John Waters

A hilariously filthy tale of sex, crime, and family dysfunction from the brilliantly twisted mind of John Waters, the legendary filmmaker and bestselling author of Mr. Know-It-All. Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She’s smart, she’s desperate, she’s disturbed, and she’s on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her "Liarmouth"—until one insane man makes her tell the truth. John Waters's first novel, Liarmouth, is a perfectly perverted “feel-bad romance,” and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.

A Novel

Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance

The cult film director of such productions as Hairspray and Pink Flamingos presents irreverent literary profiles of the figures who influenced his life and work, from martyr Saint Catherine of Siena to English novelist Denton Welch.

Role Models

No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters. The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics Pink Flamingos, Polyester, the original Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates, and in Mr. Know-It-All he serves it up raw: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself. Through it all, Waters swears by one undeniable truth: “Whatever you might have heard, there is absolutely no downside to being famous. None at all.” Studded with cameos of Waters’s stars, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from Waters’s personal collection, Mr. Know-It-All is Waters’s most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book—another instant Waters classic. “Waters doesn’t kowtow to the received wisdom, he flips it the bird . . . [Waters] has the ability to show humanity at its most ridiculous and make that funny rather than repellent.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “Carsick becomes a portrait not just of America’s desolate freeway nodes—though they’re brilliantly evoked—but of American fame itself.” —Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times Book Review

The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder

Mr. Know-It-All

The visual artist behind such cult films as Hairspray traces his haphazard cross-country hitchhiking journey at the sides of a motley group of unsuspecting drivers, including a gentle farmer, an indie band and the author's unexpected hero. 75,000 first printing.

John Waters Hitchhikes Across America

Carsick

From an icon of popular culture, here is inspiring advice for artists, graduates, and all who seek happiness and success on their own terms. So what if you have talent? Then what? When John Waters delivered his gleefully subversive advice to the graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design, the speech went viral, in part because it was so brilliantly on point about making a living as a creative person. Now we can all enjoy his sly wisdom in a manifesto that reminds us, no matter what field we choose, to embrace chaos, be nosy, and outrage our critics. Anyone embarking on a creative path, he tells us, would do well to realize that pragmatism and discipline are as important as talent and that rejection is nothing to fear. Waters advises young people to eavesdrop, listen to their enemies, and horrify us with new ideas. In other words, MAKE TROUBLE! Illustrated with slightly demented line drawings by Eric Hanson, Make Trouble is a one-of-a-kind gift, the perfect playbook for gaming the system by making the system work for you.

Make Trouble

To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. Thus begins John Waters's autobiography. And what a story it is. Opening with his upbringing in Baltimore ("Charm City" as dubbed by the tourist board; the "hairdo capital of the world" as dubbed by Waters), it covers his friendship with his muse and leading lady, Divine, detailed accounts of how Waters made his first movies, stories of the circle of friends/actors he used in these films, and finally the "sort-of fame" he achieves in America. Complementing the text are dozens of fabulous old photographs of Waters and crew. Here is a true love letter from a legendary filmmaker to his friends, family, and fans.

A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste

Shock Value

Essays discuss Los Angeles, movie promotions, Pia Zadora, jail, the National Enquirer, fame, Christmas, movie making, and the bizarre

Crackpot, the Obsessions of John Waters

The Obsessions of John Waters

Crackpot

Bruce Hainley

Waters has teamed up with art critic Hainley to offer a provocative and personal interpretation of sex and sexuality today through the window of contemporary art. They discuss a range of recent works of art, from graphic depictions of the body to abstract images.

A Sex Book

Todd Oldham

Camille Paglia

Armistead Maupin

Edward Lucie-Smith

Tom of Finland XXL

Bud Stigall

The Westmore Justice Franchise is a series so far beyond the characterization of unique that it is singular. Westmore Justice is a provocative blueprint for unearthing criminal activities that profoundly alter the balance of a human life - activities that at the time have no particular importance, but when pieced together crystallize into a web of intrigue. From the sunny beaches of Malibu, California, to the corridors of power in Washington, DC, Westmore Justice exposes the kind of truths where countless careers are ruined and many lifetimes wasted. As the clues unfold, Grant Westmore goes with gut intuition and hunches, and not by standard police procedures. A former LAPD detective-turned-Beverly Hills-private-investigator, Grant hasn't come this far without learning that to catch a killer you have to think like one. As a team, Grant, Marlene Wilson and Carmela Gambini do more than they ever achieved alone. No stranger to wrestling problems head-on, they fight their way through each fiendish scheme, fitting the many jagged fragments into a single, appalling truth, while they cross paths with unscrupulous prosecutors, crime lords, savvy impostors, murderers, and adulterers. In each mystery, Grant and his crew struggle to make what they know to be the truth prevail against swelling and unsettling evidence to the contrary as a Pandora's Box of crime, legal trickery, and deception slowly opens before their eyes - eyes that never look the other way and usually reveal less than what the guilty hope for. Make no mistake about it, Grant did not grow up the heir apparent to any family fortune. He is proud to have earned his financial rank himself, by toiling hard to build an enviable roster of high-profile criminal defense attorney clients and unjustly prosecuted individuals, unwilling to settle for anything but the truth. Although life is ever-changing, one often says, "nothing like that could ever happen to me." Well, it can and it does in Westmore Justice.

