52 Pick-Up #17 - Cecil B. Demented (2000)

Welcome back to another installment of 52 Pick-Up, my year long attempt to keep consistently writing and work through my cinematic to do list.

Hey, by the end of this year, I may have worked out a better way to word that.

But, that's a talk for another time. For now, this entry is coming to you live from the trenches of the Cinema Wars, where art house is a battle cry and bad movies a cause for vengeance.

This isn't that hyperbolic, actually. The side series of Uncharted Waters continues this week with Waters's 2000 black comedy, Cecil B. Demented. This is one which, like I said last time, I had been looking forward to. Of the unseen Waters movies for me, this has been riding high and just didn’t quite get the chance before.

Having now seen it? Well, I’ll tip a slight hand here for something coming up - first, after this side series completes, I’m going to close it out with a John Waters ranking list for people to enjoy and/or nitpick. Second, I can safely say that this movie will be placing somewhere high. It hasn’t quite dethroned my number one, but I definitely had a lot of fun with it.

As a pitch goes, this is on the more plotted end for Waters - starting with A list star Honey Whitlock as played by Melanie Griffith, cycling through a few modes in this role that get increasingly more unhinged. On the evening of a big premiere (which she has no shortage of behind the scenes cursing about) she is kidnapped by self-proclaimed cinematic terrorist Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff, equal parts manic and engaging in his full ‘cult leader’ vibe) and his dedicated team of cinematic warriors known as the Sprocket Holes. The team has kidnapped Honey for a specific purpose - they have a movie to make and they need a leading lady. Sure, she hasn’t exactly agreed to it, but all’s fair in cinema and war, so she is soon forced into their guerilla production, quickly becoming caught up in their renegade style and embracing the ethos summed up in their rallying cry: Demented Forever.

26 years later, Waters finding a new way to ask
"Who wants to die for art?"
It's like poetry, they...you get the idea.

As timing the selection of the movies for this goes, I do love the fact this happened to be the next Waters offering after Multiple Maniacs. Much as I appreciated Multiple Maniacs watching it later into Waters’ filmography, going from that to Demented resulted in a further appreciation of Waters’s evolution as a filmmaker. Where Maniacs has a bit more of a free-flowing narrative going for it, Demented is a straight shot of a movie - a psychotic joyride from end to end that starts building from the jump, and quickly hits the ground running once Cecil and his team make their official debut. Even with some of Waters’ comedic tangents, this feels like some of the tightest filmmaking I’ve seen from him, and given the story being told here, that benefits it.

Speaking of that story - damn, Waters called the shot. Obviously, this isn’t a 1:1, but watching this movie in 2026, it’s hard not to feel like Waters’ critiques of Hollywood became prescient. Even sadder, many of these were exaggerated at the time for comedic effect. The opening titles, for example, contain lists of what were fake sequels that the time, a reference to the industry’s penchant for repetition and familiarity. Watching it now, I was struck by the realization that at least two of the sequels they put out as jokes DO exist now. From there, we get jokes about the mining of non-cinematic IP for movies and a running theme about how one of Demented’s biggest nemeses is the push for more family friendly-fare in films. This last one is interesting to look at nowadays, as in some ways it’s an old refrain, but at the same time, run through a new filter. Waters has thumbed his nose at the idea of making all cinema clean and tasteful before (the protesters in Polyester presenting film as a stark binary between Disney movies and pornography, for example) but in the time since he made these jokes, even as far as Demented goes, it’s gone from church groups to board meetings. Now we’re living in an age where the push for clean wholesomeness in films is born out of a desire for the widest market share possible.

Not only do they exist, each has gone on to multiple sequels
past these. I literally just found out there are now five
Lake Placid movies.

Much like the discourse around The Simpsons, I wouldn’t look at this and say Waters is a prescient prophet. The man is an incredibly talented individual with a way with the words and a wonderfully filthy mind, but not a Nostradamus. So when I see something like this, the feeling is less ‘this blew my mind’ and more ‘Oh God, we actually got worse.’ Waters went loud for comedy and the world decided to go louder.

Not saying all modern film is bad, of course, but again, a lot of what Waters was making fun of here just feels like Hollywood looked at it and upped the ante.

The feeling is a curious one. I mean, the movie is, in some ways, depressing for how much the world seemed to get the wrong idea from it. But on its own, it’s still a very funny movie and wildly entertaining, some of the laughs coming harder for the same reason they have that feeling of ‘we learned nothing.’ Rather than hurting the film, they just further bumped it up for me and made Demented and his devoted army of Sprocket Holes even more likable in their passionate-to-some-insane-to-others devotion to cinema.

Speaking of said army, I did want to give a shout-out there before we wrap this up. While Griffith and Dorff were the big star power at the time this was made (and, again, both great in this one) Cecil’s crew has a fair amount of star power going for it as well. In particular, was surprised to see Alicia Witt as well as a still up and coming Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon among the ranks fighting for cinema.

And in a call back to last week, Adrian Grenier,
known to a lot of the internet for playing Anne Hathaway's
jerk boyfriend, seen here huffing from a bag.
This crew is a whole lot of 'Oh, hey!'

Two people would not have expected to see in a Waters movie. Not only are they there, they are both making an effort and it’s working.

Back to my initial point though.

Comedy is one of the genres in film that seems to be the most at risk of dating itself quickly. The good ones can still play, seemingly untouched by the years, while the less lucky creak louder with the years. Cecil B Demented is, arguably, part of that rare breed that have actually gotten better with age. Granted, there are parts that are definitely couched in the 2000s (Cecil’s group crashing a screening of a director’s cut of Patch Adams comes to mind) but a lot of the general swipes at Hollywood, in the light of the past 26 years since this came out land even more accurately.

With that, we bid adieu for another month. I know the back half of this month got a little erratic in terms of which day of the week. That’s on me from jockeying a rehearsal schedule. May will be getting a little more back on track, and per the shuffle, we’re staying in Uncharted Waters for just a little bit longer. Next time we leave behind the glitz and glamor of Hollywood for the dingy depths of Mortville as we conclude Waters’s Trash Trilogy with Desperate Living.

Till then.