Directed by John Waters • 2000 • United States, France
Starring Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, Adrian Grenier

John Waters’s defiant takedown of Hollywood mediocrity stars Melanie Griffith as a pampered movie queen who goes guerrilla when she is kidnapped by a band of underground filmmakers acting under the direction of renegade cine-terrorist Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff) and forced to star in their independent film. Taking inspiration from the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst (who makes a cameo appearance), CECIL B. DEMENTED plays like Waters’s personal manifesto on the ethics and ethos of anticommercial filmmaking.