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PAUL: Marilyn once asked you, “Why is it so fucking impossible to want to do the right thing?” She also said Hollywood was “suffocating” her. Do you feel that she meant that Hollywood and the film industry had made it too easy to remain a type-cast, superficial sex symbol? What is your take on her meaning of the impossibility of wanting the right thing? JOHN: That was what she asked Strasberg (too busy licking his thumbs and envisioning more of the bankable prestige she’d bring to Actors Studio, to give her an honest answer). She meant how difficult was it to do what you had to do as an “artist” to make a concrete statement-to exercise your abilities. There was always a “pall”, as she put it, over efforts that were focused on the commercial structuring as opposed to “creative expression” (again, as she put it). In her own way, she was describing the impossibility of setting the creative work ahead of the potential for commercial return. When she said this “right thing” business, she had been fired from the studio (the first time) for turning down a dumb part she felt would suffocate her beneath its banality and cement her into a type-cast sterility. Her feeling on this was individual, not general. What was the “right thing” for her? She could feel what was right and what was happening in Hollywood-as it was going on all the time-a reserved, unending battle, certainly not unique to Marilyn. PAUL: Was this dilemma symptomatic of her fame and success, the “invisible capsule” that you described in which she lived? JOHN:
At least two different things in operation here. The “invisible
capsule” was something Marilyn structured, patched together, made for
herself, an impenetrable cocoon which was as shiny as a solid gold watch
and it is this outer image that the world regards as “Marilyn”. The
“dilemma” over not doing the ‘right thing’ was not a result of
anything to do with the shell she wore or ‘capsule’ (I hope this
isn’t getting too fanciful); but did present a roadblock to further
development. In other words, Marilyn devised her persona but wanted to
carry it further than the bimbo roles. She wanted to carry her persona
into Ibsen, Chekhov - even Shakespeare. And why not? It’s what she had
in mind when she was talked into forming a corporation with photographer
Milton Greene. Introduction
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about the book :: about the author :: Official John Gilmore Site |
Fox laughed at her for trying to do something
‘important’. She wanted to stretch the resiliency of her talents but
she had to be cautious that going too far, reaching too far would leave
her vulnerable, and that sense, or feeling, triggered anxieties, the
pressure of which few can imagine. She conceived or suspected her basic
worthlessness would lay itself bare, rendering her expendable - relegating
her to the bottom rung - a maverick no one could possibly love or care
about; all would lie to her, cheat her and be traitors to her very
survival. She had no place to go, a bird in flight, nowhere to land,
unfloatable, a pointless excursion over a body of water without shores in
sight. Beneath the shining skin of Marilyn, she was that lone soul on the
ship as in Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Her pain and rootless excursions
through this city are reflected in the excessive amount of places she
lived, hopping and running and jumping, never settling, never holding
still. She possessed a wildness that only some form of tying her down
could anchor her existence (here again I run face to face with it; Jimmy
seeing that in me -“atado”, bind the bull with ropes to hold him
still). Marilyn’s fame was secondary, an encore to her secret life -
that
lonely, desperate chase and the more success one has that cannot reach
through to the inner being, becomes one’s nemesis, the bane of one’s
existence. As an alternative, suicide rides constant shotgun. Marilyn was
not unique in shouldering this unfixable quandary, her course followed a
predictable route-if you knew what was happening behind the proverbial
closed door: you struggle to the edge and then you fall off.
