JOHN WATERS AT TORONTO'S BELL LIGHTBOX FOR "SALO" SCREENING

John Waters & Mr. Will-W.

Now that's an honour! It's not every day that someone as remarkable as Filmmaker/Author/Actor John Waters graces our City. The 64 year-old native of Baltimore arrived a few days ago and has made the most of his time in Toronto, promoting as many aspects of his celebrated career as possible. 

During his stay here, he has appeared on CBC's George Stroumboulopoulous Tonight and Jian Ghomeshi's Q Live. The focus of his visit though was the International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront Centre, where Waters did a reading of his latest book Role Models on Friday night.   Being a longtime favourite of the Toronto International Film Festival, Waters popped by its new headquarters, the Bell Lightbox, to introduce a screening tonight of controversial film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom.  He was even seen about this afternoon Thrift Store Shopping in Kensington Market.

No stranger to shock and controversy, Waters has long been pushing the envelope with cult classic films like Hairspray, Pink Flamingos and Cry-Baby. Never conventional, he also has devoted much of his time to visiting Prisoners as an advocate of Rehabilitation and this is the basis of his new book.

I caught Waters on the way out of his Bell Lightbox appearance tonight along with his Handler and unexpectedly, both of them complimented me on my style sense.  Blush.  Kindly Waters put on his thick-framed glasses to sign an autograph or two for fans-in-waiting asking jokingly, "So are these going to wind up on eBay tomorrow?", before removing them again to pose for a photo with me.  At the urging of TIFF organizers, he then went over to the set-up Media Wall and posed for a few more photos, holding a sign that read Salo.  I pretty much got a Photo Shoot out of it all and I loved it!  

Check out some photos of Waters I took below earlier:

(Photo credit: Mr. Will-W.)