John Waters

Early, early one morning in May, a Baltimore woman coming home from a workout stopped at Charles Street and Northern Parkway to help a panhandler. Or so she thought. She ended up launching the mustachioed one on a looney cross-country hitchhiking venture, in which the crafty filmmaker was ferried by strangers from Maryland to California, helped along by a pastor's wife, an indie band, a married couple and a right-wing politician ( Brett Bidle, pictured). We'll get the details someday in a book Waters plans to call "Carsick."

December 20, 2012