Blonde

You want to talk about stripping away the core of a story and replacing it with something unrecognizable.

Let's look at the 2022 film Blonde.

Oh, man.

Blonde.

This is the highly controversial Netflix film directed by Andrew Dominick, starring Ana de Armas, based on the massive Pulitzer-nominated novel by Joyce Carol Oates.

Now, to understand the failure here, we have to understand the book.

It punishes the audience without rewarding them with understanding.

Okay, so this brings up a massive question for me.

[laughs]

So, um, I will go for my next one, uh, another, you know, one of these movies that people really, really kinda hated, like, to take it back to my Cuties piece, but, um, Blonde, the, uh, Andrew Dominik, uh, Marilyn Monroe movie with Ana de Armas.

Um, the, I was trying to think of a, of a good movie, and there's other versions of this, like other movies that we could use as a puzzle piece here, but movies that, like, are in theory a biopic of a person or of a, or, or a true story of something that's happened, but in essence are not really about that, even though that is playing out on screen.

We're seeing Chris Hansen launching, uh, To Catch a Predator, and the show starting to get big, and then its ultimate demise when this big event happens.

It's about media, uh, uh, you know, uh, putting itself in all of our lives in ways that is really unhealthy.

It is about, uh, you know, the, uh, holier than thou way that people go about certain things, whether it is this, uh, trying to catch predators or if it's something else, you know, whatever kind of, uh, character, whatever kind of goal it is.

But, um, you know, and so Blonde is a, a Marilyn Manson, uh, Marilyn Manson, [laughs] a Marilyn Man-

[laughs]

But I want to say that I think even though this movie's terrible, we need to talk about him in the Oscar race, because bad movies still get acting nominations.

As I texted you, [laughs] Hillary, do you remember Blonde? [laughs]

You did say literally those words.

[laughs]

Yes, yes.

I don't think you can really get an acting nomination when virtually everyone who sees the movie hates it.

No, that's Blonde.

That is 100% Blonde.

[laughs]

Uh, Blonde, we did that one.

Blonde.

Blonde, yeah.

Yeah, we're the only ones who liked that one.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

I'm really looking forward to this one.

I know the original Blonde was released as a made-for-TV miniseries back in the 90s, and that is way better than the Netflix Blonde that we saw.

But yeah, I highly recommend that version of Blonde.

But this one, this does sound good, I've got to say.

Hmm.