Remember Louise Linton? Third wife of ex-Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin? Landed in a little hot water back in 2017 when she posted a glamour shot to Instagram of her getting off a government jet with all the designer clothing on her person hashtagged (#hermes, #valentino, #roulandmouret, #tomfordsunnies)? Flew off the handle, 21st-century Marie Antoinette–style, after a commenter wrote “glad we could pay for your little getaway,” and responded by basically implying the woman was a poor slob who earned less in a year than Linton and her husband paid in quarterly taxes? A scandal that was preceded by one in which she self-published a memoir about her gap year in Africa that was widely mocked as a stereotype-laden “white savior” fantasy, resulting in calls for Zambia to demand an apology from Scotland, where Linton was born and raised? Subsequently apologized a few times and then basically flew under the radar, save for the time she posed with a sheet of cash at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in long black leather gloves and an expression that read as “paper money is for poor people; I only pay for things using gold bars”? Well, she’s back.
Specifically, she’s back with a movie she wrote and starred in, alongside Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick, called Me You Madness. The movie, to borrow a phrase, has everything. Diamonds. Spider sex. Spin classes. Vintage Mustangs. Knives. Fight scenes. Curling irons as weapons. Theraguns (also as weapons?). The line: “I think I’m going to disembowel this kid and kill him.” A possible wedding. A dinner, according to The New York Times, whose reporter has seen the yet-to-be-released film, featuring a menu of testicles. A “drug-fueled poolside orgy.”
On Thursday, Linton dropped the trailer, which begins with a voice-over in which she tells viewers: “My name is Catherine Black. You may think that I’m a materialistic, narcissistic, self-absorbed misanthrope. I don’t deny it. I’m a hedge fund manager. I’m addicted to fashion, the accumulation of money, exercise, and sex. My life is incredible.”
Hmm, a hedge fund manager who loves fashion and money and is seen by some as materialistic and self-absorbed? Is it possible this work of art is autobiographical in nature? A sort of response to her haters? (In one scene Catherine says, “It’s not nice to judge other people…Let’s all just be a little kinder to one another.”) Absolutely not, why would you even think that? “It’s not that at all,” Linton told the Times. Brooks Barnes, who saw the film, has more detail about the totally-not-autobiographical character Linton plays, who, in addition to fashion and sex, is addicted to “cocaine, Champagne, excessive exercise, expensive shoes, and indescribable violence.”
“There will be people who love it and people who hate it,” Linton said. “But I don’t care what people say. I’m proud of my little film. It’s a potpourri of silliness.” One person who apparently does love it? Former Treasury secretary Mnuchin, a fellow film financier, who told the Times: “I watched Louise create this film from first draft to final edit. I’m proud of her drive, tenacity, and spirit. The movie is highly entertaining and very good fun.”
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