Andrew Dominik is the sort of filmmaker who has “followers”. His 2000 debut, Chopper, rough-hewn study of Aussie villain Mark “Chopper” Read, made an immediate star of Eric Bana. Seven years later The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, an existential western starring Brad Pitt, scored excellent reviews before going on to take a legendarily tiny $4 million at the US box office. Pitt was back for Dominik’s Killing Them Softly in 2012, but, despite more good reviews and a spot in the Cannes competition, that film also failed to drag in the punters. It has taken 10 years to deliver another dramatic feature and – as we shall see – that project is already among the most controversial films of the era.
Still, Jesse James is now rightly regarded as a classic. That has to be nice. Nobody went to see La Règle du Jeu when it came out either.
“My feelings about that are not good ones,” he says with a weary cackle. “Just because it makes it harder. It would be great if you could have success at the time. That’s it. I am also grateful for the fact that people liked the movie. It’s a mixed thing. It’s probably better than having made Rambo 2 or something – something that works in the moment, but you’re embarrassed about 20 years later.”
A restless Australian in his mid-50s, Dominik is set to release two features this year. Emerging on May 11th, This Much I Know to be True, his follow-up to Nick Cave documentary One More Time with Feeling, follows the singer as he collaborates with Warren Ellis on their last two albums. Later this year (probably), Netflix will unveil Blonde, his gossiped-to-blazes study of Marilyn Monroe.
He has known Cave a long time.
‘Pretty amazing’
“Nick Cave is not a static person,” he says. “Nick Cave has changed from the person that I first met to the person that I know now. And that’s pretty amazing. Because a lot of people don’t actually change over the course of their lives – despite that we see this in movies all the time. It’s an unusual thing for a person to actually grow. And Nick is an incredibly warm person who loves me right now. It’s a great thing to be loved by Nick. He takes his responsibilities to his loved ones seriously.”
Dominik’s two films come after Cave’s son Arthur died in a fall. There are no explicit mentions of that tragedy in This Much I Know, but the shadow is always present.
“Well, I think that the bad boy pose is, is just something that was sort of masking a really deep sensitivity,” Dominik says of Cave. “And now he can’t be f-cked anymore with the pose. And he’s just going to be vulnerable with you. And that’s very beautiful.”
Shot in monochrome, allowing Cave ample opportunity to exercise his black humour, This Much I Know to be True is essential viewing for fans (of both Nick and the eccentric Warren Ellis). The release will not, however, quell Dominik enthusiasts’ thirst for Blonde. Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel of the same name, the film, starring Ana de Armas as Monroe, is allegedly graphic in its depiction of sexual abuse. There were rumours that Netflix was alarmed at the images, and the film has, indeed, ended up with a prohibitive NC-17 rating in the US. It seems Blonde was ready for last year’s Cannes, but ongoing issues with France’s distribution regulations ruled it out. It did not, as then expected, arrive at Venice in the autumn. It has again missed Cannes. What is going on?
“Blonde is a film that swims in a lot of controversial waters,” he says. “Particularly in these post-#MeToo times. And I think Netflix is a company that is very much concerned with market share. They want to appeal to the widest number of people. So a film which has the potential to upset people is always going to be somewhat alarming. You know what I mean? But that’s what it always was. They’ve been pretty supportive. It’s rated NC-17. They are releasing an NC-17 film, which I know they don’t want to do.”
Creative licence
To this point, with films such as Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Netflix has shown an apparent enthusiasm for giving auteur’s full creative licence. Is that changing?
“Well, I’ve made the movie I want to make. So that is still true. I mean I’m sure they tried to talk Scorsese into cutting The Irishman. I’m sure they tried. Ha ha!”
Dominik reckons that Blonde would never have got made without the #MeToo convulsions of 2017.
“Let me say this. Blonde hasn’t changed since I wrote it in 2008,” he says. “But the #MeToo movement is probably the reason it got financed. Because it portrayed certain historical figures in very unflattering ways. And that was the objection to it. It was how certain men came off. Then #MeToo happened. And there was this perfect storm moment where you couldn’t defend any man’s behaviour. Right? Whether he was the president of the United States and a beloved historical figure or not. So there was that little period of time where I just managed to squeak in the door.”
So we now assume it will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and arrive in cinemas and Netflix by the end of the year?
“One would hope it would play,” he agrees.
Why didn’t it play at Venice last year?
“Um, some backroom wrangling going on.”
So he’s not telling me?
“It wasn’t the right moment.”
He’s smiling as he speaks. One imagines there is a lot more to be said about the production of Blonde. It does seem, however, as if we will finally see the thing by the end of 2022. If the delays frustrate Dominik, he does a good job of hiding it under merry bluster. He remembers going to a revival of Terrence Malick’s Badlands, a film he loves, in the 1990s.
“I was looking around the theatre and it was a really weird-looking crowd, man – no one you wanted to have sex with. I thought: ‘It’s a lonely road I’ve chosen for myself.’ Ha, ha ha!”
This interview was conducted before the death this week of Nick Cave's son, Jethro Lazenby.
This Much I Know to be True is on limited release from May 11th
