ReFocus: The Films of John Waters
Published on 30. September 2025
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-1-3995-4390-3 (ISBN)
Description
The first collected volume of work on cult film director and icon John Waters, which offers a comprehensive study of his work as an important filmmaker and cultural force. Includes chapters covering important themes in Waters's work, stylistic tendencies, his relationship to the art world, and interviews reflecting on the impact of Waters's films on his collaborators and audience. Also features a new retrospective interview with Waters in which he reflects on his career and films.
Reviews / Votes
"The unique and often outlandish films of John Waters, including Pink Flamingos, Cry-Baby and Pecker, require a specifically greased lens if they are to be critically examined. Michelle Moore and Brian Brems have marshalled a stellar troupe of contributors who dismantle Waters' films from a variety of angles, from Waters' 'film family' and identity (including his own), to tropes such as comedy, celebrity culture, trash and melodrama. This is a highly enjoyable and smart book that combines intellectual rigor with the necessary flavour and smell that befits Waters' oeuvre. * Ernest Mathijs, University of British Columbia, author of Cult Cinema, and 100 Cult Films. *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
35 B&W
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-4390-3 (9781399543903)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Michelle E. Moore is Professor of English at the College of Dupage, where she teaches courses in film studies and literature. She is the author of Chicago and the Making of American Modernism: Cather, Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald in Conflict (2019) and coeditor of Refocus: The Films of Paul Schrader (2020). She has published articles in Faulkner Studies, Cather Studies, and Literature/Film Quarterly, in addition to contributing chapters to Modernism in Wonderland: Legacies of Lewis Carroll, Rape in Art Cinema, and Hemingway in the Digital Age. Brian Brems is a Professor of English at the College of DuPage, where he teaches film studies. He is the author of The Films of Walter Hill: Another Time, Another Place (2022) and the co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader (2020), with other publications appearing in several edited collections on Westerns and horror films. He is also a regular contributor to a variety of online publications, including Vague Visages.
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Meeting John Waters
Michelle E. Moore
Part I. Authorial Identity, Aesthetics, and Style
1. Multiple Melodramas: Melodramatic Influences and Their Uses in the Cinema of John Waters
Jamie Hook
2. John Waters in the 1980s: Publication, Performance, and the Redefinition of Authorial Identity
Matt Connolly
3. The Bloodless 1990s: From Serial Mom to Wes Craven's Scream
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Canela Ailen Rodriguez Fontao
4. Artsy Fartsy: Pecker and the Guilty Pleasures of John Waters' "Bad" Art Habits
Kristen Galvin
5. "Full of Grace": John Waters as Auteur with the Semiautobiographical Film Pecker
John P. Bray
6. "Technique Is Failed Style": John Waters, Style, and Cecil B. Demented
Brian Brems
7. Little Movies: John Waters and the Visual Arts
Nicholas Morgan
Part II. Collaboration, Subversion, and Queering the Family
8. Once Upon A Time in Dreamland: 2015 Recollections and Reflections
Chris Holmlund
9. Family Values: Charles Manson and John Waters' Cult Cinema
Kate J. Russell
10. Queer Moms, Trash Aesthetics, and Suburban Filth: The Portrayal of Maternal Abject in John Waters' Cinema
Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh
11. Fame! Fortune! Glamour! John Waters Remembers Midcentury TV
Hollis Griffin
12. An Audience with John Waters
Jane Giles
Part III. Interview
13. Interview with John Waters Conducted by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems at his Home in Baltimore, November 2 2023
Filmography
Selected Writing by John Waters
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Meeting John Waters
Michelle E. Moore
Part I. Authorial Identity, Aesthetics, and Style
1. Multiple Melodramas: Melodramatic Influences and Their Uses in the Cinema of John Waters
Jamie Hook
2. John Waters in the 1980s: Publication, Performance, and the Redefinition of Authorial Identity
Matt Connolly
3. The Bloodless 1990s: From Serial Mom to Wes Craven's Scream
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Canela Ailen Rodriguez Fontao
4. Artsy Fartsy: Pecker and the Guilty Pleasures of John Waters' "Bad" Art Habits
Kristen Galvin
5. "Full of Grace": John Waters as Auteur with the Semiautobiographical Film Pecker
John P. Bray
6. "Technique Is Failed Style": John Waters, Style, and Cecil B. Demented
Brian Brems
7. Little Movies: John Waters and the Visual Arts
Nicholas Morgan
Part II. Collaboration, Subversion, and Queering the Family
8. Once Upon A Time in Dreamland: 2015 Recollections and Reflections
Chris Holmlund
9. Family Values: Charles Manson and John Waters' Cult Cinema
Kate J. Russell
10. Queer Moms, Trash Aesthetics, and Suburban Filth: The Portrayal of Maternal Abject in John Waters' Cinema
Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh
11. Fame! Fortune! Glamour! John Waters Remembers Midcentury TV
Hollis Griffin
12. An Audience with John Waters
Jane Giles
Part III. Interview
13. Interview with John Waters Conducted by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems at his Home in Baltimore, November 2 2023
Filmography
Selected Writing by John Waters
Bibliography
Index