Take the time to answer this short questionnaire:

• Have you and your white-trash neighbors been locked in a heated competition vying for the title of “Filthiest People Alive,” while your mother sits in a playpen calling out for eggs?

• Have you witnessed a woman being violated by a giant lobster?

• Have you toppled a Christmas tree on your mother because you didn’t receive a coveted pair of cha-cha heels for Christmas?

• Do you have a child who is fond of recreating vehicular manslaughter scenarios, in the comfort of your living room in a game he or she calls “Car Accident?”

• Or, has a knock to the noggin turned you into an insatiable nymphomaniac?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you either need professional help or you’re smack in the middle of a John Waters film.

Waters will let San Diegans into his “filthy world” when he comes to UCSD’s Mandeville Hall Oct. 10 with his one-man show, This Filthy World, as part of the university’s “Artpower!” series.

“I’ve been doing it for 35 years,” Waters said. “I think it began as a way for Divine to tour the country to get attention to our early movies. And it became a vaudeville act, that’s now a stand-up act, really. I think I may be the only film director that has a stand-up act.”

Waters was down-to-earth and affable when he spoke with the Gay & Lesbian Times – but laymen may misinterpret the man who brought the world Pink Flamingos as an artistic corruptor type.

“I think I am very well understood, to be honest,” Waters said, regarding what he feels is the most common misperception about him. “Lately people say, ‘Did you ever imagine that these movies would do so well?’ And I always think, ‘Well, what did you think I would be? Some idiot savant?’”

With a fertile imagination and an interesting perspective of the world, Waters’ emergence on the cinematic scene was like a shot in the arm to conventional filmmaking.

There are some filmmakers today who remind him of that maverick spirit his films embody. He cited film auteurs such as Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, John Cameron Mitchell and Bruce La Bruce as favorites.

“I am always open to the new kids making movies,” he said. “I think it’s so exciting when you see a kid that has their first hit movie, when you go to Sundance and see the film. It’s very different. When I was young, none of the studios would even look at what I was doing. Now, they are all looking for it because of The Blair Witch Project – they are looking for the next weird movie that can come from somewhere and make a lot of money.”

In Hollywood films, special effects trump intriguing characters and genuine storytelling, which have been Waters’ strong suit. Waters has his feelings about which areas of filmmaking today could use improvement.

“I am not saying that anybody is lacking. It’s hard to make a good movie, no matter how much money you have,” he said. “I think the ones I find the least interesting are the ones that have been written by 30 people and market tested, so there’s not an inch of life left in ’em – [the ones] that are trying to make everyone love them.”

Waters had his own steady line-up of actors, dubbed “The Dreamland Players,” including Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, Mary Vivian Pearce, Cookie Mueller and David Lochary, for his early films.

But in his later films he has cast Johnny Depp (Cry-Baby), Kathleen Turner (Serial Mom), ’50s heartthrob Tab Hunter (Polyester), former underage porn actress Traci Lords (Cry-Baby), Melanie Griffith (Cecil B. DeMented) Tracey Ullman and Johnny Knoxville (A Dirty Shame), and kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst has become a fixture with five Waters films on her resume (including Pecker).

So, who would Waters love to cast in a movie that he hasn’t so far?

“Always Meryl Streep!” he said. “And Isabelle Huppert, who always tells me she would be in one of my movies, but I can’t figure a way to have a French accent in redneck Baltimore. She may have to have her car hijacked at the airport.”

One of Waters’ most popular films, Hairspray, has enjoyed immense crossover appeal, first as a Broadway musical and then as a movie musical. (Look for Waters’ 1990 film Cry-Baby to get the stage musical treatment at The La Jolla Playhouse from Nov. 6 – Dec. 16.)

“It’s exciting, and it has been re-invented every time,” said Waters of Hairspray’s re-imagined states. “I still think it has my flavor in all three versions. I think they did a great job; it was a free ride to me in a way. I think Adam (Shankman, the newest film’s director) did a great job. I’m all for it. I went to all of the premieres, I was in it. I was involved with it from the beginning. I helped talk John Travolta into being in it. I think they did a great job!”

There is one version of the film that may never see the light of day, but it has piqued Waters’ interest.

“I made a joke on the Jon Stewart show that now I wanted to do Hairspray on ice,” he said. “And the next day I had real ice producers calling and were serious and wanted to do it. Think of it – all fat girls on skates. It could be good!”

Another way that Waters stays busy, in a creative sense, is by penning books, including Crackpot and Shock Value, and the upcoming Role Models, which Waters described as a “self portrait told through me writing about the people that inspired me, from strippers to Tennessee Williams.”

And be on the lookout for his new CD “Breaking Up with John Waters” coming soon.

The future of this true American original seems to be heading in an unlikely direction. Waters’ next project will be a children’s film. No, that is not a typo, nor is it a sign of the apocalypse – it is just a way for Waters to branch out artistically.

“Well, I made a sexploitation film last time, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s a genre I’ve never done: a children’s movie.’ I like kids, I don’t want one, but I like them. So I thought, ‘Well what would it be like to have all John Waters characters that were children?’ That seemed appealing to me.”

For a whole generation of movie goers, Waters represents a fringe element of filmmaking. His films are considered a gay rite of passage (show of hands – who can recite lines verbatim from Female Trouble?), and Waters continues to inspire new generations with his brand of creativity.

“What’s odd now is that kids come up and say, ‘My parents told me how great your movies were and showed them when I was young.’ When I was young, my parents would have called the police,” he said. “So it’s changed. It’s odd how 40 years of work suddenly kind of comes together, which it seems like is happening now. Things are going very well.

“All of my movies are on television, who would have ever thought that Pink Flamingos would play on regular cable television uncut? I know I’m shocked about it! So that amazes me. Last month, I saw that five of my movies were playing on television and thought, ‘Who would have ever imagined that?’”