Writer and director Tom DiCillo (Box of Moonlight) has set his new comedy amidst New York's entertainment and fashion industries. Joe (Matthew Modine), an aspiring actor with very high standards, and Mary (Catherine Keener), a make-up artist, have been living together for six years, but the pizzazz has gone out of their relationship. Mary sees a therapist (Buck Henry) who sends her to a self-defense instructor (Denis Leary) because of her hostility towards men. Joe, who has never had an acting job, lowers his standards and accepts a bit part in a Madonna video set up by Dee Dee (Kathleen Turner), a casting agent. Meanwhile, his friend Bob (Maxwell Caulfield), who works with him at a catering outfit, lands a high-paying soap opera gig. This callow young man's obsessive pursuit of the perfect blonde leads him through a series of unsatisfying relationships. Joe himself looks temptation square in the face when he encounters Tina (Elizabeth Berkley), an aspiring actress who plays Madonna's body-double in the video.
The Real Blonde vividly conveys how difficult it is to discern truth from treacle in industries built upon surface glamour, fantasy, and manufactured dreams. The challenge is to give up perfection and the pursuit of illusion in favor of meaning. Anais Nin once wrote, "There is no one big cosmic meaning for all. There is only meaning we all give our lives, an individual meaning." In this thought-provoking film, Joe and Mary confront their illusions and demons in the process of discerning what is really important to them.