Director Andrew Dominik has further discussed his next movie, the Marilyn Monroe film Blonde that stars Ana de Armas, which is the first NC-17 original movie on Netflix, saying he expects it to “offend everyone.”
Speaking to Vulture, Dominik said he was surprised that Blonde received an NC-17 rating because he believed the filmmakers “colored inside the lines” when producing it. Dominik, who is Australian, said Americans have a “really strange” attitude about sexuality in entertainment.
“I think if you’ve got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think. It’s just a weird time,” Dominik said. “It’s not like depictions of happy sexuality. It’s depictions of situations that are ambiguous. And Americans are really strange when it comes to sexual behavior, don’t you think? I don’t know why. They make more porn than anyone else in the world.”
Asked if the fact that Marilyn Monroe is such an iconic figure led to greater trepidation over the NC-17 rating, Dominik said he can’t say for sure what the ratings board might have been thinking. That said, Dominik said he did not want to present a “sanitized” version of Monroe’s life.
“I think if I’m given the choice, I’d rather go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story,” he said. “Because we know that her life was on the edge, clearly, from the way it ended. Do you want to see the warts-and-all version or do you want to see that sanitized version?”
Dominik said Blonde “swims in very ambiguous waters” and that its release in 2022–years into the Me Too movement–might change how people see and perceive the film. In the end, though, Dominik believes everyone who sees Blonde will be offended by it.
“If it had come out a few years ago, it would have come out right when Me Too hit and it would have been an expression of all that stuff. We’re in a time now, I think, where people are really uncertain about where any lines are. It’s a film that definitely has a morality about it. But it swims in very ambiguous waters because I don’t think it will be as cut-and-dried as people want to see it. There’s something in it to offend everyone.”
Blonde is a biopic about Marilyn Monroe, based on the novel of the same name from author Joyce Carol Oates. It is more a work of fiction than a re-telling of Monroe’s real life. The Motion Picture Association said the film earned its NC-17 rating for “some sexual content,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Blonde releases this year on Netflix and in theaters. It also stars Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, and Julianne Nicholson. Brad Pitt is among the team of producers on the film.
Source: Gamespot
