Andrew Dominik

Started by wilder, May 25, 2012, 02:28:56 PM

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wilder

Cannes: Andrew Dominik Says He's Aiming To Make "Emotional Nightmare Fairy-Tale" Marilyn Monroe Biopic 'Blonde' Next
via The Playlist



After a few years in the wilderness after the masterpiece "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" underperformed at the box office, Andrew Dominik's third film -- initially titled "Cogan's Trade" after the George V. Higgins book on which it's based, and later retitled "Killing Them Softly" -- came together quite quickly. The first hints emerged in September 2010, and within a few months it had a star and producer in Brad Pitt, a distributor courtesy of The Weinstein Company, and rolled in front of cameras in early 2011.

But with the film having premiered at Cannes this week, we began to wonder what happened to "Blonde," Dominik's Naomi Watts-starring adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel about Marilyn Monroe. That film was long-mooted to be his next project after 'Jesse James,' and was originally set to get underway in January 2011 before "Killing Them Softly" came along. Was it still a going concern? Or had last year's "My Week With Marilyn" put paid to Monroe-themed pictures for a while?

Well, our man on the ground Aaron Hillis spoke to Dominik at Cannes this week, and the Australian helmer said he's actively working toward "Blonde" being his follow-up to "Killing Them Softly." "I really want to do ['Blonde']," he said. "It's not something I can talk about, 'cause we're trying to work some stuff out, but hopefully that's going to be the next picture." And when we asked about possible Cormac McCarthy adaptation "Cities of the Plain," Dominik replied that the Monroe biopic has the advantage: "I like that one, but my heart belongs to Marilyn. I'd like to start shooting it next year, that's what I'd like to do. It's a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy-tale type movie, and I really want to do it real bad... It's a story about an abandoned orphan who gets lost in the woods."

wilder


wilder

Andrew Dominik Aims To Shoot Polanski-Esque Marilyn Monroe Biopic 'Blonde' In 2013, Naomi Watts Still Attached
via The Playlist

The other day we got to speak to Andrew Dominik, whose genuinely amazing new crime film "Killing Them Softly" opens next week. One thing we wanted to make sure of was, after the seemingly epic gulf of time between his brilliant but criminally under-seen "The Assassination of Jesse James and the Coward Robert Ford" and "Killing Them Softly," that there was at least something in the works. It turns out that the movie he was originally going to do before "Killing Them Softly" is still very much a go. "I'm going to do this movie called 'Blonde,' which is about Marilyn Monroe," Dominik said.

As to the scope of "Blonde," don't expect a "Lincoln"-like sliver of the troubled star's life. "It's about her whole life," Dominik said, definitively. "It starts when she's seven and it ends when she dies." Dominik acknowledged that it will be based on the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominated novel by Joyce Carol Oates, then clarified his approach to the material. "It's sort of a Polanski descent-into-madness-type movie," Dominik explained. "It's about this orphan girl who gets lost in the woods."

Those comments echo his earlier description of the movie as an "emotional nightmare fairy tale," and Dominik sounds genuinely excited about the project. "I love it," he said. "It's my dream project and I've been working on it for years and years and years." Given his ability to make real-world characters into genuinely mythological figures, as he did in both 'Jesse James' and his first film, the hard-nosed Australian drama "Chopper" (that made a star out of some guy named Eric Bana), it seems like the perfect subject matter for the filmmaker.

When we asked Dominik if he was going to push, visually, into the realm of what-is-reality-what-is-fantasy, Dominik said yes. "It's very pseudo-Freudian," he said. "The lines between fantasy and reality become very blurred in the story." About when the film will actually shoot, Dominik optimistically says, "I'd like to do it next year." He says he hasn't hired a cinematographer yet, but that Naomi Watts -- who was attached early on, but over the summer seemed like she might have to bow out -- is still on board, although, as he said, "Anything can happen."

We wondered though, if he has another project ready to go, should "Blonde" face another delay (which is how "Killing Them Softly" got bumped up in the pipeline). Dominik says no. "It's pretty much all about Marilyn at the moment," he said.

Cloudy

Andrew Dominik talks contemporary art in the digital age for an hour at the 2012 Istanbul Int'l Culture Festival.

http://t.co/q9DJqqOsCI

wilder

Terrence Malick Thought It Was Too Slow: 10 Things Learned From The Revival Screening Of 'The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford'

Dominik said that he's "good to go" to shoot "Blonde," based on Joyce Carol Oates' book about Marilyn Monroe, next August. He said that the film has very little dialogue, which is odd considering how all his other films "rely so heavily on talking." He said there is no scene in the script longer than two pages. Also, it will be his first film with a major female character. "My films have always been bereft of women," he confessed.

wilder

Jessica Chastain Is Marilyn Monroe In Andrew Dominik's 'Blonde'
via The Playlist

The last we heard about Andrew Dominik's long brewing Marilyn Monroe biopic "Blonde," was that it was "good to go" with a shoot aiming for this August. But we had been down this road before when plans were afoot to shoot the movie in 2013, with Naomi Watts in the lead. Well, that actress dropped out a while ago and another has come in, and we think it's a pretty great choice.

Jessica Chastain is now set to play Marilyn Monroe in the movie, which will be based on the critically acclaimed novel by Joyce Carol Oates. "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" and "Killing Them Softly" star Brad Pitt's Plan B is producing the movie that Dominik has previously called "a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy-tale type movie." Damn. Here's the book synopsis from Amazon:

One of America's most acclaimed novelists boldly re-imagines one of America's most enduring icons in Blonde—the National Book Award-nominated bestseller by Joyce Carol Oates. The legend of Marilyn Monroe—aka Norma Jeane Baker—comes provocatively alive in this powerful tale of Hollywood myth and heartbreaking reality. Marilyn Monroe lives—reborn to tell her untold history; her story of a star created to shine brightest in the Hollywood firmament before her fall to earth. Blonde is a dazzling fictional portrait of the intricate inner life of the idolized and desired movie star as only the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates could paint it.

