Customer Reviews

Role Models

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Waters is a fantastic narrator and his new book is absolutely hilarious (but also very touching at points). I've honestly been forcing anybody who rides in my car this week to listen to the section about Lady Zorro and I'll start forcing everybody to listen to the section on Esther Martin next week. Honestly, despite other reviews that talk about his trashy side, I'm amazed how sweet and kind he comes across. From one bleeding heart liberal to another, I absolutely love this book :)

John Waters always has elicited strong opinions from people and that seems evident here in the early reviews. Anyone who has seen or heard Waters being interviewed or seen him emcee a show will recognize the tone and style here. He rambles entertainingly through the book, with on-target observations that integrate references that range from the absurd to the refined. The chapters vary in their quality. Some passages are laugh out loud funny, but some sections drag. The chapter on Leslie Van Houten becomes rather tedious and didactic, in places, although Waters raises worthwhile questions about rehabilitation and the grandstanding of prosecutors. The section on his art collection betrayed perhaps a need to be taken seriously even as he collects pieces that most people who find academically interesting, at most. Waters' parents do not get their own chapter, but they are always present and come across as people who supported Waters' development and work in surprising ways while remaining very much the conventional parents of their time. At the same time, Waters confronts the problems and limitations of some of the eccentric Baltimore characters he had idolized, like Zorro, the lesbian stripper whose daughter somehow thrived despite a chaotic, problem-ridden environment. Despite focusing on role models, Waters creates a world where neither nature nor nurture seem to triumph. His conservative, conventional parents wound up with "The Pope of Filth" for a son, while Zorro winds up with an apparently very conventional, well-adjusted daughter. Waters lives in a world where the classic 1950s songs of Johnny Mathis co-exist with a fringe gay pornographer like Bobby Garcia, and Leslie Van Houten of the Manson Family. Somehow the only really discordant note was the repeated mention of Elton John who seems neither fringe nor conventional, nor particularly interesting.

Other reviews here on Amazon are of the print edition of this book. This covers the audio CD version, published by Tantor Audio, and read by the inimitable Mr. Waters himself.

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 7-½ 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"

This is the first book I have read/listened to by John Waters (I got the audio book) and I haven't seen many of his films (I think just Pecker), but I have always loved his interviews on NPR's Fresh Air with Teri Gross. And, I think it is because I know him for his wonderfully personable conversational style and broad interrests (art, reading, creativity, music, people, etc, etc) that I decided to purchase this book and see what it had to offer.
Excellant. What a pleasant conversational way to hear about John's interresting personal life and his tastes through his appreciation of his role models. Yes, yes, we all know about his film exploits or public image with sex and shock, but if that was all he had to write about the book would feel very flat and two dimensional. The fact that he is so well rounded as a person and in his interests made this book my favorite of the year.
And, yes, there's plenty about sex, some wonderfully unihibited and some that is a little bit shocking for my taste. But, this just adds flavor to the soup.
Now, I'm just waiting while Amazon ships the next book I ordered from John's back catalog.

John Waters is a twisted genius. The chapter on Leslie Van Houten alone is worth the price of the book (and it is moving too). My favorite was the "Bookworm" chapter, where he supplies you with a list of sometimes neglected literary masterpieces that anyone with a sensibility akin to his MUST get. And if you don't have that kind of sensibility, pick it up anyway & be sublimely damaged forever. John, you're the coolest guy in the universe.

This work is so entertaining and good hearted and funny, I immediately ordered a copy for a friend. There were times when I had to phone people to read out passages so we could laugh together. It is perhaps not for everyone, but if you already know and like John Waters, you will love this book; it was so absorbing and delightful, I had to read it almost straight through. If you don't know John Waters (where have you been?), and have a sensitivity to language as spoken and heard away from church, your mind may be too pure to process his special brand of "filth" which includes interviews with criminals, celebrities of special note, trivia, information and particular advise on how to realize or expand your own personal filth. I wish he lived next door; it feels as if we are friends already. I'd love to have him over for a drink.

Role Models is John Waters's tribute to those who have influenced him throughout his life. I had already read two of his earlier books, Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters and Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste, so I knew what I was in for: I was ready to laugh myself silly.

