BEFORE: Eric Roberts carries over from "Lovelace", though it seems he just did a quick cameo last night as a polygraph operator, and I think he's just got a quick cameo in this film, but that counts. Cameos keep my linking alive, and will get me to the end of the year.
THE PLOT: An insane independent film director and his renegade group of teenage filmmakers kidnap an A-list Hollywood actress and force her to star in their underground film.
AFTER: It seems like I've got a loose theme this week about fame and filmmaking, and that's going to continue for a few more days, though it looks like it's going to turn into a fame and music thing, then a political thing again. That's OK, fame is fame and the theme should get me to next Friday's new "Star Wars" film. But first, a different kind of "star" wars. Here a Hollywood star is kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to act in an independent film. Ugh, how humiliating.
You have to go back and consider this film was released in 2000, that's pre-9/11 so when they use the word "terrorist" here, it's an entirely different animal than the ones we're concerned with now. And there are scenes where the filmmakers storm a movie theater in a mall with guns and bombs, which might have been funny back before it started happening in real life. I didn't even go to see "The Dark Knight Rises" in a theater because some idiot shot up a theater in Denver that was showing that film, and even now, I'm still a little wary when I go to the movies, I check where the exits are and I think about how I should duck under the seats if I should hear any gunfire that doesn't come from the screen.
I'm not sure how I feel about John Waters movies, it seems like he should have been uniquely positioned to have a distinct point of view in the filmmaking business, but that he squandered most of his opportunities just being weird and outrageous. And then the whole world sort of caught up with him and got even weirder than even he could have imagined, so now his stuff doesn't seem shocking at all. He was fascinated by transvestite and transgender performers way before all that was commonplace, before we had a half-dozen reality shows about drag queens and people changing their genders - maybe he laid all the groundwork for that, I'm not sure. I think the closest he ever got to making a real point about social change was "Hairspray", with its pokes at racism and fat-shaming.
But then I see the same old problems with both the character and the plot of "Cecil B. Demented" - it never gets around to making a real statement about anything. And Cecil's big moves seem to be storming into places and saying, "Hey, I'm Cecil B. Demented!" OK, so what? Do you have anything else to say, now that you've announced yourself? No, I didn't think so. Sure, he wants to make a shocking film, where people set themselves on fire or shoot at cops - but how does this add up to a coherent film-within-the-film? Well, it doesn't, at least not one that we ever get to see, so what the hell is the point?
OK, so they take over the "Forrest Gump" sequel that's being shot in Baltimore - so what? If Hollywood's intent on making a crappy sequel, they're going to do it, no matter what a bunch of renegade filmmakers say. You don't overthrow the Hollywood system, the only way to change it is from within, it's just too big and powerful. You can spend your entire career working outside the system and do quite well without breaking the law and trying to tear it all down.
And getting a tattoo of your favorite filmmaker's name doesn't mean squat in the end unless you're suddenly going to adopt their style. It just felt like a cheap way for Waters to justify these "terrorist" actions - oh, they know who Almodovar and Peckinpah and Fassbinder are? They must be OK, then. Not necessarily. It's like a math problem, you've got to show your work, you just can't guess at the right answer. Going out of their way to make each member of the "Sprocket Holes" unique just ended up making them a bunch of quirky people who would probably never hang out with each other in the real world, because collectively they'd be firing in every creative direction at once, without a clear point of view.
File this one sort of midway between "The King of Comedy" and "Bowfinger", which both riffed on similar concepts. I'm left feeling like I may want to see a few more John Waters films, maybe "Serial Mom" and "Pecker", but really that's about it.
Also starring Melanie Griffith (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), Stephen Dorff (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Alicia Witt (last seen in "Four Rooms"), Adrian Grenier (last seen in "The Devil Wears Prada"), Maggie Gyllenhaal (last seen in "Riding in Cars With Boys"), Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Jack Noseworthy (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Ricki Lake (last seen in "Hairspray" (2007)), Mink Stole (last seen in "Lost Highway"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Premium Rush"), Patricia Hearst, Eric Barry, Kevin Nealon (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Harry (Harriet?) Dodge, Erika Auchterlonie, with cameos from Roseanne Barr, John Waters.
RATING: 4 out of 10 raw oysters
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