FFWD Weekly
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Film by Cynthia Amsden Cecil B. Demented starring Stephen Dorff, Melanie Griffith directed by John Waters Opens Friday, September 1 Uptown Screen It’s a wonder this man hasn’t been framed and hung in some gallery of the absurd. To interview director John Waters is to keep asking questions because you can’t wait to hear his answers. That would be after you figure out what he is wearing. Starting at the floor, he’s got Converse-like running shoes but minus the soles. "They’re actually Commes des Garcons tennis shoes. These kind of shoes used to be called Jack Purcells," he says. After that, there’s the issue of his socks. Now remember, this man is 54 years old and the socks feature fat, multi-coloured stripes. Then there are the lime green pants and, after that, I just focused on his face... and pencil-thin moustache. It’s enough, you know. Cecil B. Demented is Waters’s first feature since Pecker – the one he calls his art film. Demented is Waters’s ode to action-dramas. It’s about a rebel without a film deal, Cecil B. DeMented (Stephen Dorff), and his cult of cinema terrorists that kidnaps the fabulous Hollywood starlet, Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith), to star in Cecil’s film, Raving Beauty. In spite of Waters’s familiarity with the world of obsession, he doesn’t harbour a car-chase/shootout/mayhem fetish. "No, it was something new to make fun of. Even a cop in the middle of the shootout yelled out, ‘I hate your movies!’ That used to be my fear, that cops would yell that. Now they say nice things – and all policemen ask, ‘Where’s Traci Lords?’ which is scary, I think." You wanna talk scary? The fifth ring of hell is when all your jokes come true. Waters used to have a joke about making a bumper sticker saying "Come to Baltimore and Be Shocked." Well, the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce just issued that bumper sticker with Waters’s name on it. Having been at this game since 1964 when he made Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Waters has always held a certain underground status. This is changing and he’s helpless to stop it, although he can see the irony. "In some ways I am establishment. I got hate mail over this film saying, ‘How dare you make a movie about underground movies.’ "So to somebody, I’m the establishment. Maybe it’s to people who’ve never worked." The more Waters talks, the faster he talks, and the faster he talks, the more his Baltimore twang slides into all his vowels. "G"s fall off the ends of his words, littering the floor, and suddenly, you’re rocking and rolling and you just want to invite him to dinner, ply him with liquor and show him outrageous things so he’ll have more to comment on. His style is deliberately artificial. Or artificially deliberate. Hard to say. But he says he achieves the comedy by never hiring comedians, only actors with a sense of humour. "And they play it completely seriously, like you completely believe it. Never wink, even in the most ridiculous scenes. Even when Stephen Dorff had to lick a Panavision camera, it looked like he... meant it! And that’s tough motivation. "Stephen was asking me, ‘Like, why am I licking this?’ and I told him that there’s an old curse. If you don’t like somebody, when they leave the room, you lick their furniture and they’re cursed forever – it does work. Do it. You watch, bad stuff will happen to them." It might work, or it might be Waters’s idea of starting a national wave of seat-licking, which he’d adore in the extreme. It is also a perfect segue for him to talk about the porno convention he recently attended in Las Vegas (note: this is typical Waters conversation). He loves the outrageousness of porn. "It’s the only real outlaw cinema left. They have their own star system and it is illegal to pay people to have sex in front of the camera. It’s a federal crime to ship it, and I love Adult Video News which is the Variety magazine of porn. "I didn’t know this, but the Top 10 hetero porn rentals are all anal movies." And yet another perfect segue! During production of Demented, Waters used an established theatre as a porn cinema which had a marquee that was to read: ALL ANAL EVENING. "I felt embarrassed because it looked really rude in the middle of the day with families walking by. So I didn’t put up the L and it read: ALL ANA EVENING until I said, ‘Action!’ People were walking by saying, ‘What’s an all ana evening?’"

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