Australian writer-director Andrew Dominik knew that not everyone would like his latest film, Blonde, which depicted in a nightmarish, horrifying and stylish way the tragic life of legendary movie star Marilyn Monroe.
However, nothing could have prepared him for the public and media storm that erupted around him when the film was released on Netflix last fall. In addition to the fact that most of the reviews written about the film were unusually lethal, Dominik was accused of misogyny, exploitation, desecration of Monroe's memory, and brutal abuse of his lead actress, Ana de Armas, among other things.
Planned Parenthood, an American family health organization that helps women get abortions, even went so far as to call the film "anti-abortion propaganda" (due to a particularly harsh scene in which the fetus in Monroe's stomach asks her not to harm him).
"They tried to cancel me," Dominic says with an exhausted smile during a long, uninhibited Zoom call to mark his arrival in Israel next week as the guest of honor at the Student Film Festival. "It really wasn't my intention to cancel myself. All I did was make a film that touched a bare nerve, and that's not a bad thing. By the way, I think it would be really stupid if they actually canceled me for this. But stupid things happen in life all the time, right?"
The reactions to you were full of hatred.
"I only read the worst and most extreme reviews. I was upset and confused for about 24 hours. Then I really started enjoying the whole thing. I'm friends with Gaspar Noé (the French director who made Irreversible, J.K.), and he really likes bad reviews. I sent him the most extreme reviews written about Blonde, and he was really jealous. Especially when they started saying that the film was anti-abortion propaganda. But yes, it was crazy, and I was shocked at how simplistic the responses were. As with my previous films, I expected this film to be a critical success, but that no one would watch it. This time the exact opposite happened - everyone watched the film, and the reviews slaughtered it. But criticism only hurts if you agree with them."
Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in "Blonde" "It's a film about coping with abandonment, about someone creating an illusory 'me' in response to trauma," Photo: Netflix PR
What was strange to me was that while you were under such intense and extreme attack, Ana de Armas received an Oscar nomination for her work in the film.
"Because the media has developed this kind of perception that I'm the bad guy in the story. The sadistic director who abused poor Anna. Of course, this was not the case at all. People can't separate reality from their fantasies. So let them go to hell. At least they saw the movie."
It surprises me that you say you didn't expect such a strong reaction. You probably agree with me that this is a difficult film. In interviews you gave before he came out, you also said that you knew people were going to get hurt by him, adding that "that's their problem."
"Yes, but I'm not some clown trying to get comments out of people. I worked on this film for 14 years. The purpose of the film — and Joyce Carol Oates' book, on which it's based — was to try to understand why someone who supposedly had it all killed herself at the age of 36.
"It's a film about dealing with abandonment. It's a film about someone who creates an illusory 'I' in response to the trauma she's experienced. It's a film about the gap between the real 'I' and the invented 'I'. I guess most people want to hear the legend of Marilyn Monroe - they don't want reality, they want fantasy. They like to think that Marilyn Monroe was a talented comedian. That she was a ray of light, who just experienced a difficult time that ended badly. But this is not the case. She was traumatized. She was like a scar.
"On top of everything, she was also a sex symbol, so it's disturbing twice. Because if you derive pleasure from the image of someone like Marilyn, you want to feel that she shared your pleasure. You don't want to be told that she reluctantly provided you with that pleasure. That kind of thought points the finger at you and everyone who enjoys it."
In retrospect, would you change anything about "Blonde" now that you know how people reacted to it?
"Fuck, no. No way. I love the movie as it is. I think it's a fantastic film."
The beginning: in Kubrick's film
Despite making only four feature films so far, Dominic, 55, is considered one of the most interesting directors working in Hollywood. And he's not really inclined to compromise on his art.
He fell in love with cinema at an early age after his mother took him to see Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, and began making films as a child. "I was shooting remakes of Planet of the Apes in my backyard with my parents' Super 8 camera," he says. "I decided pretty early on that I wanted to be a director. That's the only thing I've done, I've never had a real job."
Dominic says he started making movies as a child. "I filmed remakes of Planet of the Apes in my backyard with my parents' Super 8 camera. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to be a director. That's the only thing I did. I never had a real job."
After graduating from film school in Melbourne, he began creating music videos and television commercials, and in 2000 directed his first feature: a biographical crime drama called "Chopper", which told the story of Mark "Chopper" Reed, one of Australia's most violent and famous offenders. The bold (and very funny) film succeeded beyond expectations, and the enthusiastic talk around it led to both Eric Bana, who played Chopper (and who until then was best known as an Australian stand-up comedian), and Dominic received a festive invitation to Hollywood.
