* (restored)
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Filmography:
Variety (1983)
Smithereens (1982)
Tempest (1982)
Downtown 81 (1981)
Polyester (1981)
Subway Riders (1981)
Underground U.S.A. (1980)
Seduction of Patrick (1979)
Final Reward (1978)
Desperate Living (1977)
Female Trouble (1974)
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Multiple Maniacs (1970)
Books and Stories:
1. How To Get Rid Of Pimples: The Actual Cure
3. Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls
4. Putti’s Pudding (w/ Vittorio Scarpati)
5. Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black
6. Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings Of Cookie Mueller (anthology)
Tribute Sites:
The Cookie Mueller Fan Club
https://www.facebook.com/groups/CookieMueller/
Courage, Bread and Roses: A Tribute to Cookie Mueller
http://www3.sympatico.ca/brooksdr/jw/cookie/main.htm
Quotes About Cookie:
1) “Cookie Mueller was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch doctor, an art hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl.” — John Waters, 1996
2) “The first time I saw Cookie she was having a yard sale on her front porch in Provincetown. She was a cross between a Tobacco Road outlaw and a Hollywood B-Girl, the most fabulous woman I’d ever seen….
Cookie was a social light, a diva, a beauty, my idol. Over the years she became a writer, a critic, my best friend, my sister. We lived throught the peaks and the dread together in Provincetown, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Positano.
… in 1988 Cookie got sick. …in August 1989 the effects of AIDS had robbed her of her voice… On September 14th her husband Vittorio Scarpati died from an AIDS-related illness and after that Cookie kind of gave up. She died on November 10th in the hospice of the Cabrini Medical Center.” — Nan Goldin, 1990
3) Any time she walked out the door, her life was a story. I mean, everything she did. I mean, she’d say ‘I’m going to go get the milk’ and something lunatic would happen to her. So her life was like that all the time.
Cookie in her own Words / Quotes and Passages from her stories:
1) Yeah, life is tough in the real world. Actors wait on tables, ballet dancers work as topless go-go girls, artists wash dishes, and that’s not even the worst part. Someday you might bring your garbage on the subway, someday you might even shit in your own bank. (“Another Boring Day”)
2) A few weeks later, I accidentally got a job working two days a week as a housekeeper. The house was spacious and warm with all kinds of stuff to make work easier…. The only real problem was Wendy, the woman who lived there with her husband, Chris.
She was there most of the time, so I couldn’t totally relax when I cleaned. She stayed in bed though, all day, lying in her flab…
I didn’t blame her for lying in bed. She couldn’t walk. She was crippled from an accident in Mexico when her husband Chris haphazardly ran over her legs with the Volkswagon camper.
I felt sorry for her. Had it been me I would have divorced and sued this Chris person. He kept insisting that the reason she couldn’t walk was a psychological disturbance. He sounded like that misogynist idiot Sigmund Freud….
I cleaned around her.
One day I found some wild photos of Wendy and Chris. I think one of them left them out especially for me. There was a picture of Wendy spread-eagled, inserting huge bowling pins into her vagina. There was a picture of Chris trying to stick silver balls up his ass. There were pictures of the two of them and some other girl. She was tied up and they were all over her….
Because of these snapshots, I was prepared for anything, and sure enough, the day after… Wendy called me up to her bedroom….
“Cookie,” she said, “you might as well know that Chris and I aren’t getting along very well.”
“Oh?”
“I think it’s my legs. They’re not really pretty anymore…. Anyway, I want you to help us put our marriage back together again. You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, sure, whatever I can do to help,” I said, and thought oh no.
“Well, I’d like you to come over here tonight, around 2 in the morning, and get in bed with Chris. I’ll be sitting in that chair over there, and I’ll just watch. We’ll play it by ear, okay?”
“I don’t know, Wendy…” I said. Wild horses couldn’t drag me into bed with that husband of hers.
“Please, it would really help out,” she said.
I went back downstairs and stood there for a couple of minutes. Was she joking? I hated threesomes. Somebody was always getting left out. I didn’t want to fuck her husband, I didn’t want to fuck her. I didn’t want to be an upstairs maid!
…I went back upstairs.
“Look, I don’t think that’s my cup of tea,” I said.
“I thought you were wild,” she said.
Why does everyone think I’m so wild? I’m not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.
“You’re supposed to be so wild,” she almost screamed.
“Well, I’m all finished for today,” I changed the subject. “I relined the stove with tin foil, and…”
She sighed, “Oh, go away.”
I did. I went home and didn’t go back… Too bad. I needed that money for Christmas. I wanted to buy everybody something special. Oh well.
(“Provincetown—1970”)
3) “The worst part is there’s no flattery involved in rape; I mean, it doesn’t much matter what the females look like; it doesn’t even seem to matter either if they have four legs instead of two. Dairy farmers have raped their own cows even.
