Role Models

In this memoir, filmmaker John Waters (PINK FLAMINGOS) discusses people he admires and proves himself a preeminent provocateur. But it's not all shock value. He's an eloquent writer who can turn a witty phrase almost as deftly as one of the book's subjects, Tennessee Williams, and do so with convincing style. This goes for his narration as well. Waters comes off as insightful--if not excessively camp--but his flamboyance is infectious. He minces but doesn't mince words. Although some may take umbrage at his choices of talismans--Manson family murderer Leslie Van Houten, for instance--Waters, who once venerated the murderous cult for being "the filthiest people alive," has to be admired for his ironic sensibilities. His embrace of everything politically incorrect is actually refreshing in the current climate. J.S.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

May 3, 2010
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”).