Blonde director Andrew Dominik is reveling in the backlash over his film's depiction of late screen legend Marilyn Monroe.
The Australian filmmaker, 55, said he was "really pleased" that the fictional take on her life "outraged so many people" after premiering on Netflix in September, as he appeared Sunday at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
He blamed the response on U.S. audiences, stating: "They hated the movie!"
"Now we're living in a time where it's important to present women as empowered, and they want to reinvent Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman. That's what they want to see. And if you're not showing them that, it upsets them," Dominik explained.
"Which is kind of strange, because she's dead. The movie doesn't make any difference in one way or another," he continued. "What they really mean is that the film exploited their memory of her, their image of her, which is fair enough. But that's the whole idea of the movie. It's trying to take the iconography of her life and put it into service of something else, it's trying to take things that you're familiar with, and turning the meaning inside out. But that's what they don't want to see."
Based on Joyce Carol Oates' 2000 novel, Blonde stars Ana de Armas as Monroe throughout her life, including her rise to fame, some of her most tragic moments and her death from a barbiturate overdose in 1962.
The film, which received an NC-17 rating "for some sexual content," was scrutinized for exploiting Monroe's trauma with such fictionalized scenes, such as a graphic abortion in which her unborn baby begs her not to terminate the pregnancy.
Monroe was also depicted as being in a three-way sexual relationship with Charlie "Cass" Chaplin Jr. and Edward "Eddy" G. Robinson Jr., as well as being forced to perform oral sex on President John F. Kennedy, neither of which anecdotes have been substantiated.
One critic called it "pretty appalling," describing the movie as an "NC-17 violent fantasy about #MarilynMonroe presenting itself as a biography." Another said it "not only re-objectifies Monroe but revels in her victimization and self-abnegation."
Dominik, who previously warned that the film would "offend everyone," noted at the Red Sea Film Fest that "tens of millions of people" streamed the film on Netflix, blaming the backlash on American movies becoming "more conservative."
"But I don't want to make bedtime stories," said Dominik.
Blonde is now streaming on Netflix.
