#Mink Stole

[honeygleam]

pink flamingos (1972) dir. john waters

[efemmera-archive]

Mink Stole as "the Religious Whore" giving Divine a rosary-job in Multiple Maniacs (1970), Dir. John Waters.

[classicfilmpunk]

HAIRSPRAY (1988) dir. John Waters

[esqueletosgays]

BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER (1999)

Director: Jamie Babbit Cinematography: Jules Labarthe

[kaitcake1289]

never ask a horror lesbian her faves bro who the hell are they 😭😭

[despairoftheendless]

Desperate Living - 1977

[theersatzcowboy]

Cecil B. Demented (2000)

John Waters’ hysterical satire of art house film culture, the lobotomizing efforts of Hollywood, and cinematic gate-keeping is so ahead of its time you’d swear it was made yesterday…not 20 (!) years ago.

Director: John Waters

Cinematographer: Robert M. Stevens

Starring: Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, Alicia Witt, Adrian Grenier, Michael Shannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Larry Gilliard, Jr., Zenzele Uzoma, Ricki Lake, Eric Roberts, Patricia Hearst, and Mink Stole

[secretceremonies]

pink flamingos

[pierppasolini]

Pink Flamingos (1972) // dir. John Waters

[bitter69uk]

Klaxon! Today is a holy day! The truly glorious and versatile John Waters character actress Mink Stole (née Nancy Paine Stoll on 25 August 1947) turns 77! You probably know her best as Connie Marble in Pink Flamingos (1972) or Taffy in Female Trouble (1974), but I’d argue Stole’s crowning achievement is her performance as Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living (1977) (pictured). Who can forget the unstable Peggy ranting and raving in its opening minutes? (“Have I gone to Hell? Is that it? Have I gone straight to Hell?” and screaming at a child "Go home and tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother -- I hate YOU!"). Some fun facts: Pleasant Gehman interviewed Stole on her podcast The Devil’s Music last year. While she’s synonymous with Baltimore, Stole has resided in Los Angeles for years. And it may come as no surprise that being a beloved cult cinema icon isn’t exactly lucrative. For decades Stole maintained a day job as a legal secretary.

[chronophotographic-gun]

Desperate Living (1977)

[aliveandfullofjoy]

Happy new year! If you're following me, you know that I watch too many movies. You also probably know that I love acting. A truly great performance feels, to me, like a magic trick. Of the movies I watched for the first time this year (excluding 2024 or 2023 releases), these are eleven of my favorite performances, in alphabetical order.

01. Ida Kamińska & Jozef Kroner, The Shop on Main Street (dir. Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, 1965)

Kamińska received one of the coolest Oscar nominations ever with her lovely performance in this shattering Czech drama as a nearly-deaf elderly widow, but Kroner, arguably the film's true lead, deserved equal recognition for his astounding performance as the shiftless man thrown into the cogs of fascism. They play off each other beautifully, and they are both perfectly keyed into the film's tonal tightrope act. Kroner is asked to carry much of the film, including much of its comedy, and he does so effortlessly, but it falls on Kamińska to sell the sharp pivot into despair at the end. The results are gutting.

02. Anders Danielsen Lie, Oslo, August 31st (dir. Joachim Trier, 2011)

Before he turned in a key supporting performance in Trier's The Worst Person in the World, Lie delivered one of the most essential performances of the 2010s in this film. Oslo rests entirely on his shoulders, and to say he delivers is an understatement: he commands the camera's full attention, giving the viewer a fully-realized portrait of a recovering addict with just his body language. This is a brutally sad film, but that Lie is able to find some semblance in joy in the buildup to its inevitable and crushing ending feels like a miracle.

03. Margo Martindale, Paris je t'aime (dir. Alexander Payne & others, 2006)

Paris je t'aime consists of eighteen short films, each with different directors, set in various arrondissements in Paris. Some of the shorts are stinkers, but the film is a charming experience overall. The final episode stands out above the rest: Payne gives Martindale free rein to shatter your heart into a million pieces. Playing an American woman on her first trip to Europe, she describes (in amateur French) what she loves about Paris. It's Payne at his very best -- funny, mature, human -- but it sings because of Martindale's soulful performance. If he had any sense, he'd give her a feature length movie.

04. Silvia Pinal, Simon of the Desert (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1965)

I went through a miniature obsession with the Sondheim musical Here We Are this year, which got me in the mood to scratch a Buñuel itch. While it's not one of the films the musical is adapted from, Simon of the Desert shares something with Here We Are: it exists largely as a fraction of what it was once intended to be, running only 45 minutes long. Still, it's a delightful film, and the star is the late, great Pinal, whose performance as (who else?) Satan is an entertaining, anarchic riot. I need to see more of her work ASAP.

05. Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading (dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 2008)

I could throw a dozen superlatives at Pitt in Burn After Reading. It's the actor's career best. It's one of the funniest performances of the 2000s. It's the blueprint for Gosling's Ken. Every line is a perfectly orchestrated head-empty-no-thoughts symphony. The way he drinks water like a hamster? The way he laughs and says, "You think that's a Schwinn"? The way he does his victory dance? Deeply stupid. Extraordinarily funny.

06. Kurt Russell, Big Trouble in Little China (dir. John Carpenter, 1986)

Like Pitt, this is an exquisite comedic performance. Everything about Big Trouble in Little China is dialed up to eleven, from the pulpy dialogue to the over-the-top action, and it's Russell, as the over-confident himbo sidekick deeply, truly believes that he's the hero of the story, who holds the film together. Every line he says in his sorta-kinda John Wayne impression makes me scream. I had never given Russell a second thought as an actor, but this performance instantly made me a fan.