Waters describes himself as "a cult filmmaker whose core audience, no matter how much I've crossed over, consists of minorities who can't even fit in with their own minorities.". One can see how the people who have influenced him the most fit in with this self-assessment.

The first major influence on John as a little boy was "Clarabell, the psychotic clown on The Howdy Doody Show, whose makeup later inspired Divine's, had been my role model.". One can't miss the similarities when comparing the two:

The chapter entitled Leslie is perhaps the most serious piece of work Waters has ever written. In it, he talks about his twenty-five-year friendship with Leslie Van Houten, the member of the Manson family who was sentenced to death for her role in the LaBianca murders in 1969. Waters makes a very convincing case for the parole of Van Houten, who has been incarcerated for over forty years. He also apologizes for exploiting the Manson family murders in his early film career:

"I am guilty, too. Guilty of using the Manson murders in a jokey, smart-ass way in my earlier films without the slightest feeling for the victims' families or the lives of the brainwashed Manson killer kids who were also victims in this sad and terrible case."

This was quite a revelation from Waters: that of guilt. Waters has visited Van Houten on a regular basis at the California Institute for Women and is convinced that Van Houten has been mentally rehabilitated for decades and is in no danger of reoffending. The most surprising thing of all is Van Houten's sense of inner peace in all this. She seems resigned to live her life to the fullest, even though she may never be granted parole. I never thought I'd ever say this, but Van Houten's lawyers should have John Waters testify in her behalf at her next parole hearing. Waters never sweeps the LaBianca murders under the rug, and often identifies with their orphaned children, and how they must feel if they were to see their parents' murderer released. Nevertheless, it is a very convincing case to parole Van Houten, and made me review my own opinions on the matter.

Waters also talks about personalities from his hometown of Baltimore. One of them was the stripper known as Lady Zorro, whom he describes as "[having] a real rage she brought to the stage, which added a demented hostile sex appeal. An angry stripper with a history of physical and sexual abuse with a great body and the face of a man. Now there's a lethal combination...Zorro was so butch, so scary, so Johnny Cash. No actual stripping for her at that point [at the end of her burlesque career]; she just came out nude and snarled at her fans, 'What the f*** are you looking at?'".

Waters fondly remembers a Baltimore bar owner named Esther Martin: "the real reason I loved Esther right from the beginning was her mouth. No one in the world cussed more! She gave the phrase 'cursing a blue streak' a refinement that seemed almost noble. 'That motherf***ing c***s***ing son of a b***h' was used as a prefix to almost every name she uttered...Just a mention of Esther's foul language makes each sibling go into hilarious imitations of their mother's tirades. 'As my dear sainted mother would say'--Dick laughs and then mimics Esther's voice--'You're as worthless as a c**t full of cold p**s.' 'Sh** and fall back in it!'". I tell you, reading Waters's reminiscences about Lady Zorro and Esther had me laughing so hard during my work lunch breaks I could barely eat anything at all.

In the chapter entitled Bookworm, Waters writes about five of his favourite fiction authors. After I read this chapter I researched these authors and looked for their books and criticisms. Waters writes about one of his favourites:

"Try reading any novel by [Ivy] Compton-Burnett. She was English, looked exactly like the illustration on the Old Maid card, never had sex even once, and wrote twenty dark, hilarious, evil little novels between the years 1911 and 1969."

The chapter on art, entitled Roommates, was surprisingly boring. It would not have been so tedious to plow through if only Waters had included some photos of the works he was describing. There is nothing more boring to read than pages and pages of descriptions of paintings. Waters did make me laugh at this remark:

"I knew about Richard Tuttle's minimalist troublemaking and respected his early hostile establishment reviews, such as 'Less has never been less than this.' His bare plywood slat pieces nailed flat to the wall with just one thin side of the depth of the wood painted white were so beautiful, so simple, so plain, that I felt exhausted just imagining how complete the artist must have felt when he decided the work was finished."

