Latest / Half the Picture / #30 - MINK STOLE

Transcript

#30 - MINK STOLE · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  I had to call one of the biggest movie stars,
• 0:03
  and she was at that time one of the biggest movie stars.
• 0:06
  I got to call her a pick for her.
• 0:08
  You can say that.
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  She thought it was great.
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  So, Mick, welcome to Half the Picture.
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  How are you doing today?
• 0:26
  I am great.
• 0:27
  Thank you so much for having me here.
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  It's our pleasure.
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  We're, you know, we're such big fans of yours,
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  and like, you know, I was saying to you before we started,
• 0:34
  but you're my favourite Dreamlander of John Waters,
• 0:37
  kind of famous Dreamlander troupe, you know.
• 0:39
  Thank you, that's very kind.
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  All the amazing films you've made, Pink from Ingos,
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  and Femal Trouble, and Hairspray,
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  serial mom that you did with John,
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  and but I'm a cheerleader as well.
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  You have such a strong, indelible mark on cinema,
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  so it really is just a pleasure to have you in.
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  And am I right in thinking that this is your first time
• 0:58
  in London in decades?
• 0:59
  It is my first time in London in decades.
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  I was here in 1967 for two days.
• 1:04
  Wow.
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  Which barely counts, because I barely remember it.
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  So, yeah, I would consider this my first trip.
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  Wow, I mean, very different from 1967.
• 1:14
  I'm guessing this is it.
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  I don't remember.
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  And no, I don't think it is very different.
• 1:17
  London is old.
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  So, you know, Los Angeles will change greatly in a few decades.
• 1:24
  London doesn't change so much.
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  I think it looks a lot here like it did in 1800.
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  So, not everywhere, obviously, but much of where I've been.
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  Well, that's a sense of history, you know.
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  It's like, I think that's what I hear sometimes when,
• 1:39
  like, you know, Americans come to the UK,
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  like the UK, you know, the buildings are so old
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  and the cities don't change.
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  They don't have that drastic sort of change to play.
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  So, it's quite, it's quite, it's very different.
• 1:50
  50 years old is old in Los Angeles.
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  That's, that's tear down already and get rid of it old
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  in Los Angeles.
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  Here 50 years old is yesterday.
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  And what have you been up to since you arrived?
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  Oh, we've been really busy.
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  The first day we went to the Tate,
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  which was wonderful.
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  We saw the Tate.
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  We saw these amazing jokametti statues at the Tate.
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  The second day we went to the British Museum,
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  which was also spectacular.
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  Tomorrow I'm going to the Victoria and Albert.
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  Yesterday, which was Easter, we went to St. Paul's
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  for their Easter afternoon.
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  What do they call it?
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  Even so. Even so.
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  Which was really kind of, I mean, I actually was surprised
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  because I grew up Catholic, you know,
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  and my Catholicism as a child was very medieval
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  and very ceremonial.
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  You know, masses were still in Latin
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  and everything was very, very, very pompous and theatrical.
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  So when the choir processed in,
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  I actually, a little tear in my eye kind of remembering
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  the little, devout little Catholic child that I was.
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  By the middle of the ceremony, I was completely over it.
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  I mean, it didn't last.
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  I still enjoyed the music.
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  So I remember you saying once about your Catholic upbringing
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  that like you were, by the time you were a teenager,
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  you were more or less over.
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  I was done.
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  You were done of it.
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  I was done, yeah.
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  I was done and I was angry.
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  And why were you?
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  Catholicism, as the Catholicism that I experienced as a child,
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  which may be very different from today's Catholicism.
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  I mean, I know that it's very different.
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  The emphasis was on sin.
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  So all they wanted you to do was confess to how bad you had been.
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  And that was just the emphasis was on sin
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  and you're going to hell and you can't do this
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  and you can't do that.
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  And if you do this or that,
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  I mean, I could have gone to hell
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  for eating a piece of bacon on a Friday by mistake.
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  I mean, if I had been hit by a bus
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  after eating a piece of bacon, I would have gone to hell.
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  I think that's a bit much.
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  Just a little bit.
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  A little bit tough.
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  They have let that go.
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  Times have changed.
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  Times have changed.
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  Yeah.
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  And as I say, some of the movies that I mentioned at the start
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  that you've done, some of the ones with John Waters
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  like Mold Pullmaniacs, really, because John was Catholic too.
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  John grew up Catholic as well, yes.
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  And am I right?
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  Am I right in thinking that he gave you the name, Mink Stoll?
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  He did.
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  Yes.
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  So tell me about that.
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  Well, my name is Nancy Stoll.
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  That's the name I was born with.
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  With Stolls spelled the two Ls, not an LE.
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  And when we made our first movie together,
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  which was called Roman Candles, which we made,
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  I think the winter of 66, 67.
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  I never liked Nancy Stoll as a name.
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  It's two.
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  There's a double sibling.
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  And it always annoyed me.
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  So I asked him to give me a new name.
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  Now, you have to remember, this was the era of Warhol.
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  This was the superstars.
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  It was Hollywood law, and it was ultraviolet.
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  It was Viva superstar.
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  So I asked him to give me a new name,
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  and he gave me the name Mink Stoll, the precious Jew hyphen EL.
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  So it was Mink Stoll, the precious Jewel.
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  And that was my credit for Roman Candles.
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  After that, we dropped the precious Jewel.
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  It was just a bit much.
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  But he started introducing me to people as Mink,
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  and people started calling me that.
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  And it just stuck.
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  I think if I had known that for the rest of my life,
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  I would have a name that was a politically incorrect fashion
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  now.
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  I might not have kept it.
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  I might have changed it to something else or let it go.
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  But I'm kind of stuck with it now, and I'm OK with it.
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  I like it.
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  Do you say you identify more as Mink than Nancy now then?
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  Everybody calls me Mink.
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  The only people that call me Nancy are salespeople
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  and flight attendants.
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  I mean, nobody calls me.
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  Only people that don't know me call me Nancy.
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  Fair enough.
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  And with John Waters then, because, as I say,
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  I say, perhaps, you're most famous movies are with John.
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  Yes, absolutely.
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  Yeah, Pinkframing goes female trouble,
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  multiple maniacs, Hesprey, serial mom,
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  which is a favorite of mine.
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  I mean, the list is on.
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  I love serial mom.
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  I love all of the movies.
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  Of the original ones, though, I do think female trouble
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  is my favorite of the early films.
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  And serial mom is my favorite of the later films.
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  That's two great ones.
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  And you, because you play Taffy in female trouble, right?
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  And I do.
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  Yeah, your favorite character, the ones you played,
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  am I right in saying?
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  I loved Taffy.
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  I related to Taffy, because even though our childhood
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  were very different, I am the fifth of 10 children.
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  Taffy was an only child.
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  But Taffy, I always thought Taffy was an unhappy child,
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  just looking for some love and attention
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  from a relatively uncaring parent.
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  And as a child from a large family,
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  parental attention was in scarce supply.
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  So I was always looking for more attention than was actually
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  would have been my fair share under the circumstances.
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  But your fair share, when you're a child,
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  doesn't really matter.
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  You just want more.
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  So, and I was also in my family, one of my sisters
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  was the artist.
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  Another of my sisters was the smart one.
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  You know, I mean, there were, and I was the brat.
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  So I never thought I was a brat.
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  I just thought I was unhappy.
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  But this is why I related to it.
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  So strongly with Taffy, I felt that she
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  was absolutely misunderstood.
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  And you put, and Taffy's divines daughter in the film.
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  Yes.
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  Yes.
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  And Divine was one of your co-stars across so many of those movies.
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  Divine was wonderful to work with.
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  Divine was really terrific.
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  And I always felt challenged by it,
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  because Divine was so big visually
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  that I had to really be present in order to hold my own.
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  But Divine was wonderful because he was, and I say he,
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  because he referred to himself as he.
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  He was a wonderfully generous actor.
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  He never tried to pull focus.
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  He never tried to upstage.
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  He always paid perfect attention to whoever
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  was in the scene with him.
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  So it was really lovely to work with him.
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  And of course, both of us, we always came ready.
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  We always knew our lines.
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  So we were prepared.
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  And one of the things that used to get on my nerves a lot
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  was when people would call us unprofessional.
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  And I think there's a difference between unprofessional
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  and untrained.
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  We were definitely untrained.
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  But we were very professional.
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  We came to work ready.
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  We didn't fool around.
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  We had a good time, but there was room for a laugh or two
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  on the set.
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  But we weren't drinking and taking drugs and fooling around.
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  We were absolutely there to work.
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  And I think we did a good job.
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  Well, yeah, I'd say so.
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  The proof is there on screen.
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  And because I've heard you say that before about how
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  there were sort of labels of amateurism thrown at the movies
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  that you made with John.
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  But actually, you guys, like I say, you guys had the scripts.
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  You guys had to memorize the amount of prep that
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  went into those movies that you guys had to do.
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  We did all of our scenes in the early movies.
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  We did all of our scenes in master shots.
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  We had several pages of script that
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  had to be memorized from beginning to end
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  because you didn't want to be the one who three pages
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  in forgot a line.
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  Because then you'd have to start over.
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  Film was expensive.
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  I mean, the budget for Pink flamingos was $12,000,
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  which even in 1971 was not a lot of money.
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  And a lot of that money went to film stock.
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  So wasting film was the biggest crime we could commit on set.
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  So we didn't.
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  We knew our lines.
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  Otherwise, John would get mad.
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  Well, I don't know that he would get angry,
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  but there was a look.
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  He had a look, a patient, you know,
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  passive-aggressive patient look that none of us wanted to see.
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  Because you have to start at the top again.
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  We have to start at the top.
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  There was no coverage.
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  No cutaways.
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  I don't think we did cutaways until hairspray.
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  I could be wrong.
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  I haven't looked at every movie in a long time.
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  But I know in hairspray, there are a lot of them
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  because my caricature was used for them all but.
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  And then, and with John then, because as you say,
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  you've worked them so extensively over your career,
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  and I want to say you've been in every feature he's made.
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  Every feature.
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  Yeah.
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  Not every film.
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  He's made some shorts.
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  That's right.
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  And do you remember your first meeting of him?
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  Well, you know, I don't remember the exact moment,
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  but we did meet in Provincetown in the summer of 1966.
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  I had gone up there to visit my sister who was spending
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  the summer there.
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  And we were just walking down the street.
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  And she knew John vaguely from Baltimore.
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  Because I mean, we grew up in different neighborhoods, you know.
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  And so we wouldn't.
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  There was little way for us to have crossed paths actually
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  in Baltimore.
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  But she ran, we ran into him on the street and we introduced him.
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  You know, I've said this before, but one
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  would think that such a momentous meeting
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  would have some weather effect.
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  There would be thunder, there would be lightning,
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  where the sun would come out from behind a cloud
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  or something.
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  None of that happened.
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  And there was absolutely no way, of course,
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  of knowing that my meeting, this person
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  was going to have such an enormous impact on my life.
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  But I was attracted to him immediately.
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  He was incredibly smart.
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  You could see the intelligence just radiated from him.
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  He had long stringy hair.
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  He had, he was weighed four pounds.
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  He was really thin.
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  He probably weighed about 110 or 120 pounds.
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  And he was 6'1".
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  And of this long stringy hair, he did not have a mustache.
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  He was, yes, he was clean shaven.
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  The mustache came later.
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  Actually, it was my sister, the one that introduced me to him
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  who taught him, or actually introduced him
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  to the Maybelline eyebrow pencil, which
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  is how he has a mustache, but he enhances it.
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  And he still does it.
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  Maybelline.
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  With a Maybelline eyebrow pencil.
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  That's fantastic.
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  And so when you met him, you didn't think immediately
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  like, you didn't feel like a momentous meeting.
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  You just know there was no way to know that.
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  And I knew that I had met somebody interesting.
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  And of course, that was in the early part of the summer.
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  By the end of the summer, he and I and my sister
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  and several other people were all living together
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  in a kind of a treehouse fort at the edge of town.
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  This building no longer exists.
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  It's been torn down, burned down, I think, two years later.
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  But I knew that he was an extraordinary human.
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  I didn't realize that he was going
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  to have this amazing impact on my life.
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  But I did register to me that he was somebody different.
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  His intelligence, his take on the world,
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  he had more self-confidence than anybody
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  that I'd ever met.
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  And I found all of that incredibly magnetic and a little
• 13:53
  intimidating.
• 13:55
  Well, you say intimidating.
