Drama, rated R, 87 minutes,

Stephen Dorff and Melanie Griffith head up this 2000 film, John Waters’ satirical send-up of the trials of moviemaking. A crazed independent director finds a unique way to get his film produced: under the threat of violence. Dorff is Cecil, who leads a cultlike, sexually frustrated group of renegades, the Sprocket Holes, on a mission to infiltrate a Baltimore theater and kidnap Hollywood diva Honey Whitlock (Griffiths), an aging movie star on the eve of the world premiere of her new movie. Cecil forces her to star in his own film, which he gets made guerrillastyle, with assaults on the set of a sequel called as well as raids on the Maryland Film Commission, the porn industry, and unsuspecting cinema audiences — who sometimes fight back.

is almost a return to the type of trash that’s characteristic of Waters’ pre-Polyester days, when he gave us over-the-top stuff like the dog-poopeating diva Divine. The jokes are tasteless, but that’s to be expected — Waters is the King of Trash, after all, though here it feels like a well-trod path. Still, he has the power to make you squirm now and then, and

provides some solid laughs. There are plenty of familiar faces, such as Waters’ regulars Mink Stole, Patty Hearst, and Ricki Lake, along with other celebrities including Eric Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was mostly unknown at the time, and Roseanne Barr. — Michael Abatemarco