The Real Blonde

The Real Blonde is a 1997 film directed and written by Tom DiCillo, and starring Matthew Modine, Catherine Keener and Maxwell Caulfield. It is a satire of New York's fashion and entertainment industries.

Plot
Joe is an aspiring actor working as a bus boy in a high-class restaurant. His longtime girlfriend Mary works as a cosmetician for the fashion industry and largely supports him with her steady income. Joe is more concerned with expressing himself than getting a paying job, and has been unwilling to accept roles that do not live up to his artistic standard. Mary supports Joe, but urges him to accept any role to get his foot in the door. Meanwhile, his co-worker Bob lands a lucrative role on a soap opera. Bob is a classically trained actor, but is willing to overlook the quality of the material for the money. He also has a fetish for natural blonde women, leading him to date Sahara, a naive model, and then dump her after discovering that her hair is dyed.

Joe swallows his artistic pride and meets with an agent, Dee Dee Taylor, who arranges for him to be an extra in a Madonna video. Mary is harassed as she walks to work each day and begins taking a self-defense and anger management class on the advice of her therapist. The instructor encourages her to express her anger, and she finds the class extremely empowering. Bob is successful in his soap opera role and begins a relationship with his beautiful co-star Kelly, a "real blonde".

At the Madonna video, the director treats Joe and the other extras like cattle. Joe meets Madonna's body double, Tina, a friendly aspiring actress, and gets himself fired for protesting an anti-Semitic statement made by the assistant director. Joe's firing sparks an argument between Joe and Mary. The pressure of Joe's career is straining their relationship, and they have not had sex in a long time. Mary's instructor, Doug, gives her a ride home from her class and makes a pass at her. She rebuffs him, but lies to cover up the incident to Joe. Meanwhile, Bob suffers from erectile dysfunction and is unable to have sex with Kelly. She mocks his inadequacy and leaves him.

Dee Dee takes pity on Joe and allows him to audition for the role of a "sexy serial killer". He reads his lines with Tina and begins to improvise his dialogue. He impresses the producers and lands the role. Tina invites him out for a drink and he resists her advances with some difficulty. Mary meets with her therapist and tells him about her experience with her self-defense instructor. He tells her that she must become comfortable with men showing their attraction to her and begins sharing his own sexual fantasies about her. She storms out of the session. Meanwhile, Bob is negotiating a longtime contract on the soap opera, but Kelly continues to taunt him on set. Bob threatens to quit the show and then forces the producer to kill off Kelly's character.

Bob goes back to dating Sahara, with whom he is miserable. Joe breaks the big news about his role to Mary and they rejoice. Mary asks him if she is wrong for feeling angry when men hit on her. Joe supports her and threatens to beat up her therapist if he ever sees him again. They have sex for the first time in months and drift off to sleep, happy and satisfied. Mary wraps her hand around Joe's finger, revealing that his improvised monologue had been about his feelings for her.

Cast

 * Matthew Modine as Joe, an aspiring actor with strong opinions.
 * Catherine Keener as Mary, Joe's longtime girlfriend and a successful makeup artist.
 * Maxwell Caulfield as Bob, an actor with a fetish for natural blondes.
 * Daryl Hannah as Kelly, a blonde soap-opera star.
 * Bridgette Wilson as Sahara, a naive model with dyed blonde hair.
 * Marlo Thomas as Blair, a fashion photographer and Mary's boss.
 * Kathleen Turner as Dee Dee Taylor, a prominent talent agent.
 * Elizabeth Berkley as Tina, an aspiring actress who works as Madonna's double.
 * Denis Leary as Doug, Mary's self-defense instructor.
 * Steve Buscemi as Nick Reve, the director for Madonna's video.
 * Dave Chappelle as Zee, the assistant director for Madonna's video.
 * Christopher Lloyd as Ernst, a head waiter and Joe's boss.
 * Beatrice Winde as Wilma

Background
The Real Blonde had a higher budget than DiCillo's previous work, and he claimed it was not the kind of movie the studio wanted him to make. At the time, he commented, "when they gave me the budget, they trusted me not to make a three-hour movie about two people staring at each other." In an interview with IndieWire, DiCillo discussed the film's title, remarking "it’s a title that forces you to think twice. And I think the film asks you to think twice. If you take a look at the title, on a surface level, it almost appears to be a serious thing. But if you think about what it’s really saying, with the 'e' on the end 'Blonde' (feminizing it), it’s pertaining to a woman. Pertaining particularly to a very specific area of a woman. If a woman is the real blonde, her hair on top and on the bottom is going to be blonde. The title itself just forces you to go there which I think is great." He added, "every element of authority or what is perceived as real in the film deserves a second look. My idea was that the real blonde represents this ideal, this image of perfection that we all sort of create. We place it just outside of our grasp and exert this tremendous energy to try to attain it. Most of the time the energy is absolutely misplaced. It causes us to literally exhaust ourselves. It sometimes can be really destructive and ultimately is a fruitless exercise."