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  Because that leads quite nicely into my next question, which
• 13:58
  was, so the movies that you and John made together,
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  like pink flamingos and female trouble
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  and multiple maniacs and desperate living,
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  which have gone down in history and have left such a mark
• 14:07
  on cinema, the things you guys were getting away with
• 14:11
  in those films, I mean, divine, obviously eating the dog shit,
• 14:13
  the end of pink flamingos.
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  But some of the stuff you were getting away with too
• 14:16
  and David Locke were your co-star.
• 14:18
  I mean, were you ever intimidated
• 14:20
  when you were making these movies about what you had to do?
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  Actually, I wasn't.
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  Pink flamingos was my third or fourth movie with them.
• 14:31
  And before pink flamingos was multiple maniacs.
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  And I think that's probably one of the most shocking things
• 14:36
  I ever did on screen.
• 14:38
  Or off was the scene in the church with divine.
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  So the rosary job.
• 14:44
  The rosary job, yes.
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  We won't go into tremendous detail on it.
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  But the, so I was already, I was ignored.
• 14:53
  I was indoctrinated.
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  I was already accustomed to the fact
• 15:00
  that I was going to be asked to do something insane.
• 15:05
  And I always found it funny.
• 15:07
  I mean, I enjoyed this doing the scene in the church
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  because it was gave me a chance to sort of get my back
• 15:13
  at Catholicism.
• 15:16
  But I was just, we would get together.
• 15:20
  We would read the script.
• 15:23
  We would start movies without a completed script.
• 15:26
  I think we even started pink flamingos
• 15:28
  without a completed script.
• 15:29
  I mean, I knew, we all knew that divine was going to win.
• 15:34
  That the marbles were not going to come out on top of with this.
• 15:38
  But we didn't know exactly what was going to happen.
• 15:41
  And lots and lots of footage we shot
• 15:45
  didn't make it into the film.
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  But I just, we would get together, say, on a Tuesday night.
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  We would film on the weekends.
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  We'd get together on a Tuesday evening.
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  And we'd rehearse.
• 15:57
  And by rehearse, I mean, John would read everybody's parts
• 16:01
  in exactly the same tone of voice, heavily
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  inflected, lots of italics.
• 16:07
  And then we would, we would film it on the weekends.
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  So we would get together, we would, you know, we would read it.
• 16:13
  We would laugh.
• 16:14
  We all thought everything was salarious.
• 16:17
  And we were just fine with it.
• 16:22
  Nobody barked.
• 16:25
  And if people were going to bark, they
• 16:27
  didn't get asked to be in the next movie.
• 16:30
  And did you have many people bark?
• 16:32
  I think there were people who did.
• 16:34
  I think there were certainly people who did.
• 16:35
  I wasn't involved in the casting.
• 16:37
  So I don't know who didn't, who didn't.
• 16:40
  But it was all I know is I said, yes.
• 16:44
  And then I got to be in the next one.
• 16:46
  Yeah.
• 16:47
  And the next one after that, yes.
• 16:48
  Yeah.
• 16:48
  And it was you and the Dreamlanders, which, if anyone
• 16:52
  who doesn't know what the Dreamlanders were,
• 16:54
  would you mind telling us what he would
• 16:55
  and what the Dreamlanders were?
• 16:56
  Well, the Dreamlanders was the core of us.
• 17:00
  And it included, it included, you know,
• 17:04
  the actors, divine and Mary Bibby and Pierce and Cookie Mueller.
• 17:09
  And I would say, Chan Will Roy and David Lockery and me
• 17:13
  and Edith Massey.
• 17:15
  And then there was also Vincent Perrano, who did the sets
• 17:18
  and who did an amazing job on all the sets.
• 17:22
  And then there was Pat Moran, who helped with the casting.
• 17:25
  It was, you know, John's assistant producer
• 17:28
  or associate producer and his best friend.
• 17:31
  And that was Van Smith, who came in on Pink Flamingos
• 17:35
  and created Divine's amazing look.
• 17:40
  You know, the shaved head, the yellow hair,
• 17:42
  that incredible red dress, you know,
• 17:46
  the divine wears at the end.
• 17:48
  So there was a core.
• 17:52
  There was a core.
• 17:52
  And there were other people who came on later.
• 17:55
  I mean, I would consider Ricky Lake even a Dreamlander,
• 17:58
  even though she came later.
• 18:00
  But some people came in, they worked with us,
• 18:02
  and they became family.
• 18:03
  Other people came in, they worked with us,
• 18:04
  and we never saw them again.
• 18:08
  So, you know, I mean, it was,
• 18:10
  but it was the early core, a Susan Lowe,
• 18:14
  would be a Dreamlander.
• 18:15
  And if I'm forgetting a name, I'm sorry,
• 18:18
  because I might be.
• 18:20
  But yeah, but it was, it was those of us
• 18:22
  who kind of kept showing up.
• 18:24
  Yeah.
• 18:25
  And it was clear that you guys were all friends as well.
• 18:27
  Like you were friends.
• 18:28
  Yeah.
• 18:29
  We didn't spend every night together.
• 18:31
  We, you know, we didn't hang out constantly,
• 18:33
  but we did spend time together.
• 18:35
  And on the podcast recently,
• 18:36
  we've had a few different guests on
• 18:39
  from different disciplines of film.
• 18:40
  We've had film composers and film editors,
• 18:43
  and as well as actors and directors.
• 18:45
  And something I've been asking them is,
• 18:46
  what makes a good, you know, insert job here?
• 18:49
  So it, what makes a composer, what makes a good editor?
• 18:52
  And I guess like, what makes a good Dreamlander?
• 18:55
  A, knowing your lines, showing up on time,
• 18:58
  being willing to do whatever John asked.
• 19:02
  Those are the three main things, I think.
• 19:05
  And, and a good sense of humor,
• 19:08
  and a good sense, a good working ethic,
• 19:11
  and also being pleasant to be around.
• 19:14
  Nobody wants to be around somebody on a film set
• 19:17
  who's complaining all the time.
• 19:19
  And believe me, we had costs for complain.
• 19:21
  I mean, we never had food.
• 19:22
  We weren't fed.
• 19:24
  We didn't have food on the set until polyester.
• 19:27
  And we only had that because tab hunter was in it
• 19:30
  and he expected it.
• 19:31
  So, you know, I mean, there were,
• 19:33
  there were plenty of things that we could have complained about.
• 19:36
  Actually, I think I did bitch a little bit about my clothes
• 19:38
  all being ruined and pink flamingos.
• 19:41
  I provided my own wardrobe for that.
• 19:43
  And did my own makeup and hair.
• 19:45
  Yeah, well, speaking of which,
• 19:46
  the glasses that you're currently wearing,
• 19:47
  are they kind of like the Connie Marble?
• 19:49
  They're a little bit sweet nod.
• 19:51
  But the Connie Marble glasses were much more exaggerated.
• 19:54
  They're much more pointed.
• 19:56
  They were green and they have lots of rhinestones on them.
• 20:00
  Those glasses, by the way,
• 20:01
  are now in the permanent collection
• 20:03
  of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Museum.
• 20:07
  Wow.
• 20:08
  Yes, they had a major exhibit
• 20:12
  that ran for about a year of John Waters
• 20:14
  called the Pope of Trash.
• 20:16
  And I donated the glasses to the exhibit
• 20:19
  and then to the museum.
• 20:21
  That's extraordinary.
• 20:22
  Yes.
• 20:22
  That's extraordinary.
• 20:23
  It really is.
• 20:24
  Would you have thought back in 1972
• 20:26
  that pink flamingos would be,
• 20:27
  and the other films would be as celebrated as they are
• 20:30
  in the Library of Congress?
• 20:31
  No, absolutely not.
• 20:32
  And I'm actually, I mean, I've said this many times
• 20:35
  and I will say it forever, I'm glad we didn't.
• 20:38
  I'm glad I didn't.
• 20:39
  I think it would have made us self-conscious.
• 20:42
  And I think it would have made,
• 20:44
  it would have made me a nightmare.
• 20:46
  I would have been insufferable.
• 20:47
  Had I thought back then that people would still care
• 20:51
  about what we had done,
• 20:52
  about what we were doing 50 and more years on,
• 20:57
  I would have just been a conceit as little breath.
• 20:59
  I would have been awful.
• 21:00
  It would have been like, Taffy wasn't conceited.
• 21:04
  Taffy had strong will, but she wasn't conceited.
• 21:07
  She just needed love.
• 21:08
  She needed love, yes.
• 21:09
  Well, most conceited people do.
• 21:11
  But, you know, I think major conceit
• 21:14
  is generally a sign of insecurity.
• 21:16
  And, you know, so I think,
• 21:17
  no, I would have been insufferable.
• 21:19
  The only person who, I think John, nobody can predict the future.
• 21:25
  I think John was ready to be a big deal
• 21:28
  and divine was ready to be a big deal.
• 21:30
  Divine was ready to, I would not have been ready.
• 21:36
  And speaking of divine,
• 21:37
  I asked you earlier what your first memories were
• 21:40
  of meeting John.
• 21:41
  I mean, do you remember your first memories
• 21:43
  of meeting divine?
• 21:43
  Actually, I sort of do.
• 21:46
  I think if I'm remembering it correctly,
• 21:49
  I think it was a party and I think I was on LSD.
• 21:53
  But, you know, the person that I met was Glenn Milstead.
• 22:02
  Yes, of course, divine had not yet been created.
• 22:10
  And he was, Glenn Milstead that I met was very friendly
• 22:14
  and very sweet and charming.
• 22:19
  But I think we took a lot of acid back then.
• 22:22
  Never when we were working.
• 22:24
  But, you know, but often on weekends or, you know,
• 22:28
  on weekends when we weren't working.
• 22:30
  John just tell stories about how he would go watch
• 22:33
  Filini movies and ink my burger movies on acid.
• 22:36
  And he would bring Glenn with him.
• 22:38
  And he would just like, you know, what was going on?
• 22:42
  You know, all this, he's insane images.
• 22:44
  But I can only imagine Filini on acid is just 10 times better.
• 22:47
  Juliet of the Spirits is an acid trip without acid.
• 22:51
  That's right. Yeah, the technical.
• 22:53
  So, yeah.
• 22:54
  And also technical color.
• 22:56
  I mean, pink for me goes with the first movie you guys made in color.
• 22:59
  And John made sure you took full advantage of that with the hair.
• 23:02
  Absolutely. The hair was very important.
• 23:05
  I mean, divine had the yellow hair.
• 23:07
  And he wanted me to have bright red hair
• 23:10
  and he wanted David Lockery to have the blue hair.
• 23:12
  And it was David who actually came up with the way
• 23:16
  that we were able to do this.
• 23:19
  You couldn't just go to a drugstore and by manic panic.
• 23:22
  It didn't exist or go to a salon.
• 23:25
  So we had to invent them.
• 23:28
  And what David did was he bleached both of our hair out to total white.
• 23:34
  And then he took the blue felt out of a magic marker
• 23:39
  and used that to color his hair.
• 23:41
  And I used a accountant's ink.
• 23:45
  It was called quink.
• 23:47
  And a little blue bottle.
• 23:49
  And it was red ink that accountants would use for their debits in a ledger.
• 23:53
  And I would mix that with shampoo and wash my hair with it the night before we shot.
• 23:57
  And that was how I got that color.
• 24:00
  Because John says that like, you know,
• 24:03
  early 70s sort of Baltimore, you know, it's always quite conservative.
• 24:06
  Like you and David, when you were going, you know, in character,
• 24:08
  it couldn't really go out and like out and about as well.
• 24:11
  Well, we could, but we were stared at.
• 24:13
  So yeah, people, you know, because that amazing scene in pink finger
• 24:16
  is when devines walking down the street in the neighborhood
• 24:19
  and the girl can't help it's playing.
• 24:21
  And you know, people are just gulping.
• 24:23
  And that was just divine walking down the street
• 24:26
  and John in a car with a camera following alongside.
• 24:29
  I mean, those, those are not paid extras.
• 24:32
  Those are actually people on the street.
• 24:34
  Yeah.
• 24:35
  And didn't he want to say it didn't,
• 24:37
  was there an original idea in the script that at one point your hair was going to get set on fire?
• 24:41
  Yes, that was.
• 24:43
  And I actually had agreed to let him do it.
• 24:48
  And then I check it out.
• 24:51
  What he wanted was for me to sit in a chair.
• 24:54
  I think I've told this story before, but I was sitting in a chair
• 24:58
  and not react.
