Max & Domino: Dark, Funny, Iconic

I had the pleasure of seeing Anthony Marinelli's Max & Domino at The Duke on 42nd Street last night, one of six short plays which are semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival.  All six were excellent, and I'll likely review each of them in the coming days, but I'll start with Max & Domino, which was my favorite for a variety of reasons.

I saw and reviewed here Marinelli's Acoustic Space - a short 2015 movie made from his short play - which apropos McLuhan (who came up with the term) was about the impact of ubiquitous smartphones on interpersonal relations, and looked to me like a movie that might have been produced had McLuhan and Woody Allen gone on to collaborate as producers after McLuhan's appearance in Annie Hall.  Max & Domino has nothing to do with phones, but is invested with Marinelli's savvy about media, this time about movie idols and fevered illusions.

Actually, Max & Domino is about just one movie icon, Marilyn Monroe, who as fate would have it is the Marilyn in my just published Marilyn and Monet.  Unfortunately, she didn't live long enough to star in a Woody Allen movie, but she's permanently in our firmament, as hot today as ever she was in the 1950s and 60s.

In Max & Domino, she's perfectly played by Amanda Greer, who delivers just the right verve and breathiness.  Greer is in fact Domino, one half of a mobster enforcer team who are torturing poor Charlie (well played by Mike Funk) to give up where he hid their money and who knows what.  Like a boxer on the ropes having visions of some babe in his real or mediated life, Charlie makes his beating more exquisite by imagining that at times the brunette Domino is blonde Marilyn.  (I told you this was both dark and funny.)

But the best punch comes with a twist at the end, which I won't tell you, except that all is revealed and clicks into place with stiletto precision.  I hope Max & Domino move on from the semi-finals, and Charlie rides forever like his namesake on the MTA.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists: Frozen West ...  The Lady in the Woods ... Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up

Acoustic Space: A Short, Sage and Funny Movie

Just saw Acoustic Space, a short film by Anthony Marinelli currently on the film festival circuit, and based on the award-winning play by Marinelli of the same name.   That name is taken from Marshall McLuhan's phrase - "acoustic space" - which McLuhan created to describe the all-at-once immersion of the electronic environment.   In contrast to visual space, in which we tend to focus on a single direction or source of information, acoustic space gives us information from everywhere in the environment at once.  We can hear radio, for example, regardless of where our eyes may be focused - that's why listening to the radio works so well when we're driving a car.   McLuhan wrote this in the 1960s and 70s.   In my Digital McLuhan (1999) and New New Media (2009, 2012), I explored how what McLuhan wrote 40-50 years earlier was even more applicable to our current digital age, in which we're even more immersed in information than we were back then.

Acoustic Space the movie is both predicated on our digital immersion and a delightful and intelligent word-play on acoustic.  A couple about to have dinner in a restaurant are talking more to people on their phones than they are to each other.  We've seen scenarios like this before, but Marinelli  brings a special wit and pizzazz to the endeavor, with the couple almost seeming to be talking to one another when they're not, because the words they're saying on the phone have so much in common.

The man is an advertising exec and the woman is trying to give advice to her friend whose relationship is falling apart.   Acoustic Space thus resonates with the best of Mad Men and Girls.  The waiter - not at all a dumb waiter - also has some memorable lines.  If Woody Allen - who also had what to do with McLuhan in Annie Hall - and his irrepressible sketches of urban, high-tech frenetic life are to your liking, you're bound to enjoy Acoustic Space.   Indeed, I have no doubt that once it's released to the public, lots of people will be talking about it - in person and on phones in restaurants.