A small, stylishly dressed woman stands in a narrow corridor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, staring up in awe at a row of huge photographs of writers and artists, all persecuted or forced to flee Nazi Germany.
Eyeing the melancholy visages of Max Beckmann, Franz Werfel, Ernst Barlach and George Grosz, she says quietly, āThey all look so sad, like doomed men.ā
Stephanie Barron, the curator who assembled the museumās widely praised āDegenerate Artā exhibit, explains that the art displayed here, which includes work by Chagall, Kandinsky and Klee, was loathed by the Nazis, who vilified it as ādegenerate trash.ā
That phrase seems to strike a nerve with Barronās guest, who wags her head furiously up and down. Of course, this isnāt any ordinary guest.
This is the pop siren whoās been banned by MTV, blasted by the Vatican and nearly arrested in Toronto for simulating masturbation on stage. This is the wildly ambitious pop diva who began as a disco boy-toy and ended up as a Vanity Fair cover girl. This is the media-wise pop provocateur whoās survived a stormy marriage to Sean Penn and a steamy affair with Warren Beatty, and when asked in her new movie whom sheād like to meet next, coolly responds, āI think Iāve met everybody.ā
This is Madonna.
āDegenerate trash, huh?ā she snaps sarcastically. āI know what you mean. Just like āA Current Affairā and āHard Copy.ā ā
Outfitted in a sleek black cinch-waist coat, shiny Doc Marten-style shoes and trademark Russian red lipstick, Madonna is taking a 70-minute after-hours swing through LACMA. āThatās the great thing about being a celebrity,ā she says as she glides out of her limousine. āYou get to go to museums after they close.ā
Itās hard to imagine Madonna having spent much of her adolescence popping gum in museums. Yet accompanying her through the āDegenerate Artā exhibit (she parked her wad of Bazooka in the limo), you learn sheās savvy enough to see the similarities between Otto Dix and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Watching silent German films from the 1920s, she immediately spots the early works of Dreyer and Pabst. Eyeing Louise Brooks in āPandoraās Box,ā sheās absolutely transfixed, murmuring, āShe is so amazing looking!ā Still, her interests are largely visualāsheād probably flunk a pop quiz on the politics and literature from that era.
But whatās striking about Madonna is her complete self-confidence. Strolling through the exhibit, she makes absolutely no effort to hide her scholastic shortcomings. Stopping to scan an introductory essay, she says, āYou canāt go too fastāIām a slow reader.ā As she strolled through each exhibit area, she peppered Barron with questions, freely acknowledging her lack of familiarity with a variety of obscure artists.
Madonna was especially taken by Barronās account of Alma Mahler, a woman who enjoyed romantic liaisons with a host of Central European artists, including Oskar Kokoschka and Gustav Mahler. āBut what did she do?ā Madonna wonders. āWas she a painter too?ā
Barron is at a bit of a loss. āYou could say she wasāwellāa kind-of painter.ā
Madonna flashes a knowing grin. āOh, I get it,ā she says. āShe was a muse. ā
Itās obvious Madonna feels an emotional bond with all this bold, sensual andāabove allāsubversive art. When Barron notes that the original āDegenerate Artā exhibitions drew far more patrons than the officially sanctioned Nazi art showing nearby, Madonna clenches her hand into a fist. āOf course,ā she says triumphantly. āAs soon as you tell somebody something is bad, they all want to come see it.ā
Question: Whatās so threatening about your sexuality? Nobody seems to get particularly worked up about Kim Basinger or Debra Winger or Uma Thurman showing their breasts. But with youāwhy does all hell break loose?
Answer: Because theyāre not as powerful as I am. I reach more people. Kim Basinger showing her breasts isnāt threatening. But I think my sexualityās boldness threatens people. Iām assertive. Iām not embarrassed or shameful or inhibited. Iām not just showing a breast. Thereās something defiant about what I do. Iām challenging the mores and ripping open the taboos and turning up the underbelly of our societyāall the things American culture tries to keep hidden. When I rip open my shirt and show my breasts, itās a more powerful statement.
Madonnaās new film, āTruth or Dare,ā is not really a concert filmāand certainly not a documentary.
Shot during Madonnaās four-month Blond Ambition Tour last year, itās a two-hour meditation on celebrity and its discontents, an alluring, dishy and seemingly intimate fantasy portrait of a pop star wrestling with the steely grip of fame. Madonna sees it as a mock-Warhol film. Itās Madonna playing Madonnaāa performance within a performanceāwith the cameras always rolling, ready to shape, inspire, distort and sometimes simply record various events.
