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Miss Edie: Q&A with Edith Massey, John Waters Egg Lady

April 28th, 2008 by Scott Marks

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While dining at a friend’s house last night I reclaimed a box of old audio cassettes left there during a move. It was loaded with everything from pre-recorded music tapes to the complete Sam Kinison audio collection to recordings of the Sig Sakowicz radio show, something that I am not equipped transfer to the internet or else today’s blog would contain an endless loop of “Thanks for taking da’ time” and”All Right!!!”

There at the bottom of the pile sat an ancient Certion 60 minute cassette containing a 1976 interview I conducted with Edith Massey. (Who knew that a Certion would last over 30 years? Come to think of it, what the hell is a Certion?) Edie was making a personal appearance at Northwestern University in conjunction with a screening of Female Trouble. After graduating from Mad Magazine and moving on to the National Lampoon, John Waters was the next (scata)logical rung in my ascension of the fecal pop culture food chain.

I was twenty at the time and writing for the Illinois Entertainer, a small monthly newspaper that specialized in rock music. When it comes to midnight movies, Pink Flamingos is my Rocky Horror Picture Show. (The only things audience members hurled at the screen was there dinner.) I was at the Devon Theatre for Chicago’s first screening of the film (at midnight, of course) and almost every weekend thereafter for the year or so it played.

It screened every Friday and Saturday night and the first month drew negligible crowds. Once word spread, hundreds packed the small, unadorned north side theatre to see if what they’d heard about the ending was true. It was and is, and not a week passed where at least one, sometimes several patrons puked up their beer during the film’s notorious curtain shot. After more than a hundred viewing of the film my gag reflex still kicks in when Divine flashes her quite literal s–t eating grin.

As much as I love Divine and Mink Stole, it was Miss Edie who kept me coming back for more. Did Waters actually have the audacity to convince an addled, overweight, snaggle-toothed senior to strip down to her underthings and play her role in a playpen or was Edith Massey deep into the Stanislavski method?

The interview was taped the afternoon of the show in Northwestern’s Norris Center and Joel Rothman, a high school cronie and Edie-aholic xame along for the ride. Edie was a delight and pretty much an accurate representation of the characters she played on screen, minus Queen Carlotta’s nasty streak. To paraphrase Martin Balsam in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, she was a kook, but a real one.

Edie talks about everything from being a madame to crying over Little House on the Prairie to the reason she didn’t name her cat Muffy.

Scott Marks: Tell me about the new film, Desperate Living.

Edith Massey: I play a queen, Queen Carlotta, and I have ten soldiers, five on each side of me. And I have a fire gun, you know, when anybody gets in the way. Would you like me to give you some of my part?

SM: Oh, sure.

EM: I’ll say one part. Alright…umm…umm…”Welcome to Mortsville (sic), ladies. I read in the big city newspaper that you are wanted for murder.” Uhh… “Murder of a certain mister Brasley Gravel.’ Then I say, “Your are interrupting my flow of power.” Only I say it a lot louder, you know. “Lieutenant Wilson give these two…give these peasants something to…” (She pauses.) You see, I’m just learning it now. “Give these peasants something to eat. They must be hungry after their long day of breaking the law.” Now I say this real loud, of course. And so they feed him cockroaches.

SM: How do you deal with the publics’ reaction if they walk out of Pink Flamingos outraged and very offended? Do you find the film offensive?

EM: No, but can I tell you one thing? I have never gone through that. No one has ever treated me like that. But the honest truth is everybody is nice and friendly with me. I don’t actually do anything really bad. Yet. (She laughs.)

SM: John’s just starting with you.

EM: Oh, I don’t know. In this (new) movie I have a sex scene, but I ain’t gonna’ say no more. I play more mean. Then they’re going to have like, uhh…the part Divine (normally) plays, well Susan Lowe is going to play that. There are two lesbians, you know, and they win a lottery and they kind of take over the town when they win the lottery and start buying stuff. Then we have a revolution and I get killed. I have a backwards day, see, everybody dresses backwards, walks backwards and those that don’t do it get shot.

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As Queen Carlotta in DESPERATE LIVING

SM: Is (John) going to try to offend the audience again like he did in Flamingos?

EM: I don’t think John actually goes to hurt anybody. I don’t think it’s anything personal with John. He just thinks of goofy thing to make because he knows the public likes it. I know him and I know he’s not that way.

SM: How did you feel when you first read the script for Pink Flamingos and saw that at the end (Divine) was going to eat dog s–t?

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