WORDS OF ADVICE FROM JOHN WATERS
from Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters
How to Become Famous, Lesson #1
Exaggerate yourself. It’s much easier to get a reaction from the public. If you are overweight, go eat ten pies. If you are sickly and would get sand kicked in your face on any beach, start taking diet pills. Complexion problem? No big deal–rub a bag of potato chips on your face and change your name to “Pimples.” Nothing matters as long as you have too much or too little of something. Anything.
Got a rotten disposition? Well, get meaner. Ryan O’Neal is not famous for his films so much as he is for punching out his son’s two front teeth and being an all-around sourpuss. If you’re an aspiring politician, make racist comments the press can overhear; the outrage may lose you your first election, but it will get you lots of ink and make you a household word, and then you can make a successful “comeback” in the near future.
Change your name and kill off the old self who was just an average nobody. Would Merle Johnson (Troy Donahue) or Herbert Khaury (Tiny Tim) ever have made it with those embarrassing monikers? Aren’t Halston and Meat Loaf really in the same boat? Think of that obscene stage name, Peter O’Toole. What could be filthier, Muff O’Clit? Whatever your image in your old life, change it without warning, do the opposite of what people expect. If you’re the high-school football star, throw out your jock and make a rock debut dressed in nothing but a woman’s girdle and underarm perspiration shields. If you were the class nell, beaten up by the guys for risking expulsion rather than attending gym class, get back at those creeps by writing a scientific article about the high rate of impotency among high-school athletes. If you were the girl with the flattest chest and ugliest face, shock your entire class by starring in a porno movie that gets busted at its campus premiere. If you had the lowest grade average in your class and were nicknamed “Knucklehead,” plagiarize an out-of-print potboiler, publish it as your own, get caught and hype your next book at the trial. In other words, get them talking, even if it’s all negative word of mouth. What do you care as long as they spell your name right?
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