As is the case with most big events in Madonnaās career, the movie comes with its own built-in publicity campaign. As you may have read in advance press accounts, the cameras show Madonna baring her breasts, bitching at her soundmen, bickering with Warren Beatty, writhing in bed with her gay dancers andāyesāsimulating oral sex with a water bottle.
But what the cameras never show is Madonna losing control. In fact, the only person who seems truly comfortable around the cameras isāsurpriseāMadonna.
Todayās stars are so fiercely protective of their airbrushed images that itās hard to imagine anyone but Madonna showing herself screaming at her stage crew, making jokes about having sex with her father orāgaspāridiculing an Oscar-winning Nice Guy like Kevin Costner.
But Madonna is shrewd enough to realize that itās these unguarded moments that give the movie its forbidden air.
After all, āTruth or Dareā is her fantasyāshe bankrolled the $4-million movie. She insisted that Alek Keshishian, the filmās 26-year-old director, have final cut. But why not give final cut to someone who told Vanity Fair that āmy fantasy was always, āOh God, Iād love to be Madonnaās best friend.ā ā
āThere were plenty of scenes I felt edgy or uneasy about, but theyāre still in the film,ā Madonna explains, ordering a decaf cafe au lait as she settles into a quiet upstairs couch at a La Brea Avenue coffee bar. āAlek would debate with me and I eventually saw the light. Maybe all the moments arenāt necessarily flattering, but theyāre the highs and the lows of the movie. And I realized that if I took one out, why didnāt I take out all of them?ā
Question: I thought Warren Beatty offered the best critique of the film. When the doctor is treating your throat, he asks if you want to talk about anything off camera. And Beatty says tauntingly: āTurn the camera off? She doesnāt want to live off camera, much less talk.ā
Answer: I donāt think that if you let cameras follow you around for six months that youāre giving up your soul. The world knows about everything in my life. They know when I have an abortion. They know when I go out on a date. So why is a doctor examining my throat suddenly off limits? For some reason, Warren thought filming a visit to the doctor was verbotenā this incredibly intimate thing. Meanwhile, the National Enquirer illegally purchases my medical records whenever they can. Whatās to hide? I think Warrenās statement that I donāt want to live my life off camera is really a statement about himself. Itās him saying: āI donāt want anyone to know anything about my life. I want it shrouded in mystery.ā And I think Warren believed that if he kept saying to the camera, āThis whole thing is ridiculous!ā that it would keep us from using the footage.
Question: Do you think he underestimated you?
Answer: Yes. But heās always underestimated me.
Madonna says signs were posted in all her backstage areas, warning anyone who came there that he or she would be filmed. However, as an added precaution, she and Keshishian obtained signed releases from virtually all the regular members of her entourage. Except for Beatty: āHah!ā she cackled. āDo you think Warren is going to sign a release for a movie he hasnāt seen?ā
The most talked-about celeb zinger involves Kevin Costner, who is filmed backstage congratulating Madonna. When he praises her show as āneat,ā she immediately prods him, ā Neat? Whaddaya mean by āneatā?ā And as soon as Costner leaves, she growls, āAnybody who describes my show as āneatā has to go,ā turns to the camera and pretends to throw up. She has no regrets about treating Costner as if he were some hayseed who just fell off the turnip truck.
āWell, he acted liked one,ā she said, sipping her coffee. āTo go to my show, which I think is very disturbing and moving, and then come backstage and say it was āneat,ā I felt that was a slap in the face to me. So basically, I was slapping him back.ā
If itās any consolation for Costner, Madonnaās family members didnāt get any special considerations. The film shows Madonnaās brother Martin, just out of an alcohol rehab clinic, trying to pick up one of her backup singers and failing to turn up after her show to visit her at her hotel. The footage makes him look like a forlorn, almost pathetic guy reaching for his sisterās coattails. You have to wonder what it added to the movie to drag his personal problems into the spotlight.
āIt was reality,ā Madonna says. āMy brother willingly took part in the movie and in his interviews. Itās obvious I was upset because I thought that heād missed coming to see me because heād stopped to get something to drink. And when you see footage of him, trying to explain it, itās obvious that itās a con job. But I also think that heās very entertaining. My brother is a ham. Heās an exhibitionist. And he knew full well what he was doing.ā
Question: Did you ever have a woman in your life who offered you the kind of support your mother would have?
Answer: No. Not at all. Not even close.
Q: Do you miss that?
