If, god forbid, there\u2019s a natural disaster in L.A. in the near future, Jena Malone might be one of your first responders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been studying Community Emergency Response Team training,\u201d the actor-musician, 41, said, drinking coffee in the living room of her home overlooking pomegranate trees and a canyon in northeast L.A. \u201cWhether it\u2019s fire management or building a neighborhood tool shed, it\u2019s less important for me to hit career milestones now than to transform how I live on this planet. Let\u2019s build something where we\u2019re all taking care of each other\u2019s needs through mutual aid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those are galvanizing priorities from Malone, who\u2019s led generationally beloved films like the sci-fi noir \u201cDonnie Darko,\u201d played the axe-chucking Johanna Mason in two \u201cHunger Games\u201d tentpoles and recently co-starred in the lesbian bodybuilding revenge flick \u201cLove Lies Bleeding.\u201d For almost as long, she\u2019s also made experimental folk and electronic records that toy with avant-garde noise and quietly poignant songwriting.<\/p>\n
This is a wild time in L.A. for anyone concerned about the city and its culture industries, and Malone is deeply invested in both. Just before the release of her new Netflix series, the Duffer Brothers-produced \u201cThe Boroughs,\u201d she\u2019s released her first album in nearly a decade. \u201cFlowers For Men\u201d is an effects-shredded, future-primitive record, written after the birth of her son upended her obligations \u2014 and expectations \u2014 toward the men in her life and the world they\u2019ll inherit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt changed everything,\u201d Malone said, about raising a son. \u201cI grew up learning to thrive and mask in masculine spaces. Grind culture is a masculine toxicity that I inherited and indoctrinated myself in. But parenthood offers you this opportunity to burn your entire life down in sacrifice to finding out what\u2019s real. I had no idea what it was to be a man. All of my ideas burned down and not much was being raised back up.\u201d<\/p>\n
For millennial film fans, Malone\u2019s been a consistently compelling, trust-anything-she\u2019s-in actor since her child-star turn in 1997\u2019s \u201cContact.\u201d Few embody a tortured, beguiling Americana quite like her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Boroughs\u201d \u2014 a high-profile follow-up to \u201cStranger Things\u201d from the masters of unreality, created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews \u2014 has a stacked cast that includes Alfred Molina, Geena Davis and Bill Pullman, set amid a bucolic retirement community under supernatural threat. A ragtag group of Duffer Brothers misfits teaming up to fight off eldritch horror might be the last safe bet in television.<\/p>\n
Yet that\u2019s also how Malone feels about the current climate of Hollywood \u2014 a once-stable neighborhood fending off malign forces. Institutional consolidation and retreat, spiraling costs, technological upheaval \u2014 they all add to a creeping sense that an era is over, and worse is coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cFilm is in such a delicate transition. I think that where music was 20 years ago, film is now,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like being on an elevator where every floor is on fire. A lot of the things that I loved about it no longer exist, even if what I love about it is still wildly potent. My stress levels go down and my creativity goes up when I\u2019m building a world that does not rely on the film industry, even though it\u2019s my main love.\u201d<\/p>\n
That feeling called her back to music on \u201cFlowers For Men,\u201d arriving nine years after her last LP. The ego-shattering experience of giving birth in 2016 and raising a son prompted reflections about what men\u2019s inner lives were really like, and she wanted to write about them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was raised by two moms, and I had this strange aspiration to become the dad,\u201d Malone said, laughing. \u201cI was the breadwinner of my family then. But being a parent was all brand-new to me. I kept seeing my father in him, my grandfather, these older relationships with men. It was asking me to look at him with curious, childlike eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFlowers For Men\u201d was written from a sincere curiosity about mens\u2019 strictures, bad influences and better aspirations. To inhabit someone else\u2019s life, she had to sound different, too. <\/p>\n
\u201cFilm is in such a delicate transition. I think that where music was 20 years ago, film is now,\u201d Malone said. \u201cIt\u2019s like being on an elevator where every floor is on fire. A lot of the things that I loved about it no longer exist, even if what I love about it is still wildly potent.<\/p>\n
(Evan Mulling\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n
