Los Angeles, CA - Rocking a name like Mink Stole takes panache, and the woman who wears the moniker has plenty of it. A luminary from the John Waters school of outrageous and shocking entertainment, Mink is a Renaissance woman of sorts, who is at the precipice of a whole new singing career.

A Baltimore native and Los Angeles transplant, Mink is heading back East soon with a spate of gay-themed films and a one-woman show replete with songs and stories under her belt. As Connie Marble in the Waters' opus Pink Flamingos, Mink played half of the fetish-obsessed couple who battled Divine for the title of "Filthiest Person Alive" by kidnapping and inseminating young women and selling the babies to lesbians.

From that auspicious debut, Mink went on to star in all of Waters' classics, including Desperate Living, Polyester, Hairspray and Serial Mom. Mink's gay and lesbian appeal might start with Waters but she's proven herself a gay and lesbian film festival circuit darling with her roles in But I'm a Cheerleader and, most recently, Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds and Out at the Wedding.

This fearless actress who lets it all hang out in her whacky roles chatted up LesbiaNation about her career, the Bush administration, making Pink Flamingos and how it takes playing gay or retarded to win an Academy Award.

LN: I didn't realize you lived in Los Angeles. I thought you were born and bred and still residing in Baltimore.

Mink Stole: I'm from Baltimore. I'm moving back soon and I might not be back. Four seasons…

LN: I moved from Connecticut about a year ago and the four seasons just aren't what they used to be.

MS: Nothing is. It's a sad, sad world we live in. It's not the same L.A. I moved to.

LN: How so?

MS: The landscape. The landscape has changed. My favorite coffee shop is being turned into a condominium complex.

LN: Oh no. So it's back to Baltimore then. You know, I didn't realize you had your hands in so many pies. Can you tell me a little bit about Mink and Her Wonderful Band?

MS: Singing is something I discovered in my mid-fifties. I always knew I could sing I just didn't know that anyone would want to listen.

LN: So what was the genesis of this mid-life career departure?

MS: I was in the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company's production of The Winter's Tale playing Autolycus and I had to sing. People seemed to really enjoy it.

LN: And from that you started gigging out?

MS: Yes and I've been really lucky. I worked with wonderful musicians from the get go. I'm completely music illiterate but they get it when I say play it lower, they know I'm asking for a key change.

LN: I'd love to hear you sing. What's your singing voice like?

MS: I have a smoky voice. I'm on the A Date with John Waters CD singing "Sometimes I Wish I Had a Gun."

LN: Hilarious. When you do a show is it like a cabaret act?

MS: It's a one-woman show. My show is like having me over for dinner, only I get to sing. I leave lots of room for spontaneity. I talk about my early career, my early days in Catholic school. It's my take on Catholic school and I try not to cliché about it. I talk about my life before John Waters. There was a me before there was a me. I get a little political. I'm a "yellow dog" Democrat.

LN: I'm not familiar with that saying.

MS: It means I'd vote for a yellow dog before I'd vote for a Republican.

LN: So you must be thrilled about Bush and Co.

MS: The current administration is so heinous. It's unconscionable. How much money is enough for them? I don't understand the need for power that's so great you destroy the world over it.

LN: He's the anti-terrorism president who's saving the world, you know?

MS: People say they feel safer with him in office. Bush was in office when 9/11 happened. He's made the entire world hate us. And people voted for him twice.

LN: Someone like Rosie O'Donnell who held fast to her beliefs paid a hefty price for being outspoken though.

MS: I miss Rosie.

LN: Rosie is a good segue to my next question. As one of John Waters' band of actors, you have instant appeal with gay men. Do the gay girls love you too? I know I do.

MS: I've always had a very good relationship with the lesbian community. I'm more comfortable with gay people than with straight. If a man wanted to date me I'd have to be clubbed over the head and dragged to a cave. I wouldn't know what to do. I live in L.A. and I'm over 40. It's a fact of life in L.A. I'm flying low under the radar. With my gay friends everyone knows there's no possibility of sex.

LN: I wanted to talk to you a bit about Eating Out 2, which is currently on the festival circuit.

MS: I have another movie out. It's called Out at the Wedding directed by Lee Friedlander.

LN: Oh right. She directed Girlplay.

MS: I played the mother in that. And I play the mother in this one. I always play the mother now. Lee Friedlander is a kick ass director. She really makes an actor feel safe. And Allan Brocka…

LN: Eating Out's creator…

MS: He's just a sweetie. They shot Eating Out 2 in 10 days. I like the movie. Have you seen it?

LN: I didn't expect too much from a fluffy gay comedy sequel but I laughed out loud quite a bit.

MS: Those girls in it are great. It's really about friendship and what the characters are willing to go through for each other.

LN: Speaking of friendship, you've gone through quite a bit with John Waters. I admit that although I'm a John Waters fanatic I came late to the party and I only saw Pink Flamingos two years ago at a midnight screening at the Provincetown film fest. The audience was 98-percent gay men and it was like the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

MS: I'll bet. They must have repeated the lines word for word.

LN: Absolutely. I was doubled over laughing with tears streaming down my face. Despite the intended filthiness of the film, what struck me was the sense of innocence and naivete you all seemed to carry. Nowadays when people pick up a camera they're thinking about marketing and making a million but you all gave off a sense that you didn't give a damn about the business of filmmaking.

MS: We were having a great time. But we were scripted. We weren't on drugs or alcohol. People always say we must have been on drugs when we made it. We made the movie for $12,000. We didn't have a hair or make up person. Well, Divine did, but we did it ourselves. There wasn't time or money for a second take. Everything was done in master shot. You notice there were no cutaways and everything was shot at one angle.

LN: Oh right. I just thought that was an artistic choice. It's interesting to know that it was financially motivated.

MS: We didn't have the luxury of being unprofessional.

LN: Having starred in the original film, what do you think of this new Hairspray phenomenon?

MS: It's such a huge production. I'm looking forward to it. You know it's not John Waters' Hairspray. There's a step in between because it's based on the musical. It's going to be interesting. They've rolled my character and Debbie Harry's character from the original into one role that Michelle Pfeiffer is playing so that's kind of flattering. The buzz is that it's really good.

LN: Any thoughts about John Travolta taking on a role originated by Divine?

MS: I thought it should have been Harvey Fierstein since he did it on Broadway. But you know if you're an actual gay man you can't play gay on film. My God, Bill Hurt won an Oscar for Kiss of the Spiderwoman in a totally polite, restrained performance. That character was flamboyant. I thought it should have been Charles Ludlam in that role. If you're a straight man and you put on a dress in a movie you get an Oscar. Or if you play retarded. Do you remember when everyone who played retarded won an Oscar?

LN: Oh yeah and if you play a rape victim like Hillary Swank and Charlize Theron.

MS: Right. If you play gay, retarded or raped you get an Oscar.

LN: It's so true. Back to Pink Flamingos. When you were making the film were you at all aware that your character Connie Marble and the rest of the characters would become so iconic?

MS: No way. There was no way of seeing into the future. We thought we were movie stars. We knew we were in Baltimore though and you can't be a movie star in the suburbs of Baltimore.

- For more on Mink Stole, visit her official Web site at www.MinkStole.com.