Christina Newland’s sparring match, err, interview with Andrew Dominik about “Blonde” is umm … interesting. It’s clearly a film Newland detested. At moments, she decides to interview Dominik for debate.
What’s clear is that Dominik isn’t totally on-board Monroe’s corner. He sees her as this self-destructive force who was rich, beautiful and not entirely talented.
Dominik also believes that not many people really watch her movies anymore (although he’s a fan of her best work, “Some like it Hot”).
Save for “Some Like it Hot,” is there actually a Marilyn Monroe movie people go back to? Newland claims she and her colleagues are hardcore “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” fans, but I haven’t rewatched that one since my initial viewing many years ago. I guess I’d add “The Seven Year Itch,” a watchable movie. Ditto John Huston’s “The Misfits” (even though she was miscast in that one).
Monroe had small-ish breakout roles in “All About Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle” — she did very well in those.
Here’s an excerpt of a part of the Newland/Dominik interview that got snipped out by Sight and Sound. Newland decided to post it on her Twitter feed:
Dominik: She’s somebody who’s become this huge cultural thing in a whole load of movies nobody watches, right? Does anyone watch Marilyn Monroe movies?
Newland: I mean … I do. A lot of my colleagues and friends do. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is the one I watch a lot.
Dominik: Really? What is it about?
Newland: It has a worldview that is very cynical about men and gender relations in a way that I think a lot of contemporary young women like. And it affords Marilyn’s character the credit of her wit. She gets one upmanaship on men. She’s not a dumb blonde, not really.
Dominik: it’s cynical about women too, though.
Newland: Yes, but it’s glamorous. It’s a fantasy.
Dominik: What, because they’re well-dressed?
Newland: Sure.
Dominik: They’re well-dresses whores. I don’t know.
The women he refers to as “well-dressed whores” in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” are basically, to put it more mildly, gold diggers. If that’s female empowerment then I should really re-evaluate my whole notion of the term.
Dominik clearly got peeved off by the end of this interview. The “whores” comment is a result of that. An unnecessary way to make a point, but Newland was really pushing him into a corner. I’m not surprised that part got edited out of the interview, but my God …
Newland wanted more female empowerment in “Blonde,” instead she got “The Passion of the Marilyn.” However, as Dominik says in the interview, that stuff is not really what the film is about. “It’s about a person who is going to be killing themself. So it’s trying to examine the reasons why they did that.” Which is what I more or less said a few days ago. If you go into “Blonde” with that mindset then you’ll be somewhat rewarded.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.