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.
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.
Beware, if your sensibilities are delicate, if you see yourself as a person of taste, if 'outrageous' is not your adjective of choice. Because this is a story about filmmaker John Waters, whose early career is marked by such startling cult raves as Multiple Maniacs, in which its heroine is raped by a 15-foot broiled lobster; Polyester, which featured scratch-and-sniff cards; and, most notorious, Pink Flamingos, in which its transvestite star Divine eats fresh dog feces." -Tampa Tribune In Shock Value, the autobiography of notorious filmmaker John Waters, "the Sultan of Sleaze" recounts his career & explains the inspiration behind his movies. Through pictures, anecdotes, & interviews, get to know the stars of Waters' films-like Divine, Kitten, & Edith Massey-in ways that should make you queasy, or at least uncomfortable. Along the way, Waters explains what his filmmaking philosophies are & attempts to justify what he's done to American movies. "Shock Value is shocking. Any honest account of human experience must be shocking. For it is the function of art to make the reader or viewer aware of what he knows & in most cases doesn't know that he knows & doesn't want to know." -William S. Burroughs
Here are three more of John Waters's most popular screenplays — for the first time in print, including an original introduction by Waters and dozens of fun film stills. John Waters, the writer and director of these movies, is a legendary filmmaker whose films occupy their own niche in cinema history. His muse and leading lady was Divine — a 300-pound transvestite who could eat dog shit in one scene and break your heart in the next. In "Hairspray," a "pleasantly plump" teenager, played by Ricki Lake, and her big-hearted hairdresser mother, played by Divine, teach 1962 Baltimore about race relations by integrating a local TV dance show. "Female Trouble" is a coming-of-age story gone terribly awry: Dawn Davenport (again, Divine), progresses from loving schoolgirl to crazed mass murderer destined for the electric chair — all because her parents wouldn't buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas. In "Multiple Maniacs," dubbed by Waters a "celluloid atrocity," the traveling sideshow "Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions" is actually a front for a group of psychotic kidnappers, with Lady Divine herself the most vicious and depraved of all — but her life changes after she gets raped by a fifteen-foot lobster.
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. Liarmouth, the first novel by John Waters, is a perfectly perverted “feel-bad romance,” and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.
Ireland today stands at a defining moment. The prosperity of the Celtic Tiger years has given way to the sudden crash, the turbulence of the euro crisis, and the loss of our sovereignty to the faceless technocrats of Europe and the IMF. Our leaders seem impotent and rage, bewilderment and despair have swept through Irish society. Was It For This...? delves into the Irish psyche to answer the questions: What happened to our hopes and dreams? What is at the heart of the sense of betrayal that we feel? In the rush to modernity, did we throw away everything of true value? Have we lost the ideals of nationhood and patriotism set out by those who dreamt of the Irish Republic? John Waters’ remarkable new book sweeps through the pages of our recent history to get to the heart our political, social and existential identity crisis. Ranging across a vast canvas, Was It For This...? argues that the Celtic Tiger was built on a collective delusion, and that the seeds of its destruction were sown many years before it even began, when we exchanged our colonial shackles for a no-less destructive dependency for short-term gain. Ireland’s sovereignty was given up long before the IMF came to town. Along the way, Waters ponders our love/hate relationship with Fianna Fáil; the undercurrents that ran through the 2011 presidential election; why our political leaders and commentators have clung onto the remnants of 1960s revolutionary fervour long after the revolution was won; how our denial of an authoritative father figure has led to a leaderless ‘sibling society’; the emptiness of our ‘youth culture’ and the suppression of real thought and discussion through cynicism and irony; and why we have lost the very language that once enabled us to speak of ‘Ireland’ with pride.
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.
In 1991, Ireland was in the midst of a devastating recession; thousands of young Irish men and women had emigrated over the previous decade, and divisive social and moral debates on abortion and divorce had rocked Irish society. The great pillars of society - politics and religion - were beginning to crumble, a process that continued in subsequent years as both institutions were hit by scandal. A questioning of the values on which Ireland had been built had begun, with an apparently unbridgeable divide opening between "traditionalists" and "modernizers". At the start of the decade, the modernizers appeared to have won, with the election as President of the iconic Mary Robinson. Irish Times columnist John Waters captured the zeitgeist of the time with the hugely successful Jiving at the Crossroads, which sold over 50,000 copies. A defining book of the era, its success was partly due to its remarkable blending of social/cultural commentary with personal memoir. At the emotional core of the book was the relationship between John and his father, and the story of Ireland was intricately woven into this powerful narrative. It was the first in a long line of books to question the very notion of modern Irish identity, and to examine the deep-rooted tensions at the heart of the Irish psyche. Twenty years later, much has changed in Ireland, and yet Jiving at the Crossroads remains a deeply resonant book, particularly in the light of the remarkable rise and precipitous fall of the Celtic Tiger, and the fresh questioning of how we got where we are now. This twentieth anniversary reissue of a landmark book, with a new Afterword, will be welcomed by those who remember it, and will be a fascinating insight for a new generation of Irish people.
In 1991, Ireland was in the midst of a devastating recession; thousands of young Irish men and women had emigrated over the previous decade, and divisive social and moral debates on abortion and divorce had rocked Irish society. The great pillars of society - politics and religion - were beginning to crumble, a process that continued in subsequent years as both institutions were hit by scandal. A questioning of the values on which Ireland had been built had begun, with an apparently unbridgeable divide opening between "traditionalists" and "modernizers". At the start of the decade, the modernizers appeared to have won, with the election as President of the iconic Mary Robinson. Irish Times columnist John Waters captured the zeitgeist of the time with the hugely successful Jiving at the Crossroads, which sold over 50,000 copies. A defining book of the era, its success was partly due to its remarkable blending of social/cultural commentary with personal memoir. At the emotional core of the book was the relationship between Waters and his father, and the story of Ireland was intricately woven into this powerful narrative. It was the first in a long line of books to question the very notion of modern Irish identity, and to examine the deep-rooted tensions at the heart of the Irish psyche. Twenty years later, much has changed in Ireland, and yet Jiving at the Crossroads remains a deeply resonant book, particularly in the light of the remarkable rise and precipitous fall of the Celtic Tiger, and the fresh questioning of how we got where we are now. This twentieth anniversary reissue of a landmark book, with a new Introduction, will be welcomed by those who remember it, and will be a fascinating insight for a new generation of Irish people. It is published in parallel with a brand new book by John Waters, When We Are Free, which takes up the story of Jiving twenty years on to reflect on Ireland and the Irish in 2011.
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