Daily Inspiration Quote by Mink Stole

There’s a sly hometown boast embedded in Mink Stole’s line, but it’s not the glossy kind you get from press junkets. Calling “John” (almost certainly John Waters) a “cottage industry” frames him less as a lone auteur and more as an ecosystem: a small, self-sustaining economy of weirdness that employs friends, locals, misfits, and longtime collaborators. It’s affectionate, yes, but also materially specific. Waters doesn’t just “represent” Baltimore; he circulates money, attention, and a certain cultural permission structure through it.

The second clause is where the power dynamics flip. Cities usually treat filmmakers like invading armies: permits, red tape, suspicious neighbors. Stole suggests Baltimore does the opposite, “opens its doors,” because Waters has earned a peculiar civic trust. The subtext is transactional without being crass: he gives the city a mythos (sleazy, funny, defiantly unvarnished), and the city repays him with access. That’s how local legend works when it’s rooted in relationships rather than branding.

As an actress and a Waters regular, Stole is also signaling insider status. The line implies a repertory tradition - a scene built over decades - where filmmaking is less an industry than a communal ritual. “Cottage industry” can sound small-time, even quaint, but here it reads as a quiet flex: Baltimore doesn’t need Hollywood scale to produce art with an outsized cultural footprint.