American Cinema Editors (ACE) will honor director John Waters with the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award, recognizing an artist who exemplifies distinguished achievement in the art and business of film. As previously announced, ACE will also bestow career achievement honors to film editors Kate Amend, ACE and Walter Murch, ACE for their outstanding career contributions to film editing, and Stephen Lovejoy, ACE will receive the ACE Heritage Award in recognition of his unwavering commitment to advancing the image of the film editor, cultivating respect for the editing profession, and tireless dedication to the American Cinema Editors. All honors will be presented at the 74th annual ACE Eddie Awards on March 3 at UCLA’s Royce Hall where winners will also be announced in 13 categories recognizing the best film editing achievements of the year.
“John Waters isn’t just a filmmaking icon,” stated ACE president Kevin Tent, ACE, “He’s a punk rock poet of the picture palace. With each frame, he challenges norms, skewers societal hypocrisies, and explodes cinematic expectations with subversive wit and audacious style. His films crackle with an anarchic energy that’s as intoxicating as it is hilarious and poignant. ACE is proud to celebrate his singular artistic vision that has entertained the hell out of generations.”
Past recipients of the Golden Eddie include Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Kathleen Kennedy, Christopher Nolan, Lauren Shuler Donner, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Guillermo del Toro, Vince Gilligan, J.J. Abrams, Nancy Meyers, Martin Scorsese, Norman Jewison, Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas, and the Sundance Institute.
Nominations for the 74th Annual ACE Eddie Awards will be announced Jan. 25.
Waters has written and directed 16 movies including Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, Hairspray, Cry Baby, Serial Mom and A Dirty Shame. Both Pink Flamingos and Hairspray have been added to the U.S. Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.
He is the author of 10 books: "Shock Value," "Crackpot," "Pink Flamingos and Other Trash," "Hairspray," "Female Trouble and Multiple Maniacs, Art: A Sex Book" (co-written with Bruce Hainley), "Role Models," "Carsick," "Make Trouble," "Mr. Know-It-All," and in May 2022 his first novel, "Liarmouth: A Feel Bad Romance." In 2022 "Liarmouth" was optioned by Village Roadshow Pictures for Waters to write and direct the movie.
Two music compilation CDs have been released by New Line Records, “A John Waters Christmas” (2004) followed up by “A Date with John Waters” (2007). In 2017 Third Man Records released a 7” EP of Waters reading “Make Trouble” and in 2021 Sub Pop records distributed his “Prayer to Pasolini” as part of its Singles Club. Waters’ audiobooks “Carsick” and “Mr. Know-It-All” were both nominated for Grammy Awards in the Best-Spoken Word Album category. Sub Pop Records released the 7” single, “It’s in the Book”, in 2022, Waters’ cover of a 1952 hit comedy recording by Johnny Standley.
Waters is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Additionally, he is a past member of the The Andy Warhol Foundation Board and the Wexner Center International Arts Advisory Council. He is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Baltimore Museum of Art as well as the Maryland Film Festival Board and has been a key advisor to the Provincetown International Film Festival since it began in 1999, the same year Waters was honored as the first recipient of PIFF’s “Filmmaker on the Edge” award.
In September 2014 Film Society of Lincoln Center honored Waters’ filmmaking with a 10- day celebration entitled “Fifty Years of John Waters: How Much Can You Take?” featuring a complete retrospective of his work. The next year the British Film Institute also honored his contribution to cinema with its own program called “The Complete Films of John Waters…Every Goddam One of Them”. In 2015, Waters was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the same by the Maryland Institute College of Arts (MICA) in May 2016, as well as two by School of Visual Arts (SVA), in 2020 and 2022. The French Minister of Culture bestowed the rank of Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters to Waters in 2015. In February 2017 Waters was honored with the Writers Guild of America East’s Ian McLellan Hunter Award for his body of work as a writer in motion pictures. In September 2023, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened “John Waters: Pope of Trash,” the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to John Waters’ contributions to cinema, and he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Waters is a photographer whose work has been shown in galleries all over the world. In 2011 he was selected as a juror for the Venice Biennale. He’s performed his one man spoken-word lectures entitled “End of the World,” “This Filthy World,” “False Negative,” “Devil’s Advocate” or “Make Trouble” and his annual Christmas show, “A John Waters Christmas,” at colleges, museums, film festivals and comedy clubs around the world. Waters has appeared in many motion pictures and television shows including Something Wild, Sweet and Lowdown, Seed of Chucky, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. The Simpsons, Feud, The Blacklist, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Search Party. He also was one of the faces of a Nike campaign in 2019 and the Saint Laurent fall/winter 2020 menswear campaign in 2020, and Waters was featured with Mink Stole in the 2022 Calvin Klein Pride campaign.
