“I'M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP, MR. DEMENTED”…Are You?

Movies about the film industry are more plentiful than pubic hairs on Osama bin Laden's daughter. And that's saying a lot.

A few are absolutely terrific—I consider Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 one of the best motion pictures ever made. Most, however, are dreadful at best given their smug, self-serving glorification and incontinent insider innuendo. Yes, the film industry is populated by self-centered egotists rivaled only by two other groups of individuals: Televangelists and their Wives (oh Lord, those wives!) and by frumpy Real Estate Agents who plaster billboards and business cards with a pathetic photo of their pasty-ass faces. Makes you want to puke…

But I digress.

John Waters' CECIL B. DEMENTED is a slightly salacious salute to guerrilla filmmaking. It attacks Hollywood and the studio cretins who continue to crank out mindless drivel for the masses. It also gently berates technically incompetent, pretentious independent filmmakers. Pot shots are poked at both ends of the spectrum; it is a fun flick possessed with wit, wisdom and wanton wackiness.

Perhaps Roger Ebert described John Waters best when he said: “He is an anarchist in an age of the cautious, an independent in an age of studio creatures, a man whose films are homemade and contain no chemicals or preservatives.” Well put, Mr. E.—and with a cast including Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, Ricki Lake, Mink Stole and Patricia Hearst (yes, that Patricia Hearst), CECIL B. DEMENTED is well worth the rental fee at Blockbuster. As the tagline said: “Demented Forever!”