• 25:00
  There'd be one person over here with a match
• 25:02
  and another person over here with a bucket of water.
• 25:05
  And the line would be said, I forget,
• 25:07
  the divine would say, liar, liar hair on fire.
• 25:10
  And the match person would come and light it.
• 25:12
  And then the bucket person would come and put it out.
• 25:16
  Now, these were not professional.
• 25:18
  These would just be people who had nothing else to do that afternoon.
• 25:20
  And we're willing to play with us.
• 25:22
  So,
• 25:24
  but the thing that made me realize that I couldn't do it
• 25:28
  was that John wanted me to do it without reacting.
• 25:31
  Right.
• 25:33
  And then I also realized that it was the most amazingly dangerous thing I could think of.
• 25:39
  I mean, look what happened to Michael Jackson.
• 25:41
  I mean, it burnt his scalp.
• 25:43
  So, and not only that,
• 25:46
  when you think about pink flamingos,
• 25:48
  and you think about the ending of pink flamingos,
• 25:52
  by the time we got to the end of the movie,
• 25:54
  no one would remember,
• 25:56
  divine eight dog shit.
• 25:58
  No one would remember that my hair color on fire.
• 26:01
  Not only that, if it didn't work,
• 26:04
  I could be bald.
• 26:07
  And the scene would end up on the cutting room floor.
• 26:10
  It was a ridiculous thing.
• 26:12
  But I had agreed to it.
• 26:14
  So, you know, it was,
• 26:16
  then I had to say, by the way,
• 26:18
  I'm not doing that.
• 26:20
  That was not a comfortable conversation.
• 26:22
  It was John a little bit.
• 26:24
  Well, he'd been counting on it.
• 26:26
  You know, I mean, he'd written the scene and he was counting on it.
• 26:29
  He eventually understood that I was right.
• 26:33
  And that doing it was really not a good idea.
• 26:36
  You still got, I mean, you got your innings in there,
• 26:38
  and over at Riverways in that film,
• 26:40
  like, you know, the stuff that, you know,
• 26:42
  you and David sort of as contenders
• 26:44
  for the filthiest person alive.
• 26:46
  Well, I did almost set myself on fire.
• 26:49
  If you look at the scene where we're setting the trailer on fire,
• 26:53
  I pulled the torch back,
• 26:55
  and it almost catches my coat,
• 26:57
  which was made of some cheap synthetic material,
• 27:02
  so it could have gone right up.
• 27:05
  It didn't.
• 27:06
  It didn't.
• 27:07
  We were very lucky.
• 27:08
  Very lucky.
• 27:09
  And so many of the lines that you've had on screen
• 27:11
  through those films have kind of, as I say,
• 27:13
  been become part of the indelible impact and are so memorable.
• 27:16
  I mean, even though Divine was in many ways,
• 27:18
  kind of like taking center stage in those films,
• 27:20
  I mean, so many of like my favorite lines were the ones that you had.
• 27:24
  Like in Pixfengo,
• 27:25
  it was like, you know, when you're doing interview with Miss Sandstone.
• 27:27
  Oh, they're two kinds of people.
• 27:29
  Miss Sandstone, yes.
• 27:30
  Yes, yes.
• 27:31
  That's a great line.
• 27:32
  And just for no reason at all,
• 27:34
  I will tell you that Miss Sandstone,
• 27:36
  her name was Nancy Crystal.
• 27:37
  She was my very best friend when we were children.
• 27:40
  So you've wrapped us in that scene?
• 27:41
  Yes, the actress in the scene.
• 27:42
  Yes.
• 27:43
  When she and I were between the ages of six and eight,
• 27:45
  she lived right across the alley from me.
• 27:47
  You know, there was an alley that went between our two streets,
• 27:50
  and we would spend almost,
• 27:52
  we used to steal cigarettes from our dads when we were eight,
• 27:56
  or seven,
• 27:57
  and go off in the, you know,
• 27:59
  sneak down the street into the woods.
• 28:01
  We live near woods,
• 28:02
  sneak down into the woods and smoke cigarettes.
• 28:04
  I mean, we didn't inhale,
• 28:06
  but we smoked.
• 28:08
  We were very sophisticated, seven-year-olds.
• 28:10
  And so when Pixfengo's was coming around,
• 28:13
  you drafted her in, or John got her in.
• 28:15
  I think John got her in.
• 28:16
  She had moved away.
• 28:17
  So I had, you know, we had lost touch.
• 28:20
  Very, when we were eight,
• 28:22
  we lost touch.
• 28:23
  Our parents moved to Pekipsi,
• 28:25
  New York.
• 28:26
  So we had lost touch.
• 28:29
  But it was nice to see her again.
• 28:32
  And it was good to work with her.
• 28:33
  Yeah. Well, it's such a great scene.
• 28:35
  And in fact, there's this video on YouTube,
• 28:37
  which was actually the first time I would have seen any John Waters
• 28:40
  themed thing, or you,
• 28:42
  on screen.
• 28:43
  There's a video on YouTube,
• 28:44
  which is like the top hundred greatest movie insults of all time.
• 28:47
  And it's been up on YouTube for a long time.
• 28:49
  It's kind of from the early days of YouTube.
• 28:51
  And that line, your line is in there.
• 28:53
  Oh, good. I didn't know that.
• 28:54
  It's one of those.
• 28:55
  It's one of the hundred greatest.
• 28:56
  One of the hundred greatest.
• 28:57
  Do you know what number it is?
• 28:59
  It's the penultimate one.
• 29:00
  So that could be number two.
• 29:01
  Oh, okay.
• 29:02
  That could be number two.
• 29:03
  Yeah.
• 29:04
  It's either number two or ninety nine.
• 29:05
  Let's go with two.
• 29:06
  Let's go take it.
• 29:07
  And then is that your,
• 29:08
  is that one of your favorite lines?
• 29:09
  Do you have a favorite line from those fours?
• 29:11
  Yeah.
• 29:12
  Because another great one from a female trouble is,
• 29:14
  is it tap?
• 29:15
  No, tap.
• 29:16
  He says, yes.
• 29:17
  I wouldn't suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating
• 29:18
  that one oxygen in your balls.
• 29:19
  Yeah.
• 29:20
  Which is grammatically incorrect.
• 29:22
  It should be if I were suffocating.
• 29:24
  And there were oxygen in your balls.
• 29:26
  And my Catholic school.
• 29:28
  Nons would have probably been very upset with me
• 29:31
  for being grammatically incorrect,
• 29:33
  as well as for just saying,
• 29:34
  line inch.
• 29:35
  In the first place.
• 29:36
  But, um,
• 29:38
  I have used that line on occasion on the street
• 29:41
  to get rid of unwanted attention.
• 29:43
  Really?
• 29:44
  It works.
• 29:45
  Does it?
• 29:46
  Of course it does.
• 29:47
  It's like, huh?
• 29:49
  Never mind.
• 29:50
  I'm leaving.
• 29:51
  And these just like people,
• 29:53
  like, you know, like handing out leaflets or like.
• 29:55
  Well, no, it's not that.
• 29:56
  You know, just, you know, back in the day
• 29:59
  when I still got whistled at, you know,
• 30:01
  like, I used to be young.
• 30:03
  So, uh, you know,
• 30:05
  I could, you could use,
• 30:06
  it could use it for them.
• 30:07
  Or, hey, baby, you know,
• 30:09
  it works for that.
• 30:10
  Sure.
• 30:11
  Did you know that cat calling
• 30:12
  and sort of public sexual harassment
• 30:13
  has just been illegalized in the UK?
• 30:15
  Illegalized.
• 30:16
  Yeah, illegalized.
• 30:17
  Yes.
• 30:18
  Right.
• 30:19
  So you can't do any of that.
• 30:20
  You can't do it.
• 30:21
  Yeah.
• 30:22
  It's punished by the law.
• 30:23
  Yeah.
• 30:24
  It's a huge task force.
• 30:26
  Just out making sure that never happened.
• 30:29
  Well, hey, yeah, it can be reported.
• 30:31
  Okay.
• 30:32
  Well, it's good.
• 30:33
  I'm glad to hear that.
• 30:34
  No one will have to use that.
• 30:35
  No, I will ever have to say it here again.
• 30:37
  And then after female trouble,
• 30:40
  you made desperate living,
• 30:41
  which isn't,
• 30:42
  which is one of my personal favorites of those sort of early,
• 30:44
  uh, sort of trinity of trash,
• 30:46
  uh, movies that you made of John.
• 30:47
  And divine wasn't available for that as.
• 30:49
  Divine was here.
• 30:50
  Yeah, doing a stage show.
• 30:52
  Yes.
• 30:53
  Yeah.
• 30:54
  I think it was women behind bars.
• 30:55
  I'm not sure, but divine is here.
• 30:56
  Women behind bars.
• 30:57
  And then that meant that you kind of became the lead in many.
• 31:00
  Kind of.
• 31:01
  Yeah.
• 31:02
  What was that like?
• 31:03
  Well, we missed divine.
• 31:05
  Obviously.
• 31:06
  I mean, it felt strange to be on a movie set without him.
• 31:10
  Um, but it was great.
• 31:11
  I mean, I loved having my part.
• 31:13
  I really enjoyed being peggy gravel monster woman
• 31:18
  who was just mean for no reason.
• 31:21
  I mean, her bad temper was never explained.
• 31:24
  And her leg brace was never explained.
• 31:28
  Even to me.
• 31:29
  So, um, yeah, a peggy was fun.
• 31:33
  And I enjoyed peggy.
• 31:35
  And I enjoyed it.
• 31:36
  I mean, Susan Lowe did an amazing job as Rastlin Rita.
• 31:42
  You know, so I thought Susan did it.
• 31:44
  That's the part that divine would have had.
• 31:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:47
  Mole, right?
• 31:48
  Yeah.
• 31:50
  And I thought she did a great job.
• 31:51
  And Liz Renee was a hoot.
• 31:53
  You know, so I mean, it was it was another fun set.
• 31:56
  And of course, that was the year or the movie where we got Gene Hill.
• 32:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:01
  Who was as visually astonishing as Edith Massey or divine.
• 32:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:08
  And Edith Massey, of course, is the queen.
• 32:10
  Is the queen.
• 32:11
  I mean, somewhere, you know, like gets all these sort of these,
• 32:13
  one of these crazy outfits and, you know,
• 32:15
  and the productions of that movie is so interesting.
• 32:18
  Karenio again, right?
• 32:19
  Yes, absolutely.
• 32:20
  And it does feel like with each movie, like,
• 32:22
  each movie kind of builds on the last one in terms of, like,
• 32:24
  there'll be a new skills we'll learn.
• 32:26
  And they got more ambitious.
• 32:27
  Is that how it felt?
• 32:28
  Well, there was more money.
• 32:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:30
  You know, each movie had a slightly larger budget.
• 32:32
  So it was, you know, more money means more plywood.
• 32:36
  The castle, the external castle was just plywood.
• 32:46
  But the interior shots were filmed in a loft.
• 32:51
  We had a semi-sound stage.
• 32:53
  It wasn't really a sound stage, but we had a loft that we filmed.
• 32:57
  But I didn't have anything to do with it that Vincent was able to build.
• 33:03
  And so we were able to do all the interiors.
• 33:06
  But they was cold.
• 33:08
  It was very cold while we were doing the outsides.
• 33:11
  I get the sense that cold was quite a common theme on those early movies.
• 33:14
  Right.
• 33:15
  We always did them in the winter.
• 33:16
  In the winter.
• 33:17
  Yeah.
• 33:18
  Yeah.
• 33:19
  Like pink flamingos is up in the hills in sort of Maryland.
• 33:20
  Sorry, in the middle of winter.
• 33:21
  Yes.
• 33:22
  It was.
• 33:23
  It was in, yeah, out in the woods.
• 33:25
  Yeah.
• 33:26
  And there was no sort of money for heating.
• 33:28
  There was no heating.
• 33:30
  I mean, the person who suffered, who really suffered was Edith.
• 33:35
  I mean, she had to sit in a trailer, in a play pen, in her underwear.
• 33:41
  No windows, no heat for hours and hours.
• 33:45
  And no food for hours at a time.
• 33:48
  And you can see her breath.
• 33:51
  I mean, I can't even remember because I wasn't there most of the days that Edith was filming.
• 33:58
  I didn't just go to hang out.
• 34:00
  If I wasn't shooting, I wasn't there.
