UPDATE (May 21):  Waters is planning a book based on his hitchhiking “adventures,” he told a married couple from Illinois who gave him a ride from Kansas to Colorado Monday, according to reports from radio station WJBD (wjbdradio.com) and the Baltimore Sun. Waters told the couple he is headed to California.  (A person who was asked to take a photograph of them standing with Waters questioned why the couple wanted a picture with “a homeless man they picked up on the highway.”)

According to The Sun, based on information obtained from the website DCist.com, “Waters could have been starring in a John Waters movie today when he was picked up hitchhiking in Ohio by members of an indie rock band.”

The band Here We Go Magic was in a van passing through Eastern Ohio not far from the Pennsylvania border, DCist.com and The Sun reported, when they passed “a dude on the side of the road holding up a sign” that read, “To the end of Rte. 70.”

Waters previously made news with a sign when he put a campaign poster promoting City State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein’s candidacy on his front lawn in Tuscany-Canterbury during the campaign of 2010 in which Bernstein defeated then-incumbent chief prosecutor Patricia Jessamy.

As one of the band members immediately tweeted — of course they tweeted! what else? — “Just picked up John Waters hitchhiking in the middle of Ohio.. No joke. Waters in the van….

“It is absolutely 100% pinky sworn true. He even carries a mixtape to listen to!”

Who knows what the enigmatic director was up to? although band member Jen Turner later posted on her Twitter feed: “He just wanted an adventure. Imagine!”

Turner additionally described Waters as “the real deal,” calling him “a true artist.”

It was unclear which if any of Waters’ many films she or her Here We Go Magic cohorts may have seen, leaving the question unanswered, Would she have used the same description had any of them seen Divine’s outrageous epicurean antics as immortalized by Waters?

During the primary election campaign of 2010, director John Waters displayed a lawn sign in front of his house in Canterbury-Tuscany for then-City States Attorney candidate Gregg Bernstein, who ultimately won the election. (VoB File Photo/Stephen Janis)

A Baltimore native, John Samuel Waters Jr., 66, is known for offbeat, offensive and often bizarre comedic cult classics such as “Female Trouble,” “Polyester” and “Hairspray,” which in 2002 was adapted into a long-running Broadway musical.

Familiar actors like Johnny Depp, John Travolta and Kathleen Turner appeared in later films by Waters, along with TV talk-show hostess Ricki Lake, comic actress Tracey Ullman and former pornstar Traci Lords.

One of his later movies was titled “Pecker” (1998) and was filmed in the North Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden.

His next-to-last film, “Cecil B. Demented” (2000), garnered a Worst Actress nomination for star Melanie Griffith at that year’s Golden Raspberry Awards.

Waters has made only one movie since then, “A Dirty Shame” starring Tracey Ullman in 2004. Sources tell Voice of Baltimore the enigmatic director/screenwriter has had difficulty raising money in recent years for additional films.

All of John Waters’ movies have been set and filmed in Baltimore.

In the summertime, he is known to hitchhike regularly around Cape Cod, especially in the vicinity of Provincetown and North Truro, Mass., where he generally vacations.

Editor’s note:  Divine (a/k/a Harris Glenn Milstead) was born in Baltimore and was a childhood friend of John Waters. He starred in a number of Waters-directed films, most notably the original version of “Hairspray,” in which the Baltimore moviemaker crossed over from cult classics to mainstream film in 1988. Divine died that same year at age 43.
 
WATCH DIVINE PERFORM HIS/HER MOST OUTRAGEOUS ACT ON FILM, IN DOWNTOWN BALTIMORE IN 1972  (click here).    (VoB HEADS-UP:  Don’t try this at home! — and DON’T WATCH! if you’re the least bit squeamish.)
 
— Alan Z. Forman
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org