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In 2009, Waters advocated the parole of former Manson family member Leslie Van Houten. He devotes a chapter to Van Houten in his book Role Models (2010).[51][52][53]

Leslie Van Houten, the youngest member of Charles Manson’s cult, has been granted parole and could be released from prison if she is allowed to do so by California Gov. Jerry Brown. One of the people hoping for that release is famed transgressive filmmaker John Waters, who formed an unlikely friendship with Van Houten more than 30 years ago.

Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 1 of 5
09/03/2009 06:12 am ET Updated May 25, 2011
I have a really good friend who was convicted of killing two innocent people when she was nineteen years old on a horrible night of 1969 cult madness. Her name is Leslie Van Houten and I think you would like her as much as I do. She was one of those notorious “Manson girls” who shaved their heads, carved X’s in their foreheads and laughed, joked, and sang their way through the courthouse straight to death row without the slightest trace of remorse forty years ago. Leslie is hardly a “Manson girl” today. Sixty years old, she looks back from prison on her involvement in the La Bianca murders (the night after the Tate massacre) in utter horror, shame, and guilt and takes full responsibility for her part in the crimes. I think it’s time to parole her.

I am guilty, too. Guilty of using the Manson murders in a jokey, smart-ass way in my earlier films without the slightest feeling for the victims’ families or the lives of the brainwashed Manson killer kids who were also victims in this sad and terrible case. I became obsessed by the Sharon Tate murders from the day I read about them on the front page of the New York Times in 1969 as I worked behind the counter of the Provincetown Book Shop. Later, when the cops finally caught the hippy killers and I actually saw their photos (“Arrest Weirdo in Tate Murders”, screamed the New York Daily News headlines) I almost went into cardiac arrest. God! The Manson Family looked just like my friends at the time!

When the film first premiered, the reaction it received from some quarters was pretty hostile. How did you feel about that?

The film was controversial even before there was a rough cut. My NYU mentor George Stony wanted me to "get the point of view of the victims," and put in a title screen condemning pedophilia. But I wanted to film a movie about the perpetrators and let the audience make their own judgment. So when Stony and another professor saw the final cut, they asked that their names be removed from the credits. The premiere was a circus, with demonstrators and pedophiles and Straight Kids USA, a conservative group, all in full force. CNN and the four networks walked into the theater in the middle of the screening, and John Waters shouted, "Get out! It's only a movie!" In fact, there were demonstrators in front of theaters in several cities. Even if they'd never seen it, people wanted the film off the screens. The mere fact that pedophiles were allowed to state their position was enough to drive them mad. But in the end, the demonstrators only managed to call more attention to the movie. Although it was banned in certain states and countries, it played theatrically in 15 cities in the U.S.

Pink Flamingos is a 1972 American exploitation comedy film directed, written, produced, narrated, filmed, and edited by John Waters.[3]

Displaying the tagline "An exercise in poor taste", Pink Flamingos is notorious for its "outrageousness", nudity, profanity, and "pursuit of frivolity, scatology, sensationology [sic] and skewed epistemology."[4] It features a "number of increasingly revolting scenes" that center on exhibitionism, voyeurism, sodomy, masturbation, gluttony, vomiting, rape, incest, murder, cannibalism, castration, foot fetishism, and concludes, to the accompaniment of "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?", with Divine's consumption of dog feces (coprophagia) — "The real thing!" narrator Waters assures us. The film is considered a preliminary exponent of abject art.[5][6]

The film, at first semi-clandestine, has received a warm reception from film critics and the LGBT community, and, despite being banned in several countries, became a cult film in subsequent decades.

The film is a loose adaptation of the 1785 book (first published in 1904) The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade, set during World War II, and was Pasolini's final film, being released three weeks after his murder.

The film focuses on four wealthy, corrupt Italian libertines in the time of the fascist Republic of Salò (1943–1945). The libertines kidnap 18 teenagers and subject them to four months of extreme violence, sadism, and sexual and psychological torture.

Director John Waters said, "Salo is a beautiful film...it uses obscenity in an intelligent way...and it's about the pornography of power."[59]

Why You Should Watch Filth

John Waters defends the creation and consumption of obscene films, and recommends some of his personal favorites.

franticbornemisza
#johnwaters #franticbornemisza #evahesse and anybody worth their socks in Zurich, all at Eva's for a "welcome back to Switzerland party!"
Thank you so much! I had a great great time #happiness #friends #art #Tba21