What could bring the former Lorena Bobbitt, artist Wayne Hollowell, scores of heavy metal fans and a puppet show veteran from Lutherville together on a rainy weekday night in Hampden, hon?
A John Waters book-signing, of course.
Hundreds of fans braved the rain and stood in line for hours to meet the famous writer and filmmaker, get an autograph and a selfie, and be among the first to buy one or more of the books he was releasing at Atomic Books on Wednesday night.
“I think it’s a record,” said Atomic Books co-owner Benn Ray, after the last person went through the line, roughly four hours after the doors opened.
The occasion was the release of not one but three softcover books, each containing a screenplay for a John Waters movie: “Pink Flamingos” (1972); “Desperate Living” (1977); and “Flamingos Forever,” a never-filmed sequel to “Pink Flamingos,” written in 1983.
The screenplays have been published twice before, and both times they were collected in one book. Waters worked with Picador, a division of Macmillan Publishing Group, to bring them out in a new format, giving each screenplay its own separate volume, with covers incorporating paintings by Hollowell. Another three John Waters books will come out in the fall – screenplays for “Multiple Maniacs” (1970); “Female Trouble” (1974); and “Hairspray” (1988).
The official publication date is May 27, but Picador arranged to make the $15 books available in Baltimore for the May 21 book-signing event. That made Atomic Books, which has hosted John Waters’ book signings in the past and which receives his fan mail, the first place anyone could obtain copies.
To get in line and meet Waters, fans only had to buy one of the three screenplay books. As part of the event, Waters agreed to autograph other items that fans brought with them – “within reason” – and take photos with them.
The line stretched from the front door of the store at 3620 Falls Road all the way down Falls Road to 36th Street, and then around the corner and westward down 36th Street for another block. People started lining up at 4:15 p.m. The doors opened shortly after 7 p.m., and the last person got to meet the author at just around 11 p.m.
Seated at a table behind a clear Plexiglass screen, Waters was gracious and charming with everyone in line. When fans thanked him for being there, he responded by thanking them for waiting in the rain to see him.
“It was absolutely amazing to me,” he said the next morning. “It was a crowd that seemed younger, more racially diverse, stylish, smart, great – it was an absolutely wonderful night. It was just amazing to me. It’s always amazing to me, but it was especially amazing last night. It was great it was in my hometown.”
From toddlers to seniors
The outdoor temperature on Wednesday night was 58 degrees, and the average wait in line was about two hours. Some people drove hundreds of miles to meet Waters, who turned 79 last month. Others came from the immediate area. They ranged in age from toddlers to seniors. At least one fan rode up in an electric wheelchair.
For some, it was like Christmas morning — waiting a long time for the big day and then getting the gift they wanted under the tree.
Besides the screenplay books they bought, fans carried all kinds of things for Waters to sign – a plastic pink flamingo, a carton of eggs, DVDs, posters, paintings, Funko Pop figures still in the box.
Rachel Kelsey from Baltimore was one of the first in line and brought a big red brassiere for Waters to sign. Lou Michael from Hampden carried a pink umbrella with a flamingo’s head on the handle. “I was thinking about asking him to sign it,” she lamented, “but it got all wet.”
Most of the encounters with Waters were brief, lasting between 30 seconds and several minutes. Fans talked to Waters about a wide range of subjects, from favorite bands to Calvert Hall College High School to Ingmar Bergman movies to the price of eggs.
One woman told Waters she remembers that he put on a puppet show at her mother’s house when he was a teenager – his first job in show business. A woman in a black leather jacket said she grew up in Lutherville, just like he did. “It’s nice to see a girl from Lutherville,” Waters told her. A man said he thinks he and Waters are related: “My mother’s people are named Waters.”
When a mother with a young son in tow asked Waters to sign her screenplay for “Pink Flamingos,” which was rated NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America, he jokingly asked the boy to turn away. “You can’t look at this,” he stage-whispered. “We’ll be arrested.”
‘Thank you for everything’
Many of Waters’ fans used their limited time with him to express appreciation for his work. “Thank you for everything you’ve done,” said Zach Wild of Hampden. “You’ve made this amazing city so much better.”
Lauren Beward of Joppa told Waters that her grandmother, who died at 98, especially liked one of his movies.
“My grandmother was a huge fan of ‘Hairspray,'” she said. “She watched it every week. She did it so much I put it in her obituary.”