In the final chapter, Waters tells of his childhood education at Catholic schools. I again felt like laughing so hard I could barely chew:

"I hated my Catholic high school, so I certainly never went back to a reunion, although I did get to comment to The Baltimore Sun, on the school's fifty-year anniversary, that the Christian Brothers and lay faculty there had 'discouraged every interest I ever had.' A friend who attended the reunion that year said he heard me called 'f**got' and 'pornographer' by some of my p***ed-off fellow classmates who had read my criticism, but I didn't mind. The only reason to attend any school reunion is to see how the people whom you had wanted to have sex with then look today. And I had already looked up those people's addresses and driven by their homes to stalk them years before."

And when talking about those wacky saints he learned about at school:

"Of course, there are some saints we do take very seriously. Saint Catherine of Siena is without a doubt the most insane of these and we have no choice but to honor her daily. Reading Holy Anorexia by Rudolph M. Bell, the best encyclopedia of deranged saints ever written, we learn that in Catherine's time (the 1300s) she was known as 'a person of considerable reputation for outstanding holiness'--in other words, nuts! At the peak of her career she 'urged the holy hatred of oneself' and advised others to 'build a cell in your mind that you can never escape.' She was a 'bottom' for God."

and I am still laughing over the poor girl who could never succeed here:

"Catherine organized a group of fellow child masochists who flagellated themselves daily. Well, I can understand that, too. I had a Horror House in our garage and I'd charge the neighborhood kids twenty-five cents to enter. After they gave me the money, I'd tell them to wait, and I'd go inside and then yell, "Okay, come in!" The little ticket buyers would group their way into the darkness and I would squirt them with a fire extinguisher (my dad's company sold them) and then kick them in the leg. They loved it. They even came back for more. I also used to play 'school' as a kid with the little girl who lived next door, and I was always the teacher and she was always the student. Every time we played I failed her, yet she still eagerly agreed to play every time I asked, fully knowing the results."

Role Models is John Waters's most serious written work. Without his name on the cover, one would never believe that the chapters on Leslie Van Houten, art, Johnny Mathis or Little Richard was written by him. If you love Waters's humour, and need a laugh like the original "Hairspray" on the printed page, this book does not disappoint.

In Bizarro World, the rules are "Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness!" John Waters may not have read Superman comics as a kid (he was probably shoplifting Jean Genet books instead), but he's seemingly internalized the Bizarro ethic of absurdist contrariety. The new collection of his waspish writing won't surprise readers of "Shock Value" or viewers of his films, but this is stronger stuff than what you'll find there. I found it surprising in two ways.

First, the section on Leslie Van Houten is thoughtful in a way Waters hasn't been before. He's written about her in the past, but here he seems genuinely remorseful for his previous insensitivity to the victims of the Manson Family. There are limits to mockery, even for John Waters, who has always reveled in sniggering paeans to crime and all manner of vileness. Can Waters be sincere and earnest? He is here, aware of the suffering of the LaBiancas and heartbroken over the injustice done to Leslie Van Houten, who long ago should have been released from prison.

Second, he's much more up-front about his gayness, something he always elided in past writings. This time, the post-modern Peck's Bad Boy wades deeply into sex, and he's mostly amusing about his own predilections-- well, he's mostly amusing about everything. But the chapter on gay porno enters some truly twisted territory. Porno is exploitative by its nature, but this stuff is hard to read about-- at least I found it so. I guess that's the point: Waters glories in the transgressive, so the kinkier the better.

There's real pathos here, and Waters shows his softer side in exposing the effed-up lives of the most effed-up people who've ever lived. Lady Zorro, a Baltimore stripper with a gorgeous body and almost inexpressible addictions-- and a young daughter-- is an unforgettable character, and Waters does her justice.

I laughed out loud a dozen times reading this. What I'll remember from "Role Models" isn't the funny stuff, though; it's the heartfelt emotion that sneaks though at the edges.

Not much you can say about John Waters except wonderful, great, hilarious, insightful, touching. His writing is not just entertaining it is enlightening in that he is so objective. I love him and plan to read all of his books.

I just received my copy of John Waters' Role Models on "MP3 CD". I was disappointed to learn that this is a CD-R pressing with 128 kbps bit rate MP3 files. Unless you need the cheap DVD case style packaging (Dollar Store quality) save yourself the money and buy the download version instead which is what I would have done had I known about the shoddy quality of the CD edition. For what it's worth the disc sounds fine but who wants to pay a premium for a CD-R?