Cecil B. DeMented (was Re: film)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Apropos recent remarks about the decay of mass culture, here's what 
>John Waters had to say in an interview with the Seattle 
>alternaweekly The Stranger (August 24 issue 
><http://www.thestranger.com/2000-08-24/art.html>):
>
>>It's very, very different now from when I started. You could only 
>>like politically correct movies--you know, real art films. You 
>>couldn't like exploitation movies; you couldn't like nudist-camp 
>>movies. But then when underground film came along, it did change 
>>that. Because of Warhol and Kenneth Anger and a lot of people who 
>>put in nude sex and stuff that you couldn't have. It was always 
>>about breaking the next taboo, up until Deep Throat. And then 
>>hardcore pornography was legal, and that's when I made Pink 
>>Flamingos.... Now it's come full circle--Hollywood almost makes 
>>underground movies sometimes. They distribute them.... American 
>>Beauty won the Oscar; Boys Don't Cry, a tiny little independent 
>>movie with a drag king, won the Oscar. So there are no rules 
>>anymore. It's a good time. A lot better than it was when I started. 
>>Things like Around the World in 80 Days won. These terrible, 
>>terrible, mind-numbing, tyranny-of-good-taste, expensive, family 
>>hell movies.... I hated it as a child. It scarred me like parental 
>>abuse. I had to go to psychologists and talk about my parents 
>>taking me to this. "What's my problem? My parents forced me to 
>>watch Around the World in 80 Days."
>
>Doug

Have you seen _Cecil B. DeMented_ (John Waters' latest film)?  It's a 
criticism of mainstream film & multiplex culture (which shows the 
same stoop-id films on several screens, instead of diversifying the 
range of films that can be shown) & an affectionate send-up of 
underground guerilla cinema (Warhol, Anger, etc.) & its elitism at 
the same time.  The film also (unjustly in my opinion) makes fun of 
the Teamsters.

_Cecil B. DeMented_ explores the same territory (feelings of 
alienation from mass culture & consumerism) as David Fincher's _Fight 
Club_ but does so with a bit more intelligence & self-consciousness 
(& a bit more interesting take on sexuality, too).  One can say that 
it sends up Waters' own career (both underground & in the mainstream) 
as well.

Not a great film, though.

Yoshie