In his new memoir, Role Models, America’s favorite cult film director offers intimate literary profiles of some of his favorite personalities— some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. Who inspires you to neurotic happiness?

"John Waters is the Pope of Trash."

                        -William S. Burroughs

John Waters was drawn to movies at an early age, and began making 8-mm underground movies as a teenager influenced by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Russ Meyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Waters completed his first feature length film, Mondo Trasho, in 1969 before creating what would become the most "notorious" film in the American independent cinema of the 1970's, Pink Flamingos (1972).  Its success was followed with the release of numerous films throughout the subsequent decades, from Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977), to Hairspray (1988), Cry-Baby (1990), and Serial Mom (1994).

In addition to writing and directing feature films, Waters is the author of five books: Shock Value, Crackpot, Pink Flamingos and Other Trash, Hairspray, Female Trouble and Multiple Maniacs, and Art: A Sex Book (co-written with art critic Bruce Hainley).  John Waters is also a photographer. In April, 2009, Waters’ exhibition, “Rear Projection” opened at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York and the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles.  

Actress, screenwriter, and best-selling novelist, Carrie Fisher is one of show business’s most singular minds. From real-life Hollywood princess to Princess Leia, she  has lived a life beyond colorful. Daughter of a tabloid-rocked show business marriage, co-star of one of the world’s most beloved blockbuster films at age 19, married and divorced from a pop music icon, and in and out of rehab numerous times; Fisher has survived with odds-defying resilience and no small measure of sharp wit. In her recent SRO one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, she has captivated audiences across the country. Adapted from that “hilariously ennobling” (Los Angeles Times) and “exceedingly clever” (Wall Street Journal) stage show, WISHFUL DRINKING  is a caustic memoir of Fisher’s wild first half-century—a blunt testament of mid-life self-discovery, and a frank account of coming to terms with bi-polar disorder and addiction.