John Waters’ “Carsick” to be Released Tomorrow! Book Signing and Release Party at Atomic Books 6/12, 7pm!

JW Book Signing Legendary director and MFF Board Member John Waters will be releasing his seventh book tomorrow, “Carsick” (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $26), which chronicles his cross-country hitchhiking adventure from Baltimore to San Francisco. Click here to pre-purchase your very own copy from Atomic Books – signed by John Waters!

Also, be sure to check out the “Carsick” book release party and signing at Atomic Books (located at 3620 Falls Road in Hampden) on Thursday, June 12th at 7pm! Click here for event information.

“Carsick” Synopsis:
A cross-country hitchhiking journey with America’s most beloved weirdo.

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads “I’m Not Psycho,” he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?

Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker’s unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette.

Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, “Carsick” is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion-and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.

“In the director John Waters’s amusing “Carsick”…he tells us up front and quite candidly that his idea to hitchhike from one of his homes in Baltimore to another of his homes in San Francisco was dreamed up as a stunt. What else would we expect from the creator of HAIRSPRAY? Of course, you have to be John Waters to pull this off. The celebrity hanging around rain-sodden truck stops sticking out his thumb is simultaneously the premise, the joke and the tale. So be it….In the end, “Carsick” becomes a portrait not just of America’s desolate freeway nodes – though they’re brilliantly evoked – but of American fame itself.”

–Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times, 5/30/14 (click here for the complete review)

“If you saw a disheveled, clearly despondent 66-year-old man hitchhiking, would you pick him up?Would you pick him up if you realized he was John Waters?

Two springs ago, Baltimore’s most unrepentant degenerate set out on a mission of discovery. Beginning on Charles Street, not far from his home, Waters would hitchhike all the way to his San Francisco condo, following Interstate 70 most of way. There would be little in the way of advance planning; he’d be relying totally on his thumb and the kindness of strangers.”

–Chris Kaltenbach, Baltimore Sun, 5/30/14 (click here for the complete review and interview with John Waters)