Writer and filmmaker John Waters has a new book coming out this spring.
Picador, a division of Macmillan Publishers, has set May 27, 2025, as the publication date for a 96-page paperback that’s actually the screenplay for a never-filmed sequel to Waters’ 1972 movie, “Pink Flamingos.” The title is “Flamingos Forever: A Screenplay,” and booksellers, including Atomic Books in Baltimore, have started taking orders for delivery on or around the publication date. The list price is $15. A prototype book cover on Picador’s website is by artist Wayne A. Hollowell.
Waters wrote the screenplay more than four decades ago and it has never been published in a standalone version. It was included in Waters’ 1988 book, “Trash Trio: Three Screenplays by John Waters,” which also contained the screenplays of “Pink Flamingos” and Waters’ 1977 comedy, “Desperate Living.”
“Pink Flamingos” follows the story of Divine, under cover as Babs Johnson, and her efforts to hold on to the title of ‘Filthiest Person in the World.’ At the end of the movie, after killing rivals Connie and Raymond Marble, Divine solidifies her title by eating fresh dog droppings and makes plans to move from Baltimore to Boise with her son Crackers and his companion Cotton, after her mother Edie falls in love with the Egg Man.
In 2021, the U. S. Library of Congress added “Pink Flamingos” to its prestigious National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Flamingos Forever picks up the story 15 years later.
“Fifteen years after the events of Pink Flamingos, Babs Johnson returns to Baltimore from a life spent largely in bus station lavatories, only to find that she once again has to fight for the right to claim the title of World’s Filthiest Person,’ “Picador teases on its website. “Her nemesis Connie Marble’s sister, Vera Venninger, and her necrophiliac husband, Wilbur, are in her way. So begins a new battle of filth.”
Although “Forever Flamingos” was never filmed, readers may note that Waters used several of its elements in other movies he later wrote and directed. For example, he used the names of three characters — Wilbur, Inez and Tracy — in his 1988 movie “Hairspray,” and he transplanted its “Hokey Pokey” scene to his 2004 film, “A Dirty Shame.”
Picador touts the book as essential reading for John Waters fans.
“This raucous, filthy – and essential – volume in John Waters’s oeuvre never made it to the screen, so this is readers’ and his legions of fans’ one chance to see how this ghastly and irreverent saga meets its end!”
