His favorite childhood memory was seeing real blood on the seat of a wrecked car when visiting a scrap yard and fantasizing about lethal car crashes.
As a youth he would watch adult-only films at the local drive-in, with binoculars.
He is obsessed with true-crime and regularly attends gory trials all over the US, where he often sees the same faces in the public galleries.
Brother of Steve Waters.
Subscribes to more than 80 magazines. Also goes to see just about every movie that comes out and hardly ever rents movies.
Has taught classes at the Patuxent Institution, a correctional facility located halfway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The classes are meant as rehabilitation therapy for convicted killers, in which they learn to write about their violent fantasies rather than act them out.
Waters has always been very gracious in acknowledging his creative influences, such as Russ Meyer, Otto Preminger, Liberace, William Castle, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Jayne Mansfield, Robert Bresson, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
As a youth, he made as much as $50 a week doing puppet shows for the neighborhood children, and was often hired to entertain at birthday parties. He stated that many of his puppet shows were inspired by the gimmick-heavy films of William Castle.
Bears such a strong resemblance to actor Steve Buscemi that as a joke, John Waters sent out cards with a photo of Buscemi made up to look like Waters.
Big fan of 1950s director Douglas Sirk and actually got to meet him while in Europe.
Grew his thin pencil-line mustache in honor of Little Richard.
Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995
Waters originally wanted a man named "Mr. Ray" to be the narrator of Pink Flamingos (1972). Mr. Ray was famous for his hair-weave radio ads and for his Baltimore accent. Mr. Ray refused, so Waters recorded the voice-over himself, imitating Mr. Ray's voice as "Mr. J."
There is a special section of his immense book collection devoted to Liberace.
John Waters Detailed Biography
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