Blonde Director Has Some Intriguing Things To Say About His Marilyn Monroe Movie

Marilyn Monroe has been an icon in America for more than half a century, being a movie star and fashionista in her own right, as well as inspiring countless films, songs, novels, and more.

Netflix has been no exception to the Monroe hype train in recent years, releasing the documentary "The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes" in 2022. The streamer is also set to be the home of the upcoming film "Blonde," starring Ana de Armas and based on the 2010 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. The film would be a sort-of biopic, as the source novel takes the true events of Monroe's life but puts them through a more fictionalized, dramatic lens. However, the movie has been the cause of controversy multiple times, as the tumultuous editing and re-editing of the film has caused it to lay on the shelf for several years since its completion (via Vogue).

Recently, the film's screenwriter/director Andrew Dominik gave some strong opinions regarding the controversy surrounding the film's allegedly graphic sexual content.

In an interview with Vulture, Andrew Dominik did not mince words when talking about "Blonde" and the controversies surrounding the project. "We're in a time now, I think, where people are really uncertain about where any lines are," he said. "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," the writer/director said. "There's something in it to offend everyone."

The comments were sparked by the film receiving an NC-17 rating from the MPAA. The rating is the harshest that the MPAA can give out, allowing no one under the age of 17 to see the film in theaters. The official reasoning of "some sexual content" indicates that parts of the film are seriously graphic (via W Magazine). 

Dominik added that the #MeToo movement and Americans' strict views on depictions of sexual situations likely influenced the rating. The filmmaker is from New Zealand and has been active in the industry since 1999, but "Blonde" will only be his fourth feature film. Some of his other notable projects as a director include "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and two episodes of the series "Mindhunter" (via IMDb).

Acclaimed writer Joyce Carol Oates, author of the "Blonde" novel, tweeted in 2020 that she was impressed with a rough cut of the film, calling it a "startling, brilliant, very disturbing & [perhaps most surprisingly] an utterly 'feminist' interpretation" of her work.