“I did not think I would end up having her as part of my body, but you become obsessed with her,” he told the Guardian. “On my first research trip to Los Angeles, I went to see her grave and visit the Academy. While I was in town, I met a biographer. They said, “Make a leash. You’re going crazy for her.” I thought, “Of course I will not.” “Cut me off at Sunset Boulevard, let me do this.” The ink portrait is not a caricature of these features. On the contrary, it has been described with colorless contours, so little, we may even look at the bones of the screen image. The instinct to remove appearances and reveal the foundations under an image fits in well with the intent of her latest work, which favors fact-based reporting despite the thrill of Monroe’s exhumation. Cooper’s film joins investigative journalist Anthony Summers as it chronicles the highlights of his 1985 book Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, its timeline and accompanying ideas repackaged for a visual medium. He was the one who sold the concept to Cooper, convinced that she would also come to see the person behind the legacy of victimization. “For me, Marilyn has always been a bit one-dimensional,” says Cooper. “By the end of this process, she would have become a much more real person to me, with more modernity as a woman than I had ever seen in her.” In a busy market for Monroe’s biography, Cooper and Summers singled out their work from a shoe leather perspective. The film and its source material avoid pieces spoken by experts or obsessives, based on a cast of Monroe collaborators, trusted and close favorites. While researching his book in the 1980s, Summers amassed a record gold mine with the first eyewitnesses to the star’s orbit. Having spent countless hours searching hundreds of his cassettes, archived at the Los Angeles Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cooper brings this sound to life through lip-syncing representation, using actors in costumes. “This is the latest film about Marilyn Monroe, inhabited exclusively by people who knew her, touched her life, felt her presence, really knew what it was like to be around her,” she says. The multitude of perspectives is combined to form a prismatic view of a multi-faceted personality, which is already subject to constant public re-evaluation and re-evaluation. From the stupid blonde blonde queen in Hollywood (Celeste Holm’s actress said of Eva, “I thought she was very sweet and terribly stupid and my natural reaction was ‘Whose is this?’), Has been elevated to a silver saint who was martyred by a brutal media tabloid and the devastation of addiction. “The truth is somewhere in the middle,” Cooper said. “It almost always is.” She wanted to avoid the simplistic or satanic narrative of a life full of scandals and intrigue, and focused on the content of Monroe’s character: Method’s student’s spiritual curiosity, the passionate art of an actor who impressed greats like Billy Wynton Highton & . as her talents reached her innate gift. “It was a lot of things,” says Cooper. “She was indeed traumatized and affected by her relationship, but she was not a victim. She worked very hard on herself… The way she could sometimes show her vulnerability and sometimes hide it is so tempting. And we know it now as something that is powerful for all women. “But then, we did not all have the freedom to explore this in ourselves the way Marilyn did.” Monroe remains a figure of such enduring charm, having two documentaries and a biographical film only in 2022, in part for all that is universal about her rare circumstances. Although the spotlight shone brighter on her than any other celebrity of her time, Cooper and countless other women today see it as an integral part of a shared experience in the overwhelming expectations that had been placed on her. While struggling with depression, insecurity and the use of barbiturates, she had no choice but to maintain a glamorous facade in her paparazzi appearances. Although Cooper’s favorite film about Monroe is The Seven Year Itch (“I really like sending male stereotypes in that movie; Marilyn is in the joke”), she believes that the most indicative texts are the photographs they capture. the mask of the bomb and the agony he could not fully cover. Cooper is interested in “the way she could sometimes show her vulnerability and sometimes hide it.” Photo: Courtesy of Netflix / Netflix “The two archival tracks I was obsessed with were one, when he leaves Payne Whitney’s psychiatric clinic as if it were a restaurant or movie premiere, even though it had been held for three days. He ended up breaking a window, saying he was the crazy person everyone expected him to be. Joe DiMaggio ended up taking her out. It was the most unusual, awful moment. Getting full makeup and hair looks incredible. “Half of me thinks it was horrible that she felt she had to present herself like that and the other half is amazed at her ability to do it.” He continues: “The second is when they announce her separation and she can not stop the emotion to show. She is crying and it is difficult to watch her. You see a huge wound for this failed relationship. Young women today can still connect with it, and with it. Just 20 years ago, people would say it was ubiquitous, crazy, hysterical. Now, I see this and I think, ‘This is being a woman.’ Over the past half hour, the film’s main source of approach has been based on a close look at the dark circumstances surrounding Monroe’s death and her rumored relationship with well-known fans John and Robert Kennedy. Summers’ arrest confirmed that while conspiracy theories suggesting overdose suicide was a covertly fabricated blow were fictitious fabrications, there was indeed some confusion about the official archive to avoid negative public relations for the Kennedys. It’s not exactly the weapon a lawn mower can hope for. rather a comment on the continuing social impulse to treat Monroe’s existence as a juicy gossip. “I’m constantly trying to find a line where we recognize the conspiracy and try to sort out its parts,” says Cooper. “People may say there is nothing new here, but I think this movie is a useful resource.” She hopes others can take her film as a starting point for a deeper appreciation and respect for Monroe, putting them on the same track that brought a once indifferent Cooper under the tattoo artist’s needle. It does not take much to show the skeptics of the substance to a woman who has historically been regarded as a wonderful story with tears how painfully human she really was. After all, as Cooper knows very well, pulling us in has always been Marilyn’s superpower. “Any success in this film is for the younger generation to get to know it and get a clearer idea of it than they did before,” says Cooper. “They can be comforted by recognizing things that have happened in their lives and are happening to one of the most famous people of all time. It is reassuring. “I do not intend to sound like hockey.”
