Love, Marilyn, Liz Garbus’s new documentary based on Marilyn’s personal writings, is now available as a video on demand in Canada, via Bell TV, reports MarilynGeek.

Peter Mangone, who made headlines when he found rare footage of Marilyn in New York, filmed when he was a teenage fan, passed away on December 11, 2012.

The home movie was first shown in a 2003 BBC documentary, The People’s Hollywood.

Earlier in 2012, an exhibition and book, Marilyn Monroe: NYC, 1955, was announced. Sadly, the opening of the display – now at New York’s Danziger Gallery – was delayed after Hurricane Sandy devastated the city.

“I used to get up every day and put on a shirt and tie, because I read she was coming to New York to go to the Actor’s Studio and that she would stay at the Gladstone Hotel, so I used to get up every morning, dress up, get on the train, cut school and wait for hours. Some days I didn’t see her, some days I’d get a glimpse of her. Then I finally stood across from the hotel one day and I saw her. The next day I went in front of the hotel with a piece of paper, she signed it and she said, ‘You were here yesterday. You had a red tie on. Weren’t you cold?’ Because it was freezing. But she noticed. She really cared, you know.”

Chanel have uploaded a rather nice video about Marilyn, including audio from her 1960 interview with George Belmont of Marie-Claire magazine in which she explains her answer to the question, ‘What do you wear to bed?’

Of course, it was Chanel No 5 – possibly the most lucrative free publicity a perfumier ever had. The source of the original quip remains obscure, though it dates back as early as 1953 when she posed for photographer Bob Beerman.

You can watch Chanel’s video here.

Marilyn: Forever Blonde, the acclaimed one-woman show starring Sunny Thompson, may be heading for our TV screens, reports Leslie Kasperowicz for CinemaBlend.

This illustration by Istvan Banyai accompanies Maureen Dowd’s anniversary tribute to Marilyn in the New York Times.

The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, reports that artist Launa Eddy has recently inherited a trove of unseen photos by Bert Stern, including some of Marilyn, from her former employer, Edward Feldman.

LA-based artist Hildegarde Duane’s 2008 work, 14 Stations, a series of evocative photos of Marilyn-related locations, is flagged up by Archinect.

And Scott Blake, the man behind Barcode MM, has created a new video, Marilyn Monroe Supercut – a montage of Marilyn entering and exiting through 100 doors – including a clip from every one of her films except Let’s Make it Legal, reports the Huffington Post.

 Lana Del Rey recreates Marilyn’s ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ in the opening sequence of her new video, ‘National Anthem’. The president is played by rapper A$AP Rocky. Lana goes on to embody the Camelot myth, giving her own take on the role of First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

“Sure, there are some who will object to the clip’s re-telling of history: Del Rey actually plays both Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe — a loaded proposition when you consider the long-standing rumors of an affair between the actress and the commander in chief — and the clip opens with her doing Monroe’s sultry ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ from 1962. She then switches to the more demure Jackie, the doting wife to Rocky’s JFK, and their love story unfurls over seven hazy, dreamlike minutes. In a way, the dual roles seem to be director Anthony Mandler’s way of exploring the complexities of one of our nation’s most celebrated (and discussed) first couples: the notion that, from the outside, all appeared to be perfect, while, internally, their marriage was wrought with indiscretions and very stormy indeed.

There is also the fact that the clip is loaded with social commentary. The scenes of Del Rey and Rocky cavorting in the Kennedys’ Hyannis Port compound very boldly show the so-called ‘American Camelot’ (the term used to describe the unbridled hope associated with the Kennedy presidency) through a decidedly 2012 prism. Here is the first family reimagined as a beautiful white wife and a confident, powerful black husband, very much in love, caring for their biracial children, holding court with their associates. It was a scene that was practically unimaginable during the 1960s, and one that, sadly, is still sure to rankle some today.” – MTV

More screencaps at LanaDelReyFan.com

Philippe Parreno has talked about his new video installation, now on display at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.

“Why did you choose to make a film about Marilyn? 

Philippe Parreno: It started with a little book that a friend sent me of fragments from her notebooks—and what I liked was her handwriting.

So you were attracted by her words and her writing, and not her face or her image. 

The book was published because this year people are celebrating her death, and in my work I am interested in celebration. I was interested in the idea of celebrating a dead person, of trying to portray a ghost. Why are ghosts interesting? Because they are unfinished, heterogenous. Marilyn Monroe represents the first time that the unconscious killed the person—her image killed her. So we had to use an image to bring her back. The film is the portrait of a phantom incarnated in an image. Or, to use a neologism, an attempt to produce a “carnated” image.

The film is almost the opposite of your Zidane film, in which one person is scrutinised for 90 minutes. Marilyn is shot from her point of view, but you never see her: you see her writing and hear her voice, but these are generated by machines. 