07. Chishū Ryū, An Autumn Afternoon (dir. Yasujirō Ozu, 1962)

Even among Ozu's body of work, An Autumn Afternoon stands out as painfully sad. The final fifteen minutes of this film in particular are brutal, and probably the most devastating sequence I've seen in any of his movies. It was his final film, and as they had so often before, Ozu used Ryū as his leading man. He had one of the all-time great faces in film history, capable of conveying a deep, visceral ache with just a polite smile. The sadness of the finale comes through largely because of the beauty and the simplicity of Ryū's performance.

08. Harry Dean Stanton, Paris, Texas (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984)

I'm not in the habit of ranking the performances on these lists, but if I was, Stanton would be at the top. His performance in Paris, Texas -- also one of my absolute favorite new-to-me films of the year -- filled me with that rare warmth, that feeling that I'm watching a truly singular achievement in acting. Just like Chishū Ryū, if there was a contest for best faces in film, Stanton would be a finalist. Those deep eyes, the craggy skin. His performance is a masterclass in stillness and silence (he doesn't say his first line until nearly half an hour into the movie), communicating years of regret, heartbreak, joy, and longing with just a look. His journey begins in an unbearably lonely place and ends with a bittersweet reconciliation. To describe this performance as moving is the ultimate understatement.

09. Mink Stole, Female Trouble (dir. John Waters, 1974)

It feels wrong not to highlight the legendary Divine here. Female Trouble largely operates as a star vehicle for him, and he is genuinely terrific. Amazingly, though, in the face of Divine's hurricane of a performance, Mink Stole manages to steal the film as the obnoxious Taffy Davenport. As one of the core members of Waters' Dreamlanders, her keen understanding of his tone should come as no surprise, but that doesn't make it any less thrilling to watch her embody the film's deranged camp sensibilities. It takes a great actor to find the right balance in a film like this. Make no mistake: Mink Stole is a great actor.

10. Alfre Woodard, Crooklyn (dir. Spike Lee, 1994)

It's clichéd to describe a performance as the heart of the film, especially if that performance comes from a woman playing the mother in a coming-of-age movie, but friends: I've never claimed to be above cliché. Woodard is an American treasure, and she is undeniably the heart of Crooklyn, Lee's gorgeous look back home. Going toe-to-toe with Delroy Lindo (who very nearly made this list with Woodard), Woodard does richly layered work here, by turns commanding, funny, warm, and moving. It's a nuanced, lived-in performance from one of our greatest living actors.

Other performances I loved, in alphabetical order: Jane Alexander (The Great White Hope, 1970); Taraneh Alidoosti (The Salesman, 2016); Jean Arthur (History is Made at Night, 1937); Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait, 1978); Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep, 1946); Charles Boyer (History is Made at Night, 1937); Lon Chaney (The Unknown, 1927); George Clooney (Out of Sight, 1998); Sean Connery (The Hunt for the Red October, 1990); Joan Crawford (Sudden Fear, 1952); Russell Crowe (The Insider, 1999); Robert De Niro (Midnight Run, 1988); Laura Dern (Blue Velvet, 1986); Divine (Female Trouble, 1974); Griffin Dunne (After Hours, 1985); Charles Durning (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, 1982); Shelley Duvall (Popeye, 1980); John Goodman (Barton Fink, 1991); Elliott Gould (The Long Goodbye, 1973); Charles Grodin (Midnight Run, 1988); Dolores Hart (Where the Boys Are, 1960); Philip Seymour Hoffman (Punch-Drunk Love, 2002); Dennis Hopper (Blue Velvet, 1986); Shahab Hosseini (The Salesman, 2016); Gusti Huber (The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959); Rock Hudson (Seconds, 1966); Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted, 1999); James Earl Jones (The Great White Hope, 1970); Daniel Kaluuya (Widows, 2018); Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek, 1964); Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut, 1999); Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast, 2000); Nastassja Kinski (Paris, Texas, 1984); Yaphet Kotto (Midnight Run, 1988); Margaret Leighton (The Go-Between, 1971); Delroy Lindo (Crooklyn, 1994); Jennifer Lopez (Out of Sight, 1998); Walter Matthau (The Bad News Bears, 1976); Sheila McCarthy (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, 1987); Ethel Merman (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963); Nobuko Miyamoto (The Funeral, 1984); Kati Outinen (The Match Factory Girl, 1990); Jack Palance (Sudden Fear, 1952); David Hyde Pierce (Wet Hot American Summer, 2001); Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek, 1964); John Randolph (Seconds, 1966); Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet, 1986); Isabella Rossellini (Green Porno, 2008); Hassan Sabzian (Close-Up, 1990); Adam Sandler (Punch-Drunk Love, 2002); Norma Shearer (Marie Antoinette, 1936); Ruth Sheen (High Hopes, 1988); Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder, 2003); Kin Sugai (The Funeral, 1984); Haruko Sugimura (Morning for the Osone Family, 1946); Saïd Taghmaoui (La Haine, 1995); Gene Tierney (Leave Her to Heaven, 1945); John Turturro (Barton Fink, 1991); Charles Vanel (Wooden Crosses, 1932); Shelley Winters (The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959)

[forgettablebrat]

[classicfilmpunk]

Pink Flamingos (1972)

[despairoftheendless]

Multiple Maniacs - 1970