‘It’s great to fuck a cow,’ they say, ‘you can fit everything in… the balls… everything.’
So I guess it just depends on your genital plumbing as to how you see the following story.
(“Abduction & Rape—Highway 31, Elkton, Maryland, 1969”)
4) “I accidentally burned a friend’s house to the ground once. The friend didn’t approve.”
(“British Columbia—1972)
5) “Aren’t you supposed to do some scene where you get fucked by a chicken?” Divine asked me.
“Fucked by a real chicken?” Mink asked me.
“How?” asked Bonnie.
“In the script it says Crackers cuts off the head of a chicken and he fucks me with the stump,” I said.
“Oh that sounds easy,” Divine said.
“Yeah, that’s pretty easy compared with what you have to do,” I said to Divine.
“Chickens scratch pretty bad,” David said. “Even without their heads.”
“Bird wounds can be dangerous,” Van said.
I thought about Hitchcock’s The Birds, but those were seagulls and I knew just how powerful seagulls could be. Compared to them, chickens were jellyfish.
“I’m not worried about some little scratches,” I said.
(“Pink Flamingos”)
6) I met all the German film stars, people I’d always wanted to have beers with: Udo Kier, Bruno Ganz, Klaus Kinski, and the German filmmakers (Fassbinder, Herzog, Schroeder). I was in Aryan heaven.
(“The Berlin Film Festival—1981”)
7) Biography and Education: I received most of my education traveling and working various inane jobs such as: clothing designer, racehorse hot walker, drug dealer, go-go dancer, underground film actress (otherwise known as independent feature actress), playwright, theater director, performance artist, house cleaner, fish packer, credit clerk, barmaid, sailor, high seas cook, film script doctor, herbal therapist, unwed welfare mother, film extra, leg model, watercolorist, and briefly as a bar mitzvah entertainer, although I’m not even Jewish.
I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely. I wrote a novel when I was twelve and put it in cardboard and Saran Wrap, took it to the library and put it on the shelves in the correct alphabetical order. When I was eighteen, I left college for Haight-Ashbury and wound up a drug casualty, not unlike a bag lady. I learned a lot in the mental hospital, where I had shock therapy that didn’t work except for eradicating from my memory all the contents from novels I had read in the last twelve years.
A few of the films I appeared in have attained a cult status and I am told that I have a fan club in Los Angeles.
I have a twelve-year old son, who I believe has taught me the most.
I used to write poetry, but now I feel that poetry is archaic unless written specifically as song lyrics. I believe that my short stories are novels for people with short attention spans.
I live with my son in Manhattan and pay the rent as a journalist.
(“Cookie Mueller, born 1949, Baltimore, Maryland”)
Photos:
Clips
Stumbling Onto Wildness: Cookie Mueller on Film
Sylvia Miles, Ronee Blakley, Cookie Mueller at The Chelsea Hotel
Cookie meets Edie the Egglady
cookie mueller “secrets of the skinny”
COOKIE- a new film by Liz Rosenfeld
Justin Vivian Bond Reads Cookie Mueller at Low Life
Dreamlander: The Legend of Cookie Mueller (Opening Sequence)
People remember actress and writer Cookie Mueller
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p.s. Hey. ** julian, Hooray for other adventures. No, I don’t think I believe in ghosts. I was sure I saw one when I was about 15, but later I remembered how stoned I was when I ‘saw’ it. That’s about it for me and ghosts. Yeah, but of course even if I’d tried to get into the VU gig, I’m virtually positive they wouldn’t have admitted a kid like me. ** scunnard, Hey. Yeah, I’m not anti-AI at all, but I think if Carlsen’s stuff was AI-based and not ‘handmade’ it would be a whole lot less interesting. Sure, I’d be happy and more if you want use something from my gif novel work. Just let me know what you’d like when the time comes, and we can sort it out. They’ve been exhibited in various configurations before. Kier just used part of one in his recent gallery show. Thanks! ** Misanthrope, There were people setting off fireworks on my street until dawn’s early light. Yes, I remember the dangerous-y post football match ‘celebrations’ in Manchester. Walking home was more dodging than walking. Dude, just go to the doctor and get the whole problematic shebang looked at in one swoop. No? ** _Black_Acrylic, Fangoria! Me too. ** Carsten, Hi. Yes, it’s a helluva conundrum. Dude, obviously, teach if that gig comes through. You are greatly needed. Luck galore with the submission. ** Bernard Welt, Hello there, B-man. Holy fuck, the gall bladder eruption — if it erupted, I don’t how gall bladders go bad technically. What shoots one’s gall bladder to hell? In your case, at least, do you know? Excellent suggestions to Carsten, thank you. I should’ve remembered Schneebaum. I reminder you talking him back when. And ‘Eating Raoul’, of course, duh. Yeah, weird about Ed White. He did hang on for a very long time after his multiple heart attacks and considering his girth. Yeah, all those guys are gone, it’s so strange. I don’t how often you were in NYC back then, but I remember the days when John