When teenage degenerate Dawn Davenport awakens on Christmas morning to discover her parents didn’t buy her the cha-cha heels she wanted, total anarchy ensues: She cusses her parents out, stomps on their presents, and knocks the Christmas tree onto her mother, who pleads, “Please, Dawn! Not on Christmas!”
That’s how John Waters’s 1974 cult classic Female Trouble begins. Despite the Davenport family’s miserable Christmas, it’s actually Waters’s favorite holiday. He loves it so much that every yuletide season, he tours the country with his hysterical one-man show, A John Waters Christmas.
Though beloved for writing and directing campy films like the trailblazing Pink Flamingos (1972) and the more commercially successful Hairspray (1988), Waters has also written six books, most recently Make Trouble, based on his 2015 commencement address at Rhode Island School of Design.