Tough Cookie

In a better world, that sweet creature on the right there - assaying the role of Concetta in what to me may be Mr. Waters's finest work, Female Trouble, along with Divine's Dawn Davenport and Susan Walsh's Chicklette - would be 63.  Cookie Mueller left the party too soon, but we're fortunate that beside her several memorable celluloid moments (which also include her turn as the plot-advancing spy, also Cookie, in Pink Flamingos), she left behind a small but treasurable body of prose, a mix of fiction, autobiography, and essays (for not the oddest part of her odd life is that she ended up a columnist, for both Details and the old East Village Eye).

When I moved to New York in the late '80s, it was partly because I wanted to be part of the underground world I read about in magazines like those, or at least a slightly sanitized, bougie version of it.  I remember when Cookie died, in '89, because I had the feeling that that party was ending, and I suppose mostly it did.  In her writing, though, you can capture that moment.  Waters said it best:  "Cookie Mueller wrote like a lunatic Uncle Remus - spinning little stories from Hell that will make any reader laugh out loud. She was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch doctor, an art-hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl.”

There's a fair amount of Cookie-love still out there online, ranging from an almost surreally primitive Angelfire (did you know that even still existed?) fan site to an enthusiastic overview of her writing, here.  Of course, you can always pop into nice Mr. Amazon's little shop and pick up your own copy of her anthology, Ask Dr. Mueller (they go high, but it's worth it).  Doing so makes for a nice birthday tribute, no?