The actor: Few actors are more intimately associated with the films of John Waters than Mink Stole. In the late '60s and '70s, Stole played a series of uptight villain roles generally pitting her against Divine, most famously in 1972's Pink Flamingoes. As Waters' films got bigger, Stole's roles got smaller, but she continued to appear in each one. Over the past 15 years, Stole has solidified her status as a camp icon by appearing in a number of gay independent films, including Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds, which was recently released on DVD. Stole also writes an advice column for the Baltimore City Paper.
Mondo Trasho (1969)—"Homeless Woman/Asylum Inmate/Snob #1"
Mink Stole: That was our jump from 8mm into 16mm black and white, no-sync sound. Mondo Trasho was a lot of fun. I think I played several roles in it. I'm probably best known for my topless tap dance. [Laughs.]
The A.V. Club: What do you remember about your topless tap dance?
MS: John actually got me exactly one lesson. I got one tap lesson to learn how to do that, which obviously, if you look at the movie, I didn't learn very well. It was fun.
AVC: When you're topless, people probably aren't obsessed with what your feet are doing.
MS: They weren't really looking at my feet. They can't really tell. Plus, my eyes were completely bugging out of my head, I was wearing a rosary. It was fun.
AVC: The Internet Movie Database says your three characters are Homeless Woman, Asylum Inmate, and Snob #1.
MS: Oh yes, and at the very end of the movie, as Mary Vivian Pearce is walking around with duck feet, David Lochary's mother and I are standing on the corner. Since it's not sync sound, we were saying things like, "17, 30, 29." We were just mouthing words. David and I later went into the recording studio—or we should have been so lucky. We went into John's room with a tape recorder, and started saying whatever obscenities we said. I honestly don't remember. [Laughs.]
AVC: You actually got arrested at some point, filming Mondo Trasho?
MS: Yes. We were doing sort of a guerilla film day, and we were filming the scene where Divine hallucinates a naked hitchhiker. In order for a person to appear naked on film, the person actually has to be naked in reality. John had chosen the campus of Johns Hopkins University without permission. So even though Mark was fully clothed and he had a robe on between takes, we were spotted by some graduate students who were highly offended, and they called the police. When we escaped from the campus police, they called the city police. We were in a 1959 red El Dorado Cadillac, so were sort of conspicuous. [Laughs.] We were picked up by the city police. The guy Mark, who had played the hitchhiker, was taken away and arrested. The rest of us were picked up the following day. We got off. The judge thought he had Tropic Of Cancer, he thought he had cracked this major porno. [Laughs.] We were just kids making this movie.
AVC: That must have been sort of a bonding experience, getting arrested together.
MS: Yeah, kind of. We were already bonded. I'm not sorry it happened, except years and years and years later, when I wanted to get my real-estate license, it was held up. They only write down that you've been arrested, they don't write down the disposition of the case, which was dismissed, and they didn't have the records from 1967 in Baltimore. [Laughs.] It held me up with the FBI for a while.
Multiple Maniacs (1970)—"Mink/Cavalcade Patron"
MS: Well, I played the religious whore. I had a couple little roles in that. I played a straight woman at the Cavalcade Of Perversion, and then I played… I can't remember. I don't think that was "Drunk On The Street." You know, in the early films, I played a lot of bit parts as well as whatever my main role was. The religious whore, that was really fun. We had such a good time doing that, because John and I had both grown up Catholic. We were violently anti-Catholic, so the desecration of the church was really fun. [Laughs.] I couldn't see, I didn't have contacts at the time. My vision's really bad, so as I come out of the confessional, I'm counting pews, because I can't see where Divine is. I have to actually count to find the pew that I'm supposed to turn into to go do my seduction of Divine. After we did the fake rosary job, John said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute," and came out and he had a candy bar called Fudge that he had wiped all over the rosary. [Laughs.] Just his little coup de grace.
AVC: You'll never get into heaven now.
MS: Oh, I'm not expecting to. [Laughs.] I haven't been expecting to get into heaven for a long time. Actually, you know, I really want to go there, which I don't think you really do. If there's a heaven, I would probably go. I've actually a very nice person.
