Overview

To call John Waters a cultural icon is almost insulting. This is a man whose entire career has been dedicated to the explosion of mainstream culture. But nonetheless, from his earliest films he has been the centre of controversy, acclaim, revilement and reverence. After all, he did direct the notorious Pink Flamingos (in which a twenty-two stone transvestite snacks on poodle poop), not to mention Female Trouble (in which Divine as a man rapes himself as a woman), as well as the crossover smash Hairspray (which introduced Ricki Lake to the world) and Serial Mom (in which Kathleen Turner murders Patty Hearst with a white pump). From the days when the press wouldn't return his phone calls to the present, promoting his films on everything from network morning shows to So Graham Norton and giving commentary on NPR, CNN, TNT and more, Waters has consistently been the outrageous voice of avant garde cinema. Here, critic Robrt Pela examines Waters's life and impact on our culture in this groundbreaking work - both a biography of Waters and his bizarre rise to infamy and a remarkable, often hilarious, but always illuminating look at his films, their impact and the not to be believed cult of Waters fans.

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9781555836252

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Reviews

Delightfully free-form text tracing the career of bad-boy filmmaker John Waters. Never quite comfortable with his middle-class Baltimore background or rigid Catholic schooling, young Waters began to walk on the wild side in earnest during his teenage years, when he surrounded himself with juvenile delinquents who inducted him into adolescent hooliganism and formed the kernel of what would later be his moviemaking circle. A semester at NYU's film school brought him in contact with the real counterculture, and time spent with Andy Warhol convinced Waters that he could make movies with his friends for no money: America's strangest film auteur was on his way. Drawing on the reminiscences of the original Dreamland crew (his drug-taking/shoplifting pals from the '60s and '70s), the ravings of his most fanatical adherents, and an eerily convincing interview with his muse, the deceased Divine, as channeled by medium Calvin Sharpee, freelance journalist Pela traces the evolution of Waters's style from Hag in a Black Leather Jacket through Eat Your Makeup (Divine portrays Jackie Kennedy in a reenactment of the Kennedy assassination) to the 1973 opening of Pink Flamingos (Divine eats dog excrement on camera). Pela spends less time on the films that followed, with a single chapter dedicated to Waters's mainstream works: Hairspray (his most successful film, which made Ricki Lake famous), Cry Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, and Cecil B. Demented. He does, however, offer a chapter entitled Faggots, Fat Women, and Puke: The Bluffer's Guide to Recurring Imagery and Motifs in John Waters Films. That's as close as we get to Waters's deepest motivations, which remain mysterious. A brisk, informative, and entertaining portrait. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Robrt Pela is a contributing writer for Men's Fitness and The Advocate as well as a theatre critic whose reviews appear each week in the New Times and are heard on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He lives in Arizona.

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