• 34:04
  I would imagine that some kind person put a blanket over her between ticks.
• 34:10
  But I'm not 100% sure of that.
• 34:13
  Yeah, because she's just there in her, basically on her underwear.
• 34:16
  And there's no glass in the windows.
• 34:18
  No.
• 34:19
  So it can imagine how.
• 34:20
  It's not a functioning trailer.
• 34:22
  It's a shell of a trailer that they found in Vincent.
• 34:26
  Decorated.
• 34:28
  So.
• 34:29
  Yeah.
• 34:30
  And that's reliving them in that because that's getting, I want to say that's currently being remastered in 4K by the criteria.
• 34:36
  It is.
• 34:37
  It is, yes.
• 34:38
  Yeah.
• 34:39
  And I saw just a snippet of it a couple of weeks ago.
• 34:43
  I did some b-roll for them and the, and I saw just a moment of it and it's astonishing.
• 34:51
  I saw a scene where one of Queen Carlotta's goons is servicing her.
• 34:59
  And I can see hairs on his butt.
• 35:04
  It's like, whoa.
• 35:07
  John, what is in 4K?
• 35:09
  Exactly.
• 35:10
  In some ways, how it was meant to be seen, but also how it should be seen.
• 35:13
  How it should be seen.
• 35:14
  All those grotesque sort of details that were kind of.
• 35:17
  They're part of it.
• 35:19
  You know, I mean, we made a gritty film and we made a low budget film and there's nothing to be ashamed of.
• 35:26
  So, I mean, I think celebrating the fact that so much was able to be done for so little.
• 35:32
  Absolutely.
• 35:33
  Yeah.
• 35:34
  Yeah.
• 35:35
  And isn't it true that when they were being remastered by criterion and companies like that,
• 35:38
  there were, there were sort of things on the audio tracks and in the picture that were kind of,
• 35:42
  that had been invisible for so many years because of the DVD and on VHS.
• 35:46
  There wasn't, those details just didn't come, you weren't able to see them or hear them.
• 35:50
  Is that right?
• 35:52
  I think so.
• 35:53
  I could tell you the absolute truth.
• 35:55
  I have not watched them.
• 35:58
  I am not glorious once in sitting alone in the dark watching my own films.
• 36:05
  So, I forget the character that I forget.
• 36:08
  You know the movie that I'm talking about.
• 36:09
  Sonsetful of audio.
• 36:10
  Yeah.
• 36:11
  Sonsetful of audio.
• 36:12
  I can't remember her actual, the name of her character, but yeah, I don't do that.
• 36:18
  Do you ever go back and revisit them?
• 36:20
  I mean, you know, just first.
• 36:22
  We look at a lot of film clips in the show that I'm doing with Peach's Christ.
• 36:26
  You know, we show a lot of film clips, so I do see them then.
• 36:31
  But no, it's been, I saw serial mom a couple of years ago when we had the big major show at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles.
• 36:42
  There was a screening of serial mom that I went to.
• 36:46
  And I enjoyed it very much.
• 36:48
  I think it's a really fun movie.
• 36:50
  But no, I haven't actually popped in a DVD of Pink flamingos and watched it at home for a long time.
• 36:56
  Or ever.
• 36:58
  That's fair enough.
• 36:59
  That's fair enough.
• 37:00
  I mean, as I say, like, because those early movies for so long, the Dreamlanders and John were kind of seen as the outsiders.
• 37:05
  Yes.
• 37:06
  And then with something like when films like serial mom and hairspray, especially came along, like you, it felt like the Dreamlanders finally cracked the mainstream.
• 37:15
  It felt like people suddenly kind of realized, oh, you know, what's this?
• 37:18
  You know, it was something new.
• 37:19
  I mean, is that how, how did it feel at the time for that?
• 37:22
  Well, hairspray was, hairspray was the first union film.
• 37:26
  So that changed a lot of things that meant everybody got food.
• 37:33
  But it was, I'll just keep my mother.
• 37:37
  I'll use my mother as an example.
• 37:39
  My mother actually went to a screening of the first movie, Roman Candles.
• 37:45
  And in that movie, there is a scene where a woman, you know, nuns outfit with a full face of makeup.
• 37:54
  And her boyfriend at the time in a priest's outfit are making out drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
• 38:00
  Well, my mother, the good Catholic that she was, was so horrified.
• 38:05
  I mean, absolutely beside herself horrified, that she would not come back to see another film, which was probably just fine.
• 38:15
  She saw polyester.
• 38:17
  I tried to get her to see polyester and she wasn't interested, but then John told her to go see polyester and she went, she adored John.
• 38:25
  She deployed everything we were doing, but she really liked John because he could make her laugh.
• 38:31
  But she's actually an extra in hairspray.
• 38:37
  You'd have to know where she was and not blink to see her, but she's an extra, she's in the auto show in hairspray.
• 38:43
  And she was so thrilled because she was a big fan of Jerry Stiller, who was a delight, by the way.
• 38:50
  And just a nicest person you'd ever want to meet.
• 38:53
  But, you know, he plays Dubai's husband, and Ricky likes father in the movie.
• 38:58
  And she got to meet him and she, and he was charming to her and told her how much he liked me, which he didn't know me, but was still, you know, very sweet.
• 39:07
  And so I just think of my mother as, you know, my mother being in hairspray is as big a turning point.
• 39:14
  And my life as could have happened.
• 39:17
  And then, of course, after hairspray, she wanted to come to every premiere.
• 39:22
  And did she?
• 39:23
  She did, yes.
• 39:24
  Yeah. And it felt like, did it feel like the gang had finally kind of broken through in many ways into a kind of mainstream acceptance.
• 39:31
  It did and it didn't because the gang wasn't the gang.
• 39:36
  David Lockery was no longer with us.
• 39:39
  Of course.
• 39:40
  And Edith was no longer with us.
• 39:44
  And all the, you know, these new people had come in, Debbie Harry.
• 39:48
  And, you know, we had all these people that had never been in a job workers movie before had come in.
• 39:55
  And it was wonderful to have them, but it was a different crowd.
• 39:59
  It wasn't the old Dreamlander crowd.
• 40:02
  It was a new Dreamlander crowd.
• 40:04
  And like I said, some people stayed and some people left.
• 40:08
  But it was, it felt good.
• 40:12
  It felt really good.
• 40:14
  And then, of course, divine died.
• 40:17
  So it put a enormous damper on all of our celebratory feelings because divine died right after it opened.
• 40:27
  So, yeah.
• 40:29
  You know, yay.
• 40:31
  Oh.
• 40:33
  Sure.
• 40:34
  I mean, do you remember where you were when you got the news that divine had passed?
• 40:36
  Yes.
• 40:37
  I was living in New York at the time.
• 40:39
  And I had been out.
• 40:41
  I remember I was at like, at home.
• 40:43
  And there were, this was the age of answering machines.
• 40:45
  And there were a million call me messages on my answer machine.
• 40:49
  And the one from my mother said, I'm so sorry about divine.
• 40:53
  And that's how I knew.
• 40:56
  And it was, it was a gut punch, a real gut punch.
• 41:01
  So, yeah, that made everybody, I mean, it really just took everybody down a big notch.
• 41:09
  I mean, hairspray is still a wonderful movie.
• 41:12
  And divine is wonderful in it.
• 41:17
  So as a way to go out, hairspray was brilliant.
• 41:21
  Absolutely.
• 41:22
  I mean, divine is someone who has really not only of those performances stood the test of time and those looks,
• 41:27
  but it's, you know, he's permeated so much of popular culture since then.
• 41:32
  I mean, when you're basically, when you're, when you're the model for a Disney villain,
• 41:37
  Ursula and the little mermaid, I mean, you know, you've made a mark.
• 41:40
  Yes.
• 41:41
  It's really too bad divine didn't live to see that.
• 41:43
  He would have been thrilled.
• 41:46
  He really would have been thrilled.
• 41:48
  He was, divine never thought of himself as a drag queen.
• 41:52
  Divine was an actor who played women's parts.
• 41:55
  But he also played men's parts.
• 41:57
  So, and he was looking to play more men's roles and to be considered more of an actor than just, you know, this freak drag show.
• 42:09
  And he was a really good actor.
• 42:14
  So, I mean, who knows where he could have gone.
• 42:17
  Yeah.
• 42:18
  It's, yeah.
• 42:19
  It's one of those sort of eternal questions, isn't it?
• 42:21
  Because I want to say, yeah.
• 42:22
  Are you running in the run-up to hairspray?
• 42:24
  He was doing a lot more different movies.
• 42:26
  Oh.
• 42:27
  Well, not just movies.
• 42:28
  He had a music career.
• 42:30
  He had, he had albums and he was, he had albums out.
• 42:35
  He didn't like club work.
• 42:36
  You know, he had a whole other career outside of John.
• 42:40
  So, it was, yeah, it was a big loss.
• 42:45
  But what divine did was divine change drag in a sense that,
• 42:53
  up until then, it seemed like most drag.
• 42:56
  And I'm not as fully comprehending of all drag history.
• 43:03
  But most drag was men trying to look and appear real, like real women.
• 43:09
  There's not a whole lot of real about Babs Johnson,
• 43:12
  although in Pink flamingos, although divine played a woman
• 43:17
  and looked very feminine.
• 43:19
  There were the cockats in San Francisco who were very gender-bendary.
• 43:23
  I don't know if you know who they were.
• 43:25
  I've heard of that.
• 43:26
  Am I right?
• 43:27
  You and divine did...
• 43:28
  We did shows with them, yes.
• 43:29
  Yeah.
• 43:30
  Neither of us actually considered ourselves actual cockats.
• 43:33
  But we did work with them.
• 43:35
  But they were very gender.
• 43:36
  I mean, there were men in drag with glitter in their beards.
• 43:40
  So, you know, there was some attempt.
• 43:44
  I mean, there were some members of the troop who were very feminine
• 43:48
  and did standard glamour drag.
• 43:51
  But divine took the glamour out of it.
• 43:54
  I mean, especially in polyester.
• 43:59
  And then again, in hairspray.
• 44:01
  I mean, there's nothing glamorous about a house dress
• 44:03
  in your hair and pin curls.
• 44:05
  So, it was a different take on drag.
• 44:10
  And when it comes to modern drag,
• 44:12
  because I hear what you're saying,
• 44:14
  and divine has such an impact,
• 44:16
  I mean, do you think modern drag...
• 44:17
  How much do you think modern drag is sort of taken from divine, if anything?
• 44:21
  Well, I don't know.
• 44:22
  I think without divine, there may not have been a drag race.
• 44:26
  But I don't know that.
• 44:28
  I mean, RuPaul, who has the best legs in the entire world,
• 44:35
  was doing his own thing at the same time in the 70s in New York.
• 44:45
  So, there's no way of knowing where drag would have gone.
• 44:50
  I think what's happened with drag now,
• 44:53
  a lot of what's happened with drag now,
• 44:55
  is it's more about the clothes and the outfits
• 44:58
  and the outrageousness and the expense.
• 45:03
  I mean, I look at drag race,
• 45:05
  I seldom watch it, but I do watch it occasionally.
• 45:07
  And it's like these gowns cost thousands and thousands of dollars.
• 45:13
  And I think early, you know, with the cockats,
• 45:17
  it was imagination rather than money.
• 45:21
  That they reveled in and used.
• 45:25
  So, I'm not sure how I feel about drag today.
• 45:31
  I mean, I'm doing a show with my favorite drag queen,
• 45:34
  Peaches Christ, you know, out of worship.
• 45:37
  And Peaches has her own take on drag,
• 45:44
  which is more clown-like, more outrageous,
• 45:50
  but not, no attempt to look real.
• 45:56
  And, you know, I mean, well, that's not true.
• 45:58
  That's not completely fair either.
• 46:00
  There is an attempt, but it's not the primary focus.
• 46:03
  And what is the primary focus?
• 46:05
  I think to be outrageous and shocking looking.
• 46:11
  Peaches is one of the most intelligent people I know.
• 46:18
  She's smart, she's driven, she's ambitious.
• 46:23
  I love working with her more than, I mean, just about anybody.
• 46:27
  And there are actually, there are parallels,
• 46:33
  if you want to get into this, between Peaches and John Waters.
• 46:37
  They're both ambitious.
• 46:39
  They both have minds that race forward
• 46:44
  and the bandwidth in their brains to accommodate it.
• 46:49
  So, Peaches' right shows, and you know, is a drag performer also,
• 46:54
  and a persario, and has also launched careers of other drag performers.
