Role Models
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Role Models is a wild and witty self-portrait of John Waters, America's 'Pope of Trash', told through intimate profiles of his favourite 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 John Waters form his own brand of neurotic happiness.
A paean to the power of subversive inspiration that delights, amuses and happily horrifies in equal measure...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The director of the gross-out epic Pink Flamingos and other cinematic provocations salutes the people he finds inspiring himself foremost among them in these self-regarding essays. Waters s role models range from icons like Johnny Mathis and Tennessee Williams to a gay reality-porn auteur, a lesbian stripper called Lady Zorro, and ex-Charles Manson groupie and murderer Leslie Van Houten. When he pays attention to them, Waters produces vivid portraits of his subjects, especially those with really lurid backstories, but he s happier when the spotlight is on him and his studied outrageousness. He discusses celebrity ( I ve... gone out drinking with Clint Eastwood, and spent several New Year s Eve parties in Valentino s chalet in Gstaad, but what I like best is staying home and reading ) and the graphic pornography on his walls, and regales readers with scatological scandals, disdaining religious beliefs while graciously tolerating people who hold them. In the end, Waters s war against the tyranny of good taste feels tired, his taboo-breaking rote, his kitsch-mongering snobbish (taken on a tour of the Vatican, he refuses to leave the gift shop and its hideously pious cards ).