Joel Barnatovich asked Waters to inscribe five words on the copy of “Cry-Baby” that he brought: “Our bazooms are our weapons.” It’s a line that Ricki Lake’s character, Pepper Walker, says in the movie to Johnny Depp’s character, Wade Walker: “The first thing a Cry-Baby girl learns: Our bazooms are our weapons.”
“I come from a small town in Pennsylvania that didn’t have many gay people,” Barnatovich said. “I always remember this because it gave me courage.”
Jessa and Joshua Paulsen came from Pittsburgh to celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary by seeing him. Another couple, Jade Hurst and Cameron Wilson, said they drove eight hours from Knoxville, Tennessee, just for the book signing. They bought all three screenplays and Hurst asked Waters to sign a copy of “This Filthy World,” a video of one of his spoken-word performances.
“The first time I saw it, it changed my life,” Hurst said of the video, but “I never got to see him” in person. “After the pandemic, I decided I’m going to see him” whenever possible. They even traveled to Los Angeles to see his “John Waters: Pope of Trash” exhibit when it was at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, she said.
‘Filth is my life’
A number of fans wore tee-shirts with John Waters-related slogans. “Filth Is My Life,” one said, quoting Divine. Also: “Pope of Trash,” “Join the Cult,” and “He’ll Make You Sick.” Others had LGBTQ themes such as “Worship Gay Satan,” or band names, including “Amyl and the Sniffers,” “Meatbot” and “Melvins.”
Quite a few said they were in town for Maryland Deathfest XX, billed as “America’s biggest annual metal party,” featuring nearly 100 bands on three stages over four days in downtown Baltimore.
Jeremy Wilcox and Kelsey Goessman, from Nashville, Tennessee, said they came to Baltimore for the Deathfest festival this weekend and are also John Waters fans.
Seeing a John Waters show was “one of the first things we did when we started dating 10 years ago,” Wilcox said, and now they’ve been married for six years. “When we saw he had a book signing, we said we have to go,” he added.
Waters, who hosts the Mosswood Meltdown punk rock festival every summer in Oakland, California, said he didn’t schedule the book signing to coincide with Deathfest but is glad it worked out that way.
The filmmaker declined to sign certain items that fans brought. He turned down a woman who asked him to sign a blank piece of paper.
“I don’t sign blank pieces of paper,” he said. Fraudsters “can put it on a check.”
Waters also turned down Mario Alipio when he asked him to sign a tee-shirt with the filmmaker’s image silkscreened on the front.
“I love that picture, but it’s definitely a pirated one,” said Waters, who won’t sign pirated items.
‘Out of the blue’
One of Waters’ biggest fans was Hollowell, the artist who provided paintings for the covers of all six screenplay books but hadn’t met Waters before Wednesday.
Based in northern Virginia, Hollowell has cultivated a following by painting large portraits of personalities from movies and TV shows, and some of his recurring subjects are characters from John Waters movies. He’s found success by painting actresses from vintage movies, such as Joan Crawford and Mary Astor. Other subjects include Cher; Judy Garland; Liza Minnelli; Elizabeth Taylor; Natalie Wood; and Princess Diana.
Buyers of Hollowell’s work include entertainers RuPaul, Kelly Ripa, Delta Burke and the son of Faye Dunaway, as a gift for his mother. He currently has a show of his work at Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St. in Baltimore, coinciding with its run of “The Mystery of Irma Vep.”
Hollowell said he received an email last year from Waters, and it came in as a message on a standard form that he has on his website, www.waynehollowellart.com. Hollowell said he thought at first that it might be a prank, but it turned out to be genuine and that led to discussions about the book series. Initially, “I thought it was a joke,” he said. “I was so excited when he called up. I couldn’t believe it…It was out of the blue.”
Waters has a practice of choosing fan art for his book covers. Hollowell had an exhibit of his John Waters-themed art at The Club Car night spot during Artscape 2023, and that apparently caught the filmmaker’s attention. After that initial contact, he, Waters and Picador art director Alex Merto worked to create the six covers. Four incorporate works that Hollowell had already painted, and the artist made two paintings specifically for the covers of “Multiple Maniacs” and “Flamingos Forever.”
Hollowell, 57, said he first learned about Waters in the 1980s when a teacher at North Carolina School for the Arts, an arts-oriented high school that he attended, gave him a copy of Waters’ 1981 book, “Shock Value.” “I read it over and over and over.”
