Age: 46
female
Marielle Stiles Heller (born October 1, 1979) is an American director, screenwriter and actress. She is best known for directing the films The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019).
Eternal Flame is a gripping four-part dramatic limited series that chronicles the meteoric rise and devastating collapse of the iconic 1980s band The Bangles. Framed through the shifting, often contradictory memories of its members, the series uncovers the raw reality behind the glossy MTV image. The story begins in the gritty 1981 Los Angeles "Paisley Underground" scene, where the Peterson sisters, Susanna Hoffs, and Annette Zilinskas forge a fierce, democratic pact to build a leaderless rock-and-roll democracy. Rebranded as The Bangles and joined by seasoned bassist Michael Steele, they conquer the underground club circuit with their raw garage-rock sound.However, when global pop deity Prince gifts them "Manic Monday" and major label executives at Columbia Records realize the camera's intense fixation on Susanna, the band’s egalitarian dream is pushed to the brink. Swept up in the corporate machinery of the late-'80s music industry, the women find their gritty artistic identity actively commodified, polished, and packaged into slick pop perfection. As massive commercial hits like "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Eternal Flame" rocket them to global arena stardom, heavy-handed management and toxic media narratives aggressively isolate Susanna, branding the group as a singer and her backup band.Stretched to the absolute breaking point by relentless touring, exhaustion, and unaddressed creative friction, the band's internal sisterhood cracks. The tension culminates in a chaotic, legendary 1989 blowout concert on a literal slab of unfinished concrete at the Houston Beltway 8 freeway opening, where the group dramatically implodes. Rich in period detail, complex relationships, and authentic musicality, Eternal Flame strips away cheap '80s nostalgia to deliver a fierce, empathetic, and honest examination of systemic industry sexism, the high price of mega-stardom, and the tragic cost of creative compromise.