• 47:03
  So, you know, there are many parallels.
• 47:07
  And it's also just one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet.
• 47:11
  Yeah, because when I was researching the show that you guys are doing,
• 47:14
  which, as you say, is other worship, and it's going to be touring the UK.
• 47:17
  And something that Peaches said struck me, which was that,
• 47:20
  like, they were talking about modern drag and about how,
• 47:24
  with stuff like RuPaul's Drag Race,
• 47:27
  it can feel a little pre-packaged, maybe a little bit monetized.
• 47:30
  I mean, and do you think heavily monetized?
• 47:33
  Yes.
• 47:34
  I mean, I think there's now a drag race Ukraine.
• 47:36
  I'm not sure.
• 47:37
  I mean, it's a worldwide phenomenon now.
• 47:41
  And almost as if it sounded the way that they were talking about it,
• 47:44
  almost as if they wanted to shake drag up a little bit with the show.
• 47:47
  Is that one of the intents, do you think?
• 47:49
  Of our show, or with drag race?
• 47:51
  With either worship.
• 47:53
  I'm not sure that that's one of the intentions.
• 47:55
  I think our intention is to entertain our audience, mostly.
• 48:00
  I mean, if we shake anything up, that's great.
• 48:02
  But we're not crusading for any changes.
• 48:08
  One thing the drag race has done,
• 48:11
  it has normalized drag in many ways that it's no longer considered
• 48:23
  an aberration in the way that it used to be.
• 48:28
  It's now considered.
• 48:30
  It's given credit as an art form, which it is.
• 48:35
  So I think, you know, mother's watch drag race.
• 48:39
  And they let their daughter, you know, they let their children watch drag race.
• 48:42
  I mean, you go to a drag bar now, and, you know, it will be
• 48:48
  bridal parties, you know.
• 48:52
  I guess they call them end nights here, you know.
• 48:55
  So I mean, everybody now under C's drag and recognizes,
• 49:02
  not everybody likes it, obviously.
• 49:05
  But everybody knows of it.
• 49:08
  It's no longer a secret.
• 49:10
  Whereas back then, when you guys were doing the movies,
• 49:13
  it was much more of an underground phenomenon.
• 49:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 49:18
  And do you think, and how do you feel about the sort of,
• 49:21
  I guess you could call it kind of the mainstreamification,
• 49:24
  if you like, of drag, doing it's a good thing?
• 49:26
  I have no problem with it.
• 49:28
  I don't really have an opinion about it one more.
• 49:30
  Actually, I guess if I do, I'm glad for it.
• 49:32
  I guess if I had to choose a feeling about it, I'd be glad for it.
• 49:35
  I want people to be happy.
• 49:37
  And I want people to be happy doing what makes them happy.
• 49:41
  And if putting on a dress makes it like I happy,
• 49:43
  by all means put on a dress.
• 49:45
  You know, I have no judgment whatsoever.
• 49:50
  I do think that putting on a dress doesn't necessarily make you fabulous.
• 49:57
  I mean, there are better and not so great drag queens.
• 50:02
  But if, like I said, if it makes somebody happy to put on a dress
• 50:08
  or makes a woman happy to put on a suit, a man's suit,
• 50:12
  I just want people to be happy.
• 50:15
  It doesn't hurt anybody.
• 50:17
  Absolutely.
• 50:18
  And we've either worshipped the show.
• 50:20
  I mean, what can you tell us about it?
• 50:21
  What can people expect from the show?
• 50:23
  What's the format?
• 50:24
  Something similar to what we're doing here, actually.
• 50:27
  Basically, it's a conversation between me and Peaches.
• 50:31
  We cover certain territory because the audience wants to know things.
• 50:35
  They expect to hear certain things.
• 50:37
  So we discuss certain things.
• 50:39
  And we show film clips.
• 50:41
  We sing.
• 50:43
  We do a couple of duets together.
• 50:45
  We sing separate songs.
• 50:49
  And the film clips.
• 50:50
  And we basically invite people into our conversation.
• 50:55
  They don't get to talk.
• 50:58
  We say we're inviting people into our living room.
• 51:02
  To overhear our conversation.
• 51:05
  We don't script it.
• 51:07
  So every show is going to be somewhat different.
• 51:12
  We're covering basic points.
• 51:15
  But every now and then I remember something I hadn't said before.
• 51:20
  And so there'll be another interesting nugget that kind of just pops out of my mouth.
• 51:26
  And it's very casual.
• 51:29
  It's very easy.
• 51:30
  We're very relaxed on stage.
• 51:32
  We never wanted to memorize it.
• 51:35
  Many reasons.
• 51:36
  The first reason is that it gets stale.
• 51:39
  The second reason is if you're memorizing something and you forget your place,
• 51:43
  it can panic you.
• 51:45
  And nothing is less interesting than watching somebody panic on stage
• 51:48
  because they've forgotten their lines.
• 51:50
  I've been in place and forgot my lines and it's really not comfortable.
• 51:56
  But when you're on stage with someone as seasoned as peaches,
• 52:00
  if one of us kind of can't come up with something really fabulous,
• 52:03
  the other one picks up the slack and moves it forward.
• 52:06
  So we're good.
• 52:08
  But it's really just a celebration of the fact that peaches and I have been friends for 25 years.
• 52:17
  The show started originally as a celebration of me,
• 52:22
  as an idol worship, as me being the idol and peaches being the worshiper.
• 52:28
  I was the worshipy.
• 52:29
  And that was nice, but it was slightly uncomfortable.
• 52:33
  It's, you know, you can sit on the pedestal for just so long.
• 52:36
  It was like, okay, I'm done.
• 52:39
  And then when we decided to do it again,
• 52:42
  we were actually supposed to bring it here in 2020.
• 52:47
  But COVID stopped us.
• 52:49
  We were scheduled.
• 52:50
  We had a booking.
• 52:51
  And COVID stopped us.
• 52:54
  And so when we just, and we didn't do it for a while.
• 52:57
  So when we decided again to do it a couple of years ago,
• 53:01
  it's great.
• 53:02
  I'd love to do it, but let's change it.
• 53:04
  Instead of making it all about me, let's make it about us.
• 53:07
  And the fact that we have worked together,
• 53:10
  because I idolize peaches just as much as he idolizes me.
• 53:14
  I have so much respect for that person.
• 53:17
  And the creativity that goes into being peaches Christ,
• 53:22
  and how hard peaches works.
• 53:26
  So we, it added depth to the show that it had not had before.
• 53:31
  So now it's a celebration of us and our friendship and our work
• 53:35
  that we've done together.
• 53:37
  While completely acknowledging all the John Water stuff.
• 53:40
  Sure.
• 53:41
  So, I mean, that's how we met.
• 53:43
  Because he was a fan.
• 53:44
  He was a fan.
• 53:45
  Yes.
• 53:46
  Yeah.
• 53:47
  Because they were a filmmaker as well, all about evil.
• 53:49
  All about evil.
• 53:50
  They directed.
• 53:51
  Is it, is it, he was it?
• 53:53
  Sorry.
• 53:54
  Well, I never used they for peaches.
• 53:58
  Joshua is his out of track name.
• 54:01
  And so when he, when he is Joshua, I say he, when she is peaches,
• 54:06
  I say she, I get them mixed up sometimes.
• 54:11
  But it's, yeah, I would say, but I never used the word day.
• 54:15
  And neither does Joshua.
• 54:17
  At least to my knowledge.
• 54:20
  And I think that he considered, I don't want to speak for him.
• 54:23
  But I think that he considers himself a man who wears, who does drag.
• 54:28
  Right.
• 54:29
  As opposed to a non-binary.
• 54:31
  But if I'm speaking out of turn, Joshua peaches, I'm really sorry.
• 54:35
  I don't mean to.
• 54:36
  It's, it's such a sensitive topic these days.
• 54:41
  And I'm 78.
• 54:43
  And so it's really hard for me sometimes to keep everything in focus.
• 54:49
  I want the world to know that I never, ever, ever mean harm.
• 54:53
  If I make a pronoun mistake, it is a pronoun mistake.
• 54:57
  It is not a feeling mistake.
• 54:59
  Absolutely.
• 55:00
  For an intention mistake.
• 55:02
  And with the show then, because you're taking it around the UK.
• 55:04
  And as we said at the start, this is your first time in,
• 55:06
  or second time in London in a long time.
• 55:08
  And then you're going around the UK. Are you excited for that?
• 55:11
  I am thrilled.
• 55:13
  I am absolutely thrilled.
• 55:14
  We're going to Manchester.
• 55:15
  We're going to Newcastle.
• 55:17
  We're going to Edinburgh. We're going to Dublin.
• 55:20
  And we're going to Amsterdam.
• 55:22
  Now I have been to Amsterdam.
• 55:23
  But I've never been to any of those other places.
• 55:25
  So I just am.
• 55:27
  I want to take everything.
• 55:29
  And unfortunately, because I am so old, I do need to rest.
• 55:32
  So I don't get to sightseeing quite as much as I'd like to.
• 55:36
  Which is why we came to London a few days ahead of time.
• 55:40
  So I could actually enjoy the city.
• 55:44
  And I've been just inhaling it.
• 55:47
  And you're doing the show at the BFI.
• 55:50
  Am I right?
• 55:51
  Yes, we are.
• 55:52
  Yeah. And how does that feel?
• 55:53
  I mean, the BFI is an institution.
• 55:54
  I mean, to be able to be accepted and embraced so much for the work you've done.
• 55:58
  It's astonishing.
• 55:59
  It feels wonderful.
• 56:01
  I'm humbled and thrilled at the same time.
• 56:04
  And there are also where we're part of a trash film series that they're doing.
• 56:11
  And I don't know the details of all of the whole series.
• 56:14
  But apparently our show and a new print of plan nine from outer space
• 56:21
  are the centerpieces of the film festival.
• 56:26
  Fantastic.
• 56:27
  I mean, two iconic.
• 56:28
  Iconic.
• 56:29
  Yes.
• 56:30
  Absolutely icons.
• 56:31
  And I want to say a lot of the, you know, the John Waters movies we've been playing as well.
• 56:34
  It's out.
• 56:35
  I have a look at the program.
• 56:36
  It looks fantastic.
• 56:37
  It's sort of the right, the plethora of stuff that's serving up for people.
• 56:42
  Well, I'm thrilled.
• 56:43
  I mean, the idea that people still care about things that we did a million years ago is breathtaking to me.
• 56:51
  And also the people who weren't even alive.
• 56:55
  You.
• 56:56
  When we made the films.
• 56:58
  It's, you know, that you care about them.
• 57:01
  It's, it's really something.
• 57:03
  It is.
• 57:04
  And not only the John Waters films, but that actually, you know, that leads me quite nicely into some of the,
• 57:08
  a couple of the other films you've made.
• 57:10
  Like, but I'm a cheerleader, which is another great film.
• 57:13
  That again is another film that's had like an amazing afterlife.
• 57:16
  It, yeah, it didn't do so well.
• 57:17
  I think when it first opened, but it has achieved a certain cult status.
• 57:21
  Well, look at the cast.
• 57:23
  It's Natasha Leon, obviously a bud court.
• 57:27
  I know the late great.
• 57:29
  We're very sorry about that.
• 57:32
  The RuPaul as a boy.
• 57:36
  Michelle Williams is in it.
• 57:40
  Melanie Linsky is in it.
• 57:42
  You know, I mean, it's just, oh, Kathy Moriarty's in it.
• 57:45
  I mean, it's, it's got an amazing cast.
• 57:48
  So, and it's a fun movie.
• 57:51
  You know, it takes a serious subject and makes fun of it.
• 57:55
  And I think that's a great way to do things.
• 57:59
  You know, you take, you take the work seriously, but yourself not so much.
• 58:03
  Yeah, which is very much like what you and John were doing.
• 58:06
  Very much.
• 58:07
  And that movie seems to have quite a few similarities to the stuff you and John were doing.
• 58:11
  There may have been an influence who knows.
• 58:13
  You know, it's really hard for me because people are always telling me,
• 58:17
  oh, John would love this or this is just like John and I don't know that that's always true.
• 58:24
  But the, you know, to me, it gets set a great deal.
• 58:28
  And do you remember what were your memories like making that film?
• 58:31
  Working with that amazing cast and that, you know, it makes sense.
• 58:34
  Well, we were working, we were on location in a really remote part of California
• 58:39
  that was very dry and dusty and very hot.
• 58:42
  And so the working conditions were a little rough.
