John Waters gets Walk of Fame star, declares he’s “closer to the gutter than ever”

With Divine co-stars Ricki Lake and Mink Stole looking on, filmmaker John Waters received the 2,763rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, a rare acknowledgment from the movie industry of the director’s hold on a certain degenerate segment of the American movie-going public.

“The Hollywood Walk of Fame, you’re the best, and I hope the most desperate showbiz rejects walk over me here and feel some sort of respect and strength,” Waters said in his acceptance speech.

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The 77-year-old director is having a Hollywood moment with his star’s unveiling and a new career retrospective at the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, “John Waters: Pope of Trash.”

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“I’m so respectable I could puke,” the Baltimore-born filmmaker said at a press conference for the show.

Waters’ most beloved films include cult classics Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Multiple Maniacs and Mondo Trouble. Hairspray, starring Divine and Lake — both of whom Waters made stars — and Serial Mom with Kathleen Turner were rare mainstream Hollywood breakouts.

“John Waters has been a huge part of pop culture for many years,” said Ana Martinez, producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “As a director, he has created some of our historic and favorite film moments and we’re thrilled to welcome him to our landmark location for this well-deserved and permanent tribute.”

Waters’ relationship with Hollywood, a continent away from his guerrilla-styled aesthetic in Baltimore, was fraught from his very first trip out west.

“I got out of my vehicle in 1970 at Hollywood and Vine and darted across the street and got a jaywalking ticket, the first one, and I never looked back,” Waters recalled outside Larry Edmonds Bookshop and Movie Memorabilia, just next door to Eyebrow Threading of Hollywood.

Waters thanked old friends who he said stuck with him through “good times and the bad,” including Stole, who appeared in over a dozen Waters movies starting with her appearance as a party guest in the short Roman Candles in 1966.

Waters also paid tribute to studio partners like Warner Bros., and Outfest for sponsoring the event “and thinking I was gay enough to receive it.”

“The drains on this magic boulevard will never wash away the gutter of my gratitude, the flotsam of my film career, or the waste of Waters’ appreciation,” the director said. “Thank you, Hollywood. This time I’ve finally gone Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”