Mr Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder

(Hardback)

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Description

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, the original 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 of Waters's stars, from Divine and Mink Stole to Johnny Depp, Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and illustrated with unseen photos from Waters's personal collection, MR. KNOW-IT-ALL is Waters's 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

An exuberantly transgressive American filmmaker gets down, dirty, and weird about life, art, and career . . . Comic and rude but always compulsively readable, Waters 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 - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Nothing can squelch [John Waters'] outrageous imagination . . . If you don't laugh loud and often, check your pulse, then your breath on a mirror - Ray Olson, Booklist

Endlessly entertaining . . . Waters's musings are as funny and eccentric as his films; longtime fans will be delighted with the treasure trove of insights into his brilliant oeuvre. - Publishers Weekly

The essays are wildly discursive and funny. - The Guardian

There are walk-on parts for the likes of Kathleen Turner ("Sure, Kathleen liked a cocktail") and Justin Bieber (who drew a Waters moustache on to his own hairless upper lip), and freewheeling musings on music and food. Waters here is a raconteur on top form. - New Statesman

This is the work of a deliciously entertaining, irreverent genius - Attitude magazine

Even if you've never seen a single frame of the sublimely trashy oeuvre of director John Waters, Mr-Know-it-All is this year's standout film autobiography. - Evening Standard

Author Bio

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.