CINEMA: Sultan of Shock

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As Waters' movies (Hairspray, Cry-Baby) became increasingly agreeable, though without losing their tang, they attracted major studio financing and, this time, a Hollywood star: Turner, who on her first reading of Serial Mom threw down the script in disgust. "If I hadn't met him," she acknowledges, "I probably would have been able to pass on it. But once we met, no way." A dandy of decadence, Waters can charm them all, even the studio moneymen. "I live in Baltimore," he says, "but I know how to play the Hollywood game."

Waters' Italianate villa reflects his interests: an electric chair in the hallway, weird movie posters on the walls and, in the attic, lots of oddity and atrocity memorabilia. "It's exactly the house you'd think I'd live in," he admits. The library bulges with books on true crime, film history, lesbian nuns and other arcana. "My home is my think tank," he says. "It's where I always know I'll find the idea for my next movie."

But can the shock virtuoso still find amusing ways to upset moviegoers in a world that has caught up with and perhaps surpassed his foulest dreams? Mink Stole, the actress who since 1966 has appeared in every Waters work, hints that he may have, well, mellowed. "I wouldn't use that word," she says, "because it's so Donovan. But we have grown up. There's less to be mad about now."

The very thought of that might vex Waters. He cannot even bring himself to use the term mainstream; he calls it "the M word." There are some ideas that even Baltimore's Poet Lurid finds too loathsome to contemplate.