Interview: Actress Mink Stole Reflects on Her Career and SERIAL MOM

This week, Scream Factory is releasing a fantastic Collector’s Edition Blu-ray for John Waters’ subversive domestic comedy, Serial Mom, which follows a well-meaning mother (Kathleen Turner) who embarks on a murderous rampage after she finds out that certain folks are out to harm certain members of her loving family. In Serial Mom, frequent Waters collaborator Mink Stole stars as Dottie Hinkle, the bane of Turner’s character’s existent and tormented victim of her malicious sense of humor.

To celebrate the brand new Blu from Scream Factory, Daily Dead had the pleasure of speaking with Stole about her career, from starting out with Waters during the 1960s through her experiences on a variety of his other cinematic projects, including Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, and, of course, Serial Mom. Stole also reflected about her time on the set of Waters’ 1994 dark comedy, working with Turner and more.

Great to speak with you, Mink. You've been a part of so many really fun and amazing films that impacted my life growing up, so it's really awesome to get to speak with you today.

Mink Stole: I’m always happy to be part of corrupting another human being [laughs].

I know we’re going to chat about Serial Mom, but I would love to hear about how you started off in the industry. Was John basically the catalyst behind that? Because I know you guys worked together for a long, long time.

Mink Stole: Oh, absolutely. I met John when I was 18. Maybe I had just turned 19, but I was still really young. We met casually, and, of course, he wasn't John Waters with all the sparkles and fireworks and asterisks and things that surround his name today. He was just this really amazingly charismatic guy that I met in Provincetown, which was on Cape Cod.

And when I met him, he had one ten-minute, black-and-white 8mm film under his belt. He did not call himself a filmmaker; at least I don't remember that he did. He was just incredibly charismatic and knowledgeable and confident, and all those things that charismatic people are. So, we hung out in the summer, and we ended up sharing an apartment. He and I and about six other people were living there through the summer, including my sister, who had introduced us, because she knew him from Baltimore.

So, when we moved at the end of the summer, we all moved back to Baltimore. And then, one day, John called me up and said, "Hey, I'm making a movie. Do you want to be in it?" Who says “no” to that? I didn't even ask him what it was. All I remember from that is that I had on this monkey fur jacket and my hair was cut really short and blonde. And I think it was Pat Moran who spanked me. I think that was the scene. There was no dialogue. It was just a vignette.

I did a couple of other vignettes for this film, too, and John cobbled all these things together and made this movie called Roman Candle, which you can’t even see now. But then he made a couple of other short films that, for one reason or another, I wasn't in. But, yes, I completely started with him, and while I wouldn't say that everything I know I learned from him—because that's not true— everything that I know I learned came through the conduit of him, if that makes sense.

When you get to work with a director who really becomes so integral to your career, like John did in your early years in this industry, does that make the relationship you two share that much more special?

Mink Stole: Well, when it comes to John, I don't know anything else. So, that's my normal. It’s hard to quantify it or qualify it. In many ways it was fabulous, because we were not only working together, but we were friends, and we're still friends today. We've been friends for 50 years. That is a long time, pretty much for my entire adult life we have been friends. And I could say genuinely that I believe he has been a bigger impact on my life than I have been on his, but I do think that we've been good together. I do think that we've been very beneficial to each other.

But I don't know the “other.” I don't know what it would be like not to have done it the way I did it, for it not to have happened the way it happened. You know, some things are just as they are. So, I really don't know how to answer that question. I do know that very few other people have had this kind of a relationship in their lives, so I do think it's enormously marvelous and special. The flip side is that it's very hard for people to recognize me as a person or an actor outside of his world. John has cast a great light upon me, but at the same time, he has also cast a great shadow over me, too. So there's a flip side, but I’m always grateful for every opportunity he ever gave me, too, of course.

You’ve played a lot of fun characters over the years, but Dottie in Serial Mom might be my favorite, or at least tied with Tammy in Hairspray. How much fun was it to come into something like Serial Mom, which was a little more mainstream, but you guys still got to make this wonderfully weird project that most studios would have never even considered taking on?

Mink Stole: Yeah, Serial Mom was a completely different filming experience. I don't like the word "journey," but there was a progression for him as a director. It wasn't like we jumped from Multiple Maniacs to Serial Mom, because that would never have worked. That’s an improbable jump.

There was a long series of transitions, from starting out in 8mm black and white, moving up to 35mm color, sound, and then using movie stars. It was a huge difference, but John did it well. He made his transitions well. And the working conditions were infinitely better, too. We got food. We got housing. They gave me an apartment. It was incredible.

The tone of the film was set by a combination and a collaboration, the collaboration between John and Kathleen, because a difficult actor on the set, especially one with a great deal of power, who chooses to exercise that power in a negative way, can bring down the entire thing and can make the entire experience miserable. Kathleen was an angel. She was light. She was fun. She was funny. She was having a good time. She was charming and wonderful to people, and between her, and the fact that John's sets are always fun anyway, plus the quality of the work that was being done by everybody, Serial Mom was a really intensely good experience.

Did you realize when you were doing these films, from an actor's perspective, that beyond the infectious nature of John’s directing, his stories were always working on another level? Did that help ground things when sometimes the material ventured into these weird territories?

Mink Stole: Well, I will tell you, I loved Hairspray, and I really loved my character in Hairspray. It was the first time that I had been a good guy. I was always the bad guy. I was always the real asshole in the movie who had to get a comeuppance, like in Pink Flamingos or in Female Trouble. So, in Hairspray, I got to be one of the good guys. I was on the side of right justice and the American way. I was thrilled by this. But unfortunately, in the translation from film to stage, my character got kind of absorbed into another character and disappeared, and that makes me a little sad. I mean, part of what I do is there, but my name does not live on. But Hairspray was a huge thing for me, and I was very aware of the social commentary we were making in Hairspray because I lived through that era.

I was a teenager watching that type of TV show. It wasn't called The Corny Collins Show, but that TV show existed and I watched it. That amusement park existed and I attended it. And the fact that it closed because of refusal for integration, that's true. So, I was aware of these things and I was delighted with the social commentary John was able to work into that film—and on all of his films, actually.