From sea to shining sea, it's a John Waters' Christmas. That's right. Cult cinema's one-time enfant terrible is enjoying unprecedented mainstream success this holiday season. As the old year closes, and the gay auteur closes in on his 60th birthday, Waters is all over the middle-class American map. The very class whose values he vowed to shatter forty years ago has embraced him big-time.

At UCLA last Saturday night, he presented - live and in person - A John Waters Christmas. For the second consecutive yuletide, Waters talked up and about Christmas in the university's Royce Hall. This year, he was joined by electro-punk pro sex feminist Peaches. It was just one stop in the A John Waters Christmas tour. If you were unable to attend a live performance, the audio version is available on CD, complete with explicit lyrics warning.

That same night, December 17, about fifty miles south of UCLA, at the Orange County Museum of Art, in San Clemente, (home of the Nixon Western White House), John Waters: Change of Life, an exhibit of his photo montages, was in progress. The exhibit is on display till January 15, but the irony of John Waters being showcased in this bastion of California conservatism, will linger long after the exhibit is dismantled. Attendees also have the rare opportunity to see John Waters' three earliest films, Hag in a Leather Jacket, Roman Candles, and Eat Your Makeup, shot in 8mm, and never released theatrically.

On the Great White Way, last Saturday, the stage musical version of Waters' 1988 film Hairspray was playing to a packed house in its fourth Broadway year. In other U.S. cities, touring companies of Hairspray delighted mainstream audiences.

In all phases of his forty-year career, John Waters has championed the underdog. Little wonder. Gay, obsessive and rebellious, John Waters always believed himself to be among their number. Or, as he told a press conference before Hairspray 's Broadway bow, “The real reason I'm praying that Hairspray succeeds is that if it's a big hit, there will be high school productions, and finally the fat girl and the drag queen will get the starring parts.”

Long after the New Year's Ball drops on Times Square, John Waters will continue his mainstream roll. His next movie, the motion picture musical version of Hairspray, is scheduled to shoot in April, the same month the dapper auteur turns 60.

Another upcoming project, less mainstream, but not exactly underground, is the here! television series, John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You. These thirteen films, hand-picked by the filmmaker who gave us the movies' first (and only) 300-pound transvestite star, Divine (Glenn Milstead), will air on here!, beginning in February, with commentary by Waters before and after each title. These wraparounds will reflect John 's insightful, comedic, and outrageous musings on the cultural significance of each movie. Considering that one of his all-time favorite movies is the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton-Noel Coward abomination, Boom!, the mind boggles contemplating what he'll say about Beefcake, Freeway, Sissy Boy Slap Party, and others.

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