• 58:46
  But it was great.
• 58:48
  I mean, I, you know, I loved working with Bud.
• 58:51
  You know, I mean, that was, actually, it's funny because my sister who used to be,
• 58:56
  my sister Betsy Phillips, who was an actress many, many years ago,
• 58:59
  she stopped acting, did a play with Bud many, many years ago.
• 59:03
  So he was kind of, you know, it was a family event.
• 59:08
  But I always admired him and it was really fun to work with him.
• 59:12
  So, and of course, Rue, you know, was hilarious.
• 59:18
  Yeah, because you play La Tasha Leon's sort of mum in the,
• 59:21
  I do.
• 59:22
  You sort of send her off to the treatment camp.
• 59:24
  Well, I called the Make It Straight camp, yes.
• 59:27
  And that move, as I say, that that movie's had such an amazing afterlife
• 59:30
  and it seems more popular today than it was at the time.
• 59:33
  I think it is.
• 59:34
  Yeah, why do you think that is?
• 59:36
  I don't know.
• 59:37
  Well, okay, maybe I do know.
• 59:39
  Right now, especially in the States, I don't know what it's,
• 59:42
  I do not know what the climate is here.
• 59:45
  But there is so much animosity in the States now
• 59:52
  for trans people in particular.
• 59:55
  And I think it's, you know, while drag seems to have been normalized,
• 1:00:02
  not all gainess has been.
• 1:00:05
  So, there's, I think it's a way for people to look
• 1:00:12
  and be able to laugh at a situation that really isn't funny
• 1:00:17
  in the actual world.
• 1:00:20
  It is very, I mean, over here, I think it's a similar situation.
• 1:00:23
  Is it?
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, I think there's a lot of conversation happening about it
• 1:00:26
  and people are trying to define it.
• 1:00:28
  And, and, you know, I think, yeah, it's like we were saying earlier,
• 1:00:31
  it's a sensitive.
• 1:00:32
  It's a sensitive subject.
• 1:00:33
  And it's relatively indefinable because it's,
• 1:00:35
  there are so many permutations.
• 1:00:37
  There are permutations of straight.
• 1:00:39
  There are permutations of gay.
• 1:00:41
  There are permutations of every, you know, I mean, it's like,
• 1:00:45
  I might be straight, but I might only like blondes.
• 1:00:48
  I might be straight, but I'm only like, you know,
• 1:00:50
  people with big feet.
• 1:00:51
  You never know.
• 1:00:53
  I mean, there's the variety of appetite and the variety
• 1:00:59
  of inclination is as vast as the variety of humanity itself.
• 1:01:04
  So, putting these labels and making these strict definitions
• 1:01:09
  is really deleterious.
• 1:01:12
  That's a good word.
• 1:01:13
  That's a great word.
• 1:01:14
  I've never heard that one before.
• 1:01:16
  It's really bad.
• 1:01:18
  It's really bad.
• 1:01:19
  Yeah.
• 1:01:20
  And it seems like people are sort of, for me,
• 1:01:23
  they feel like they're almost casting themselves on the wrong side of history
• 1:01:26
  by being against it and by being militant about,
• 1:01:29
  but, you know, against it.
• 1:01:30
  And that for me just seems.
• 1:01:31
  Absolutely.
• 1:01:32
  It's lacking just in common humanity.
• 1:01:34
  Well, certainly.
• 1:01:35
  It's lacking in any kind of kindness.
• 1:01:37
  You know, well, I mean, the world lacks a great,
• 1:01:40
  lacks kindness to a great degree these days, just in general.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  I mean, I don't know.
• 1:01:47
  Everybody here that I have met so far has been lovely.
• 1:01:50
  But in the states, kindness isn't, it's not invisible.
• 1:01:55
  There are many, many lovely kind people who live in the states.
• 1:01:58
  But we are run by an unkind government these days.
• 1:02:01
  So, it's, which has permitted, you know,
• 1:02:05
  has given license for unkindness to exist in a greater degree than it did.
• 1:02:11
  Then we were aware of before.
• 1:02:13
  Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  And is that kind of unkindness?
• 1:02:16
  Is that what, so that's more visible?
• 1:02:18
  Definitely more.
• 1:02:19
  Well, be as you live over in the states.
• 1:02:21
  Do you see that a lot more?
• 1:02:22
  Yes.
• 1:02:23
  Out on the streets.
• 1:02:24
  Yes.
• 1:02:25
  Well, it's not like people are out on the streets kicking and punching each other.
• 1:02:28
  But just this general attitude of,
• 1:02:31
  I'm being honest if I tell you you're a jerk.
• 1:02:34
  Or I'm being honest if I think that you don't get to, you know,
• 1:02:38
  you shouldn't be allowed to live here.
• 1:02:40
  I'm just being honest.
• 1:02:42
  You know, just being honest is sometimes honesty is something that should be kept to oneself.
• 1:02:51
  I remember John said, John Waters said,
• 1:02:53
  when one of his sort of goals of making those movies was comic terrorism called,
• 1:02:58
  you know, make it attack your enemy with humor.
• 1:03:00
  With humor.
• 1:03:01
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:03:02
  Do you think that's something that we maybe need more of in the state against?
• 1:03:06
  Well, I think it's done.
• 1:03:07
  I think that's part of the reason why our movies, you know, work still because they are funny.
• 1:03:16
  And why a movie like, but I'm a cheerleader still works because it's actually funny.
• 1:03:21
  And you know, it is attacking a serious subject.
• 1:03:25
  It's attacking the enemy with humor.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  And giving that spare and more.
• 1:03:30
  It makes more of a mark than just straight forward.
• 1:03:33
  Well, I, if it doesn't make a mark on the people that it's actually attacking,
• 1:03:37
  what it does is it lifts the spirits of those who are doing the attack.
• 1:03:41
  I mean, it lifts the spirits of those who are rebelling against.
• 1:03:45
  And you know, humor lifts us up, you know, laughter heals.
• 1:03:49
  So when we can laugh together, when we can get together as a group of people and laugh together,
• 1:03:54
  it's, it has a very beneficial effect.
• 1:03:58
  I also think it makes you feel a bit more sane because so much of what seems like it's going on in the world is does not feel sane to me.
• 1:04:05
  But be able to laugh about it makes helps me feel ground, ground for me.
• 1:04:09
  Anyway, personally, grounds me and makes me feel a bit more sane about what's going on.
• 1:04:12
  Yes.
• 1:04:13
  And I think it also helps you feel part of the community.
• 1:04:16
  And that's very important.
• 1:04:18
  Oh, wait, before I forget a movie that I must ask you about, which you had a small,
• 1:04:23
  another sort of 90s kind of jam, which you had a role in is lost highway.
• 1:04:28
  Oh, yes.
• 1:04:30
  I'm actually only voice in it.
• 1:04:32
  Yes, but I'm already thinking you were.
• 1:04:34
  I was.
• 1:04:35
  I did shoot the scene.
• 1:04:36
  Yes.
• 1:04:37
  How do I come about?
• 1:04:38
  Well, they called not gave, you know, they asked me to do it.
• 1:04:43
  David Lynch himself did not call me.
• 1:04:45
  He was so nice.
• 1:04:48
  I only met him that one day on the set.
• 1:04:50
  I never saw him before.
• 1:04:51
  I never saw him.
• 1:04:52
  Oh, I did see him after once.
• 1:04:53
  But the nicest thing that he did for me was before I got invited to the cast screening.
• 1:05:01
  And before the cast screening, he sent me a letter telling me that the visual had been cut.
• 1:05:09
  So I wasn't going to see myself on the screen.
• 1:05:13
  And I thought that was so kind that I didn't just go to the screening and go.
• 1:05:22
  So I don't even know if I still have the letter.
• 1:05:25
  I wish I hope somewhere I do, but I may not, but that would have been something to keep because it was just such an act.
• 1:05:31
  It was an act of kindness.
• 1:05:32
  It was a real act of generosity not to let me be publicly disappointed.
• 1:05:39
  So I really like him.
• 1:05:41
  I mean, I've always admired his work, but I really liked him for that.
• 1:05:45
  That just made me really, you know, I get all I hear about David Lynch from his collaborators is, you know, especially a lot of the actresses he worked with
• 1:05:54
  was just how sweet he was and how warm he was.
• 1:05:57
  He really was.
• 1:05:58
  He was just charming.
• 1:06:00
  Because what's so, for me, fascinating about that as a film fan, is that like, because John Waters and the work he has together is so, you know,
• 1:06:07
  it's true and outsider.
• 1:06:08
  And as is, you know, hit David's, David Lynch is, you know, and there's like, I think there's a photo of John Waters and David Lynch meeting and shaking hands in front of Bob's big boy.
• 1:06:15
  So the fact that you, so the fact that you're in there in as part of his kind of move for me just makes perfect sense.
• 1:06:21
  Yes.
• 1:06:22
  And I go to Bob's big way.
• 1:06:24
  Is that your favorite fast food?
• 1:06:26
  Is it still around in America?
• 1:06:28
  It's still there. That particular one is still there. Yes.
• 1:06:31
  Is that your local?
• 1:06:32
  No, it's not even close to where I live.
• 1:06:34
  But if I'm in that neighborhood, I will go there.
• 1:06:37
  Because he used to spend like days and weeks in there, right?
• 1:06:40
  That was his office, so I want to say David, just making notes.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah, but it's miles from where I live.
• 1:06:46
  You know, miles in LA means hours.
• 1:06:49
  Although I must say, coming to the, coming to, to where I am, where I'm staying, from the airport, I was shocked and up at the traffic quest here.
• 1:06:59
  It reminded me of home.
• 1:07:02
  Well, LA has like the worst traffic ever, right?
• 1:07:05
  Very bad. Very, very bad.
• 1:07:07
  It's all the freeways, right? They just get congested.
• 1:07:09
  I stay off them as much as possible.
• 1:07:11
  I mean, I've never been, so I have no idea.
• 1:07:13
  What's wrong?
• 1:07:14
  I hear some mixed reports about LA.
• 1:07:17
  Some people say it's lovely, and some people say it's like, I can't, you know, I can't, maybe there's Hollywood and LA.
• 1:07:22
  Well, Hollywood is part of LA, so it's, you know, I mean, and it depends on why you're there.
• 1:07:28
  You know, if you're coming to break into the movies, it can be a really rough place.
• 1:07:33
  And I lived there for 18 years and spent a lot of that time very lonely.
• 1:07:38
  And then I left and went, moved back to Baltimore, and I was there for 14 years.
• 1:07:45
  And then I fell in love with my husband, who lives in LA.
• 1:07:49
  Oh, well, I fell in love with Tom.
• 1:07:51
  And moved back to LA and stayed.
• 1:07:57
  And it's very different now.
• 1:07:59
  Is it?
• 1:08:00
  Well, I no longer look for work.
• 1:08:03
  You know, I have retired.
• 1:08:05
  I still work, but I've retired from looking for work.
• 1:08:09
  And it's a great release.
• 1:08:11
  It's a wonderful burden off your shoulders when you do that.
• 1:08:15
  And I am happily married, and I'm, you know, I like my life.
• 1:08:20
  Wonderful.
• 1:08:21
  Well, I did, I was going to ask about, because after the tour,
• 1:08:24
  either worship wraps up, I want to say I heard you say on the radio that after the tour is done,
• 1:08:29
  that's the, that's it for terms of touring.
• 1:08:31
  It's the end of my touring.
• 1:08:33
  These multi-city tours are just hard on me physically.
• 1:08:37
  And I don't want to stop working completely.
• 1:08:42
  I don't want to ever do that.
• 1:08:44
  I hope that, you know, I die on a stage someplace.
• 1:08:48
  But I don't want to tour anymore.
• 1:08:53
  You know, that doesn't mean I won't get on a plane and go someplace,
• 1:08:56
  but not six cities in a row again.
• 1:08:58
  Sure.
• 1:08:59
  Sure.
• 1:09:00
  Yeah.
• 1:09:01
  You're not quite opting for like a quite domestic life.
• 1:09:03
  No, although I like my quiet domestic life,
• 1:09:06
  but I do like the little pop of color and interests that happens periodically too.
• 1:09:11
  And what would that, I mean, John, like, you know,
• 1:09:13
  because there's been talk for a long time now about him making another movie.
• 1:09:17
  I mean, would you?
• 1:09:18
  I would certainly do it, but I mean, he would have to ask me to do it.
• 1:09:22
  And I would be mortified and horrified if he didn't.