Dominik himself penned the screenplay and while there's no word yet on when shooting will begin, we presume everyone is aiming for things to start this year.

Lottery

Andrew Dominik is a pretty cool dude. I hope his Monroe thing is a Lynchian sort of thing, I read it was supposed to be a trippy nightmare thing.

He also gets a hi-five for having a great set of favourite films:
Raging Bull (Scorsese)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Sunset Blvd. (Wilder)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
Marnie (Hitchcock)
The Tenant (Polanski)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch)
Badlands (Malick)
Blue Velvet (Lynch

03

wow 'marnie'? thats interesting. i dont think even hitchcock liked that one.

Punch

"oh you haven't truly watched a film if you didn't watch it on the big screen" mumbles the bourgeois dipshit

03

holy crap that was amazing. now have to rewatch 'marnie'.

wilder

That video is really fantastic, full of so much insight. Here's one thing Dominik said I found interesting:

"Superhero movies are always the same story. They're about somebody who develops magical powers at the first sign of trouble, but they always have to have a secret identity, their self is always split. And it's usually due to something that can harm them that comes from their story of origin, their childhood or something like that. And because of this they have to split themselves in half. And one half can get public acclaim, and then the other half, the real self, has no hope of intimacy - and this is the story that Americans love. And...it's strange...to me. In a way Taxi Driver is a superhero story."

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Even PT's movies lend themselves to that categorization in a way. Sydney > Dirk Diggler > Frank TJ Mackey > Barry Egan > Daniel Plainview > Lancaster Dodd. Maybe this is part of the reason they resonate with so many people?

Drenk

Ascension.

wilder

Andrew Dominik Directed Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Movie 'One More Time With Feeling' Sets Fall Debut
via The Playlist

September 8th will see Dominik's new movie, "One More Time With Feeling," hitting theaters around the world. Originally conceived as something more straightforward, the film accompaniment for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' new album Skeleton Tree grew into something more. Mixing live performances, interviews, improvisation, narration, color and black-and-white photography, and 2D and 3D imagery, the explores the making of the album as Cave grappled with the tragic death of his son.

Picturehouse Entertainment will be releasing the film, which arrives one day before Skeleton Tree drops on September 9th. Press release below.

June 2 2016: The first opportunity anyone will have to hear any of the songs from the new Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album, Skeleton Tree, will be to watch the feature film One More Time With Feeling, directed by Andrew Dominik (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Killing Them Softly). The film will be distributed to more than 650 cinemas around the world by Picturehouse Entertainment on 8th September 2016, immediately prior to the release of Skeleton Tree the following day.

Originally a performance based concept, One More Time With Feeling evolved into something much more significant as Dominik delved into the tragic backdrop of the writing and recording of the album. Interwoven throughout the Bad Seeds' filmed performance of the new album are interviews and footage shot by Dominik, accompanied by Cave's intermittent narration and improvised rumination.

Filmed in black-and-white and colour, in both 3D and 2D, the result is stark, fragile and raw, and a true testament to an artist trying to find his way through the darkness.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' sixteenth studio album, Skeleton Tree, will be released globally on vinyl, CD and across all digital platforms on 9th September 2016. This follows the Bad Seeds' most critically and commercially successful release of recent times, Push the Sky Away (2013).

Skeleton Tree began its journey in late 2014 at Retreat Studios, Brighton, with further sessions at La Frette Studios, France in autumn 2015. The album was mixed at AIR Studios, London in early 2016.

wilder

Andrew Dominik's Long Developing Marilyn Monroe Pic 'Blonde' Heads To Netflix, But Without Jessica Chastain
via The Playlist

It has been four years since Andrew Dominik's under-appreciated "Killing Them Softly" hit theaters. While the director returns next month with the Nick Cave documentary "One More Time With Feeling," any news about a Dominik-helmed feature film has been pretty quiet lately. For a long while now, he's been developing a Marilyn Monroe movie based on the book "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, but as things sometimes go in Hollywood, the pieces just couldn't come together. Naomi Watts had been attached for the lead role, followed by a possible turn from Jessica Chastain. The good news, however, is that the movie finally looks to be happening, but with a new lead.

In an interview at Indiewire, the director revealed that "Blonde" will now be a Netflix production, with filming starting in early 2017. "I'm very grateful," he said. "My idea with the film is to make something a little more accessible than what I've done before. It moves a bit faster."

He's got a new actress to play Monroe, but for now is staying mum on just who it will be, but don't expect a straight-forward biopic, as it apparently leans heavy on imagery and less on dialogue.

"It's a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy-tale type movie, and I want to do it real bad... It's a story about an abandoned orphan who gets lost in the woods," is how Dominik described the movie in 2012.

wilder

Tom Hardy To Star In Andrew Dominik's 'War Party'
via The Playlist

Deadline reveals that Tom Hardy is slated to star in "War Party," which Dominik will direct, and Hollywood is beside themselves trying to get the rights to the film. Harrison Query is co-writing the movie with Dominik that will see Hardy play a Navy SEAL, though no other details are available at the moment. Studios are battling with each other to land the project, but apparently the deep pockets at Netflix are in the pole position, which makes sense given they snagged the rights to Domink's Marilyn Monroe pic "Blonde" last year.

Speaking of which, what's going on with that project? Long in development, it's still in stasis and one wonders if it's going to get bumped back again. No word on when "War Party" might roll, but it could be a way off, as Hardy has the gangster flick "Fonzo," J.C. Chandor's "Triple Frontier," and the second season of "Taboo" all on his slate.