Little Girl Lost

Tania is 60 today.  Feel old?

Public Service Announcement: An Annual Reminder

Remember:  No white shoes until Tuesday, please.

This message is brought to you by the Café Muscato 

in partnership with the Sutphin Foundation.

Birthday Boy: American Auteur

The artist and his muse

One of America's great contributions to the world of cinema came into the world 67 years ago today, and in many ways, he has been as influential in shaping my appreciation of the movies as anyone this side of Griffith and Gish.  Working with the extended repertory company he recruited in the back alleys of his native Baltimore, John Waters made stars in much the way of the classic studios: by finding extreme types and then figuring out what really made them shine.  From Divine to Patty Hearst, he has given birth to some truly landmark performances: Edith Massey as the Egg Lady, Kathleen Turner as serial-killing sweetheart Beverly Sutphin, Johnny Depp as teen reprobate Cry Baby.  His very personal vision of cinematic glamour - equal parts pinup and puke, as it were - has proven amazingly durable, and while these days he's as much a writer and personality as director, he remains a consistently, even reassuringly, contrary voice of reason, sanity, and, of course, Bad Taste - of the highest order.

It's quite a day, for one could assemble a perfectly workable Dreamland cast just out of some of Waters's fellow celebrants - imagine the script he could craft around a roster consisting of Charlotte Rae, Glen Campbell, Jack Nicholson, Marilyn Chambers, and Sherri Shepherd, with a very special cameo by Bettie Page.  Throw in a couple of the regulars like Mink Stole and Mary Vivian Pearce, and he'd be all set.

In the absence of such a doubtless celluloid atrocity/triumph, I guess we'll have to make do with our well-thumbed DVD of Female Trouble, to me the film that most closely guarantees Waters a kind of cinematic immortality.  It's smoother than Pink Flamingos, a shade less full of shock-for-shock's-sake than Desperate Living, and even after all these years as serious a look as can be imagined at how  show business and the mania for celebrity can warp minds and lives.  The Midnight Movie might have gone the way of the dodo, but it's nice to know that Waters is still with us, keeping a jaundiced yet boundlessly appreciative eye on the foibles and messes of the world and prescribing for the least sign of boredom a little discreet mayhem.

Given the goings-on that he's depicted at at least one birthday party, though, I think a little e-appreciation like this is just about as far, at the moment, as I'm willing to go.

My Day...

...in a nutshell.  Don't ask.  Mother of God, please don't ask.  After a day like this, Mama smack.

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?

A Timely Reminder

Back there in the world of Saturday-starting weekends, I know, you're heading into a last, langurous long weekend before the autumn. We at the Café hope that you will take a moment from saying farewell to summer to heed this hint from our domestic engineering consultant, homemaker extraordinaire Beverly Sutphin:

You can't wear white

after Labor Day!

And none of this whining about how fashion changes, and don't try to sneak by over the next few months in any so-called "winter white." Beverly has some firm opinions. Which we share. Put that stuff away!

The Darlings of Cinema

Róisín Murphy's "Movie Star" has been a major iPod favorite for months now, but only today did I think to track down the video. I suppose everyone else in the world has seen this endlessly, but it seems to me an excellent way to close out Hallowe'en.

It is anarchic, gleeful, marvelous - equal parts prime John Waters and early Fellini, with a dash of Cyndi Lauper circa "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and more than a little George Romero toward the end. And under, around, and through it all, that seductive, chugging beat perfectly setting off Murphy's sweet, slightly steely voice.

Enjoy.

Portrait Gallery: Álvaro Villarrubia

Spanish shutterbug Álvaro Villarrubia can take my picture any time he likes.

Some of his portraits have their Warholish undertones:

The Once and Future Prince of Puke

Others give a fresh, chic twist to star portraits:

Carmen Maura, Reina de las Películas

Others simply document the loveliness set before them:

I can has Javier Bardem?

While others combine simple sets, an artful use of props, and fashion to tell an enigmatic story:

Amanda Lepore; yes, dear, you have breasts. We know. Put them away.

One knew that the boho scene in Madrid was fabulous; it's good to know it's being so fittingly captured on film.