A Real-Life Rock Groupie Inspired Miley Cyrus’s Drive-Away Dolls Character

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Focus Features, Mick Hutson/Redferns

Warning: spoilers ahead for the plot of Drive-Away Dolls, in theaters now.

The year is 1999. A pair of lesbian friends are driving cross-country, unaware there’s a stolen briefcase in the trunk of their car or that they’re being chased by inept crooks dead set on getting it back. The contents of the case, over which a suave mystery man has already been killed, aren’t the valuables one might expect. There’s a collection of plaster-cast penises inside, one of which belongs to a family-values-advocating senator. And this man is desperate to reclaim the replica of his family jewels.

The plot of Ethan Coen’s road-trip comedy Drive-Away Dolls, written with his wife Tricia Cooke, is of course mostly a work of fiction. But the artist behind the coveted penis replicas in the film, hippie chick Tiffany Plastercaster (played by Miley Cyrus in an uncredited cameo) is based on a real person: the late Cynthia Albritton, a.k.a. “Cynthia Plaster Caster,” an artist and rock-and-roll groupie known in the late 1960s and ’70s for casting the erect penises of famous rock musicians. One of her first subjects was Jimi Hendrix, whose 1968 replica was nicknamed “the Penis de Milo”; she went on to make more than 50 phallic re-creations, including ones for Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Eric Burdon of the Animals, Wayne Kramer of MC5, Jon Langford of the Mekons, and actor-singer Anthony Newley. In a 1995 interview, Albritton confessed that she originally saw her efforts “as a great ruse to divert rock stars from the other girls. Only by accident did it become an art form. I take it seriously, though there is an absurd side. But I’m laughing with them, not at them.”

Coen and Cooke explained via email that they wrote their own Plaster Caster into the film because “she just seemed like the right figure to erect against the forces of evil.” Her analog in the film appears in psychedelic flashbacks that reveal she knew the senator in his younger years and memorialized his member. Albritton passed away in 2022 at the age of 74, however. “We’re sad Cynthia didn’t get to see the movie. We were looking forward to meeting her, hoping she’d enjoy how we borrowed her.”

Albritton’s unconventional occupation began in 1966 when the Chicago native was a 19-year-old University of Illinois art major and self-described “shy … virginal, goofy girl who wanted to get laid by cute British boys with long hair and tight pants.” A homework assignment to cast something solid that could retain its shape led to her first plaster job — with Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders. Though her mold failed, she claimed she did succeed in getting laid.

As she penetrated the music scene, there was no shortage of rockers willing to drop their pants. “During the sexual revolution, you had a social obligation to dip your dick into something new and different — and we had something different for dipping,” Albritton recalled in 2012. She kept a meticulous diary, replete with descriptions and drawings of each phallic encounter. She later expanded her repertoire to include female rockers’ breasts, casting Susie Gardner of L7, Peaches, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab, among others.

Though Frank Zappa declined to commemorate his manhood, he became her patron, admiring the concept behind her art “both artistically and sociologically” and comparing it to neon sculpture. “He was the first person in the world to tell me I was an artist,” she recalled in 2005. But when Zappa died in 1993, she got the shaft from his business associate, Herb Cohen, who wouldn’t return 25 sculptures held for safekeeping. She recovered all but three after going to court.

As for Albritton’s Drive-Away Dolls analog, the filmmakers say Cyrus was already acquainted with her character’s real-life inspiration. She arrived on set with “some languid dance moves” and suggested they play Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” while she filmed her scene — an idea Coen and Cooke liked so much, they kept it in the movie. “We gave her a bucket of goop and shot her as she rolled around on a Pilates ball kind of thing to give her the action of the waterbed she’s supposed to be on. We were all there to celebrate Cynthia. It was fun. We laughed a lot.”

Perfect for the woman who didn’t take herself too seriously and inspired the 1977 Kiss song “Plaster Caster” — which Albritton said Gene Simmons wrote so that she would cast him. But he didn’t meet her standards: “It’s all about the musical talent,” she said. Her work eventually earned her an exhibition in New York in 2000 and consideration in two documentaries, Plaster Caster and My Penis and I. In 2010, she ran for mayor of Chicago as a “Hard Party” candidate, obviously facing stiff competition. She may no longer be with us, but thanks to Dolls and Miley Cyrus, the salute to her penis art lives on.