have a next book I can do, every single other part of my career is doing great. But the independent movie scene in America right now is almost non-existent. And my last movie didn't make money either; that has something to do with it ... but you know what? I'll get it made. Or I'll write a book. I just need a way to tell stories."
The Broadway-back-to-movie success of Hairspray did give Waters a boost.
"Hairspray changed everything. I only had one thing which really reached a huge amount of people. If I ever did anything radical, that's it. Because it was one of my usual ideas which somehow snuck into middle America."
"I go to colleges all the time [to perform] but the difference is, I am the establishment now, I am the insider which is hilarious to me because what I'm doing is not all that different."
Well he still lives in Baltimore - "because it's where I get all my ideas, it's where I am inspired" - and which entertainment-wise is famous for two things - his movies and television series The Wire. Many of its crew started out with Waters.
"I was in Japan and there was a map where the murders took place in The Wire and Divine ate dogshit; where different horrible things happen," he laughs at the geek appeal he's helped bring the city.
"This is where I know people who aren't in show business who think they're normal but are totally insane and where I get all my ideas. If I ever need inspiration, I just walk around. That's why I have never understood why anyone would want to watch a reality show."
Why anyone would pay to see Waters talk isn't hard to see from the DVD of his This Filthy World stand-up monologue. He's polished, provocative and hilarious, though now it's not the same show with the same stories.
"I retire them. I keep a few because sometimes it's like greatest hits that they expect you to do. This particular show, I have a gay version. I have an art version. I have a prison version. I have a horror version. I have many versions of it. You are getting the standard one but completely all the new jokes."
Still, Waters has been using his eloquence to serious ends in recent years.
In Role Models, a book about his personal heroes and obsessions, the longest chapter puts the case for the release of Leslie Van Houten, who was one of the Manson Family who, Waters says has unjustly been denied parole after serving 40 years for her involvement in the LaBianca murders.
Having attended the trials, Waters put jokey references to Manson and his followers in many of his early films. It sounds like something he now regrets.
"Yeah, and I apologise for that in my book.
"I used it as 'punk rock shock Manson', the same way many people did, the same way he became a Halloween costume. I treated it in a way that was irresponsible and I talk about that."
Otherwise, Waters is still having fun veering between being "the pope of trash" and more cerebral callings.
"Yeah, I've done well in high and low and badly in the middle. I can be just as comfortable in the worst redneck bar as I was as a judge in the Venice Biennale this year, and I loved doing that too. I can do both. What I can't do is a shopping mall. The middle is where I ran from."
And there's always the hope that even if he can't get a new film made soon, one of his old ones might get a remake or a Broadway stage revival, just like Hairspray did.
"I'm ready to turn all of them into something else. I joked that it was going to be 'Hairspray on ice' on a television show and they called and said they'd like to do it. I'm happy to have them all out there working. I wanted Pink Flamingos to be an opera and I still think it would be a good one ..."
An opera? So it's not over until the fat, er, lady ... ?
"She does more than sing at the end."
Well, yes, of course she does.
Lowdown
Who: John Waters, cult figure and film-maker variously known as the "sultan of sleaze", the "prince of puke" and "the pope of trash"
Where: Opera House Wellington, Monday; The Civic, Auckland, Wednesday
-TimeOut