• 1:09:28
  But I don't know that he ever will.
• 1:09:31
  He's an incredibly busy man.
• 1:09:33
  You know, he's honest, he's on his own speaking tour constantly.
• 1:09:37
  And he writes books.
• 1:09:39
  I mean, he's, he is not slowed down.
• 1:09:42
  Now, he doesn't mind tour it.
• 1:09:44
  He seems to like it.
• 1:09:47
  You know, I mean, he's on the road constantly,
• 1:09:49
  but I, you know, John and I are very different.
• 1:09:52
  I mean, are you guys still in touch?
• 1:09:54
  Are you still with friends?
• 1:09:55
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:09:56
  You know, do you ever hang out?
• 1:09:57
  Or is it not that kind of?
• 1:09:58
  Well, we live in different places.
• 1:10:00
  But yes, I see him a couple of times.
• 1:10:02
  Basically, I see him a couple of times a year.
• 1:10:05
  He comes to L.A.
• 1:10:07
  And, you know, we'll have dinner.
• 1:10:11
  But it's, I, you know, when I lived in Baltimore,
• 1:10:14
  I would see him more frequently.
• 1:10:16
  Because he still lives in Baltimore, right?
• 1:10:18
  Well, he lives several places.
• 1:10:20
  He has a house in Baltimore, he has a,
• 1:10:22
  he has homes in Baltimore province town San Francisco in New York.
• 1:10:26
  So, you know, he spreads himself,
• 1:10:28
  and he's on the road all the time.
• 1:10:30
  Of course, of course.
• 1:10:31
  I mean, he came here, actually.
• 1:10:32
  I saw him at the barbecue when he came here a few years ago.
• 1:10:34
  And it was just mainly in the audience,
• 1:10:37
  just drag queens and middle-aged women.
• 1:10:40
  And it, and then me.
• 1:10:43
  I was kind of in the middle of this road.
• 1:10:45
  I was loving it.
• 1:10:46
  It was great.
• 1:10:47
  Oh, it was.
• 1:10:48
  And it's funny, because I think pink flamingos
• 1:10:50
  had just come out on Criterion.
• 1:10:51
  Yes.
• 1:10:52
  They just done the remaster.
• 1:10:53
  So, he was talking about that.
• 1:10:54
  And when he went to the Criterion,
• 1:10:56
  because he obviously, Criterion,
• 1:10:58
  have long been a big supporter of the films,
• 1:11:00
  and he loves them.
• 1:11:01
  And he's, he is showing my film nerd in this here.
• 1:11:04
  But he said,
• 1:11:05
  pink flamingos just being announced on Criterion.
• 1:11:07
  And then me and maybe like,
• 1:11:08
  because every other thing he would say
• 1:11:10
  would get a big cheer,
• 1:11:11
  because everyone obviously loves him.
• 1:11:13
  And then he said that.
• 1:11:14
  And then like me,
• 1:11:15
  and maybe five of the people in this massive barbecue
• 1:11:16
  in order to...
• 1:11:17
  And I felt very seen.
• 1:11:19
  Yes.
• 1:11:20
  But yeah.
• 1:11:22
  It's astonishing.
• 1:11:23
  He seems to have so much energy still.
• 1:11:25
  I don't have that.
• 1:11:26
  He really does.
• 1:11:28
  He's the Energizer Bunny.
• 1:11:29
  Do you have the Energizer Bunny here?
• 1:11:31
  Is that the duress of Paris?
• 1:11:32
  That was the little pink bunny
• 1:11:34
  that kept going and going and going and going and going.
• 1:11:36
  And he just can't stop.
• 1:11:37
  And he's going to be 80 in a couple of days.
• 1:11:39
  Yeah.
• 1:11:40
  Well, you guys are about the same age, right?
• 1:11:41
  He's a year older.
• 1:11:42
  A year and change.
• 1:11:43
  Older than I am.
• 1:11:44
  So, yeah.
• 1:11:45
  I'll be 80 next year.
• 1:11:47
  Wow.
• 1:11:48
  I thought I'd say he don't...
• 1:11:49
  You don't have a bucket.
• 1:11:50
  Thank you.
• 1:11:51
  That's very sweet.
• 1:11:52
  Most times I don't feel it either.
• 1:11:54
  But I will, after I've been traveling a long time.
• 1:11:57
  Well, we were saying before we started rolling about how,
• 1:12:00
  like,
• 1:12:01
  I'm feeling frozen at a certain age.
• 1:12:04
  Like, you know, I can't feel,
• 1:12:06
  but I feel like I'm probably like 22, 21.
• 1:12:08
  And what were you saying something similar, right?
• 1:12:11
  Well, when I think of what I look like before I look in the mirror,
• 1:12:14
  I think of myself at about 40.
• 1:12:16
  I think that's what I look like.
• 1:12:18
  And then I look in the mirror and I see my mother at her.
• 1:12:21
  And everything goes out the window.
• 1:12:24
  It's like, oh, no, that's what you look like.
• 1:12:27
  It's a little bit different.
• 1:12:29
  So I avoid mirrors.
• 1:12:32
  I think that's one of the secrets to being happy in your later years.
• 1:12:37
  Don't look at any mirrors in the house.
• 1:12:39
  Don't look, yeah.
• 1:12:40
  I mean, do you have any kind of, I guess,
• 1:12:42
  I don't know for the vices,
• 1:12:44
  but like, like, in terms of like growing into, you know,
• 1:12:47
  your 70s or 60s, I mean,
• 1:12:49
  do you have any kind of,
• 1:12:50
  like, thoughts or things that have helped you along
• 1:12:54
  in that sort of pit process that...
• 1:12:56
  I don't know.
• 1:12:57
  I mean, I've accepted the fact that I've gotten older,
• 1:13:00
  because you have to.
• 1:13:02
  I mean, I'd rather get older than not.
• 1:13:05
  I don't want plastic surgery.
• 1:13:07
  I have a shoot all of that.
• 1:13:09
  I feel like I've earned every wrinkle in my face.
• 1:13:12
  And I like my face the way it is.
• 1:13:14
  I wouldn't mind losing a little of this,
• 1:13:16
  but you know, that's another story.
• 1:13:18
  But I'm terrified to do anything to change it.
• 1:13:21
  I'm just scared.
• 1:13:22
  I would be terrified of waking up and not recognizing myself.
• 1:13:27
  I think, for me,
• 1:13:30
  I started taking piano lessons five years ago.
• 1:13:33
  Starting from zero.
• 1:13:35
  Starting from knowing where middle C was.
• 1:13:37
  And that's been wonderful,
• 1:13:39
  because when you learn,
• 1:13:40
  and I'm not naturally gifted,
• 1:13:43
  you know, so I really have to work at it.
• 1:13:45
  But it has expanded my brain.
• 1:13:47
  I can feel the synapses connecting in a way
• 1:13:51
  that they didn't use to do that.
• 1:13:54
  So I think as you grow older,
• 1:13:57
  keep changing and keep looking for things
• 1:14:01
  to engage your brain and engage your body
• 1:14:04
  so that you can...
• 1:14:06
  My husband says that he says
• 1:14:09
  that the secret is to find something that you love
• 1:14:12
  that you can get better at.
• 1:14:14
  And piano with that.
• 1:14:16
  Oh, I'm much better than I was five years ago.
• 1:14:18
  I could not sit down and play something for you,
• 1:14:20
  but I can play my exercises better than I used to be able to.
• 1:14:25
  And I've just taken a watercolor
• 1:14:27
  and I'm really bad at that,
• 1:14:29
  but I really, really like it.
• 1:14:31
  And people seem to think that
• 1:14:34
  if they're not instantly good at something,
• 1:14:36
  they should drop it.
• 1:14:38
  And that's the most ridiculous thing,
• 1:14:40
  because unless your Mozart,
• 1:14:43
  you're not instantly good at things.
• 1:14:45
  It does take time.
• 1:14:46
  It takes practice.
• 1:14:47
  It takes energy.
• 1:14:48
  It takes commitment.
• 1:14:49
  And having those things
• 1:14:51
  keeps me engaged.
• 1:14:53
  It keeps me engaged with my brain engaged,
• 1:14:56
  my body engaged,
• 1:14:57
  and my enthusiasm's engaged.
• 1:15:02
  It keeps you, I guess,
• 1:15:04
  there's always vitality that comes with passions.
• 1:15:06
  Yeah, that's exactly.
• 1:15:08
  It keeps you...
• 1:15:09
  I mean, there are days when I don't want to practice.
• 1:15:12
  Believe me.
• 1:15:13
  And there are days when I don't want to practice
• 1:15:15
  and I don't practice.
• 1:15:17
  But then I take a gummy and I go back.
• 1:15:21
  I also recommend gummies,
• 1:15:23
  but if you can't say that,
• 1:15:25
  I don't know if they're legal here.
• 1:15:27
  The vitamin gummies?
• 1:15:28
  No, marijuana gummies.
• 1:15:30
  Tell me more.
• 1:15:34
  I take them frequently.
• 1:15:37
  I don't have any with me.
• 1:15:38
  I don't have any.
• 1:15:40
  I don't know what the status is here
• 1:15:42
  about marijuana.
• 1:15:43
  Is it legal?
• 1:15:44
  I think there is some...
• 1:15:46
  The rules of check.
• 1:15:47
  No.
• 1:15:48
  Apparently not.
• 1:15:49
  Forget I said that.
• 1:15:51
  It's legal in LA.
• 1:15:53
  Well, it goes back to the LSD days of the 60s.
• 1:15:56
  Yes, it does.
• 1:15:58
  But that is growing.
• 1:16:00
  I think a little bit.
• 1:16:01
  I'm not a stoner.
• 1:16:02
  I don't sit around.
• 1:16:03
  You know, it actually...
• 1:16:05
  It opens my mind and it gives me energy and focus.
• 1:16:08
  For me, it's very useful.
• 1:16:11
  Because you mentioned the music.
• 1:16:13
  I know that because back in 2015,
• 1:16:15
  you've been developing your music over the last 20 years.
• 1:16:18
  Well, I started singing.
• 1:16:20
  And I was very lucky.
• 1:16:22
  I had a friend named Brian Grillo in Los Angeles,
• 1:16:26
  who asked me one afternoon if I would sing a song that he had written
• 1:16:29
  at this gay club on a Sunday afternoon.
• 1:16:33
  And I said, yes.
• 1:16:34
  And I enjoyed it.
• 1:16:35
  It was really fun.
• 1:16:36
  And then he introduced me to some musicians.
• 1:16:40
  And I ended up, you know, we formed a band.
• 1:16:43
  And I...
• 1:16:45
  I mean, obviously I changed out some of the musicians.
• 1:16:48
  But it was...
• 1:16:49
  I discovered that I really liked it.
• 1:16:51
  It was really fun.
• 1:16:52
  And then when I moved back to Baltimore,
• 1:16:54
  I put together a lovely band.
• 1:16:57
  And we put out an album.
• 1:17:00
  I put out a CD.
• 1:17:02
  And it was not a huge hit.
• 1:17:05
  But I'm still very proud of it.
• 1:17:07
  And, you know, we performed.
• 1:17:12
  I don't have a band now.
• 1:17:15
  And that's okay.
• 1:17:17
  I still love to sing.
• 1:17:19
  But I don't...
• 1:17:21
  You know, I don't have a band.
• 1:17:23
  But I do...
• 1:17:24
  Yeah.
• 1:17:25
  We sing in the show.
• 1:17:26
  It's just a nice thing.
• 1:17:27
  Yeah, do duets.
• 1:17:28
  Are you as passionate about the music as you are about your acting?
• 1:17:31
  Well, I like the music.
• 1:17:33
  I like singing.
• 1:17:34
  And I like interpreting songs.
• 1:17:36
  It's not...
• 1:17:37
  I don't go way out and interpret things in a completely different manner than anybody else would do
• 1:17:42
  that I'm not trying to be avant-garde about them.
• 1:17:45
  But...
• 1:17:46
  Much of my album is covers.
• 1:17:48
  And it's called No Remings, by the way.
• 1:17:50
  You can listen to it on iTunes.
• 1:17:52
  Oh, no, not iTunes.
• 1:17:54
  Apple music.
• 1:17:56
  I think iTunes is gone.
• 1:17:58
  I don't know.
• 1:17:59
  Spotify is more of the kind of...
• 1:18:01
  You might be able to listen to it on Spotify as well.
