Mr. know-it-all : the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

Title:

Author:

Waters, John, 1946- author.

Personal Author:

Waters, John, 1946- author.

ISBN:

9780374214968

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

x, 372 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Contents:

Mr. know-it-all -- Bye bye underground -- Accidentally commercial -- Going Hollywood -- Clawing my way higher -- Tepid applause -- Sliding back down -- Back in the gutter -- I got rhythm -- Act bad -- Gristle -- Delayed -- Overexposed -- Flashback -- One-track mind -- My brutalist dream house -- No vacation -- Betsy -- Run-on Andy -- My son Bill -- Grim reaper.

Abstract:

"The newest essay collection from the New York Times-bestselling John Waters, reflecting on how to overcome newfound responsibility and rebel in the autumn of your years"-- Provided by publisher.

Personal Subject:

Waters, John, 1946-

Subject Term:

Aging -- Anecdotes.

Motion picture producers and directors -- Biography.

Genre:

Anecdotes.

Summary:

"The newest essay collection from the New York Times-bestselling John Waters, reflecting on how to overcome newfound responsibility and rebel in the autumn of your years"--

Holds:

Available:*

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Summary

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 Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself. Through it all, Waters swears by one undeniable truth: "Whatever you might have heard, there is absolutely no downside to being famous. None at all."

Studded with cameos, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from the author's personal collection, Mr. Know-It-All is Waters' most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book--another instant Waters classic.

"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." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

" Carsick becomes a portrait not just of America's desolate freeway nodes--though they're brilliantly evoked--but of American fame itself." --Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times Book Review

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

An exuberantly transgressive American filmmaker gets down, dirty, and weird about life, art, and career.In this collection of loosely connected, photo-illustrated essays, Waters (Make Trouble, 2017, etc.) ponders his improbable state of respectability after years on the artistic fringe. He begins by reflecting on his first major Hollywood success, Hairspray (1988). The film catapulted Waters, along with such colorful actors as Divine and Mink Stole, from the world of underground filmmaking to at least the edges of the mainstream. The author's newfound status as Hollywood insider allowed him to direct such A-list celebrities as Johnny Depp and Kathleen Turner and make films that enjoyed marginal success in the 1990s. After several box office failures that included Cecil B. Demented (2000), a film about an insane movie director who kidnaps an A-list actress to star in an underground film, and A Dirty Shame (2004), a "sexploitation satire" that he "was amazed got made at all," Waters cheerfully slid back into the gutter to cash in on his fall from mainstream grace. Waters discusses everything from his wide-ranging musical tastes, which include the Nutty Squirrels, jazz vocalists who predated Alvin and the Chipmunks, to his latter-day yippie political leanings. He also shares his fantasies of his perfect "Stalinist chic" home and dispenses remarkably sound advice on how to invest in art made by monkeys. A lifelong "drug enthusiast," Waters tells the story of an LSD trip he took at age 70. Aware ofand perhaps reveling inthe gruesomeness of his own mortality, he includes a letter to his "son," a plastic baby doll named Bill, and a meditation on a "lunatic resurrection" after death as the "Duke of Dirt." Comic and rude but always compulsively readable, Waters' book demonstrates that he is not only first among Filth Elders; he is also a keen observer of American culture.Wickedly smart and consistently laugh-out-loud funny. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.