The one “insane” stunt Mink Stole refused to do in ‘Pink Flamingos’
There are movies like Octonauts: The Ring of Fire and Peppa Pig: My First Cinema Experience that are so harmless it feels like they could be blown off the screen with one gusty exhalation of an excitable toddler. But then, there are other movies which aren’t quite so light and weightless, holding a harsh density that purposefully provokes and prods the viewer, films like Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66 and John Waters’ Pink Flamingos.
Waters, who was nicknamed ‘The Duke of Dirt’, was notorious for his cinematic bad taste, creating such classic movies as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and Cry-Baby while earning an ardent pack of cult followers in the process. Rising to underground popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s, Waters made his debut with Mondo Trasho, a day in the life of a hit-and-run driver, starring his long-time collaborator Divine.
Just one year later, they would, once again, join forces for the release of Multiple Maniacs, a film about a bunch of deviants known for their debaucherous behaviour, but neither this film nor their previous collaboration would compare to 1972’s Pink Flamingos. A stylish and subversive piece of cinema, the iconic cult classic saw Divine vie for the title of being ‘The Filthiest Person Alive’.
Remarkably, not everything in the fictional film was totally fake, with Waters and Divine living up to the movie’s nasty premise by setting up a scene where the actor ate real dog shit. “I guess it’s one of the most famous scenes I ever shot,” Waters once stated, “Certainly, no one ever tried to do it again. It was a first, a last and pointless! Infantile! No special effects – it was real. And it frightens people to this day. [Divine] would try to explain it. I didn’t eat it. It made it worse! I mean, he brushed his teeth immediately. It wasn’t like he walked around”.
Divine wasn’t the only actor to be asked to do shocking things, either, with Waters asking co-star Mink Stole to set her hair on fire, something the actor wasn’t so willing to do.
During a 2020 interview with Another, Stole stated: “John wanted me to set my hair on fire in the film, and I originally agreed to do it before I realised that was absolutely insane. I’d refused to do something I originally agreed to do, and I thought Divine would refuse as well because eating dog shit is absolutely insane. It was truly repulsive but Divine did it and it was completely real and it made history”.
Made on a budget of just $12,000, you can’t really judge Stole for refusing, considering that Waters didn’t exactly have the proper precautions in place to be able to deal with if things went wrong on set.
Although Divine came away as the main character of Waters’ cult classic, Mink Stole’s Connie Marble is one of the film’s unsung heroes. Check out a clip of her in the scene below.