A: God, yes. When I see my girlfriends with their mothers even now I canāt even imagineāitās unfathomable what that sort of nurturing would have done for me. Letās face it. I probably wouldnāt be sitting on this couch here talking to you now if Iād had a mother. I really miss it. My role models who nurtured me when I was growing up were all men.
Madonnaās mother died when she was 6 but clearly did more to shape her life than anyone else. In what is perhaps the filmās most emotionalāsome might say over wroughtāscene, Madonna visits her grave, first kneeling and then sprawling on the ground beside the headstone.
She freely acknowledges that it was the presence of the camerasāand her notion of āTruth or Dareā as an exploration of her lifeāthat inspired her to make the trip. āI hadnāt been to her grave since my father remarried,ā she says. āBut thatās what this film was about. I was on a mission to film my life. So it gave me the opportunity to deal with an issue that Iād been avoiding or running away from all my life because it was so painful.ā
The loss of her mother at such an early age fueled Madonna with an edgy, impatient desire to succeed. In the film, a member of her tour group puts it simply: āSheās in a race against time.ā Reminded of the remark, Madonna quickly nods. āItās true. Life is just too short and I have too many goddamn things to do, so I better hurry up. That has a lot to do with my motherās deathāIāve felt that way since I was a child.ā
As she sees it, her motherās death freed her from accepting the typical constraints of a blue-collar, big-Catholic-family upbringing. āI think the biggest reason I was able to express myself and not be intimidated was not having a mother,ā she says. āI did not have a female role model. Women are traditionally raised to be subservient, passive, accepting. The man is supposed to be the pioneer. He makes the money, he makes the rules.
āI know that some of my lack of inhibition comes from my motherās death. For example, mothers teach you manners. And I absolutely did not learn any of those rules and regulations. And because I had such a large family, I realized that I would only be noticed and heard if I made the biggest noise. If I wanted my fatherās attention, I would get on a table and tap-dance and lift my dress andāguess whatāheād pay attention to me.ā
In āTruth or Dare,ā Madonna is never seen with her musicians, only with her backup singers and, most often, with her troupe of young, predominantly gay, dancers. As she puts it: āThey flocked to me. They were my family.ā She revels in their affection, teasing them, flirting with them, playfully dragging them in bed with her. Then, just as suddenly, she stings them with a bitchy tongue-lashing, dubbing them āqueens on the rag.ā
Madonna views this complicated family affair in maternal terms, which is probably accurate if you can imagine yourself wrapped in the adoring arms of a black widow spider.
āIt comes from my need to be mothered,ā she says, running a hand through her shoulder-length blond hair, which shows an inch of dark roots at the top of her head. āI look at the dancers and say, āTheyāre me.ā I transfer me as a little girl onto them. I view them through all of my feelings of being deserted and not being emotionally supported or loved. And I say, āNow Iām going to be their mother in the way I didnāt have one.ā ā
Question: OK. Give me an analysis of your Hollywood career.
Answer: Iāve been a failure so far. And the reason is that I simply havenāt put a lot of thought into it. I havenāt honored or respected a movie career the way I should have. I didnāt approach it the way I approached my music career. Iād had a lot of success in music, and all of a sudden people were going, āHereās a movie.ā And I didnāt think about it. I just took it. I underestimated the power of the medium. Itās been a good lesson for me.
If you took a thermometer to Madonnaās stack of possible movie projects, the one that would generate the most heat is āEvita.ā For more than a decade, everyone from Oliver Stone and Michael Cimino to Meryl Streep, Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli has been onāand offāthe musical about Eva Peron. Now Madonna and director Glenn Gordon Caron are at the helm, with the Disney Studio providing the financing. But today, Madonna is gloomy about the filmās prospects.
