Cecil B. Demented

The most successful of John Waters’s late movies. A masterful satire on showbiz, telling the story of a gang of filmmakers-turned-terrorists who took their nicknames from independent directors (they include an “Andy Warhol”, a “Pedro Almodóvar” and a “David Lynch”). One day, the group led by the eccentric Cecil decide to kidnap a spoiled Hollywood starlet, Honey Whitlock (a self-ironic Melanie Griffith), and to force her to star in their low-budget film. To everyone’s astonishment, the celebrity befriends her kidnappers… Waters’s work was loosely inspired by the story of Patty Hearst, granddaughter of media mogul W.R. Hearst, well known to all fans of Citizen Kane, kidnapped by the left-wing Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. Just like Honey in the movie, Patty switched sides and started supporting the criminal activities of her oppressors. After her re-entry into society, Hearst befriended Waters and played small roles in several of his films, including Cecil B. Demented.