what the film does
hollywood star honey whitlock is sweet in public and a monster in private. at a baltimore premiere for her latest picture she is kidnapped on stage by cecil b. demented and his gang, the sprocket holes, a crew of andy warhol-worshipping outlaw filmmakers who each wear a tattoo of a director they love. they hold her in an abandoned movie theater, gagged and tied, and force her to star in cecil’s underground masterpiece. she resists, then gives in, then gets good.
the shoot is real. the gang storms a screening of patch adams: the director’s cut with guns and smoke bombs and keeps the footage. they invade the set of a forrest gump sequel and trade fire with teamsters. the baltimore film commission tells the press it says no to cinema terrorism. honey turns herself in once and the gang retrieves her. she watches a television special where her ex-husband explains how awful she is, and she decides hollywood is the worse hostage situation. she takes the brand on her arm and declares herself demented forever.
the finale is at a drive-in. cecil needs one last shot: honey sets her hair on fire for the camera. she does it. cecil sets himself on fire so she can escape. the police arrive, some of the gang gets out with the footage, and honey is led to a van smiling because the crowd finally loves her.
why this one
waters takes the patty hearst kidnapping and turns it into a manifesto. the title borrows cecil b. demille, and the joke is that the terrorists are the only people in the film who respect movies. death to mainstream cinema, power to the people who punish bad cinema. the movie hates the business and loves the medium, and it is not subtle about which side it is on.
the casting is a double joke. griffith plays a star playing a star, and dorff plays cecil as a punk messiah who makes the hostage situation look like film school. the gang is full of actors before they were actors: maggie gyllenhaal and michael shannon in early roles, adrian grenier, alicia witt. patty hearst cameos. waters shot it in baltimore like everything else.
artisan gave it a limited release in august 2000 and it died fast. the dvd did the real work. this is the waters film that plays best to the room that already agrees with it.
what stays with me
the moment honey decides. the television special, the ex-husband’s stories, the slow math that escaping means going back to hollywood where everyone hates her. then demented forever, and the brand. it is the only hostage movie where the ransom is a better life.
the ending too. she lights her own hair on fire for the final shot, and the film treats it as the most romantic gesture it has. waters ends on her smiling in a police van because the crowd finally saw her the way cecil saw her. the burn was the point.
on hand
the dvd is the artisan release.
image: tmdb backdrop (key fKHf0o9JQ62Ak06CUyqvJKbu4v0); genuine production still, the gang with honey whitlock at the brick-wall holdout. source luma 113.46, pre-darkened 0.78, baked at factor 0.45, lanczos to 1200x675, on-disk luma 30.24