John Waters, son of P.T. Barnum

Film · Theater
He was irrepressible. In 1959, filmmaker John Waters posted announcements on telephone poles of his Baltimore neighborhood. From the start, he was both a creator and a P.T. Barnum impresario. Culled from the costumes, props, handwritten scripts, correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, film clips, and more, included in “John Waters, Pope of Trash,” the major exhibition dedicated ...

Smashingly trashy: John Waters retrospective at AMPAS Museum

Film
John Waters: Pope of Trash, the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the eponymous artist’s contributions to cinema, opens at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on September 17, 2023. The exhibition will trace the grotesque, daring, tacky, hilarious, and salacious elements that recur throughout Waters’s sixty-year career of filmmaking and reveal how his movies have ...

Wade in the Waters: the iconoclastic filmmaker to spiel at the Luckman

Film · Ideas & Opinion
The dryest bon mots in town will cogitate in the twisted mind of John Waters and drop with abandon from the distinguished filmmaker/director/writer’s mouth June 2 at the Luckman Stage on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. Waters’s short experimental films in the 1960s used his Baltimore-based pals as actors and gathered steam in ...

Dueling divas on Hollywood Blvd: Divine vs. Shirley Jones

Film
Can’t make it to TCM Fest 2014 opener, screening “Oklahoma”? Got sold out? Then trundle across Hollywood Boulevard to where the real party people will be celebrating the DVD release of “I am Divine,” sub-titled, “The True Story of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.” Docu concerns the great drag-queen actor, otherwise known as ...

John Waters celebrates Johnny Mathis

Film · Ideas & Opinion · Music
Sixties singer Johnny Mathis‘s name has popped up in surprising ways recently. DJ Josh Kun spun the velvet-voiced crooner’s version of “Kol Nidre” at “Get Down, Moses,” Kun’s Jewish/African-American “listening party.” Then, John Waters, the witty, loquacious, and dapper film director, cited Mathis as one of his key “role models.” It happened at an ALOUD ...

John Waters & Carrie Fisher dish at ALOUD 1

Film · Ideas & Opinion
This just in from Louise Steinman, curator-turned-impresario of the Library Foundation’s ALOUD book talk series. Louise has nailed down what promises to be a wild and wonderful evening of conversation Filmmaker John Waters communes with his interlocutor, Carrie Fisher. Two of show business’s sharpest minds (and fastest tongues!) meet to discuss their role models! John ...