Role Models »

John Waters is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and visual artist best known for his cult films, including Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, and Cecil B. DeMented. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

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.

The New York Times - Tom Carson

The nostalgia that…infused Waters's movies from "Hairspray" on turns engagingly unabashed in Role Models, the latest and best of his cobbled-together exercises in autobiography at one remove…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 in the book is that…Waters can't help revealing on every other page that he's both sentimental and good-hearted.