Book, show and now musical album: for several years, Tarbais Olivier Steiner, former student of the Théophile-Gautier high school, and Isabelle Adjani, film star, have been exploring the mystery of Marilyn Monroe together. With *Vertigo*, accompanied by the Swiss electro-pop group Proksima, they offer much more than a tribute to the American icon: a poetic meditation on fame, disappearance and the irreplaceable power of the human voice.
How did the meeting between a writer, director and producer from Tarbes and a world-famous artist and performer come about?
Olivier Steiner : I don’t even know anymore, and it’s not even a formula! I have a relationship with rather Adjanian time, everything for me was yesterday, and today, and tomorrow.Â
Let’s say that I’ve always known her by heart. Then one day I met Adjani, and I found her pretty. Then another day, I met Isabelle, and I found her beautiful.
Then Marilyn arrived. First as a compliment, then as a way of meaning something unspeakable. It became reading, theater, travel, a book and finally an unidentified sound object: *Vertigo*, this album, when Marilyn would have been 100 years old on June 1, 2026.
Isabelle Adjani : What touched me about Olivier was his way of looking at the people behind the images. Marilyn is often reduced to a photograph or a legend. Olivier is interested in the person, in the flaw, in poetry, in human complexity. It’s this look that brought us together.Â
Why does the character of Marilyn Monroe fascinate you so much?
Olivier Steiner : Because Marilyn no longer belongs only to Hollywood or even to her era. Sixty-four years after her death, she continues to cross generations, languages and continents. She is both a real woman and an almost mythological figure. Pasolini wrote: “Could it be that Marilyn showed us the way?” Edgar Morin described it as the “matrix star”, the first world myth of the modern era. But what interests us is less the disappeared icon than the human presence behind the image.
Isabelle Adjani : Marilyn talks to us about desire, solitude, fame, the making of images and our collective need for stories. In reality, this album is as much about her as it is about us. And it’s dizzying.Â
Why does this musical album go well beyond a tribute to the American muse who died too soon?
Olivier Steiner : We never wanted to make a nostalgic record. *Vertigo* tells the last hours of Marilyn Monroe, from August 4 to 5, 1962. The story of a flickering star. Twelve titles. One hour. From noon to midnight. But very quickly everything goes beyond Marilyn. We talk about memory, love, disappearance, transmission and above all the human voice.
Isabelle Adjani : The album travels between France, Switzerland with Proksima, the United States and Tunisia where it was finalized and mixed by Dawan. It combines literature, electronic music, spoken word, archives, poetry and song. Marilyn is the starting point and the arrival point.
With the exponential development of AI, do songs, voices and music still have a future?
Olivier Steiner : The more artificial intelligence progresses, the more valuable the human voice will become. AI will soon be able to imitate all the voices in the world. They will know how to compose, arrange, perform. They can even resurrect whoever they want.
Isabelle Adjani : … but will something be missing?Â
Olivier Steiner : Voilà . Oui. Absolument. Â
Isabelle Adjani : The human voice is not just a sound. It is a story, a mortal body, a memory, a childhood, a fragility. *Vertigo* was born in this moment of change that we are experiencing.
Serge Gainsbourg, from whom you draw inspiration for this concept album, who is the spiritual father or son of *Histoire de Melody Nelson*, wouldn’t he suffer the wrath of censorship, which doesn’t say its name, these days?
Isabelle Adjani : What inspired us at Gainsbourg was not provocation. It is his formal freedom. With *Story of Melody Nelson*, he invented a hybrid object between literature, story, interior cinema and music. Like Godard in cinema, he showed that an album could become a total work.
Olivier Steiner : Each era invents its own prohibitions. Artists have always encountered resistance, sometimes moral, sometimes political, sometimes economic. The forms change, but the tension between creation and freedom remains.Â