• 1:18:05
  But anyway, when I was making the album,
• 1:18:10
  the thing that was the most fun for me was I had my musicians lay down the music tracks.
• 1:18:18
  Yeah, the instrumental tracks.
• 1:18:20
  And then I spent hours and hours with the instrumental tracks going over...
• 1:18:27
  And figuring out how my vocals would go in them.
• 1:18:31
  And I loved doing that.
• 1:18:33
  That was really fun for me.
• 1:18:36
  There's so much sort of detail you can get in the post of music.
• 1:18:41
  Yes.
• 1:18:42
  And I also...
• 1:18:43
  I like telling a story with music.
• 1:18:46
  I'm a storyteller as an actor.
• 1:18:49
  And I think the way I sing is more of storytelling in the music,
• 1:18:54
  rather than just reciting lyrics,
• 1:18:59
  vocalizing lyrics.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah.
• 1:19:02
  Is there anyone out there that you'd like to work with if you got the chance?
• 1:19:05
  Because you've got so many amazing people.
• 1:19:07
  Is there anyone out there who you're a fan of?
• 1:19:09
  Yes.
• 1:19:10
  I would like to work with Steven Spielberg, please,
• 1:19:13
  and make a lot of money.
• 1:19:15
  Let's make it happen.
• 1:19:17
  Because he's still going.
• 1:19:19
  He's still going.
• 1:19:20
  Yes, he is.
• 1:19:21
  Disclosure days coming out in a few months.
• 1:19:23
  That's, you know, the Spielberg.
• 1:19:25
  Are you a fan of his movies?
• 1:19:27
  I'm a fan of some of them, yes.
• 1:19:29
  Which ones are your favorites?
• 1:19:31
  Well, E.T.
• 1:19:33
  Of course.
• 1:19:35
  Jaws.
• 1:19:36
  Well, Schindler's list was brilliant.
• 1:19:42
  No, I mean, I am not a film scholar.
• 1:19:46
  You can ask me all kinds of questions about film,
• 1:19:48
  and I will go completely blank on you.
• 1:19:51
  So if you ever want to talk to somebody about film and film history,
• 1:19:54
  talk to Peaches.
• 1:19:56
  Is Peaches the go-to?
• 1:19:58
  He is the go-to.
• 1:19:59
  Because you did all about evil together, right?
• 1:20:01
  Yes.
• 1:20:02
  Well, he wrote and directed it.
• 1:20:03
  Yes.
• 1:20:04
  And how about that?
• 1:20:05
  And is in it.
• 1:20:06
  Yeah.
• 1:20:07
  And how did that come together?
• 1:20:08
  Was that born out of idle worship?
• 1:20:09
  Well, we had worked together.
• 1:20:11
  We had done idle worship.
• 1:20:12
  We had done a version of idle worship.
• 1:20:14
  We didn't call it that.
• 1:20:15
  But we had done some stage shows together.
• 1:20:18
  Well, we had done basically a very early, early iteration of idle worship,
• 1:20:24
  where I would come out and he would interview me and then he'd show a film.
• 1:20:30
  So then when he made the movie, when he was casting the movie,
• 1:20:33
  he did call me and asked me to be in it,
• 1:20:36
  because we were friends by that time.
• 1:20:38
  Our friendship has certainly grown since then.
• 1:20:42
  But yeah, it came out of that.
• 1:20:45
  And you say you're not a film scholar,
• 1:20:47
  but do you have a film fan?
• 1:20:49
  Are there any sort of filmmakers?
• 1:20:50
  You know, I'm average American filmgoer, basically.
• 1:20:54
  I mean, what have I seen lately?
• 1:20:56
  I saw.
• 1:20:57
  Oh, I saw the one with Ryan.
• 1:21:00
  What's it called?
• 1:21:01
  Project Hell Mary?
• 1:21:02
  Yes, I saw Project Hell Mary.
• 1:21:03
  No way.
• 1:21:04
  I really liked it.
• 1:21:05
  Yeah, I saw it yesterday.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah, I liked him a lot.
• 1:21:08
  I think he has a wonderful, a wonderful,
• 1:21:12
  relaxed, interesting quality on film.
• 1:21:16
  I think he's a movie star.
• 1:21:17
  He's kind of got an effortless quality.
• 1:21:19
  An effortless quality, yes.
• 1:21:21
  He's kind of carried grant.
• 1:21:23
  Yeah.
• 1:21:24
  Because that movie, it's literally just him and basically just him and a robot.
• 1:21:27
  I know.
• 1:21:28
  And he can hold it together.
• 1:21:29
  And he holds it together.
• 1:21:30
  So I was very impressed with that.
• 1:21:32
  Are you a sci-fi fan?
• 1:21:33
  No, particularly.
• 1:21:34
  But I'm a Ryan, whatever his name is, fan.
• 1:21:37
  Hangosley.
• 1:21:39
  So if Steven Spielberg was making a movie with Ryan Gosling.
• 1:21:43
  Oh, please.
• 1:21:44
  Please.
• 1:21:45
  Fantastic.
• 1:21:47
  Well, I gotta say, before we finish, I'm such a big fan of serial mom.
• 1:21:51
  And it's one of my favorite films of yours.
• 1:21:53
  And I just wanted to ask about those scenes,
• 1:21:55
  because you played Dotty Hinkle.
• 1:21:56
  Yes.
• 1:21:57
  It's kind of neurotic housewife in that film.
• 1:21:58
  And you have these scenes of Kathleen Turner,
• 1:22:00
  who's the star,
• 1:22:01
  which is just hilarious.
• 1:22:02
  I'm like, you have these phone call scenes.
• 1:22:04
  And I just want to ask about the making of that film.
• 1:22:08
  That movie was really fun.
• 1:22:10
  It was really, really fun.
• 1:22:12
  Kathleen should have gotten an Oscar.
• 1:22:14
  I mean, there was never any question about it.
• 1:22:16
  It takes millions of dollars to promote an Oscar.
• 1:22:19
  But she is, it is the most wonderful personification of evil
• 1:22:26
  that I've ever seen.
• 1:22:28
  This joyousness of just a monster.
• 1:22:34
  And she is so charming and so likable.
• 1:22:37
  So I thought she was wonderful.
• 1:22:39
  I loved working with her.
• 1:22:40
  She was really fun to work with.
• 1:22:41
  I was nervous.
• 1:22:42
  I was very apprehensive.
• 1:22:43
  I had heard that she was difficult.
• 1:22:47
  And I don't, I couldn't tell you where I heard it.
• 1:22:50
  But you know, in the ether,
• 1:22:52
  there was Kathleen Turner is difficult.
• 1:22:54
  She was not difficult at all.
• 1:22:56
  She was having a wonderful time.
• 1:22:59
  She really enjoyed playing that part.
• 1:23:04
  I mean, you can see it.
• 1:23:05
  You can see it.
• 1:23:06
  You can watch it.
• 1:23:07
  You can tell she's having fun.
• 1:23:08
  One of my favorite moments in the film is during the phone call
• 1:23:12
  where she calls me, you know,
• 1:23:14
  watch your filthy mouth.
• 1:23:15
  You're filthy whore, whatever it is.
• 1:23:17
  She says, right before she, you know,
• 1:23:20
  she calls me and she chooses me out.
• 1:23:22
  And then she calls me back as the telephone operator.
• 1:23:26
  But before she does, there's this little giggle
• 1:23:29
  that she does.
• 1:23:30
  That just every time she does it,
• 1:23:32
  it just makes me want to laugh.
• 1:23:34
  It's just such a wonderful little giggle.
• 1:23:38
  It's almost like a little school girl giggle.
• 1:23:40
  It is.
• 1:23:41
  She's just the gleeful.
• 1:23:42
  Stop it.
• 1:23:43
  Yeah.
• 1:23:44
  And then the scene in the courtroom.
• 1:23:45
  I love that one.
• 1:23:46
  That must have been fun to shoot.
• 1:23:47
  It was.
• 1:23:48
  I mean, I had to call one of the biggest movie stars.
• 1:23:52
  And she was at that time,
• 1:23:53
  one of the biggest movie stars.
• 1:23:55
  I got to call her a pickfucker.
• 1:23:58
  Who can say that?
• 1:24:00
  She thought it was great.
• 1:24:02
  You get, because you're getting dragged out, aren't you?
• 1:24:05
  By the way, you're just shouting all these.
• 1:24:07
  She likes it because like the character you play almost seems
• 1:24:10
  like she's quite sort of buttoned up kind of house.
• 1:24:12
  You know, I don't use bad language.
• 1:24:14
  She did, though.
• 1:24:15
  Yeah.
• 1:24:16
  Well, she had it quite, quite there at the tip of her tongue.
• 1:24:19
  Yes.
• 1:24:20
  Yeah, this gets brought out by,
• 1:24:21
  by Kathy Turner's character.
• 1:24:23
  And you're absolutely right.
• 1:24:24
  You can see that sort of deliciousness.
• 1:24:26
  Oh, she was just having the best time.
• 1:24:28
  She really was.
• 1:24:29
  I think she enjoyed every minute of it.
• 1:24:31
  And I see her.
• 1:24:32
  I don't see her often,
• 1:24:33
  but I mean, I have been to see her in place.
• 1:24:35
  She's a wonderful actress.
• 1:24:37
  I've seen her in play.
• 1:24:38
  I said, I should say actor.
• 1:24:39
  I think that's one of those words that should be gender neutral.
• 1:24:47
  But I've seen her in plays.
• 1:24:48
  And she's just a glorious thing to watch on stage.
• 1:24:55
  And John seems so proud of that movie, particularly.
• 1:24:58
  I mean, John is, as he should be, you know, very proud of the work
• 1:25:01
  that he did and you guys did together.
• 1:25:02
  But I think you see,
• 1:25:03
  he always talks about serial momers, like, you know, very fondly.
• 1:25:06
  It's like, as if it's, you know, he says it's his best movie.
• 1:25:08
  He actually said once was like, this is my.
• 1:25:10
  Well, I think it is.
• 1:25:11
  I think it actually is.
• 1:25:13
  I mean, I think, like I said earlier,
• 1:25:15
  the best movie of his early years.
• 1:25:18
  Pink flamingos got all the notoriety,
• 1:25:20
  but female trouble is a better movie.
• 1:25:23
  It's just, it's not quite a shocking,
• 1:25:25
  but it has its moments.
• 1:25:28
  And, but the storyline, the plot and the acting throughout is,
• 1:25:33
  I think, better.
• 1:25:35
  But serial mom definitely is the crowning achievement.
• 1:25:38
  I agree.
• 1:25:39
  As a wrap-up question.
• 1:25:40
  I mean, it's a big question.
• 1:25:41
  I mean, if you could be remembered for one thing,
• 1:25:43
  Pink Star, what would you like, want to be remembered for?
• 1:25:46
  Oh, good Lord.
• 1:25:47
  You mean me personally, or, or, I guess, I guess,
• 1:25:52
  I guess, like, Pink stole the sort of the dreamlander
• 1:25:55
  and then, like, Pink stole the person, you know, Nancy.
• 1:25:58
  No, never Nancy.
• 1:25:59
  Never Nancy.
• 1:26:00
  Only people who don't know me call me Nancy.
• 1:26:05
  I think, I think the early dreamlander,
• 1:26:07
  I think that is what I'm most proud of.
• 1:26:09
  That has had the biggest effect on my life,
• 1:26:12
  the fact that I'm still working with it,
• 1:26:15
  the fact that I'm on stage Friday night at the BFI
• 1:26:18
  because of what I did, of because of those films.
• 1:26:22
  So, yes, I think the early dreamland work is certainly
• 1:26:25
  what is, if a legacy there be, that be it.
• 1:26:29
  I like to say it's in the Library of Congress.
• 1:26:31
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:26:32
  Because it's all reserved for all time.
• 1:26:34
  Yeah.
• 1:26:35
  Wonderful.
• 1:26:36
  Well, what can I say?
• 1:26:37
  Thank you so much, Pink, for coming on the show.
• 1:26:39
  I'm such a fan of yours.
• 1:26:40
  And it really was just such a pleasure
• 1:26:41
  just to hear you chat to us.
• 1:26:42
  Well, thank you.
• 1:26:43
  Thank you.
• 1:26:44
  Thank you.
• 1:26:45
  This has really been fun.
• 1:26:46
  I've enjoyed an enormous light.
• 1:26:47
  Thank you so much, Pink.
• 1:26:48
  Thank you very much.
• 1:26:49
  I really enjoyed myself.