Books by John Waters
20 Years of Style: The World According to Paper
by John Waters, Kim Hastreiter, David Hershkovits, Michael Musto, Isaac Mizrahi, Pedro Almodovar, Todd Oldham, Patrick Mcmullan, Anna Sui
For the legions of Paper Magazine fans, and anyone who's interested in Where Style Starts. This stunning portrayal of the last 20 years is a wonderful commemorative look at the life and times of the era. Following introductions and commentary by a virtual who's who of popular culture, 20 Years of Style charts just how style has evolved over the past twenty years, illustrating the huge influence that underground cultures from the worlds of art, music, film, sports and urban street life ultimately have played on mainstream fashion. Laid out by year starting in 1984 and continuing through the present, this star-studded journey cannot be described by words alone.
Adding to this visual feast are essays and commentary from Paper Magazine founders and co-editors Kim Hasreiter and David Hershkovits, as well as celebratory tributes to Paper Magazine from dejay and musicologist Moby; rap icon Fab 5 Freddy; artist/designer Todd Oldham; and style historian Harold Koda.
Copies
No copies available.
Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance
by 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.
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.
Copies
-
$18.00
Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance: A Novel
by 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.
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.
Copies
No copies available.
Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder
by John Waters
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, 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, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from the author's personal collection, Mr. Know-It-All is Waters’ 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
Copies
-
$27.00
Role Models
by John Waters
Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time.
From the incomparable John Waters, a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich―and happily horrify readers everywhere.
Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities―some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis―these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.
Copies
No copies available.
Role Models
by John Waters
Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich―and happily horrify readers everywhere.
Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities―some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis―these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.
Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time.
Copies
No copies available.
Carsick
by John Waters
By writer/film director John Waters. ISBN 978-0-374-29863-0. John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads “I’m Not Psycho,” he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?
Copies
No copies available.
Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America
by John Waters
Carsick is the New York Times bestselling chronicle of a cross-country hitchhiking journey with America's most beloved weirdo.
John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads "I'm Not Psycho," he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?
Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker's unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette.
Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion―and a celebration of America's weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.
Copies
No copies available.
Crackpot: The Obsessions of
by John Waters
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.
Copies
No copies available.
Pink Flamingos: A Screenplay
by John Waters
The return of a spectacular, reviled, and iconic classic of American filth!
John Waters takes us back to the scene of his original crime against good taste. Watch as Babs Johnson fights to hold on to her title as “Filthiest Person Alive,“ fending off the craven attempts to dethrone her by her nemeses Connie and Raymond Marble.
Read along as Waters takes us on a romp through his camp and filthy vision of Baltimore, from nefarious baby-stealing lesbians to scenes of unspeakable things done to unsuspecting chickens, to the film’s iconic and revolting coup de grace (no spoilers, but it is just as stomach-churning on the page more than fifty years later!). Pink Flamingos is John Waters at his provocative, disgusting, piety-puncturing best, with the hellish and hilarious trash masterpiece that first made him a household name.
Copies
-
$15.00
Flamingos Forever: A Screenplay
by John Waters
One part of John Waters’ iconic Trash Trilogy, Flamingos Forever is a dark-comedy screenplay about a drag queen trying to retain her title of “Filthiest Person in the World.”
Fifteen years after the events of Pink Flamingos, Babs Johnson returns to Baltimore from a life spent largely in bus station lavatories, only to find that she once again has to fight for the right to claim the title of “World’s Filthiest Person.” Her nemesis Connie Marble’s sister, Vera Venninger, and her necrophiliac husband, Wilbur, are in her way. So begins a new battle of filth.
This raucous, filthy―and essential!―volume in John Waters’ oeuvre never made it to the screen, so this is readers’ and his legions of fans’ one chance to see how this ghastly and irreverent saga meets its end!
Copies
-
$15.00
Hairspray: A Screenplay
by John Waters
A feel-good fable and an enduring critique of conformity told with true John Waters flair.
Tracy Turnblad, a spunky, full-figured Baltimore teen, wants nothing more than to be a featured dancer on The Corny Collins Show. So when she gets chosen to be on the air, it seems like all her dreams are about to come true. But when she and some of the Black cast of the show try to integrate the segregated dancing, things take on a life of their own. A sweet, hopeful parable about the dangers of conformity and segregation, Hairspray is perhaps the one optimistic entry in John Waters’ shocking and delightfully deranged oeuvre. Both a clear-eyed social critique and a celebration of the dizzying aesthetics of Baltimore in the early 1960s, this is another, softer side to the essential John Waters.
