Love, Marilyn is a 2012 American documentary film about Marilyn Monroe's writings directed by Liz Garbus and produced by Stanley F. Buchthal, Garbus, and Amy Hobby. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2012 and is based on the 2010 non-fiction book Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, edited by Stanley F. Buchthal and Bernard Comment. The production firms that produced the film included the Diamond Girl production company, Sol's Luncheonette Production and the French-based StudioCanal production company, whose parent company (Canal+ Group) owns the third-largest film library in the world.
The film was initially slated to be named Fragments, but was later changed to Love, Marilyn.
Synopsis
50 years after her death, two boxes of Marilyn Monroe's writings—diaries, poems and letters—were discovered in the home of Lee Strasberg, her acting coach. The film features dramatic readings of Marilyn Monroe's writings by actors, film critics, journalists and authors; and archival footage of Hollywood insiders who knew her or worked with her in various films or acting school.
Interviews
Authors and film critics - present day
Patricia Bosworth
Sarah Churchwell
Lois Banner
Molly Haskell
Donald Spoto
Thomas Schatz
Archival - first-person primary source coverage
Rupert Allen
Eve Arnold
Lauren Bacall
George Barris
Walter Bernstein
Truman Capote
Collin Clark
Ben Gazzara
John Huston
Peter Lawford
Jack Lemmon
Joshua Logan
Ben Lyon
Norman Mailer
Richard Meryman
Arthur Miller
Marilyn Monroe
Edward R. Murrow
Jean Negulesco
Laurence Olivier
Norman Rosten
Jane Russell
Gloria Steinem
Lee Strasberg
Paula Strasberg
Susan Strasberg
Eli Wallach
Billy Wilder
Actors and others - present day
F. Murray Abraham
Elizabeth Banks
Adrien Brody
Ellen Burstyn
Glenn Close
Hope Davis
Viola Davis
Jennifer Ehle
Ben Foster
Paul Giamatti
Amy Greene
Jack Huston
Stephen Lang
Lindsay Lohan
Janet McTeer
Gretchen Mol
Jeremy Piven
Oliver Platt
Zoe Saldana
Vinessa Shaw
David Strathairn
Amber Tamblyn
Lili Taylor
Uma Thurman
Marisa Tomei
Evan Rachel Wood
Reception
Critical response
Entertainment Weekly, in its "The Must List: The Top 10 Things We Love This Week" section", picked Love, Marilyn as one of its selections the week of June 28, 2013, Volume #1265. The EW staff wrote, "The iconic star takes center stage in a revelatory HBO documentary that combines old footage and a slew of interviews with such actors as Viola Davis and Glenn Close. Catch it now on VOD or with the HBO Go app."
Matthew Gilbert, film critic with The Boston Globe reviewed the film positively, writing, "But yes, more Marilyn is just what we need, when the project is as exquisitely done as Love, Marilyn. The new HBO documentary, which premieres Monday at 9 p.m., is an elegant pastiche based on the boxes of Monroe’s own writings that were discovered a few years ago. It’s not a traditional biographical film of the American Masters variety, because director Liz Garbus doesn’t attempt to be all-inclusive or to impose chronology onto the material ... Garbus adeptly patches together fragments of a life narrated, in a way, by Monroe herself. She inventively pieces together an impressionistic, revealing, and ultimately moving version of the story that so many of us know already."
Sara Stewart, liked the film as well and wrote in The New York Post, "It's hard to imagine that absolutely everything hasn’t already been said about Marilyn Monroe. But for all the books and movies and tributes and myth-making, the iconic blonde has never had much of a chance to speak for herself...But the writings are the film’s reason for existing, and they are fascinating. Ranging from hastily scribbled jottings to lengthy letters to her acting coach Lee Strasberg, the handwritten notes add a refreshing complexity to a persona that’s been simplified over time into a two-dimensional, if ever-enduring, sex symbol."