"I didn't have a plan," Dominic recalls, "but I always wanted to make 'American' films. The way I understood it, America has always been the place where you make the kind of movies I wanted to make." After turning down a series of tempting offers from the big studios, Dominic met Brad Pitt, who was then in the early stages of an image change, and the two developed a friendship and a strong creative partnership that endures to this day. Pitt has produced the three Hollywood films Dominic has directed so far, and starred in two of them.
"Actually, Brad gave me my career," Dominic says. "When we met in the early 2000s, he was a huge star who enjoyed a special status, but he wasn't happy with some of the films he made and started looking to the future. He knew he wouldn't be able to act in movies forever, and wondered what else he could do. He started his own production company, Plan B, to make the kind of movies he loves and make movies he'll be proud of. I guess we have similar tastes. We like the same things. We love each other. We get along fine. We both want our movies to be the best they can be. He's a great partner."
Dominic with Brad Pitt. 'I've learned that people are beautiful, that life is good, that God exists,' Photo: GettyImages
Dominic and Pitt's first collaboration came in 2007 with the innovative western The Assassination of Jesse James by Coward Robert Ford. Pitt played the famous gunman, and Casey Affleck played Robert Ford, the fan who betrays his idol and kills him. Reviews praised Roger Dickens's spectacular cinematography, praised Pitt's introspective and mature performance, and complimented Dominic on the brilliant ways in which he was able to dismantle the myth of Jesse James (and the Wild West). But the general public was upset by the slow pace, length (almost three hours!) and severe lack of action scenes, and the film failed at the box office.
"I was shocked," Dominic recalls. "I was sure people would want to see the movie. When I was younger, movies like Blue Velvet and Batman played side by side, in the same movie theater. For me they were both Hollywood movies, and I thought there was a big audience for both types. But then you get to Hollywood and realize that directors like David Lynch and Terrence Malick are at the Fringe, that they're not part of the real business.
"Brad Pitt knew he couldn't act in movies forever and started his own production company. We love the same things, and each other. We get along fine. We both want our movies to be the best they can be. He's a great partner."
"It's not that I was trying to be difficult and unapproachable on purpose," he continues. "I wrote a script, I brought in a movie star, the budget was low. It's true that I came up with a very different idea than people expected. The movie Brad Pitt made before Jesse James was Troy, so I guess the audience thought he was going to get a commercial Western, with a lot of shots and all that, but that stuff didn't interest me at all. It's a film about disappointment with myth and the problem of fantasy. He actually rejects fantasy. I don't want to tell people bedtime stories. I don't know how to do it, and I won't be good at it."
The next movie you made, Kill Them Softly, also played with the expectations of the audience. On the face of it, it looks like a gangster movie. You have Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Ray Liotta in the lead roles, but you basically presented the characters in a very poor light and gave the viewers the opposite of what they thought they would get.
"Kill Them Softly is a crime film set during a global economic crisis. It's a film about people trying to survive during a financial collapse. All gangster stories are, after all, versions of the American Dream. The criminal reaches the top, and then he is kicked away. That's usually the story, success stories. In general, most American films are about success, I think, but not my films. Maybe if I had some success, I would have connected to this issue more."
Me and Brad and the guys
Dominic says he has another collaboration with Pete, but he thinks it's too early to talk about it. At the same time, he can't imagine choosing to work with another production company. "I'll always work with Brad and his guys. They're the best producers around right now. They only care about the movies, and they make consistently good movies. They're not trying to get rich."
Ten years passed between "Kill Them Softly" and "Blonde." Do you think the waiting period until your next movie will be shorter?
"I'm proud of my films and I think they're good, but I'm not a careerist and I don't make movies because I have to. I don't have a collection of ex-wives to whom I have to pay alimony, and I don't have to make $7 million a year to pay off my debts. I don't have those problems. That's why I don't have to make $100 million movies whose only goal is to make money. But I always need to have a project I'm in love with so I can fully dedicate myself to it, and it's not easy to make that happen."
Dominik was accused of misogyny, exploitation, desecration of Monroe's memory and abuse of his actress, among other charges. An American organization that helps women get abortions went so far as to call the film "anti-abortion propaganda" because of a scene in which Monroe's fetus asks her not to harm him
It seems that in recent years it has become more and more difficult to make films that are challenging and not necessarily commercial.
"It's definitely a strange time. Culturally, the environment became very conservative, like the '50s or so. Hollywood studios are struggling financially, streaming is taking over, but Netflix has agreed to produce Blonde. Although I don't know if they would have agreed to produce it today, after what happened."
Approach the world with an open heart
Apart from his long-standing partnership with Brad Pitt, Dominic also maintains a significant relationship with Australian rock star Nick Cave. The two have known each other intimately for nearly 40 years, and Cave is also signed to the music for two of his films.