āIt doesnāt look very bright right now,ā she says. āEvery day I get another message from either my agent or Glenn Caron saying, āWeāre waiting just one more day to hear from Disney on whether theyāre going to give it a green light or not.ā But Iām not going to lie and say that my enthusiasm hasnāt flagged a little. Iām very fickle. And if Disney doesnāt commit soon, Iām just going to have to concentrate on other things.ā
She contends that Disneyās legendary cost-consciousness has stalled the project. āItās very frustrating. (Disney studio chairman) Jeffrey Katzenberg is squabbling over pennies. Weāre all paying for that crazy memo he wrote. If they donāt want to spend the money, thatās fine, but I donāt want to be in a low-budget version of āEvita.ā ā
(A Disney spokeswoman says, āAs far as weāre concerned right now, the movie is a go.ā)
Madonna is developing other projects, including an adaptation of the James Baldwin novel āGiovanniās Roomā and a film about the life of legendary choreographer Martha Graham. She also has been working with two different writers on a film about painter Frida Kahlo. āIām excited about it,ā she says. āIt wonāt be your typical reverent artist-bio picture.ā
Nor has Madonna ruled out the prospect of making āLita and Swan,ā a female buddy picture that would co-star Demi Moore and be produced by Joel Silver. āIt has more character development than most Joel Silver films,ā she explains. āThe problem is that the timing doesnāt look good. They want to make it right away, but I think the script still needs some work and Demi is six months pregnant.ā
You get the distinct impression Madonna is not the sort of woman who can sit on her hands for very long. āItās trueāIām freaking out,ā she says. She recently took a small role in an upcoming Woody Allen movie, in which she plays a circus performer. And sheās committed to playing a part in director Gus Van Santās adaptation of Tom Robbinsā novel āEven Cowgirls Get the Blues,ā which she says will shoot in June and July. Asked about her role, Madonna quipped: āI get to make out with Uma Thurman. What could be more fun?ā
Nearly a year later, Madonna still has mixed feelings about her last big film projectāāDick Tracy.ā āThis is going to sound really horrible, but I have to admit Iāve never really seen the movie. I saw a lot of bits and pieces, and I did see an early cut, and I saw about half of it at a premiere in Washington, D.C., but then I had to leave.
āYou could say I have a lot of unresolved feelings about it. I remember being very upset that all of my big music scenes were cut up the way they were. I learned a lot about filmmaking from Warren, but obviously it didnāt make me a big box-office star, did it?ā
Madonnaās happiest marriage has been with the media. Her critics have landed a few punches in recent months, most notably a withering broadside in Playboy that dismissed her as an emasculating pop tart. But sheās generally been portrayed with a mix of unabashed curiosity and outright adulation. She posed as Marilyn Monroe II in Vanity Fair. āNightlineā treated her like a presidential candidate. Even Spy magazine, which eagerly attacks everybody, has handled her with kid gloves, even putting her on its cover last month (albeit with Madonnaās head plastered on another womanās body).
Madonna has even started to pick up a few highbrow accolades, most notably from hotshot feminist academic Camille Paglia. Writing in the New York Times last fall, she lauded Madonna as the āfuture of feminism.ā Praising her āprofound visionā of sex, Paglia wrote: āMadonna sees both the animality and the artifice of sex. Sheās taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives.ā
These accolades donāt go unnoticed. In fact, the south wall of Madonnaās kitchen is dominated by an immense blond-wood magazine rack, stocked with Vanity Fair, Mirabella, Vogue, Interview, Traveler and more.
āI donāt mind being the subject of gossip,ā she says. āPeople who take it seriously just end up being devastated by it. I find a lot of it fairly amusing. Spy can be very funnyāitās abstract gossip. Itās more challenging than People or US. I enjoyed being on their cover. Iād just like to know whose body they used instead of mine.ā (Spy says Nicki Gostin, its picture research editor, posed as Madonnaās ābody double.ā)
Madonna handles the celebrity glare well. Her house in the Hollywood Hills is hermetically sealed, with guards, hidden cameras and an electric-eye gate. But out in public, she is relaxed, if on guard. Though she is recognized virtually everywhere she goes, she quietly slipped into her favorite coffee bar, sized up the crowded room and casually asked if she could retire to a quiet, upstairs area. Itās easy to see why journalists have generally treated her with respect. She is smart, sassy and fearlessly frank, and never ducks a question.
When she realizes the barās noisy sound system might be drowning out her replies, she takes the tape recorder off the couch and holds it in her hand. āNo problem,ā she says brightly. āItās just like holding a microphone. Iām pretty good at it.ā
Youāve raised a lot of moneyāand awarenessāfor AIDS-related causes. Why hasnāt Hollywood, which has many gay men in positions of power, taken a more active role?
Answer: Because nobody wants to offend anybody. If you take a stand on something, then you may not get a job, or people may not go see your movie or people might be insulted by your actions. Everyone is afraid in this town. This is a town full of very self-centered, selfish people who make their entire living out of putting their best face forward.
