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THE RUNDOWN<\/strong><\/p>\n When Maggie Gyllenhaal thought of casting a young Marilyn Monroe for her short film Flesh Impact<\/em>, which will debut at the Venice Film Festival<\/a> in honor of Monroe\u2019s 100th birthday, she had an unexpected pick in mind: Dakota Johnson.<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal cast two actresses, Johnson and 93-year-old Ellen Burstyn, to play young and old versions of the starlet who died<\/a> at age 36. Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a> shared the first-look images of both women in the role:<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal explained how she decided on casting Johnson, saying she had been hesitant at first because Johnson doesn\u2019t really look like Monroe.<\/p>\n \u201cThen I thought, That\u2019s ridiculous. Who cares?\u201d she told Vanity Fair<\/em>. \u201cI don\u2019t know that anyone even really totally knows what Marilyn looks like because she\u2019s been so commodified and made into this myth and she\u2019s very blurry in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal wrote the script for the 17-minute film. During that process, \u201cDakota was always on my mind. When I\u2019m writing, sometimes I\u2019ll find an actor just keeps coming up and I almost have to actively push them out of my head so that I don\u2019t limit what I\u2019m doing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n The film explores \u201cwhat would\u2019ve happened if [Monroe] had 60 years to herself,\u201d Gyllenhaal said. \u201cWhat might be different about the work that she would do now?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis film is very much a mixture of Marilyn and my fantasy of her,\u201d she continued. \u201cIn a lot of ways, this movie is about Marilyn and also about actresses in general and what it\u2019s like to have that strange, very vulnerable, and, at the same time, very powerful job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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