CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/30/2024

Celebrate the extraordinary freedom of Cookie Mueller in this Pride Month Pick

"Why does everybody think I'm so wild? I'm not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path." So begins Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller, Chloé Griffin's must-read, low-fi homage to the beloved cult writer, actress and muse to many, who died in 1989 of AIDS-related causes at the age of 40. "Cookie looked like Janis Joplin meets Jayne Mansfield, a redneck hippie with a little bit of glamour drag thrown in. She never led a safe life, unsafe was her middle name. She lived on the edge, always," John Waters is quoted. "She was like a woman in flames—she was something like I'd never seen before in my life," Gary Indiana tells Griffin. "Not just a beauty, but the freedom that she had about herself, that extraordinary freedom… She was like a comet going across the sky once in 100 years." Featured photograph is Cookie Mueller, N.Y.C, 1979 by Don Herro.