Out of the hundreds of people who stood in line to get a book autographed by John Waters this month was a woman who has possibly been the focus of more international media attention than the filmmaker has.

The former Lorena Bobbitt, who now goes by Lorena Gallo, was one of the last people in line to meet Waters during a May 21 book signing event at Atomic Books in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Waters is well known for writing 10 books and directing 16 movies, including the 1998 comedy/drama Pecker. He just released three books that each contain the screenplay for a movie he wrote: Pink Flamingos (1972), Desperate Living (1977), and Flamingos Forever, a never-filmed sequel to Pink Flamingos, written in 1983.

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Gallo received a torrent of press coverage in 1993 when she used a kitchen knife to cut off the penis of her then-husband John Wayne Bobbitt, while he was asleep in bed, and tossed it out of a car window. His penis was found in a field across from a 7-Eleven convenience store and successfully surgically reattached by a team of doctors in a nine-and-a-half hour operation. The incident and its aftermath were covered around the world. In many ways, it’s a real-life tale of ‘desperate living’ and how one woman reacted.

A native of Ecuador, Gallo alleged that her husband, a bar bouncer and former U. S. Marine whom she married in 1989, had raped and abused her for years. He was charged with rape after the knife incident but was acquitted and later starred in two pornographic films, John Wayne Bobbit Uncut and Frankenpenis, also known as John Wayne Bobbitt’s Frankenpenis.    

In 1994, his wife was acquitted of assault by reason of insanity and went on to start a foundation for domestic abuse victims and their children. The couple divorced in 1995. She dropped the last name Bobbitt and reverted to using her maiden name, Gallo.

The case brought attention to the issue of domestic violence and marital rape. Anti-domestic violence advocates and some feminist groups supported Gallo, citing the abuse she suffered. The media frenzy surrounding the incident resulted in a national debate about domestic abuse, but also a slew of jokes, songs, and slogans, and the name Bobbitt became part of the American lexicon.

Media personality Howard Stern had John Wayne Bobbitt on his 1993 New Year’s Eve special and raised $250,000 to help cover the costs of his reattachment surgery. The feminist artist Mary Beth Edelson created a life-size sculpture of Lorena Bobbitt, reimagining her as the warrior goddess Kali. Oxford English Dictionary added ‘Bobbitt’ as a transitive verb, defining it as “to cut off the penis of (a man, esp. a husband or lover), typically as an act of revenge for perceived sexual grievances.”

References to the Bobbitt incident have bobbed up in numerous movies and TV shows, including David Fincher’s Fight Club, the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers, and multiple episodes of the adult cartoon series The Family Guy. Jordan Peele produced a docu-series entitled Lorena. The Lifetime channel aired I Was Lorena Bobbitt as part of its “Ripped from the Headlines” film series, with Dani Montalvo starring as Lorena and Gallo as executive producer. Singers ranging from “Weird Al” Yankovic (“Headline News”) and Lizzo (“Grrrls”) to the Canadian hardcore punk bank SNFU (“Bobbitt”) have mentioned her in songs.

Waters’ three screenplays have been published twice before, and both times they were collected in one book. Waters worked with Picador, a division of Macmillan Publishing Group, to bring them out in a new format this year, giving each screenplay its own separate volume, with covers incorporating paintings by artist Wayne Hollowell. Three more John Waters books will come out this fall with Hollowell covers, screenplays for Multiple Maniacs (1970); Female Trouble (1974), and Hairspray (1988).

The book launch event in Baltimore drew several hundred John Waters fans who stood in line in the rain to get a chance to meet the director and get books signed by him. It was the only book-signing event that Waters, 79, has scheduled for the first three screenplay books, and it lasted four hours.

Gallo, 57, who lives in Northern Virginia, drove to Baltimore with a companion and stood in line along with everyone else to meet the filmmaker. Sporting a hooded black jacket, black pants, and black-and-white high-top sneakers, she purchased the screenplays for Pink Flamingos and Flamingos Forever and posed for a photo with the author. “I’m a great fan” of Waters, she said afterwards, adding that she already has tickets to his holiday-themed spoken-word show next December, A John Waters Christmas.

The non-profit organization that Gallo founded in 2018 is based in Haymarket, Virginia, and called The Lorena Gallo Foundation. Based in Prince William County, Virginia, its goal is “to educate and mobilize the public about violence and sexual assault against women and to ensure that services are available to survivors and their families.”

According to the foundation’s website, she’s also available for speaking engagements to tell her story of “overcoming trauma to reclaim her voice as an advocate for survivors.” She’s been featured on Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, The View, Inside Edition, and many other shows.

“After a desperate act of self-defense, Lorena Gallo Bobbitt found herself at the center of one of the most decade’s most lurid news spectacles,” her foundation’s website states. “Sexism and sensationalism drowned out the real story behind the headlines: one of a shy young immigrant woman who endured years of horrific domestic violence and whose escape triggered two criminal trials and unrelenting public scrutiny.”

Through this experience, the website continues, “Lorena has transformed herself into a champion for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Since the 1990s, she has worked as a facilitator and advocate to support survivors in the Washington, D. C. region and Northern Virginia area. Dismayed by the continued prevalence of domestic violence decades after she escaped her own abusive marriage, Lorena made the courageous decision to return to the public eye. Lorena has reclaimed her well-known but often misunderstood story of trauma, survival and resilience to give voice to survivors who struggle in silence.”

“Silence is not an option because silence keeps victims trapped,” Gallo warns on her website. “Survivors need to get support in order to escape, and to be heard in order to heal. To end the cycle of abuse, we must find the courage to break our own silence.”

Waters, who filmed Pecker in the same neighborhood where Atomic Books is located, said he enjoyed meeting and talking to Gallo. “She was lovely,” he said. “I’m flattered she came all the way from Virginia.”

Gallo’s trip to Baltimore impressed the store’s co-owner, Benn Ray.

“She is super sweet,” he wrote on social media. “I had to stop myself from gushing, ‘You’re a goddamn f**king hero and I’m sorry for the way the country treated you.’”

A woman who commented about the encounter on social media said she thinks Gallo made an impression on Waters.

“I can’t imagine there’s many people he’s that intrigued to meet at this point,” the commenter said of Waters, “but I imagine she makes the cut.”

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