Role Models
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4.6 • 55 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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.
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 ).
Customer Reviews
His best book
Where's the sequel, Johnny??
Wonderful Insight Into A Different Mind
This was a great insight to how the King of Cult films thinks and what has inspired him.