"I first met Nick in 1986 at a mutual acquaintance," Dominic says. "He was like the Prince of Darkness. A mythological figure, even then. I had just started dating his ex-girlfriend. We were both in love with the same girl, that's how we met. He was my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, but he was also 'Nick Cave.' He was super cool. He'd call us to talk to her, and I'd answer the phone, and slowly our conversations got longer. That's how we became friends."
"It was the first time I made a film with a different motivation – I wanted to help my friend." With Nick Cave, Photo by GettyImages
Cave's friendship took a tragic and unexpected twist in 2015 when Arthur, the singer's 15-year-old son, fell to his death. A broken Cave, who was just about to release a new album called "Skeleton Key," was looking for a way to avoid the usual PR chores. To this end, he suggested that Dominic make a small, intimate documentary about him, which would answer all the questions that the media and fans might ask. Thus was born the beautiful, moving and heart-wrenching documentary One More Time With Feeling, released in 2016.
"Nick called me after Arthur passed away. He didn't want to talk to the media about what happened, but he understood that there was a hunger on the part of his audience to understand what was going on with him. It was a strange situation for me, because I had no control over the film. The control was all Nick's. But it was also the first time I made a film with a different motivation – I wanted to help my friend."
And what was it like?
"It was a completely liberating experience, because not only did I have no control, I also had no idea what I was going to do. I just came in with the camera and started shooting, thinking that later I would somehow turn it into a movie. I knew I would have to deal with certain topics, it was impossible to avoid the subject. Arthur is dead - how do you perceive it? How do you deal with it? How do you even look at your life again when something like this happens? But it was amazing to go to work not knowing what I was going to film that day. Invent it by instinct. The making of this film brought me back to my love of cinema. I always plan everything, and this time I couldn't plan anything. I only had my instincts, and I found that I could trust them, that they connected to something. I found that I could stop thinking about what the movie should be and just let it be what it is."
"I was shocked at how simplistic the comments about 'Blonde' were. I thought that, like my previous films, this one would do well in criticism but no one would watch it. This time the opposite happened: everyone watched the film, and the reviews slaughtered it. But criticisms only hurt if you agree with them."
Last year, Dominik and Cave released another documentary called "This Much I Know to Be True," which continues to accompany the legendary singer's musical recovery journey.
"It was amazing to see how Nick dealt with grief throughout this time," Dominic says. "He handles it in the most responsible and beautiful ways possible. He allowed his grief to connect him to the world, his grief became the path that led him back to life. In the first film, he tries his best to be positive, and fails. In the second film, we can already see what he actually learned, after something like six years."
And what did you learn from this experience?
"I learned that people are beautiful, that life is good, that God exists, that it is better to approach the world with an open heart, that any trauma or disaster provides us with the opportunity to behave nobly. That no matter what life throws at you, what matters is how you react and handle it. The two films I've made with Nick are very positive, and I think now I'd like to make a film that's more positive. I'd like to make a good feel movie."
Coming to look for Jesus
Dominic is currently in the editing stages of another documentary project, which he is directing for a legendary rock star. This time it's Bono, the lead singer of U2.
"I've known Bono for 30 years, but we've never worked together," Dominic says. "It was a wild experience. He has an unbelievable life at all. During COVID-<>, he sat down and wrote an autobiography, and the film is based on her and the show he did in her wake. He tries to put his life in order, to find meaning. He constantly moves forward and confronts himself, he is not afraid to look at himself. He is very brave. I love him."
Dominic has a Hebrew-speaking Jewish half-sister who used to live in Israel, but he hasn't visited Israel yet. "When my sister heard that I had received the invitation to come to the student film festival, she told me I had to go, so I said, 'Come on, Holy Land.'"
Although Dominique has a Hebrew-speaking Jewish half-sister who used to live in Israel, he himself has yet to visit Israel. "When my sister heard I had received the invitation to come to the student film festival, she told me I had to go," he says. "So I said, come on, Holy Land."
Dominic interrogates me at length about the Christian holy sites he can visit during his stay in Israel, and gets excited when I tell him that I grew up in Jerusalem, near the valley from which the tree used to build the cross of Jesus was taken. I tell him that quite a few years ago I was shocked to meet his good friend, Nick Cave, in a dimly lit Jerusalem bar, and when I asked him what the hell he was doing here, Cave replied that he had come to Jerusalem to "follow in the footsteps of Jesus and write about it with my typewriter."
"Totally!" says Dominic, "that's exactly what I'm coming for, too."
"Whether you believe in him or not," he says, "Jesus is an interesting character. All the ideas of right and wrong came from him: the idea that God was on the side of the weak, the idea that a rich man could not enter heaven. He popularized these ideas. We are all affected by it, eventually. And besides," he continues with a smile, "junkies love Jesus. Because this idea of either heaven or hell is a concept that every drug addict can identify with."
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