Throughout āTruth or Dare,ā Madonna repeatsāas if it were her mantraāthat her act isnāt just provocative, but political too. Not everybody buys that. In fact, many critics say sheās confusing political statements with shock-value narcissism. Even on āNightline,ā when asked how she could wear a neck manacle in one of her videos and not see herself as a sex slave, she replied, not very convincingly: āBut I chained myself. Iām in charge!ā
As more than one critic has pointed out, Madonnaās favorite video sexual theaterāwhether itās her leather ānā lingerie poses or footage of two women kissing each otherāoffers classic male fantasy poses. On the other hand, she has taken an active stance in various political causes. In addition to performing numerous AIDS fund-raisers, Madonna has put her mouth where her money is. Her now-celebrated (and much-faxed) interview with the Advocate was a raunchy, no-holds-barred affairāand more important, a rare example of a straight superstar unabashedly courting the gay press.
āI think my point of view is very political,ā she insists. āMost people in entertainment donāt want to present their point of view about anything. But I think presenting my point of view about life, whether itās about sexual equality or anti-homophobia, is a political statement. I know it has an impact. I know that people look at me and say, āSheās someone to look up to because sheās really in charge of her life. Sheās doing what she believes in.ā ā
Is being a role model a political statement? Perhaps not. But Madonna makes a telling point. Her enemies certainly view her as a subversive cultural force.
āLook at this Rev. Donald Wildmon character and all his Moral Majority people,ā she says. āTheyāre obsessed with meāand thereās a hostility to that obsession. They have a hatred for the power and fame and freedom that I have. For them to go around, banning records and books and trying to get people arrested, itās a pretty clear statement about their own obsessions.
āObviously Iām tapping into something in their unconscious that theyāre very ashamed of. And since they canāt deal with it, they tell everyone itās shameful. I was really reminded of that in the āDegenerate Artā exhibit. Itās like Hitlerāthey want to purify your thoughts.ā
Near the end of the film, we hear one of the people on your tour say of you: āSheās very unhappy much of the time.ā True?
Answer: I certainly was unhappy on tour.
Question: But why? When youāre out on tour, arenāt you doing what you love?
Answer: Iām a tormented person. I have a lot of demons inside of me. My pain is as big as my joy. Itās always been that way. I used to throw myself into a project to mask my pain. Now Iāve learn to exorcise my paināand try to heal itāthrough my work. So itās become more productive for me emotionally. I can act out whatever hostilities I feel onstage or write about my pain in a song.
What Warren Beatty says in āTruth or Dareā is at least half-trueāMadonna doesnāt want to live her life off camera. But you sense itās more than just a narcissistic cravingāperhaps she simply finds solaceāand inspirationāin the soothing warmth of the camerasā attentive glow.
āThe process of filming somehow set up certain interactions, especially between me and my dancers, that never would have taken place,ā she says, popping a Bazooka bubble in the back seat of her limo. āIt brought us closer together. For example, we played ātruth or dareā all the time. But the one that we got the best stuff fromāthat we used in the filmāwouldāve never happened if we hadnāt have done it for the filmmakers.ā
(āTruth or dareā is a cheeky party game in which players either choose truth, where you must answer any query, no matter how personal, or dare, where you must perform any act requested of you. In the film, Madonna does both.)
ā āTruth or dareā was good therapy for everybody,ā she says, working on her gum. āOnce you got past the exhibitionist side of itāwhoāll kiss who, whoās sleeping with whoāthen you got down to the real truth. People couldnāt hide. It became a real therapy session.ā
In fact, the entire movie is Madonnaās therapy session. As the filmās star, she gets to work out her anxieties and live out her fantasies. But what makes āTruth or Dareā such a striking celebrity confessional is that it stars Madonna in both rolesāas patient and therapist.
Trying to explain the filmās therapeutic value, Madonna returns to musing about her motherās death. āI guess the die is cast when youāre 5 years old. Whatever has gone on with me began as a cry out to the world. I was saying, āIām alone. I donāt feel loved.ā ā
In āTruth or Dare,ā when her assistant has a birthday party, Madonna gets up and reads a simple, heartfelt poem sheās written for the occasion. The key line? āYou canāt count on much in this life,ā she says. āI should know.ā
āI really do believe that,ā she says softly, nodding her head, as if savoring that small piece of wisdom. āThatās the school I come fromādonāt assume anything. Itās a way of protecting yourself from being hurt.ā
Looking out the window, she squints into the sun. āAnd itās a way of allowing yourself to go on if you are hurt. If someone stabs you in the back or humiliates you, itās a way of keeping yourself from being too devastated.ā
As she slips her sunglasses back on, she displays a faint smile. āAnd you know whatāit works.ā
Ā© Los Angeles Times
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