Yes, there is an uncanniness to the whole mise-en-scène…the camera becomes her eyes looking around the room.

Your fictitious evocation of Marilyn’s room at the Waldorf Astoria is also very cinematic. 

The idea of cinema as exhibition is another aspect. The room at the Astoria that I have recreated is basically an exhibition space, so when you enter the room at the Beyeler, you will have the feeling that you are entering two exhibition spaces, one containing the other.”

Read interview in full at The Art Newspaper

The artist Philippe Pareno – best known for his 2006 video, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait - has recreated a new work about Marilyn, inspired by the book Fragments, and to be unveiled in Switzerland this summer, reports The Art Newspaper:

“The ghost of the American icon Marilyn Monroe haunts a new video by the artist Philippe Parreno, which is due to be shown at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel this summer (10 June-30 September). In the work, we see the world through Monroe’s eyes as she looks around her Waldorf Astoria hotel suite and sits at her desk to write. Parreno has recreated the room in detail, down to the wallpaper.”

Madonna dons a curly blonde wig in the video for her new single, ‘Give Me All Your Luvin”. M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj (a big MM fan) also go blonde.

The look is very much like Marilyn’s circa 1954. As we know, Madonna was heavily influenced by Marilyn’s style early on in her career, and she had the same hairstyle in the 1990 film, Dick Tracy.

Amp Radio looks at tributes to Marilyn in pop, including Mariah Carey’s video for I Still Believe and Gwen Stefani’s Cool.

Footage from Marilyn: Forever Blonde, a one-woman show starring Sunny Thompson, is now on Youtube.

A trailer for My Week With Marilyn can be viewed here

Painter and ES member Elizabeth Grammaticas visited the ‘Marilyn Monroe in the Arts’ exhibition in Crete last week, and has shared her thoughts (and photos) with us.

I have posted a small selection, but you can see many more over at the ES forum.

‘I attended the “Marilyn Monroe in the Arts” Exhibition at DEKK Exhibition Center in Crete a few days ago, and was pleasantly surprised with the exhibition. The exhibition is up until 10/30 if anyone happens to be in Crete in the time (*does ‘happening’ to be in Crete actually happen? I lucked out and was on vacation with my dad there and saw the signs).

It was a larger exhibition than I expected, as well as intelligently done. Here’s some more pics of my favorites.’

’1)This first piece is my favorite. It’s “Changing the Story of MM”. It contains four panels of Marilyn’s image being digitally altered. First is one of the famous Kelley nudes, with Marilyn Pregnant. Then a Bert Stern with a woman covering her up. Marilyn surrounded by a large asian family..and finally…another nude female with Marilyn in the “Something’s Got to Give” pool scene. I think this piece hit the nail on the head with so much of what we see with Marilyn’s story being constantly retold and reimagined based on the story teller.’

’2) I liked these silhouette type images of Marilyn as well. I love how the icon is so clearly recognizable without the need for an image of the person to actually be there. (my camera didn’t get the photo well enough to see the artist.)’

’3)I love that they had these Rizzo photos!

Each section of the exhibition had large signs elaborating on her life, image, and impact. I have the exhibition book which contains most of the exhibition, and then some.’

‘The videos in the exhibition were a good variety. Before you go into the exhibition, there is a projection of Marilyn’s performance at the JFK Gala. In the “White dress” section, they had a Sam Shaw interview playing. Another part of the exhibition had chairs to sit down and watch various Marilyn movie trailers.’

‘They also had two video pieces, one titled “No,No,No!”. It was mostly “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” footage, but without Marilyn in it. You hear the audio track looped of Marilyn singing the pre-diamonds intro of”No.no.no..no!”, and see various men and people surrounding her, except Marilyn is cut out. So you just see the crowds of people demanding her attention, and her going ‘no no no nono’. It was a bit eerie walking in the exhibtion with all these images and manipulations of Marilyn’s image and hearing her voice going “No no nono!”.

They had another video looped of the paddle scene in “The Misfits” with one video on top with the paddle, the other with the zoom shot of her rear bouncing back and forth.

In addition to these videos, they also had slide shows of Marilyn magazine covers, celebrities impersonating Marilyn, and Marilyn photos not in the exhibition.

Most of the art is from Europe, and most of it is from a few collections in Vienna and Germany.’

Andrej Pejic – an androgynous, 20 year-old Australian male model of Bosnian descent – appears as Marilyn in ‘Norma Jean’, a risque short film styled by Patricia Field, who comments, “It looks at Marilyn’s status as a sexual icon and explores the societal implications of the sex-kitten femme.”

Watch ‘Norma Jean’ now at Stylite

I’ve written a guest post for British Pathé Blog, focussing on archive footage of Marilyn Monroe.