Westmore Justice

A hilariously filthy tale of sex, crime, and family dysfunction from the brilliantly twisted mind of John Waters, the legendary filmmaker and bestselling author of Mr. Know-It-All. Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She's smart, she's desperate, she's disturbed, and she's on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her "Liarmouth" - until one insane man makes her tell the truth. John Waters's first novel, Liarmouth, is a perfectly perverted "feel-bad romance," and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.

A feel-bad romance

Liarmouth

Susan Reynolds

Ronna Phifer-ritchie

Each of us wears our personality like a disguise-but with the Enneagram, you can strip away that mask and reveal your true self. A timeless tool used by corporate trainers, counselors, and mental health professionals, the Enneagram defines nine basic personality types. Which are you?: Evangelical Idealist, People Pleaser, King of the Hill, Creative Seeker, Masterful Hermit, Loyal Guardian, Optimistic Dreamer, The Dominator, Peaceful Lamb.

Identify Your Type, Gain Insight into Your Personality and Find Success in Life, Love, and Business

The Everything Enneagram Book

James Egan

The films of John Waters (b. 1946) are some of the most powerful send-ups of conventional film forms and expectations since Luis Bu-uel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou. In attempting to reinvigorate the experience of movie-going with his shock comedy, Waters has been willing to take the chance of offending nearly everyone. His characters have great dignity and resourcefulness, taking what's different or unacceptable or grotesque about themselves, heightening it and turning it into a handmade personal style. The interviews collected here span Waters's career from 1965 to 2010 and include a new one exclusive to this edition. Waters began making films in his hometown of Baltimore in 1964. Demonstrating an innate talent at capturing the hideous and crude and elevating it to art, he reached international acclaim with his outrageous shock comedy Pink Flamingos. This landmark film redefined cinema and became a cult classic. Appearing in this and many of Waters's early films, his star Divine would consistently challenge gender definitions. With Polyester, Waters entered the mainstream. The film starred Divine as an unhappy housewife who romances a former teen idol played by Tab Hunter. Waters's commercial breakthrough, Hairspray, told the story of Baltimore's televised sock-hop program, The Corny Collins Show, and how one brave girl (Ricki Lake) used her platform as a dancer to end segregation in her town. From Serial Mom and Pecker to Cecil B. Demented, Waters continued to infiltrate the mainstream with his unique approach to filmmaking. As a visual artist, he was given a retrospective at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004, which was shown at galleries around the world.

Interviews

An outrageous collection from the uniquely legendary John Waters, updated with new material—including Waters’s 2002 New York Times article, “Finally, Footlights on the Fat Girls.” Crackpot, originally released in 1986, is John Waters’s brilliantly entertaining litany of odd and fascinating people, places, and things. From Baltimore to Los Angeles, from William Castle to Pia Zadora, from the National Enquirer to Ronald Reagan’s colon, Waters explores the depths of our culture. And he dispenses useful advice along the way: how not to make a movie, how to become famous (read: infamous), and of course, how to most effectively shock and make our nation’s public laugh at the same time. Loaded with bonus features, this special edition is guaranteed to leave you totally mental.

The Obsessions of

Unwatchable

Here are three of the filthiest-and yet, in their own way, sweetest—screenplays ever written: Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, and Flamingos Forever. Intermixed with the scripts are dozens of classic stills from the films. In Pink Flamingos, Waters's muse and leading lady, Divine, a 300-pound cross-dresser who could turn your stomach in one scene and break your heart in the next, competes with her family for the title of "filthiest people alive"—as readers will see, it's really anyone's game. Desperate Living is a perverse fairy tale featuring gun-toting lesbians, leather-clad castle guards, and a repulsive queen who has her own daughter gang-raped among other atrocities. Flamingos Forever is the unproduced sequel to Pink Flamingos, set fifteen years after the original, when the rivalry for "filthiest people alive" is revived; it was never filmed, Waters tells us, because by the time it was written, too many of the original cast had died—this book is the only chance for Water's fans to read it.

Three Screenplays

Pink Flamingos, and Other Filth

The Republic of Ireland, described variously as The Emerald Tiger, The Celtic Tiger and The Tiger Economy of Europe, is apparently one of the great success stories of 20th-century Europe. Just 75 years into independence, less than 40 years from the stygian blackness of pre-modernity, and only a decade from what seemed to be an economic apocalypse, Ireland has finally modernized. With a young population and economic growth rates the envy of the western world, it should offer a model for all fledgling states to follow.

John Waters

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