John Waters will perform his new one-man show, A John Waters CHRISTMAS, to B.B. Kings at 8pm on Tuesday, December 22.
John Waters is most famous for the original film "Hairspray," which was turned into the blockbuster Tony Award-winning musical, and his film "Cry-Baby," which was also turned into a popular musical that played Broadway in 2008.
John Waters' A John Waters CHRISTMAS is a "vaudeville-style" production that celebrates his filmmaking career with a provocative monologue that takes the audience inside extremes of the contemporary art world and Waters' fascination with true crime, trash, and exploitation films.
Waters,' who early on got attention for "making art from sleaze," began his rise to fame in the 1970s and early '80s with trash films featuring his regular troupe of actors known as Dreamlanders-among them Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Edith Massey-often committing cinematic crimes. Starting with "Desperate Living" (1977), Waters began casting real-life convicted criminals (Liz Renay, Patricia Hearst) and infamous people (Traci Lords, a former porn star). Only with "Hairspray" (1988) did he begin a transition into mainstream filmmaking, which introduced Ricki Lake and earned a modest gross of $8 million domestically. In 2002, "Hairspray" was adapted to a long-running Broadway musical, which itself was adapted to a hit musical film which earned more than $200 million worldwide. After the crossover success of the original film version of "Hairspray," Waters' films began featuring familiar actors and celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Edward Furlong, Melanie Griffith, Chris Isaak, Johnny Knoxville, Martha Plimpton, Christina Ricci, Lili Taylor, Kathleen Turner and Tracey Ullman. His many other films include "Pink Flamingos," "Female Trouble," "Polyester," "Serial Mom," "Cecil B. Demented," and "A Dirty Shame."
For more information, visit www.bbkingblues.com.
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