Cookie, 1976, (© Audrey Stanzler)
ABOUT COOKIE MUELLER
“...one of the most influential if unheralded figures in late 20th-century American culture. ”
Cookie Mueller was a firecracker, a cult figure, a wild child, a writer, a go-go dancer, a mother and a icon. A child of suburban 1950s Maryland, she made her name as an actress in John Waters's films, including Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, and then as an art critic for Details magazine and a health columnist for the East Village Eye. She was also a writer of hilarious and shockingly wise stories, the ‘cure for a bad party,’ and a maven of New York’s downtown art world. Her writings, especially the collection of autobiographical stories Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black (Semiotext(e) 1990) have inspired many and gathered a cult following.
Cookie lived an independent and wild life, going from Provincetown, where she kept a circle of romantic crack-pots and poets around her, to New York City where she collaborated with No Wave and avant-garde filmmakers such as Amos Poe, Eric Michell and Michel Auder. Cookie also lit up the stage at the Performing Garage alongside other NYC luminaries such as Taylor Mead, John Heys, Gary Indiana and Sharon Niesp.
Cookie died from AIDS in 1989, and has since become an icon, adored by those who have discovered her work.
Edgewise is a meditation on memory and storytelling paying homage to the life of Cookie Mueller through the voices of her friends, lovers, and family.