Mink Stole and Peaches Christ talk trash, collaboration and community: “Divine eating the dog poop was way past the tolerance level of most people”

Baltimore-born Mink Stole is one of many anomalous figures in the film worlds of John Waters. From Connie Marble in Pink Flamingos (1972) to Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living (1977), Stole cemented herself as a regular performer of steely, often somewhat unhinged characters. She’d later cameo in an array of cult films, including But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) and Splendor (1999).

Film programmer and drag impresario Peaches Christ saw something unique and meaningful in Stole’s unmistakable screen presence. After inviting Stole to introduce Desperate Living at Christ’s popular ‘Midnight Mass’ screening series in San Francisco, the two became regular collaborators and firm friends.

Now, they’re bringing their unique and intimate double act Idol Worship to the BFI, as part of a new BFI Southbank season celebrating cult, Trash! The Wildest Films You’ve Ever Seen. Ahead of the season, the duo sat down with us to discuss the meaning of trash, the changing landscape of cult distribution, and Stole’s overdue canonisation.

Blake Simons: What does ‘trash’ as a concept mean to you?

Mink Stole: That’s a tough one for me. John Waters embraced the term many decades ago – I’m with him on it. But, at the same time, I kind of hate being called trash – I’d like to think that what I do has more value than that. But as a term of art, trash means independent, original, generally less expensive, and fun.

Peaches Christ: It’s funny how certain words are interpreted differently. One thing I’ve noticed is the difference between the way Brits use the word ‘camp’ compared to the United States. Sometimes it’s used as a way to denigrate what I do there, but over here it’s used in a way that elevates it – almost like camp is a higher level of cleverness. With ‘trash’, I like to think of it as – you call our shit trash, so we’re going to reclaim it and embrace it. It’s not for you – because if you see it as trash then, really, you don’t get it. 

Trash cinema is for insiders. Most people who love trash cinema wouldn’t literally find it to be garbage. They elevate it to: these are my favourite movies, my favourite things that are outsider, transgressive, underground, maybe not made with the same budgets. But it’s an interesting thing to call it. Metaphorically, I think John reclaimed it such that we’ll call ourselves trash so that you can’t dismiss us.

Mink: So that you can’t hurt us. 

Peaches: It’s like the way that we use ‘queer’.

Peaches, what was it about Mink on screen that you found so fascinating? What inspired your idolatry?

Peaches: Those early John Waters movies were transformative. I grew up Catholic in Maryland. I was a sissy. I was misunderstood. I loved everything dark and horrific and macabre. 

There was a deeper, more personal connection. Even though I didn’t know them personally, I really identified with this group of misfits. I’ve read critics that dismiss the Dreamlanders’ performances as amateurish, but if you look at David Lochary, Mink Stole, Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, you see a committed group of people performing a kind of comedy that is very challenging to pull off. Many filmmakers think they can do what this group did, and they often fall flat on their face. Divine and Mink held these movies up to a standard of performance that is very elevated. Because she was doing something that hadn’t been done is why I fell in love with Mink Stole.

Mink, what was it about Peaches that solidified your friendship?

Mink: Peaches sent me a wonderful letter inviting me to come to San Francisco for a screening of Desperate Living and be interviewed before the movie. I had never been the subject of the attention that many of the other Dreamlanders got, Divine in particular – and I have to say, Divine deserved it, and handled it beautifully. But I had never had it.

I didn’t expect the reception that I got. When I walked into that theatre, there was a banner across the stage that said ‘Hail Mink’. It was a standing ovation; there was Peaches on the stage dressed as Peggy Gravel; and the capper was an animatronic Peggy Gravel on the stage stirring a vat of rabies potion. Nobody had ever done this for me before, it blew my mind. I fell in love with Peaches immediately.

It fascinates me that you starred together on stage in a homage to Grey Gardens (1976) – Return to Grey Gardens (2016) – because the Beales always struck me as real people who are very much like John Waters’ characters, and that film came out right in the middle of the Dreamlanders’ rise.

Peaches: A huge motivating force for me has always been celebrating film across the board, and Grey Gardens was always on my list of things I wanted to celebrate, but I was reluctant. I was lucky that I got to see Grey Gardens at the Castro Theatre in the ‘90s in an auditorium full of people who celebrated the Beales in that film – because they were queer people, they were outsiders. Then I saw it somewhere else, and the audience was snickering. They were watching it more from the point of view of: aren’t these people freaks? Aren’t they funny to laugh at? So I got nervous. It wasn’t until I had this drag child, Jinx Monsoon, who did this flawless Little Edie that I thought: no one’s going to snicker at this. They’re going to get that we’re sending this up with love. 

I needed a close friend to show up and say, you need to take better care of yourselves, this isn’t any way to live. That’s why Mink was perfect, because she was the real life version of that mentor. It was fun to put her in a play where we were acting out a thing that was actually kind of real for us.

Mink: I loved being part of it. The Beales took their completely extraordinary lives totally for granted. They completely accepted the way that they lived. They didn’t complain – well, Little Edie wanted to be in show business – but they never discussed the fact that they lived such weird, unusual lives. They just lived them. I think that’s how a lot of the John Waters characters are also. They just are – without explanation and without preamble.