Casting
DiCillo has stated that Tom Rosenberg of Lakeshore Entertainment, the film's production company, wanted him to cast a big name actress in the role of Mary, such as Nicole Kidman or Julianne Moore. DiCillo instead wanted Catherine Keener to play Mary, as he had experience working with her on previous films, including Box of Moonlight, Living in Oblivion and Johnny Suede. He said, "I knew no one could play the part like Catherine but Lakeshore wouldn’t approve her. I was in agony. Every night I'd lie awake asking myself, 'Is this what it takes to move ahead? Rejecting all the wonderfully talented people I've worked with who actually helped get me to where I am?'". DiCillo kept pushing for Keener to play Mary and eventually Rosenberg relented, saying he could cast Keener as long as she worked out with a personal trainer for six weeks and consulted a professional make-up artist. DiCillo was hesitant to call Keener and tell her this, saying "I imagined her hearing the words I was about to say to her and I knew there was no way I could make the call. What actress could ever commit to a film knowing the producers were questioning the way she looked? Also, it would have destroyed our friendship". DiCillo decided not to call Keener. He says, "[instead] I called Tom Rosenberg and said, 'That’s it. I’ve put stars in every other role. I’m casting Catherine Keener, without your trainer and your make-up'".

Release
The Real Blonde premiered on September 14, 1997, at the Deauville Film Festival in France, and went on to play at several other festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. It then received a theatrical run in the United States beginning on February 27, 1998, where it grossed only $83,048 against a budget of $10 million. It was released on VHS and LaserDisc in late 1998 by Paramount Home Entertainment, and then on DVD in January 1999.

Reception
The movie received mixed reviews from critics and currently holds a 34% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In September 1997, Lisa Nesselson of Variety wrote, "The Real Blonde pillories the shallow realms of fashion advertising, rock videos and soap operas while championing the search for sincere romance and rewarding work in the big city", and described the film as a "comic exploration of the quest for integrity and depth in a world wowed by artifice and superficiality." She went on to write "[the] populous cast displays appropriate urban energy. Modine is OK, if not especially memorable, as the low-profile actor with sky-high standards. Keener grounds the proceedings with her Everywoman brunette demeanor, and Berkley and Wilson sally forth for the hard-working blond contingent." A 1997 review from the Film Monthly Journal of the British Federation of Film Societies states, "it is a film which wears its heart on its sleeve and to many this is so apparent as to be annoying. However, its dealings with contemporary sexual mores and male / female relationships, are, in some parts, quite amusing."

In March 1998, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+, commenting "the movie, an attack on superficiality, never quite makes it out of the shallow end." Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle labelled it a "very crowded movie that babbles endlessly without ever saying very much." Geoffrey Macnab of British paper The Independent wrote, "director Tom DiCillo finally got a decent budget for his satire The Real Blonde, but there's still no danger of this director joining the movie mainstream."

It was featured on an episode of Siskel & Ebert, where it received two thumbs up from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. In his other review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, and wrote:"[Director/writer DiCillo] devises brief, sharply observed scenes. He notices, for example, the way a makeup artist makes up not only a model's face but also her attitude. The way the karate instructor, playing an aggressor, takes a sly pleasure in using sexist insults. The way people talk knowledgeably about movies they haven't seen. The way a guy who's embarrassed to be in a porno store will brazen it out. All of the actors are right for their roles because a degree of typecasting has been done, but Daryl Hannah brings a particularly focused energy to the role of a soap opera actress who is not impressed that a guy is impressed by her. And Catherine Keener brings a wry wit to her character; she sees models on Times Square billboards and knows what it took to get them there. The characters are articulate enough to talk about what really moves them; they don't play sitcom games. DiCillo never puts two and two together, but somehow it all adds up."