Book-It 'o14! Book #18
The Fifty Books Challenge, year five! ( 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013) This was a library request.
Title: Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America by John Waters
Details: Copyright 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A cross-country hitchhiking journey with America’s most beloved eccentrics
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"
Why I Wanted to Read It: This is the longest between movies John Waters has ever gone! He's even admitted he might never make another movie! But he's still writing, thankfully! And Role Models was so good! Especially when you listen to it!
How I Liked It: I had eagerly followed the story of Waters's hitchhiking in preparation for a new book as, I've repeatedly said before, I would listen to him read from the phone book (do those still exist?).
But here's the thing. This isn't the book you're expecting. Less than half the book is Waters's actual experiences hitchhiking. The first slightly-more-than-half are dedicated to works of fiction, speculating the best that can happen (rides include meeting Connie Francis, a pot-dealer that gives him five million for his next movie, and falling in with a twisted circus where he is billed as THE MAN WITH NO TATTOOS!, and more), and speculating the worst that can happen (rides include a serial killer of cult film directors, daughter and accomplice of child murderer Gertrude Baniszewski Paula who is NOT pleased with Waters's poking fun at her mother in Shock Value, and a homophobic chain-smoker who delivers Waters to anti-gay cops, among others).
The trouble with Waters's fiction is that, well... he'd be the first to admit he doesn't understand the current generation. In fact, he's one of the few Boomers whose "These Kids Today" gripings are generally and affectionately accepted by the generation they disparage. Most of his cinematic work, when attempting to focus on generations to which he doesn't belong, tends to fall flat. Cecil B Demented, for instance, and Pecker was saved largely by the fact its young characters were generally intended to be isolated outcasts. Any of his other work dealing with youth of generations younger than his own involve period pieces (Hairspray, Cry-Baby) that generally throw back to his own youth or characters merely secondary (Polyester, Serial Mom, A Dirty Shame). It's gotten predictably worse as Waters has gotten older and has so adamantly rejected so many forms of social media.
So many of Waters's young people, well... are actually not-that-thinly disguised '60s Yippie envisions, complete with the slang. The divide Waters feels between himself and the younger generation is uncomfortably obvious (the fact he's put in a circus show by young people since he has no tattoos) as well as overtly Boomer (something about which he'd cringe) and the "everyman" he was able to pull off in his quasi-fiction in Shock Value and Crackpot has all but disappeared.
Another factor against the fiction is that to long-time and/or devoted fans (is there really such a thing as a "casual" John Waters fan?), a good deal of the material is recognizable as repackaged from his stand-up (what he calls his "spoken word" act), making it kind of tedious. I was actually shocked to find myself skimming and skipping through it (I of course went back read the whole thing for the review because that's what these are for), something I never thought I'd do with a John Waters book.
His non-fiction is fascinating, but too brief to make up for the fiction. It has a rushed quality as though it was an afterthought rather than the focus. A good amount of space is devoted to a young Republican (TEA Party Republican, although Waters doesn't mention that in the book, or even his name) council member, all of twenty years old, who picks him up twice, and, when they part, whom Waters gives the keys to his San Francisco property, to see who can get there first.
I don't know if I'd ever not recommend a John Waters book. But this was surprisingly disappointing for such a thrilling premise. The book's press has done well, however, which hopefully means more work for him, if not movies, than books worthy of his talent.
Notable: Waters bared his soul even as he was cracking wise in Role Models, something that's largely absent here (for obvious reasons). But within the fantasy "good rides" chapters, we find among Connie Francis and '80s porn star Johnny Davenport (in the copyright information Waters/his attorney notes that "The characters of Johnny Davenport, Connie Francis, and Paula Baniszewski portrayed in this work are used fictitiously.") another real-life person, but one John knows. The departed (or so he thought) Edith Massey, not dead this past quarter century, but merely escaped from show business to rest. He plays the encounter still humorously (Edith still has her secondhand store, but now with secondhand prescription drugs), but the genuine heart shines through as he hopefully interrogates her whether other deceased Dreamlanders are secretly still alive, too. They part with what she apparently always always signed off to him: "Don't be strangers."
Given the over-the-top experiences Waters describes in the "good rides" section (millions to make a movie, a twenty-something hippie-lookalike boyfriend with a geriatric fetish, alien encounters that imbue his anatomy with magical powers), you can't help but feel this is one he genuinely hopes would happen.
