Dealt with in 1964's After the Fall, Marilyn Monroe reappears, center of attention, in Arthur Miller's roman a clef, Finishing The Picture. Now 89, Miller returns with Monroe, here as a brunette and called Kitty, in a nervous-breakdown, halting production of the 1961 John Huston western, "The Misfits," which Miller wrote and turned out to be Monroe's and her co-star, Clark Gable's, last picture. Lampooning acting gurus Lee and Paula Strasberg, known here as Jerome and Flora Fassinger, Miller settles old scores.
A drugged and emotional mess, Kitty, under the supervision of her secretary Edna Meyers (Frances Fisher), recovers in producer Phillip Ochsner's (Stacy Keach) bedroom while the rest of the film crew broods in narcissistic Hollywood-aggrandizement on how to finish the picture. Lounging on luxurious furniture and walking through the spacious dimensions of Thomas Lynch's beautiful hotel-room set, cinematographer Terry Case (Scott Glenn) suggests filming close-ups of female ass, while Flora Fassinger (Linda Lavin) suggests bringing in her husband Jerome (Stephen Lang).
Decked out in cowboy attire and described as a "John Wayne with brains," Jerome is a quack who gets the job done. Sitting bedside to Kitty in the dark-blue bedroom set of act two, Jerome encourages Kitty to pull herself together amidst his ramblings of Eleanora Duse. The video screen projections of the actors coming in to check up on Kitty in this act are novel, though perhaps unnecessary, accompaniments, not distracting but not really adding to the drama.
Matthew Modine, as Paul, Miller's stand-in, is stiff and boring and spouts heavy lines. Without a coherent word and appearing naked throughout at least half the play, Kitty (Heather Prete) is more like a fussy infant than a troubled star. The choice to not have her speak was probably a good one, keeping with the audience's icon status of Monroe over anything potentionally less, but it still feels like exploitation.
