You might know Cookie Mueller from Nan Goldin’s photos: caught in a fit of hysterical laughter, bleached-blond hair, winged eye makeup. Or maybe as the underground actress with a lisp and spring-o-lator heels in John Waters’s films. But it’s in her wild body of written work that her kaleidoscopic life comes into focus.
Art critic, part-time drug dealer, fashion designer, health columnist, high-seas cook, racehorse hot walker, foot model — Cookie moved through the worlds she inhabited with sensitive irreverence, humor, and an instinct for survival. Garden of Ashes is an archival essay film structured through the geographic chapters of her life: Baltimore, San Francisco, Provincetown, New York, Positano, and finally, the infinite span of the afterlife. Beneath her magnetic presence was a singular writer whose work created a prism through which a whole ecosystem of cultural histories intersect and reverberate into our present.
In 1989, shortly before dying from AIDS-related illness, Cookie wrote, “Time and history have proven that the sensitive souls among us have always been more vulnerable.” As AIDS devastated queer communities and exposed further the cruelty of America, Cookie continued to write with incisive wit, tenderness, and defiant vitality. Blending memoir, cultural history, and experimental documentary, Garden of Ashes asks what it means to live fully in the face of mortality — and how certain voices continue to resonate long after they are gone.
Archives description:
The film is fully authorized by Cookie Mueller’s son, Max Mueller, who holds the rights to Cookie’s writings, Super 8 footage, childhood photographs, letters, and journals. Frank Crivelli has provided Super 8 footage capturing Provincetown, Massachusetts in the 1970s, featuring Cookie Mueller, Max Mueller, John Waters, Gregory Corso, and others. Artist Francine Hunter’s archives contain early video footage of Cookie and her husband, Vittorio Scarpati. Filmmakers including Michael Oblowitz, as well as the estates of Glenn O’Brien and Amos Poe, have granted us permission to work with materials from their archives.
As an underground actress and writer, Cookie appeared in numerous films and public programs. We have access to an extensive archive of The Willoughby Sharpe Show, the 1980s New York public access series on which Cookie frequently appeared. MARMIA has also provided materials from its archives, and The Getty houses The Kitchen’s video archives, which include recordings of Cookie.
In addition, many photographers have granted permission for us to use their work, including Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch, the David Armstrong Estate, the Peter Hujar Estate, and Kate Simon, among others. The Library of Congress, which acquired and digitized The Poetry Project archives, has also provided audio recordings of Cookie’s readings there.

Archives: The film is fully authorized by Cookie’s son Max Mueller who holds the rights to Cookie’s texts, Super 8 footage and photographs of Cookie’s childhood, letters, and journals. Frank Crivelli has provided us with Super 8 footage capturing Provincetown Massachusetts in the 1970s. The footage features Cookie Mueller, her son Max, John Waters, Gregory Corso etc. We have obtained a release from Frank Crivelli for this material. Artist Francine Hunter’s archives contain early video footage of Cookie and her husband Vittorio both in the hospital the year they died of AIDS-related illness.  Many photographers who have granted us permission to use their photographs including: Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch, David Armstrong Estate, Peter Hujar Estate, Kate Simon etc.
Filmmakers including the estate of Amos Poe, Michael Oblowitz, the estate of Glenn Obrien, John Waters have given us permission to work with their archives. Cookie was an underground actress and appears in many of their films. We have access to a massive archive of the Willoughby Sharpe Show, a public access show in NYC in the 1980s that Cookie frequently made guest appearances on.
MARMIA has also provided us with materials from their archives. Additionally The Getty houses the video archives of The Kitchen which has recordings of Cookie reading her texts. The Library of Congress has acquired The Poetry Project archives and fully digitized them. They have provided us with audio recordings of all of Cookie’s readings there.

Arielle de Saint Phalle

Arielle de Saint Phalle has worked closely with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch for well over a decade. She was a co-producer of his film Father Mother Sister Brother (Golden Lion, Venice 2025). She produced The Rifleman (Sundance, 2021), and the restorations of Niki de Saint Phalle’s 1970s films Un Rêve Plus Long Que la Nuit (NYFF 2023) and Daddy (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025), both released by MK2. 

Sierra Pettengill

Sierra Pettengill is an acclaimed Brooklyn-based filmmaker. She produced the Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning Cutie & the Boxer (2013). As a director, her work includes Riotsville, USA (Sundance 2022), The Reagan Show, and The Rifleman. Her films, known for their rigorous and subversive use of archives, have screened at MoMA, Locarno, and Lincoln Center. Pettengill brings her expertise in archival storytelling to lead the production of this definitive portrait of Cookie Mueller.