Do you view ‘trash cinema’ as being a thing of the past or do you think it continues to exist in the present?

Peaches: John brought the notion of ‘shock value’ from a carnivalesque point of view into the world of cinema. He took the idea of the freak show and translated it to cinema by having a drag queen eat dogshit. Can people achieve these things the same way that John did in the late ‘60s and ‘70s? Absolutely not. But filmmakers coming along and reinventing the way that we do things, working as outsiders and being dismissed as trash – and they’re okay with it? Absolutely.

I go to underground film festivals all the time and still see shocking, wild, crazy things young filmmakers are creating what the BFI would say is trash. Maybe, in 30 years, we’ll be programming those movies. It’s almost like for it to really be trash when it comes out, the BFI has to dismiss it and turn their nose up into the air – for it to really be good trash. You should literally be thinking it’s not worthy of your screen. Then, once it finds its audience and builds its cult, it’ll get elevated to that other kind of trash cinema.

Mink: We were absolutely dismissed. [Film critic] Rex Reed said of Female Trouble [1974] “where do these people go at night?” I used to get lots of grief about my name – they would always put my actual birth name next to it to explain me. There was a lot of dismissal and snideness that these people think they’re doing something. And of course, Divine eating the dog poop horrified a lot of people. It was way past the tolerance level of most people. And now it’s celebrated. It’s an interesting turnaround.

‘Trash’ has become more omnipresent in today’s world in different respects. TikTok and Instagram brainrot similarly finds humour in absurd non-sequiturs and gross-out humour. And, of course, queer and cult filmmakers are taking the aesthetics of John Waters and pursuing a similarly sandbox approach to independent filmmaking.

Mink: I always say it’s a wonderful thing that anybody with a phone can make a movie, and a terrible thing that anybody with a phone can make a movie. There’s quality out there, and there’s not-quality. I don’t spend much time on social media, but I do every now and then find myself in a rabbit hole. Three reels are brilliant and then the fourth one is really bad. Then you get another one that’s good. So it’s a real mixed bag. But the fact that these platforms exist and are a way for people to share their creativity with the world is excellent.

Peaches: We’re all inspired by things and then we make things. Any artist who says that they haven’t been affected or influenced by the things they like is crazy. I think figuring out how to take that inspiration and regurgitate it as your own unique and original version of all the things that inspire you is what art is to me, or at least the process of it. The mistake I’ve seen made is that some don’t know the difference between taking inspiration or copying. When you try to copy something that’s already been done, you fail. It’s missing that spark that makes it whatever we need it to be.

I love that people have access to audiences. For a long time, it was about luck. It took New Line Cinema distributing Pink Flamingos for John to get to another level. Now, you don’t necessarily need that person in power to get accepted to a film festival, or distribute your film. You can put it online and find out if there are other sick, twisted people out there who like this thing.

Tell me about the tour. You’re subverting the expectations of the BFI Southbank audience by delivering something that’s atypical in structure and content for that cinema space.

Peaches: I started out doing pre-shows before screenings, and the shows would often grow to become their own thing that could be separate from the screening. Much as I love the screenings, you’re dealing with time constraints, licensing rights, all these other variables. Mink was the first to say: we can do this without the movie screening. I could create a whole show that’s about her. That’s what we did. And then, during the pandemic, Mink said: this show needs to be about us as collaborators. Now we’re with the best version of the show, because it’s so honest. But it also delivers what the fans are looking for, celebrating all of Mink’s fantastic characters.

Mink: I’ve never performed in London before. Except for two days in 1967, I’ve never even been to the UK. To say that I’m excited is an understatement. I am quivering in my very bones.

Peaches, you founded Midnight Mass and grew a faithful audience. Mink, the films that you debuted in were very much a homegrown effort. Community strikes me as core to both of you, and maybe even to trash cinema as a concept.

Mink: Community is important, period. The fact that you sit in a dark room with people experiencing the same thing at exactly the same time, in whatever way you’re experiencing it, is a wonderful, unifying thing. There have been times when I’ve sat by myself in a movie theatre and had a wonderful connection with whoever was sitting next to me, because we were both weeping or laughing over something, and I never saw that person again. When the movie was over, we went our separate ways, but I still felt that connection. I think that’s part of the community in film.

Peaches: I decided to call myself Peaches Christ and create a show called Midnight Mass because I was raised Catholic, and a lot of it was to give a middle finger and reclaim something that had been used to hurt me. Over time, I realised that, by gathering people together in a space to celebrate what we value, and finding fellowship as a community of outsiders and weirdos, it was a collection. I was gathering the trash to celebrate trash. There’s a spiritual component to that, and it’s exactly what Mink describes. The power is in the people. It just so happens that we celebrate trash in our church, but queer church is real, and for me, cinema is my church.

Mink Stole and Peaches Christ appear in their new show Idol Worship at BFI Southbank on 10 April as part of the film season Trash! The Wildest Films You’ve Ever Seen and are touring their show to Home, Manchester, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, Cameo, Edinburgh and Irish Film Institute, Dublin.