Title: Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America by John Waters
Details: Copyright 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A cross-country hitchhiking journey with America’s most beloved eccentrics
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"
Why I Wanted to Read It: This is the longest between movies John Waters has ever gone! He's even admitted he might never make another movie! But he's still writing, thankfully! And Role Models was so good! Especially when you listen to it!
How I Liked It: I had eagerly followed the story of Waters's hitchhiking in preparation for a new book as, I've repeatedly said before, I would listen to him read from the phone book (do those still exist?).
But here's the thing. This isn't the book you're expecting. Less than half the book is Waters's actual experiences hitchhiking. The first slightly-more-than-half are dedicated to works of fiction, speculating the best that can happen (rides include meeting Connie Francis, a pot-dealer that gives him five million for his next movie, and falling in with a twisted circus where he is billed as THE MAN WITH NO TATTOOS!, and more), and speculating the worst that can happen (rides include a serial killer of cult film directors, daughter and accomplice of child murderer Gertrude Baniszewski Paula who is NOT pleased with Waters's poking fun at her mother in Shock Value, and a homophobic chain-smoker who delivers Waters to anti-gay cops, among others).
The trouble with Waters's fiction is that, well... he'd be the first to admit he doesn't understand the current generation. In fact, he's one of the few Boomers whose "These Kids Today" gripings are generally and affectionately accepted by the generation they disparage. Most of his cinematic work, when attempting to focus on generations to which he doesn't belong, tends to fall flat. Cecil B Demented, for instance, and Pecker was saved largely by the fact its young characters were generally intended to be isolated outcasts. Any of his other work dealing with youth of generations younger than his own involve period pieces (Hairspray, Cry-Baby) that generally throw back to his own youth or characters merely secondary (Polyester, Serial Mom, A Dirty Shame). It's gotten predictably worse as Waters has gotten older and has so adamantly rejected so many forms of social media.
So many of Waters's young people, well... are actually not-that-thinly disguised '60s Yippie envisions, complete with the slang. The divide Waters feels between himself and the younger generation is uncomfortably obvious (the fact he's put in a circus show by young people since he has no tattoos) as well as overtly Boomer (something about which he'd cringe) and the "everyman" he was able to pull off in his quasi-fiction in Shock Value and Crackpot has all but disappeared.
Another factor against the fiction is that to long-time and/or devoted fans (is there really such a thing as a "casual" John Waters fan?), a good deal of the material is recognizable as repackaged from his stand-up (what he calls his "spoken word" act), making it kind of tedious. I was actually shocked to find myself skimming and skipping through it (I of course went back read the whole thing for the review because that's what these are for), something I never thought I'd do with a John Waters book.
His non-fiction is fascinating, but too brief to make up for the fiction. It has a rushed quality as though it was an afterthought rather than the focus. A good amount of space is devoted to a young Republican (TEA Party Republican, although Waters doesn't mention that in the book, or even his name) council member, all of twenty years old, who picks him up twice, and, when they part, whom Waters gives the keys to his San Francisco property, to see who can get there first.
I don't know if I'd ever not recommend a John Waters book. But this was surprisingly disappointing for such a thrilling premise. The book's press has done well, however, which hopefully means more work for him, if not movies, than books worthy of his talent.
Notable: Waters bared his soul even as he was cracking wise in Role Models, something that's largely absent here (for obvious reasons). But within the fantasy "good rides" chapters, we find among Connie Francis and '80s porn star Johnny Davenport (in the copyright information Waters/his attorney notes that "The characters of Johnny Davenport, Connie Francis, and Paula Baniszewski portrayed in this work are used fictitiously.") another real-life person, but one John knows. The departed (or so he thought) Edith Massey, not dead this past quarter century, but merely escaped from show business to rest. He plays the encounter still humorously (Edith still has her secondhand store, but now with secondhand prescription drugs), but the genuine heart shines through as he hopefully interrogates her whether other deceased Dreamlanders are secretly still alive, too. They part with what she apparently always always signed off to him: "Don't be strangers."
Given the over-the-top experiences Waters describes in the "good rides" section (millions to make a movie, a twenty-something hippie-lookalike boyfriend with a geriatric fetish, alien encounters that imbue his anatomy with magical powers), you can't help but feel this is one he genuinely hopes would happen.