Search for 'The Real Blonde' leaves no feelings unmoved

Published: Friday, February 27, 1998

Friday, February 27, 1998

FILM: Ironic humor, sympathy evoke insight on characters in pursuit of perfection in world

By Michelle Nguyen

Daily Bruin Contributor

In today's fast-paced superficiality of organic coffee and drive-thru dry cleaners, there is still truth and beauty.

Our modern artist is Tom DiCillo, and his new film, "The Real Blonde," is his muse. DiCillo has created a comedy using New York's entertainment and fashion industry as its backdrop. The sad, but deeply human subjects of his comedy are players in this industry - products of a society whose emphasis lies in pursuing goals empty-handed.

"It's one thing to strive for things. It's another to strive for it and not have a sense of yourself while you're doing it," says Elizabeth Berkley, who stars in the film. "Now, taking that serious note and spinning it around on its head is what Tom DiCillo does so well."

The currents of sarcastic wit and sympathy that mark DiCillo's style in "Living in Oblivion"and "Box of Moonlight" continue to run through "The Real Blonde."

"He and his wicked sense of humor poke fun of not only the industry, but humanity. But it also shows the heart too, " Berkley says.

No person is too cool to be spared in "The Real Blonde." DiCillo has Steve Buscemi step down from the altar of independent films to play a cameo as an outlandish, ego-heavy music-video director.

"(Buscemi's) character is kinda pissed off that he's an indie filmmaker, and now he's doing a video. You know, his snobbish attitude,"Berkley says. "So (the film) pokes fun at ego."

With the national wrath for her feature film debut in "Showgirls" behind her, Berkley herself is cast as a struggling, fragile actress hoping for exposure as a Madonna body double.

The players in this tragic comedy are young, pretty people who are struggling to do something with their lives. There is Joe (Matthew Modine), an actor who still does not want to compromise himself by pursuing demeaning parts. Mary (Catherine Keener), Joe's live-in lover, relentlessly tries to free her male-directed hostilities by going to her sleazy shrink and her self-defense class, taught by Doug (Denis Leary).

DiCillo chooses a slice-of-life approach that is akin to Robert Altman's. This rhythmic, fast-paced approach might reflect DiCillo's worries that people's lives have been reduced to sound bites.

The title of the film comes from the story line of Joe's fellow actor-waiter, Bob (Maxwell Caulfield) who is in pursuit of the "real blonde," a true golden girl who doesn't get her blonde from a bottle. The directions of his pursuit aim at his soap opera co-star, Kelly (Daryl Hannah) and the supermodel Sahara (Bridgette Wilson).

"The fact that there's only a certain caliber of woman that (Bob's) prepared to commit to means that he does have an easy get-out each and every time," Caulfield says. "I think the guy is close to approaching some kind of sexual burnout, and we witness it in the movie."

During his incessant search for the real blonde, one must wonder if any of Bob's candidates are real blondes. Caulfield can only lay claim to Daryl Hannah's status as a blonde. Smirking widely, Caulfield says, "I'm the only person that can actually answer that question because umm ... The script originally called for her to flash the camera. I was the only person privy to that, and I think it's so obvious Daryl Hannah's a blonde, but I definitely had the Cadbury seat on that one."

On a serious note though, the phrase "the real blonde" provides a larger metaphor for the whole lot of society who strives for an invisible perfection.

"I think America is becoming a cartoon society," Caulfield says. "We are looked upon as the society that has its act most together ... and yet we are getting more and more caught up with image and perception as opposed to reality and facts. Without getting too heavy about it Tom's got an interesting viewpoint on it. It is something to poke fun at."

DiCillo does paint a world of colorfully ludicrous characters, but his film is hardly a scathing indictment of their world. He shows them in a purely human light, synchronically sympathizing and taunting.

"The one thing the English used to accuse America of is having no sense of irony. I think that's really coming along really fast in America," observes Caulfield, a born and bred Englishman. "I once asked my mother to define irony, and she said it's laughing with tears in your eyes, and I think the movie does that."

DiCillo's sympathetic sentiments are epitomized in a scene where Sahara (Bridgette Wilson), a blonde supermodel, has bruises on her face from Bob's beating. Her photographer (Marlo Thomas), ecstatic with her genius and artistry, decides that Sahara should pose as is, adorned with bruises, lingerie and snakes.

Wilson felt self-consciously weird when she was actually doing the photo shoot, but the impact of the image really hit hard when she actually saw the dailies.

"When I was watching the photo shoot, it was so sad to me because, first of all, the issue of what really happened to her is sort of skirted throughout the entire movie, which I think is how oftentimes it's dealt with," Wilson says.

In the film, this photo of Sahara was turned into an advertisement, a biting sign that some "artists" think this brand of sad beauty does sell.

FILM: "The Real Blonde" opens today.

Paramount

Matthew Modine and Elizabeth Berkley star in "The Real Blonde."