John Waters

In 1998, TASCHEN introduced the world to the masterful art of Touko Laaksonen with The Art of Pleasure. Prior to that, Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, enjoyed an intense cult following in the international gay community but was largely unknown to a broader audience. In 2009, TASCHEN followed up with the ultimate Tom overview: Tom of Finland XXL, a beautiful big collector’s edition with over 1,000 images, covering six decades of the artist’s career. The work was gathered from collections across the United States and Europe with the help of the Tom of Finland Foundation, featuring many drawings, paintings, and sketches never previously reproduced. Other images had only been seen out of context and were finally presented in the sequential order Tom intended for full artistic appreciation and erotic impact. The elegant oversized volume showed the full range of Tom’s talent, from sensitive portraits to frank sexual pleasure to tender expressions of love and haunting tributes to young men struck down by AIDS, and was completed by eight commissioned essays on Tom’s social and personal impact by Camille Paglia, John Waters, Armistead Maupin, Todd Oldham, and others, plus a scholarly analysis of individual drawings by art historian Edward Lucie-Smith. The only thing missing from Tom of Finland XXL was a widely affordable price tag—until now. The new Tom of Finland XXL is still big enough to work your biceps, and includes all of the original content, but costs a fraction of the original price. You’re welcome.

Brigid Berlin (born 1939) was one of the most prominent and colorful members of Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960s and 1970s. Her legendary personal collection of Polaroids is collected here for the first time and constitutes an intimate, beautiful, artistic, outrageous insight into this iconic period. This wild photographic odyssey featured a foreword by cult filmmaker John Waters, who writes, "Brigid was always my favorite underground movie star; big, often naked, and ornery as hell ... The Polaroids here show just how wide Brigid's world was; her access was amazing. She was never a groupie, always an insider." Berlin knew everyone and her lens captured them all: celebrities, Superstars, artists, herself and, of course, Warhol. As Waters observes, through her snaps, "Andy was uncovered and revealed like never before." The book also features an introduction by Bob Colacello, editor of Warhol's Interview magazine and features writer for Vanity Fair, who notes: "In recording life, she captured our times. By myopically depicting her own transgressions and self- indulgences, she has prophetically reflected the narcissism and exhibitionism, the craving for fame and confusing of fame and infamy that have become the staples of American popular culture." In discussing her style, he reflects, "This is the opposite of fashion photography or studio portraiture. Brigid was a realist. What she saw is what you got."

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 manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash? Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker's unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette. Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion--and a celebration of America's weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.

Utilizing and effectively employing the power of your mind and your brain are essential prerequisites for achieving anything great in life. However, when it comes to the development of their own mind power or brain power many people are clueless. They are not even aware that they possess the means of changing their brain's circuitry through neuroplasticity based techniques. Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. The brain actually has the ability to reorganize itself by creating new neural pathways. So how do you go about increasing your mind power as well as your brain power so that they are both operating at an optimal levelIn his book entitled Mind Power: The Never Revealed Secret Ways To Achieve Greatness Using Mind Mastery And Neuroplasticity author John Waters shows you exactly how. He gives you a thorough understanding of how your brain functions and provides you with the tricks you need to achieve your greatest self-whether that be your most creative, attractive, intelligent, intuitive, or athletic side.

From the Pope of Trash himself, John Waters, Carsick is his hilarious (if not always 100% true) account of hitchhiking fearlessly into the heart of middle America.

A personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time.

The story of cult figure Cookie Mueller's life through an oral history composed of more than 80 interviews with those who knew her, with photographs by David Armstrong, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and others Cookie Mueller (1949-1989) was a firecracker, a cult figure, a wild child, a writer, a go-go dancer, a mother and a queer icon. A child of suburban 1950s Maryland, she made her name first as an actress in the films of John Waters, and then as an art critic and columnist, a writer of hilarious stories and a maven of New York's downtown art world. Edgewise, by Berlin-based actress and writer Chloé Griffin, tells the story of Cookie's life through an oral history composed of more than 80 interviews with the people who knew her, including John Waters, Mink Stole, Gary Indiana, Sharon Niesp, Max Mueller, Linda Yablonsky, Richard Hell, Amos Poe and Raymond Foye. The contributors take us from the late-1960s artist communes of Baltimore to 1970s Provincetown and New York, through 1980s Berlin and Positano. Along with the text, Edgewise includes artwork, unpublished photographs and archival material and photography by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, David Armstrong, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and others.

An hilarous and savage attack on the fifty people who fecked up the Emerald Isle.

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-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.

Here are three more of John Waters's most popular screenplays -- for the first time in print, including an original introduction by Waters and dozens of fun film stills. John Waters, the writer and director of these movies, is a legendary filmmaker whose films occupy their own niche in cinema history. His muse and leading lady was Divine -- a 300-pound transvestite who could eat dog shit in one scene and break your heart in the next. In "Hairspray," a "pleasantly plump" teenager, played by Ricki Lake, and her big-hearted hairdresser mother, played by Divine, teach 1962 Baltimore about race relations by integrating a local TV dance show. "Female Trouble" is a coming-of-age story gone terribly awry: Dawn Davenport (again, Divine), progresses from loving schoolgirl to crazed mass murderer destined for the electric chair -- all because her parents wouldn't buy her cha-cha heels for Christmas.In "Multiple Maniacs," dubbed by Waters a "celluloid atrocity," the traveling sideshow "Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions" is actually a front for a group of psychotic kidnappers, with Lady Divine herself the most vicious and depraved of all -- but her life changes after she gets raped by a fifteen-foot lobster.

"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation." Thus begins John Waters's autobiography. And what a story it is. Opening with his upbringing in Baltimore ("Charm City" as dubbed by the tourist board; the "hairdo capital of the world" as dubbed by Waters), it covers his friendship with his muse and leading lady, Divine, detailed accounts of how Waters made his first movies, stories of the circle of friends/actors he used in these films, and finally the "sort-of fame" he achieves in America. Complementing the text are dozens of fabulous old photographs of Waters and crew. Here is a true love letter from a legendary filmmaker to his friends, family, and fans.

Waters dispenses useful advice: how not to make a movie, how to become famous, how to have a sense of humour even if you've been sentenced to life in prison, and perhaps most appropriately, how to most effectively shock and attract the nation's public. He examines the fashion sense of those on trial, assesses the current state of indie filmmaking, warns us what he'd do if he were President of the United States, and recounts what's been getting on his nerves in the past twenty-four hours. Reading CRACKPOT is slumming in reverse. See trash transformed to art before your very eyes. Watch as lowbrow fixations are elevated shamelessly to a highly original comic manifesto.