The Weekly interviews cult filmmaker John Waters on the eve of his talk at Golden State.

A dirty-white terrier squats and proceeds with its business on a cold downtown Baltimore sidewalk. The mop-headed canine looks around blithely as the last morsel of waste inches out. The grainy 16mm film picks up the deed in all its supple brown glory as a vintage elementary school rendition of “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” blares in the background, crackling at every “woof, woof.”

Standing next to the unwary pooch is the 250-pound drag queen, Divine (Glen Milstead), who is considered by many of his fans as the queen of all drag queens.

Divine’s makeup is more reminiscent of an evil clown than Liz Taylor and her demeanor is more like Charles Manson than Ms. Manners.

You would think the outlandish juxtaposition between the monstrous drag queen and the moppy mutt is enough of an acidic visual on its own until Divine proceeds to her knees and scoops up the freshly secreted bowel-movement as if it was chocolate frosting and does the unimaginable.

The historic one-take shot wasn’t an illusion nor was it done with special effects. This is the conclusion of John Waters’ 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos and it stands alone in the annals of cinematic history and it will stand alone in the future of cinema.

“[Pink Flamingos] became more of a political action than a movie,” Waters says over the phone from his Baltimore office. “We were so into [the film] we actually became the characters; it was an anarchist statement,” he continues at a mile-per-minute pace. He explains that Divine’s ingestion of dog feces would actually be an illegal act if it were filmed today, but it wasn’t illegal at the time it was shot.

Ever since that cold Baltimore day over 30 years ago, Waters has risen steadily above his longtime underground cult status to become more of a mainstream figure with the tremendous success of the Broadway musical adaptation of his 1988 film Hairspray that, in turn, inspired a 2007 film-remake of Hairspray starring John Travolta. The Broadway adaptation, Hairspray: the Musical, was a huge hit. Waters’ 1990 film Crybaby – which was incidentally Johnny Depp’s first starring role in a film – has now been written into a musical and will debut on stage in San Diego this November before it goes to Broadway in March 2008.

It may be true that Waters has parted ways with that renegade shock he once so greatly admired and fought for. His new feature film in the works, Fruitcake, may be even more evidence of Waters’ softer side. “[Fruitcake] will be a John Waters children’s Christmas movie,” he says, but won’t divulge any further information.

In addition to his new film Waters is writing a book titled Role Models as well as readying for his next photography exhibit, due to open “sometime in 2008.” There is no doubt that Waters really is a renaissance man. He makes movies, writes books, records CDs, produces hit Broadway musicals and is a serious contemporary artist. Moreover, Waters is an astute critic of popular culture and a devoted film historian; he speaks knowledgeably about works ranging from the most obscure Russ Meyer film to his favorite film of 2007, Grindhouse.

Though the director may be more family friendly now than he was for most of his career, he still holds dear his earliest most raunchy films that starred all Baltimore locals with thick local accents. He doesn’t miss the Baltimore accents that were so effortlessly omnipresent in his early works.

“I hate [Baltimore regional accents] now. All regional accents are generally annoying and in film you usually don’t want that. I wish I didn’t have [one], but it does come out every so often,” Waters says.

Pink Flamingos’ putrid finale hardly stands alone as that film’s sole exercise in bad taste. Some of the other standouts include a talking anus, a flasher who enjoys dangling a tied kielbasa from his member, chickens involved with human coital activities and a 300-pound half nude woman in a playpen obsessing about eggs.

In Waters’ 1981 book, Shock Value: a Tasteful Book about Bad Taste, he explains that while working on Pink Flamingos, “I knew I only had $10,000 to work with, so I figured I had to give the audiences something no other studio could dare give them even with multi-million dollar budgets.”

Waters, now 61, once said, “If someone vomits watching one of my films, it’s like getting a standing ovation.” In fact, when Pink Flamingos was first released some theaters provided patrons with a “Pink Phlegm-ingo Barf Bag.”

Waters wrote Flamingos Forever, a sequel to Pink Flamingos. But circumstances contributed to the film never getting made: spotty funding, the death of actress Edith Massey, who played Divine’s egg-loving mother, and Divine’s untimely death. “I know I will never make a sequel to Pink Flamingos because it would have to end with Divine taking a shit and the dog eating it,” Waters says in Shock Value.

He reconfirms that Flamingos Forever will never get made. “I’d probably have to use all famous Hollywood actors and that would never work.”

An Evening with John Waters starts at 8pm, Thursday, Oct. 11, at the Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. $20-$49. 372-4555, 372-3800 or goldenstatetheatre.com.