Liked this very much, as I always have time for Mort Castle since reading "The Old Man And The Dead" years ago (which is about Hemingway, so he has a decided thematic interest in reinterpreting the lives of icons).
For those who didn't like that it was specifically MM, eh, well, I bet if it had been someone who was "Marilyn in everything but name", there'd be others who would be posting on "why couldn't he have just made it Marilyn Monroe and be done with it?", so six of one...
I have no problem with the presenting of an idea about the specific actress - the story needs it for the resonances, and yes, it's only fiction. I know its a story written by someone because it stops when it's over. More specifically, its fiction about an icon, someone who's life, image and persona have transcended mere general awareness into a much broader popular realms - Marilyn, like Elvis, keeps on going long after her death. Its only natural she should become the fodder for stories.
I thought it would have been a cheat *not* to have acknowledged the sexual element. YMMV, but that was a quintessential part of MM as icon. Needed to be done, and I didn't think it was masturbatory, but instead humanizing. I think some author who wanted to hack out a jerk-off fantasy about Marilyn Monroe would have spent less time and effort getting there. I like that Pseudopod can present stories like this that are horror, just not the type of thing people think of when they think of horror. Psychological, no external threat, the horrors of popular culture and history and the people ground up in the gears.
As to the point - maybe I'm misreading (hearing), and I actually am hesitant at putting my thoughts down as a solid statement because I believe that its deliberately NOT spelled out for a number of reasons, but I believe the author's implication was that Marilyn was the victim of some form of molestation as a child, physical or mental - that's not the ultimate point, however, and I would leave the "Need"'s narration at the end to be re-examined by the listener with that thought in mind. Marilyn as pop icon, a screen that millions projected onto, but her "Need" and its origin was also part of that. The personal specific magnified out into a popular culture and finding resonances with her audience in ways not intended by her or her packagers, and what the arc of her "life story" then says to those who felt those resonances. Every person carries their secret damage, if they have some, but when one person becomes this large of a figure, their secret damage gets magnified as well, and when the root, the personal specific's life, ends in such a way, well....
The Need, at the end, has become an icon, just like Marilyn. It lives on after her, to our detriment.
Reading, delivery, 2 narrators - all great!
And Billy Wilder may have been a prick, but he made ACE IN THE HOLE (among others) and thus, gets an eternal pass...
“Cinema needs people and feelings and heart. Angelina Jolie is not a real person; she’s like a drawing. Ben Affleck is not a real person – he’s like a computer!”
Jesus Franco