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Product Description
Review
Praise for Role Models
“Waters is a greater National Treasure than 90 percent of the people who are given ‘Kennedy Center Honors’ each December. Unlike those gray eminences of the show-business establishment, 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. To quote his linear ancestor W.C. Fields: It’s a gift.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
“His acolytes won’t need a reviewer’s say-so to lap up every word of “Role Models,” . . . But dilettantes at liberty to skip around will find a lot to charm them. In a way, the best joke is that – Baader-Meinhof gang, outsider porn and all—Waters can’t help revealing one very page that he’s both sentimental and good-hearted. Pass the relish, Uncle John.” —Tom Carson, New York Times Book Review
“If Waters began his career by seeking to infuriate, he now has mellowed to a place of gleeful tweaking. ‘Role Models’ is charming and chatty . . . it also reveals the making of a unique American artist through his influences. When he calls for people to make him a cult leader of filth —having left trash behind for becoming too acceptable—it’s hard for any outsider not to want to follow along.” —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times
“Waters may not be a gloater, but there is a delightful lunatic glee that pulses through the book. It combusts in the final chapter, titled ‘Cult Leader,’ which exhorts readers to rise up against the ‘tyranny of good taste,’ wear their belts off center, and infiltrate living crèches. Happily, for all the reflective and tender moments, Waters never suppresses his radiant pervert self.” —Liz Brown, Bookforum.com
“What is exhilarating about Waters is that he’s not kidding, that he’s the reporter, comedian and poet-in-chief of a fantasy cult which thinks ‘there’s only one way to die—spontaneous combustion. The unexplained phenomenon of being so guilty and happy, so obsessed, so driven and so fanatical that you just burst into flames for no apparent reason on the street.’ He remains one of our most necessary fellow Americans.” —Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News
“The collision of the eloquent and the profane is probably the best reason to read this quasimemoir-cum-how-to, aside from its deeper philosophy: judge not lest ye have the whole story, indulge your inner pervert (within reason), and read, for the love of Divine. Waters puts it another way: ‘I believe in the opposite of original sin. I don't believe anybody is born guilty or evil.’ Glory-hole-lujah. Amen.” —Heather McCormack, Library Journal
“[Role Models is] an impressive, heartfelt collection by a true American iconoclast.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“How did somebody from a quiet Baltimore neighborhood grow up to become the outlandish, brilliant, and insane John Waters? Two words: Johnny Mathis.” —Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors
“A delirious descent into Waters World, Role Models is a true-life confessional from one of America’s greatest ironists. John Waters is a man always ready and willing to say the unsayable. He is the dark mirror of contemporary culture. From haute couture to low culture, from literary outsiders to lapsed actors, he delivers razor-sharp pen portraits of the women and men who have perverted and inspired him by turns. And yet Waters’s warped imagination is always humane, his judgments insightful. Role Models is as much a philosophical manifesto as it is an utterly hilarious and shamelessly entertaining read.” —Philip Hoare, author of The Whale
“John Waters has a great gift for appreciation—whether for toothless lesbian strippers in Baltimore or the most rarefied painters and writers of our day. He is a dandy who has done away with everyone else’s hierarchies and created a new world that conforms only to his own taste for trash and the sublime. He is frank, funny, and (strangely enough) both sensible and outrageous.” —Edmund White, author of City Boy
Book Description
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.
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I must admit that I'm a big fan of writer/director/author Waters, but I began with his more mainstream movies such as "Hairspray" and "Cry Baby". I learned a lot more about him in watching his one-man show (captured on DVD) titled "This Filthy Life", where he discusses his growing up gay (from as far back as he remembers) through his film career. I thoroughly enjoyed that show where he did use "shock value" when needed.
This book is not an autobiography but in telling us about the famous -and infamous - folks he's met in his life Waters reveals a lot about his life. He's always been opinionated - one of the traits I've like about him - and he provides lots of those here. The book stats out with a story about singer Johnny Mathis that is wonderful (or should I say "Wonderful, Wonderful" to quote one of Mathis' early hit records). Then he moves on to former member of the Charles Manson "gang", Leslie van Houten, who he has spent the last 35 years visiting in prison, and lobbying for her release. This story fills nearly an hour of the 7- hour book. It is not what you expect from Waters and it does show his compassion. The next longest section is about the fashion designer who styles his clothes. This is followed by the story of a lesbian stripper named Zorro. At about this point in the book, the author turns scatological in his stories. Not only do the two filmmakers in the Porno section make gay films, they have their "actors" (I use that world loosely) do some pretty outrageous things and the words are about as rough as you'll find anywhere. But then it's on to the story of the time Playboy magazine sent Waters to interview rock and roll icon Little Richard which rivals the Mathis section for fun and facts. There are other "role models" here but those are the ones that stand out - at least for me.
Listening to Water on this audio is like hearing him lecture live. Not once did I get the feeling he was reading from the printed page. And I was impressed by his compassion and enthusiasm. If all the stories were like those of Mathis, Little Richard and van Houten I'd give this book 5 stars, even with Waters using the occasional four-letter word. But grossness of the language and images in other sections, placed there, obviously, for shock value or to "push the envelope" turned me off enough to downgrade two stars. Yes, there is the "skip button", but I wanted to give him a chance. If this were a movie it would be rated NC-17. Be forwarded before you listen to this among friends little tolerance for anything beyond the "F-word".
Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
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