Cookie Mueller

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Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller (March 4, 1949 – November 10, 1989) was an American actress, writer and Dreamlander, who starred in many of filmmaker John Waters' early films, including Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living.

Early life

Cookie Mueller grew up with her parents in the Baltimore suburbs in a house near forests, a mental hospital and railroad tracks. She was nicknamed Cookie as a baby: "Somehow I got the name Cookie before I could walk. It didn't matter to me, they could call me whatever they wanted." During her childhood Cookie, along with her parents, brother and sister, took roadtrips across the country:

"In 1959, with eyes the same size, I got to see some of America travelling in the old green Plymouth with my parents, who couldn't stand each other, and my brother and sister, who loved everyone. I remember the Erie canal on a dismal day, the Maine coastline in a storm, Georgia willow trees in the rain, and the Luray caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where the stalagmites and -tites were poorly lit."

Mueller had many pets as a child, including many turtles, one she named Fidel, a dog named Jip, snakes, tadpoles and even opossums which turned out to be rats. Cookie began her penchant for writing at age 11, when she self-wrote a 321 paged book about the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1830. She stapled it together and wrapped it in butcher paper and Saran wrap and placed in on the shelves of the library in its proper order. The book was never seen again.

With a swath of pivotal events precipitating in Mueller's life, such as her brother dying at age 14 from climbing a dead tree which collapsed on him in the driveway, she went on to pursue her writing and in high school hung out with the alternative "hippie" crowd. One of Mueller's idiosyncrasies as a teen was that she constantly dyed her hair: "Whenever you're depressed, just change your hair color," she [her mother] always told me, years later, when I was a teenager: I was never denied a bottle of hair bleach or dye. In my closet there weren't many clothes, but there were tons of bottles."

She took a small job at a Baltimore men's department store and saved up enough funds to head to Haight-Ashbury where she continued the hippie lifestyle.

"Hippy Vagabond Days"

Mueller travelled across the country, living with groups of vagrants here and there and settled in places such as Provincetown, British Columbia, San Francisco, Pennsylvania, Jamaica and Italy across a broad travelling tenure. It was during 1969 that Mueller first met film director John Waters at a premiere for his film Mondo Trasho. Mueller subsequently moved on to starring in Waters' films, underscoring her major role as "Cookie the Spy" in Pink Flamingos. After her underground film status had faded, she moved to New York and put down stakes as a writer/journalist and columnist.

Writing, credits, relationships

In his book, "Shock Value," John Waters credits Mueller with the title for his 1974 film, Female Trouble. When she was hospitalized for pelvic inflammatory disease in Provincetown, Massachusetts Waters and Mink Stole visited Mueller. "What happened, Cook?" Waters asked. "Just a little female trouble, hon," she replied.

From 1976 up until her death, she remained a close friend, artistic collaborator and photographic subject of Nan Goldin. Goldin created and widely exhibited The Cookie Portfolio 1976-1989, a series of 15 portraits, after Mueller's death. One photograph, "Cookie and Vittorio's Wedding" (1986) documents Mueller's wedding to Vittorio Scarpati, an Italian artist and jewellery designer from Naples who had died of AIDS just seven weeks before Mueller. Both of them were heroin addicts, a contributing cause for AIDS.

Mueller wrote the health column 'Ask Dr. Mueller' for the East Village Eye and later served as art critic for Details. Mueller's books, Ask Doctor Mueller (1996), a collection of her writings, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black (1990), a memoire, and Garden of Ashes (Hanuman Books, 1990) are cult classics. Other works include the novella Fan Mail, Frank Letters and Crank Calls, (Hanuman Books, 1988) and several collections of short prose.

Death

She died from AIDS-related causes on November 10, 1989 in New York City, aged 40. Her ashes are interred on the beach near Provincetown; in the flowerbed of the Church of St. Luke in the fields in Greenwich Village; alongside those of Vitorrio and her dog Beauty in the Scarpati family crypt in Sorrento; under the statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corvocado in Rio de Janeiro; in the south Bronx; and in the holy water of the Ganges. She was survived by her son, Max Wolfe Mueller, who appeared in Pink Flamingos.

The last of Mueller's quotes, an elegy of her intent and existence, was written shortly before her death:

"Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free." -Cookie Mueller

Filmography

References

• Mueller, Cookie, "Ask Dr. Mueller", High Risk Books, London, 1996, ISBN 978-1852423315

External links

• Cookie Mueller at the Internet Movie Database
• Courage, Bread and Roses: A Tribute to Cookie Mueller
• Cookie Mueller at Find a Grave