Then he went to art school in Atlanta and attended a midnight showing of Waters’ “Female Trouble” there. “I’ve just loved him ever since,” he said. “He’s definitely one of my all-time favorite inspirations…He and Andy Warhol are my favorite two inspirations.”
Hollowell said he got the Club Car exhibit with the help of one of its owners, Ryan Haase, and has shown his work in galleries and cafes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the East Village in New York and other locations. He’ll have a show during World Pride in Washington, D.C. at Dirty Habit restaurant in the Kimpton Hotel Monaco, 555 8th St. N. W.
Hollowell said this is the first time he’s created artwork for book covers, and he has ideas for additional covers if Waters is thinking about doing even more screenplay books. He said he’d love to see Waters publish screenplay books for “Polyester,” “Cecil B. Demented” and “Serial Mom,” among other movies he’s made. “ ‘Serial Mom’ – everybody loves that,” he said.
Lorena Gallo
Another fan at the book-signing was Lorena Gallo, also from northern Virginia. In another life, she was Lorena Bobbit, the woman who received international press coverage in 1993 when she cut off the penis of her then-husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, while he was asleep in bed, and tossed it out of a car window; his penis was found in a field across from a 7-Eleven convenience store and successfully surgically reattached by a team of doctors in a nine-and-a-half hour operation.
Gallo, a native of Ecuador, alleged that her husband, a bar bouncer and former U. S. Marine whom she married in 1989, had raped and abused her for years. He was charged with rape after the knife incident but was acquitted and later starred in two pornographic films. In 1994, his wife was acquitted of assault by reason of insanity and went on to start a foundation for domestic abuse victims and their children. The couple divorced in 1995.
Gallo and a companion named David joined the line at Atomic Books around 9:30 p.m. and got to the front about an hour later. She said after meeting with Waters that she and her companion arrived late because they got caught in D.C. traffic. She explained that she dropped the last name Bobbitt and reverted to the use of her maiden name, Gallo.
The non-profit organization that she founded in 2018 is based in Haymarket, Virginia, and called the Lorena Gallo Foundation. Its goal is “to educate and mobilize the public about violence and sexual assault against women and to ensure that services are available to survivors and their families” in Prince William County, Virginia. According to the foundation’s website, she’s also available for speaking engagements to tell her story of “overcoming trauma to reclaim her voice as an advocate for survivors.”
Gallo purchased the Picador screenplays for “Pink Flamingos” and “Flamingos Forever.” She said she’s a “great fan” of Waters and already has tickets to his Christmas show next December.
Waters, who filmed the movie “Pecker” in Hampden, said he enjoyed meeting and talking to Gallo. “She was lovely,” he said. “I’m flattered she came all the way from Virginia.”
‘Local stories are great’
Of the three screenplay books, “Pink Flamingos” sold the best. In fact, it sold out. “Flamingos Forever” was second, followed by “Desperate Living.” Many fans bought all three.
Waters stayed afterwards to sign all the copies that were left, for sale in the store after the event. He said he enjoyed meeting his fans and hearing what’s on their minds.
“Most people just say great stuff,” he said. “And I love seeing all the young kids — so non-binary, radical.”
Did anything shock him?
“No. Nobody said anything that shocked me,” he said. “People said things that were moving to me, how important I had been to make them feel good about themselves and everything. It was moving to me.”
He said the fans with local stories, such as the woman who remembered his puppet show, and the woman from Lutherville where he grew up, triggered flashbacks.
“That’s the thing with local signings,” he said. “The local stories are great.”
He was happy that people came from out of town for his book launch and planned to stay overnight: “We’re bringing people to Baltimore.”
‘It keeps going’
If he learned anything from the book-signing event, Waters said, it’s “just how great young people are and that old people that say they had more fun when they were young, they don’t know what’s going on.” Young people today, he said, “are having just as much fun as we ever had.”
He’s also gratified that young people are discovering movies he made and books he wrote decades ago, as evidenced by the sales of Picador’s screenplays.
“It’s still shocking to me how many people say that their parents told them to watch them,” he said of his movies. “When I was young, their parents called the police. Now, I really feel old because they say their grandparents told them to watch them…But it’s great. It’s just amazing to me that it keeps going to the next generation.”
Atomic Books is definitely on my Bucket List! If it wasn’t 2,650 East of me, I’d be a regular. Hopefully John Waters will do a signing at the bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard where is sidewalk star is located, Larry Edmonds.
I thought he died very recently… I am SO glad I was wrong! He is a national treasure!
Baltimore’s own is still keeping it real!