Twice in one year

Last night I went to see John Waters talk at the Miami Book Fair and it was exciting because it's the second time this year that I got to see him! I was disappointed because at at the last minute Natan couldn't come but luckily my friend Meghan is awesome and likes to do fun things with little notice. I thought that the set up would be like how it was at Coachella, which was just John Waters talking and telling stories for about an hour however, last night they had a guy interviewing John Waters. Now I love John Waters and no matter who he is talking to he is very funny but the guy interviewing him was really pretty annoying. His questions were always sort of vague or just not detailed enough so John Waters would answer him but then realize that guy didn't have another question lined up so John Waters would just start talking about something else related. Last time I went to the book fair I saw Salman Rushdie with the same format of him being interviewed and the interviewer for him was a real idiot too so I think they should think of something else to do or get better interviewers. Anyways, John Waters was great and his new book, which is called Role Models, sounds really interesting and I bought it for him to sign so I'm excited to read it.

So, there were many good qoutes from him last night but here are some of my favorites:
At one point he was talking about growing in the Baltimore suburbs in the fifties, which he said despite what you have seen in movies and on tv it was really terrible, and he said that is was hard to grow up in that time because you were expected to be like everyone else but he knew he was different because he didn't want to be like everyone else and he didn't care that he didn't want to be like everyone else.
Another time the interviewer asked him, "Did you guys think you were cool?" referring to John Waters and all his friends that were in his movies and John Waters without missing a beat says, "well we were cool"

Afterwards they opened the floor for audience questions and Meghan forced me to go up even though I was super nervous. Some of the questions were so silly and ridiculous and they took up so much time. The most insane one wasn't even really a question it was just this woman saying, "I noticed in the last election a lot of politicians that seemed like they were John Waters characters, I'm thinking of one in particular (and then she went one to describe in a round about way Christine O'Donnell) can you swear that you didn't create them and it's really like some kind of performance art?" So this woman was right in front of me and then I walk up to the mic and the interviewer on stage says, "Okay so we have time for one more question" and I hear everybody in line behind groan with disappoint and THEN the interviewer says to me "Better make it good" UUUHH so I mumbled into the mic, "Boy I thought I was nervous before but now..." and then I went on to ask him how chooses music for his movies, because some of the songs just fit so perfectly and I said that every time I hear Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It" I can only think of Divine in Pink Flamingos. And I also asked if his cd Breaking Up With John Waters is coming out any time soon. So he responded that he didn't know when or if the cd was coming out and that he always picks songs that will help the narrative of the film and all of his scripts have notes about what songs he wants to use. And he also talked about how important it is to get the rights to all songs that are used or else it will come back to get you eventually. I was happy with my answer and that I got to ask a question and I was walking away and then the interviewer says "Let's do one more" and I THINK he said "let's end with a good one" which I took to mean that my question wasn't good but Meghan says that he didn't say that...I don't know. Anyways, the guy behind me gets to the mic and says "John Waters I just want to thank you for saving my life!" ugh Apparently this kid was diagnosed with an extreme case of OCD and his therapist made him watch Pink Flamingos.

I got my book signed and got a picture with him and I had him sign Natan's odorarama card from the movie Polyester.


And while waiting in line Meghan and I befriend this cool girl who was in front of us.

All in all it was a pretty good night.