The most prominent instrument on the album is its layers of vocal treatments. Malone has a lovely natural voice \u2014 intimately whispered, with hints of \u201870s country rock. But here she douses it in pitch-shifted digital acid, like a late 2000s R&B record dropped in the pool at the Joshua Tree Inn.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an uncanny combo, but its lends modern melancholy to \u201cBarstow,\u201d which has the narrative structure of a Townes Van Zandt banger but is corroded with bleary effects. \u201cCreate In Your Name\u201d has a Billie Eilish-worthy late-night murk, with lyrics so devotional they almost sound consumptive. \u201cDisaster Zones\u201d is all blown-out ambience, and the LP closes on a showstopping cover of John Prine\u2019s classic \u201cAngel From Montgomery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love that a man wrote a song where the first line is \u2018I\u2019m an old woman,\u2019\u201d Malone said. \u201cAs a female songwriter, it gives me so much permission. Now all the doors are open. If I was to give flowers to all of the different men that have touched or changed things that deserve celebration, John Prine would be one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
That idea \u2014 celebrating men for the good they\u2019re capable of \u2014 felt transgressive enough today that it cohered the album for her. But it also came with questions about how romantic partnership fit into her life. Settling into motherhood, she read up on relationship anarchy \u2014 which she sees as not abiding by tiers of connection. She bought books on ethical nonmonogamy (\u201cSex at Dawn\u201d was a big one) to learn how other lives were not just possible, but maybe even more fulfilling.<\/p>\n
(Perhaps this was not a stretch from an actor who played the wild child Lydia Bennet in \u201cPride and Prejudice.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cI had been under this societal understanding that hierarchical love, placing one partner above everything else, was the ultimate romantic expression. I could name hundreds of movies that brought that up,\u201d she said. \u201cBut while I\u2019m learning to take care of this child, I\u2019m realizing that self-love is one of the most important parts of this equation. I need to have expression, some work in life that felt like another love. And then my family, and how important friends were. And all of a sudden there\u2019s no world where I would just have one love, not even just romantic love.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Actor](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/0156822\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/8059x5375+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe8%2Fcc%2F66dac0e74cfabdf8243e12653d28%2F1552876-et-jena-malone-1667.jpg)
<\/picture>\n\u201cI had been under this societal understanding that hierarchical love, placing one partner above everything else, was the ultimate romantic expression. I could name hundreds of movies that brought that up,\u201d Malone said. \u201cBut while I\u2019m learning to take care of this child, I\u2019m realizing that self-love is one of the most important parts of this equation. I need to have expression, some work in life that felt like another love.<\/p>\n
(Evan Mulling\/For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n
\u201cFlowers For Men\u201d is, in her way, a bargain with that contradiction \u2014 to love men deeply, but never put them above all else, even as she got engaged to her partner, actor Jack Buckley, earlier this year. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s still sorting out how to present this album live. She said she\u2019s a fan of the Dead City Punx model of renegade shows in forgotten corners of L.A. Maybe as the city seems to fall apart, she\u2019ll find a leafy park or the back of a dingy bar that\u2019s the right home for these strange, lonely yet hopeful songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want someone to walk into the bathroom and be like, \u2018Whoa, why is there a woman singing to me?\u2019\u201d Malone said. \u201cI like the idea that art makes you a little uncomfortable and you don\u2019t have the previously held expectations to know how to hold it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If, god forbid, there\u2019s a natural disaster in L.A. in the near future, Jena Malone might be one of your first responders. \u201cI\u2019ve been studying Community Emergency Response Team training,\u201d the actor-musician, 41, said, drinking coffee in the living room of her home overlooking pomegranate trees and a canyon in northeast L.A. \u201cWhether it\u2019s fire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2407764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2407763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Are-men-OK-Actor-Jena-Malone-genuinely-hopes-so-on.com2F7f2F3e2Fb18de8054bbb8b51e5af539c.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2407763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2407765,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407763\/revisions\/2407765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2407764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2407763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2407763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2407763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}