What do you think?
Rate this book
Multiple Maniacs: A Screenplay
A very John Waters traveling show, replete with freaks, robbery, murder, sex, blasphemy, and savage shellfish—a lurid, surreal celebration of filth and trash. Listen as Waters himself acts out each role!
The Cavalcade of Perversion is a traveling show run by Lady Divine and a crew of her fellow degenerates. They have to drag suburban housewives into each vile, tasteless performance—only to rob them at gunpoint at the end of each show. When Divine gets bored of the routine and graduates to murdering the attendees one day, it sets her off on a rampage, hunting down her cheating lover, Mr. David, and unleashing a chain of frenzy, a truly blasphemous sex act, and a surreal violation by a giant lobster. Multiple Maniacs is John Waters’ paean to the glories of trash. As Lady Divine chants as she marches proudly into downtown Baltimore at the end of the movie, “I’m a maniac! A maniac that cannot be cured! O Divine, I am Di-vine!”
Multiple Maniacs is available in audio here, on its own, or in the The John Waters Screenplay Collection where you can also listen to Waters narrate this iconic film along with five of his other masterpieces, including Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Flamingos Forever, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Cavalcade of Perversion is a traveling show run by Lady Divine and a crew of her fellow degenerates. They have to drag suburban housewives into each vile, tasteless performance—only to rob them at gunpoint at the end of each show. When Divine gets bored of the routine and graduates to murdering the attendees one day, it sets her off on a rampage, hunting down her cheating lover, Mr. David, and unleashing a chain of frenzy, a truly blasphemous sex act, and a surreal violation by a giant lobster. Multiple Maniacs is John Waters’ paean to the glories of trash. As Lady Divine chants as she marches proudly into downtown Baltimore at the end of the movie, “I’m a maniac! A maniac that cannot be cured! O Divine, I am Di-vine!”
Multiple Maniacs is available in audio here, on its own, or in the The John Waters Screenplay Collection where you can also listen to Waters narrate this iconic film along with five of his other masterpieces, including Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Flamingos Forever, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Audible Audio
Published October 21, 2025
2 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
John Waters
101 books1,483 followersJohn Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, personality, visual artist and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films: Pink Flamingos and Hairspray. He is recognizable by his pencil-thin moustache.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 21, 2025
Thanks to Macmillan Audio, the amazing John Waters (author), and Libro.fm for providing a free advance audiobook of Multiple Maniacs: a Screenplay expertly read by John Waters himself. Getting free stuff does not influence my reviews in any way.
This is the screenplay that pretty much started it all from Waters, with Lady Divine and The Cavalcade of Perversion. Every trigger warning you can think of applies to this. I am not sure what else to say because that covers it, I think. Enjoy! I know I did.
This is the screenplay that pretty much started it all from Waters, with Lady Divine and The Cavalcade of Perversion. Every trigger warning you can think of applies to this. I am not sure what else to say because that covers it, I think. Enjoy! I know I did.
February 4, 2026
As part of the annual challenge of reading different formats and going through all of John Waters' screenplays. I have more appreciation of the film as the script allowed a better understanding of the "Stations of the Cross" scene.
November 23, 2025
lobstaaaa
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews