The Show Must Go On

... an excerpt from Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder by John Waters

Your personal life never gets you out of a performance. Even if someone close to you does die, your contract doesn’t excuse you from showing up. Even if it’s family.

When my younger brother, Steve, tragically passed away after complications from a brain aneurysm, I left the burial following the funeral ceremony a little early to catch a plane for the first night of my Christmas tour. From the grave to the airport directly to the stage without even checking into the hotel.

Nobody knew. I did the show.

Another time, I left for a German tour knowing my mother was about to die. She was in hospice, we had said our goodbyes, and the doctors had told me and my sisters that Mom would never regain consciousness. The show must go on and I think my mother would have understood.

Midway through the German tour, I got word my mom had died and I didn’t tell a soul. How do you do a comedy show after informing the audience your mother just died? You don’t. I went out and did the act before a sold-out audience and nobody was the wiser.

The night I got the news I even attended a party Wolfgang Tillmans threw for me at his amazing flat in Berlin. He had gone to a lot of trouble and it was too late for him to cancel, so who was I to ruin his good intentions? I didn’t mention anything to him until it was time for me to leave, a little too early since the party was still in full swing. “Don’t say anything,” I whispered to him at the door, “but my mom died today. Thank you so much for this lovely party.”

He looked stupefied. But I did the right thing.

I finished my tour and made it home in time to do the eulogy at Mom’s funeral. Everybody rested in peace. Including the manager.

The venue can cancel you, however. Too few ticket sales (this only happened once in my whole life) and weather issues. But long ago I figured out if you somehow show up, they have to pay you. Once I was with one of my best promoters, Ian Brennan, and we had just done my Christmas show in Toronto, and the next day we were supposed to do the same thing in Montreal.

But the worst blizzard ever to hit Canada struck and all the flights were canceled. We took the train. In a full white-out. Often the train had to stop while the railroad workers unfroze the switches in the tracks. By the time we somehow made it to Montreal, it was illegal to even be out. Full emergency curfew.

“We’re here!” we told the club. The show must go on!

The venue couldn’t even find us a way to be picked up at the train station, but two crazy female fans took over and showed up with a car. We slipped, slid, and skidded our way to finding a hotel (our original one had closed). By showtime it was a complete disaster outside. Snowdrifts. High winds. A winter homeland.

But our trusty fearless punk rock drivers somehow got us to the club, and I was shocked to see people actually showed up! Not as many as would have on a regular night, but still a good crowd.

I did the show, maybe a hastily rewritten blizzard version, and the club, God bless their soul, had no choice but to pay us. It took days for us to get out of town afterward, but so what? I had fulfilled my contract, and again, the you-know-what went on. ■

Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2019.