Copies
-
$17.00
Mr. Know-It-All
by John Waters
The newest essay collection from the New York Times bestselling author John Waters, reflecting on how to overcome newfound respectability and rebel in the autumn of your years.
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, 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, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from the author's personal collection, Mr. Know-It-All is Waters’ most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book―another instant Waters classic.
Praise for John Waters
“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
Copies
No copies available.
Shock Value
by John Waters
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.
Copies
No copies available.
Hairspray, Female Trouble, and Multiple Maniacs: Three More Screenplays
by John Waters
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.
Copies
No copies available.
Make Trouble
by John Waters
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.
Copies
No copies available.
John Waters: Pope of Trash
by John Waters, David Simon, Christine Vachon, Jeanine Basinger, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake, Jenny He, Cindy Sherman, Dara Jaffe, B. Ruby Rich, Sean Baker, Barry Jenkins, Johnny Knoxville, Bruce Labruce, Orville Peck, Kathleen Turner, Edgar Wright, Delmonico Books
Irreverent, heartfelt, shocking and laugh-out-loud funny―a colorful celebration of the work of subversive auteur John Waters
Known for pushing the boundaries of good taste, John Waters (born 1946) has created a canon of high-shock-value, high-entertainment movies that have cemented his position as one of the most revered and subversive auteurs in American independent cinema. Featuring misfit muses, tributes to his hometown of Baltimore and themes of fetish, obsession and celebrity culture, his renegade films―including Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), Desperate Living (1977), Hairspray (1988), Serial Mom (1994) and A Dirty Shame (2004)―are irreverent, laugh-out-loud comedies that lovingly draw inspiration from William Castle, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, Andy Warhol and Pier Paolo Pasolini alike. John Waters: Pope of Trash accompanies a landmark exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the first dedicated solely to Waters’ films. The book presents costumes, props, handwritten scripts, concept drawings, correspondence, promotional gimmicks, production photography and other original materials from all of the filmmaker’s features and shorts. Spotlighting many of his longtime collaborators, it also features a new interview with Waters and texts by curators Jenny He and Dara Jaffe, film historian Jeanine Basinger, film critic and cultural theorist B. Ruby Rich, and author-writer-producer David Simon that explore how Waters’ movies have redefined the possibilities of independent cinema.
Copies
-
$59.95
Desperate Living A Screenplay
by John Waters
A grotesque and hilarious satire about the American dream, suburban living, and the corrupting influence of power, set in a world that could only have sprung from the unhinged and brilliant mind of John Waters.
On the verge of a suburban mental health crisis, frazzled and wildly unstable housewife Peggy (immortalized by Mink Stole on-screen) runs away from home with her maid and partner in crime, Grizelda (played with spectacular gumption by the sizzling Jean Hill), only to end up in Mortville, a shantytown filled with society’s rejects. Mortville is run by the evil Queen Carlotta, who parades through the cardboard streets taunting and terrorizing her subjects.
John Waters’ wild and visionary fable lampoons everything from the staid conservatism of the American dream to race and class relations. The New York Times ranked Desperate Living at “the highest peak atop [John Waters’] trash heap of a filmography.” High praise indeed!
Copies
No copies available.
Film stills
by John Waters, Peter Handke, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Hans Helmut Prinzler
Am 31. Mai 2020 würde Rainer Werner Fassbinder, cinephiler Autodidakt und Gigant des jungen deutschen Films der 1960er und 70er Jahre, seinen 75. Geburtstag feiern. Dass er bei seinem frühen Tod 1982 ein Œuvre von 44 Filmen hinterließ, das in nur 17 Jahren entstand? vom Stadtstreicher (1966) bis zum posthum veröffentlichten Querelle (1982)?, ist dem unbedingten Ausdruckswillen dieses schöpferischen Berserkers und Selbstausbeuters zu verdanken, der zwischen der Poesie Brechts, der Eleganz Jean-Luc Godards und der Entdeckung des Profanen für die Kunst im Sinne Warhols oszilliert. Unser neuer Band der?Bibliothek der Klassiker? versammelt 180 Bilder aus fast allen seinen Filmen und gibt Gelegenheit, Fassbinders Vermächtnis in einem Wiedersehen mit zahlreichen Wegbegleitern, deren Ruhm er mitbegründet hat, zu feiern. Der Filmhistoriker Hans Helmut Prinzler würdigt in seinem begleitenden Text das Schaffen dieses genialen Enfant terrible des deutschen Films, und John Waters, Kultregisseur und selbst ein Enfant terrible des amerikanischen Kinos, meldet sich mit einem Geburtstagsgruß zu Wort.
Copies
No copies available.