A rollicking picaresque memoir on moviemaking from the titans of underground trash cinema.In the underbelly of underground cinema, the Kuchar brothers have long been the prophets of experimental filmmaking. Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool is a raucous journey through the minds of these two transcendent artists.The works of George and Mike Kuchar defy every convention of filmmaking. Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool is their manif...

A very John Waters traveling show, replete with freaks, robbery, murder, sex, blasphemy, and savage shellfish—a lurid, surreal celebration of camp and trash.The Cavalcade of Perversion is a traveling show run by Lady Divine and a crew of her fellow degenerates. They have to drag suburban housewives into each vile, tasteless performance—only to rob them at gunpoint at the end of each show. When Divine gets bored of the routine and graduates to murdering the...

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...

**“Burroughs famously dubbed Waters the Pope of Trash. Female Trouble, we might say, is his Summa Trashologica.”—**Ed Halter, The Criterion CollectionIt all goes to hell when Baltimore bad girl Dawn Davenport doesn’t get the cha-cha heels she’s been demanding for Christmas. In this hilarious, irreverent, pyrotechnic melee of high-trash hijinks, Dawn ruins Christmas, skips town, and embarks on a wild ride that involves hitchhiking, robbery, ...

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 Mari...

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 si...

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 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 tel...

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-...

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 m...

Grammy-winning music producer, Ian Brennan’s seventh book, Muse-Sick: a music manifesto in fifty-nine notes, acts as a primer on how mass production and commercialization have corrupted the arts. Broken down into a series of core points and actions plans, Muse-Sick is a concise and affordable pocket primer follow-up to Brennan’s two previous music missives, How Music Dies (or Lives): Field Recording and the Battle for Democracy in the arts and Silenc...

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),...