Ashbery would invite Brad and Donald and Tim and me to parties, and there would be Barthelme and Denby and Merrill and Ed and David Kalstone and on and on just right there drinking their drinks, all nice and talkative. Lucky us. Padgett’s bio of Dick Gallup is really nice. I’m reading it right now. Small scars are the coolest. I hadn’t thought of sciatica, but eek, yes. I don’t mind aging so much but it’s so relentless. Big love to you, maestro and buddy. Carsten responded to you if you didn’t see it. ** Sypha, Haha, Sam Smith is pretty inexcusable but a mere drop in her bucket. ** pancakeIan, Glad you dug the work. Yes, the kind of creepy eroticism is a big part of why it’s as interesting as it is, I think. Seaside, that’s the name. I know of Celebration, but I’ve never peeped at it. I will, thanks. Yeah, luckily the poetry canon as officially okayed by schools contains some actual awesome ones, although they don’t help you understand why they’re particularly awesome, I guess because they think all the poets they teach are just pieces of the canon. I remember thinking ‘meh’ about Emily Dickinson in school, and it wasn’t until years later I figured out why she’s so incredible. ** Bill, I’ve yet to see anything AI-generated, at least that I can remember, that had any depth or mystery and subtext whatsoever. But I supposed they’ll figure out a way how to fake that too. So many people are pointing to ‘A Boy’s Own Story’ as a major reason why they became comfortable with their gayness. It’s interesting. At the time, my main reaction was basically, ‘oh, Ed’s stopped being experimental’. ** Hugo, I was definitely intrigued by the evidence of your friend’s game. And wished to play it. And maybe hopefully will someday. ‘A girl died of a stroke after trying to flirt with me’: I immediately see a fictional construct in that idea’s future, but I’m weird. I knew DFW a bit, and I knew people who were close to him, and that now accepted interpretation of his leaving ‘TPK’ out because he wanted it to be published is pretty spurious. People who knew him see it as him displaying his failure and a reason why he did what he did. Who knows, though, ultimately. The Leve thing is a mystery. But he did drop the finished mss. off at his publisher then go straight home and kill himself. ‘The Sluts’ partly took so long because there was no internet as it currently exists when I started it, and it took a few years for that context to become the context of the novel. I literally had to badger the author of ‘Wrong’ to even mention ‘God Jr.’ in the book. He didn’t think it fit into his anarchist/ punk/ queer overview and didn’t want to include it. So he tossed in that brief mention at the last minute under duress. Two novels at the same time, wow, nice. I think I couldn’t do that, but then, yeah, I worked on ‘The Sluts’ while I was also writing ‘Guide’, ‘Period’ and ‘My Loose Thread’. Anything you want to say about the novels? Or the long poem? No pressure. I always find it really hard to talk about what I’m working on until it’s close to finished. ** Steve, I knew Robin Zander’s son was a singer, but interesting that there’s impending evidence. Curious. I personally don’t think any singer could top Robin Zander, but maybe the common DNA will help. Glad things are moving along with the estate at least. I haven’t seen ‘L’Amour’ in many decades. How does it hold up? ** Steeqhen, Hi. I’m happy his stuff broke through with you. Nice story/image about the snails. I had dinner with friends the other night, and an ant got stuck in some melted/stiffened cheese, and I spent about half of the dinner carefully freeing it from the goop and transferring it to the ground, where it probably got stepped on with minutes, but at least I tried. Cool: ‘About Ed’. Using the blog as personal life/thoughts outlayer helpmate makes theoretical sense, yes. ** HaRpEr //, Hi! I’m sorry you’ve been feeling down, but I’m glad you’re back. What a great Berrigan quote. Wow. Feel better, pal, and do feel free to talk here about whatever would help. ** Nicholas., There you are. I think I detect a new tone, it’s true. And the encoding as well. Not the code(s) themselves, don’t worry. Well, it’s morning, so the last drink I drank was coffee. Enjoy the pleasurably lengthy walk(s). xo. ** Uday, I can imagine Nina Simone’s voice evolving those pix. When I was a kid I saw ladybug and thought it looked candy-like delicious, and, oh my god, it so wasn’t. Ed White story … When I was an up and coming young writer and made my first trip to NYC as a writer to do a reading, Ed held a dinner party for me, and he told me he would invite anyone I wanted to come, and I said John Ashbery, who I revered and had never met, and, sure enough, Ashbery was there at the dinner, and he was drunk on arrival and got incredibly more drunk during the dinner and had to be carried down the stairs and put in a taxi, but I met John Ashbery, which was huge, and that was extremely kind of Ed to have done that. ** Okay. I have revived a very old guest-post concerning the wondrous Cookie Mueller for you today, and please fully enjoy yourselves. See you tomorrow.
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