Pink Flamingos (1972)—"Connie Marbles"
MS: Pink Flamingos was fun, but it was really cold. It was our leap. We did the progression. We started out with 8mm, then we went to 16mm with Mondo Trasho, 16mm black-and-white no-sync sound, then the leap into Multiple Maniacs, which was 16mm black-and-white sync sound, then Pink Flamingos was color! This was a huge step forward. We're practically the history of American film, starting with 8mm. That was our big jump into color. Naturally, we took advantage of the color, with our hair colors, and the clothes that we wore. Fun with color.
AVC: Did you have any idea that it would become a cult sensation?
MS: You know, there's no way to know that. No, of course not. People ask me that all the time, and no, you can't possibly know. We knew we were doing something that was going to shock people, gross people out, and make people laugh, because we thought it was very funny. We all thought it was hysterical. At the same time, I can know something is hysterical, and also know that a mother giving a blowjob to her son is going to shock people. I'm tough to shock, and I was already accustomed to John's humor, but even then, we would sometimes get the script pages and go, "God, I can't believe we're doing this."
AVC: What shocked you?
MS: The incest shocked me. Not so shocked that I wouldn't do it, but it was shocking in that it was funny. There was a recognition of the fact that it was going to be shocking. And, you know, eating dog shit. I wouldn't have done it, so that was shocking. I still can't watch it. It makes me gag. It's not that I sit around, "Yawn, I think I'll watch four of my old movies." I don't do that. [Laughs.]
AVC: You don't watch them on a perpetual loop?
MS: I just recycle my three fan letters. [Laughs.] I'm not really like that, but every now and then, there'll be a screening that I'm talked into going to, or paid to go to. But I can't watch that scene. It makes me gag.
AVC: It's sort of become the signature scene of the film.
MS: It's almost too bad, because the movie, even without it, would have been shocking. It pushes it way over the edge, but even without it, it would have been very shocking. It makes me wonder what then would have been the center scene. I'm not sure. That is the question that people continually ask, if it was real. People still ask that, even though if you watch the movie, there is no cut.
AVC: It isn't like you can do CGI or complicated computer effects.
MS: It was the '70s. It was a long time ago, they didn't have CGI. Back in those days, we didn't have Xerox. John handwrote, and I still have somewhere, a page of handwritten script from Multiple Maniacs. He wrote them by hand. We didn't have copy machines. You kids these days, you have no idea. [Laughs.] If you wanted to have something printed, you had to have it offset printed. You couldn't just type it up and print it out. We didn't have that. Things have changed enormously.
Female Trouble (1974)—"Taffy Davenport"
MS: I think that it's actually the best of John's early films, I think it's the masterpiece of his early years. I'm not sure that the masterpiece of his later years has been made. I mean, I love Serial Mom a lot.
Polyester (1981)—"Sandra Sullivan"
MS: I can't remember, was Polyester 35mm? It might have been.
AVC: Well, it was the legendary Odorama.
MS: Odorama had nothing to do with the filming of it. That was all post. That had no effect on me whatsoever. We didn't have a big "Two" flashing in front of us when we were on camera. [Laughs.] I think the Odorama is very clever. Polyester was just shown in San Francisco, the 13th or 14th. People had their Odorama cards, and it was fun. People get a kick out of the Odorama. It all smells the same. One smells pretty, and the rest smell like farts.
AVC: Polyester reached a bigger audience than some of your earlier films.
MS: It was the first movie that we allowed our parents to see. That was a big milestone, because the movies before that are "Parents not allowed." Which is fine. There's no reason for my mother to ever see Pink Flamingos. She wouldn't like it, and it would just upset her, so why? I certainly wouldn't want her to see me giving Divine a rosary job in a church. She's a good Catholic woman. So, yeah, Polyester certainly reached a wider audience. We also had our first big movie star.
AVC: Tab Hunter?
MS: Yeah, Tab Hunter, who was perfectly lovely to work with, and John talks to this day about how brave he was, because, you know, he kissed a man. This was not done. I forget when we made this. The '70s, I guess.
AVC: Well, it was released in '81.
MS: So we must have made it in '80. I used to live my life and know "This was the year we did this, and that was the year we did that." It's all become sort of a blur, now.
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