Laura Broviac and Michael McHaney with John Waters (Laura Broviac and Michael McHaney)
If you’ve been wondering where hitchhiking cult film director John Waters is, there’s an update! A couple from Illinois picked him up in Kansas on their way to their Rockies Mountains vacation. Laura Broviac and husband McHaney were driving when they passed Waters near an exit in Junction City on Sautrday. According to WJBD Radio, “Broviac thought the man … looked like Waters. When she got internet service a few miles away, she decided to look him up and discovered Waters was hitchhiking across the country. Broviac made her husband turn around and backtrack the eight miles to pick him up. Waters was still thumbing a ride and stayed with the Salem couple across Kansas all the way to Denver, Colorado.”
That sounds a lot like what happened to the band Here We Go Magic, who picked up Waters last Wednesday in Ohio. While the band spent six hours with Waters, Broviac and McHaney spent eight hours with him. Broviac said they spent the time “listening to stories from everyone from Liz Taylor to Lana Turner to Kathleen Turner. He had stories about Faye Dunaway and he talked about his most major accomplishment of selling out the Sydney, Australia Opera House while working as a stand up comedian. Of course his type of work isn’t for everyone, but chances are you’ve seen Hair Spray or seen the Simpsons and maybe the episode he narrated.”
Waters told the couple that he’s “preparing to write a book about his adventures of hitchhiking across America. We’ll have to see how he viewed us. I laughed and said, ‘do you think you just got the most boring people to pick you up at almost the end of your ride’. He said ‘no, no, you’re very interesting’ and said he enjoyed his time with us.” He also treated them to lunch and let them help him find a piece of cardboard for his next sign.
Here We Go Magic posted this other photo of Waters in Kansas (the woman sent them the picture wrote, “This man is an American treasure and just radiates unparalleled energy! He f-ing rocks!”). We spoke with bassist Jen Turner last week about the experience:
Did he say how long he’d been hitchhiking? Well, that day he had been standing there for many hours. I guess no one recognized him. Not to mention he was wearing a hat that said “Scum Of The Earth.” I don’t know if that was helping him or not. He had been hitchhiking for a few days from Baltimore, I think. He said that half the drivers that picked him up knew who he was and the other half didn’t know who he was.
Did he open up about his experiences hitchhiking? He mentioned that people will go wildly out of their way to take him places, even people that didn’t recognize him. I think he was happy with the kindness of strangers because people think it’s a myth that anyone is kind anymore. Not like the old days when I’ll pick you up on my horse and drive you in the country. I think he was trying to say that everyone had been super nice. He got a lot of local guys. At some point, when it was getting really late, he finally made a sign that said, “To the next hotel” and he got a ride really quickly.
Apparently when Broviac and McHaney asked someone to take a photograph of them with Waters, the photographer wondered why they wanted a photo with a homeless man.
