Madonna (19 page)

Arquette was known largely for her acting on the small screen. Her roles up to that point included parts in the television movies
Executioner s Song
and
Harvest Home
with Bette Davis. Her movie work had included
S.O.B.
, a starring role in
Baby, It's You
, and Martin Scorcese's
After Hours
. She also had a curious rock and roll identity, having been the inspiration for the hit song by the group Toto: “Rosanna.”

During the filming of
Desperately Seeking Susan
, Madonna and Rosanna reported to interviewers that they had become close friends. According to Madonna, “We're like sisters—we've got lots of miseries in common, and boyfriend problems.”
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“I love her—she's my long-lost sister,” Rosanna claimed with praise for Madonna.
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“I have never met anyone who has such a focus.”
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Although Madonna was nervous for the first few scenes, it wasn't long before she found her sea legs on the set. Everyone who knows Madonna agrees that in
Desperately Seeking Susan
, the singer isn't acting as much as she is being herself on film. The Madonna that you see on the screen in this movie is the real Madonna Ciccone, only slightly magnified.

One of the production aspects that was important for the believ-ability of the part of Susan, and for Madonna's identification with her, was the costuming. “She's wearing a lot of her own stuff,” says Rosefelt of Madonna's clothes in the film, “because ‘Susan' has a lot of crucifixes on, and a lot of jewelry. In large part, these are Madonna's own clothes.”
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Explaining how this came about, Rosefelt says, “Santo Loquasto was the designer of the costumes as well as the production designer for the whole film. He's worked with Woody Allen—he won an Oscar nomination for
Zelig
and a Tony Award for
The Cherry Orchard
. So, he's a very big guy in the design world. He knows what he's doing. His vision of the character was much more ‘West Side'—old clothes and ‘thrift shop,' which is not Madonna's look at all. He went up to Madonna's place and looked through her things, and I think there was kind of a give-and-take between what Santo wanted, and what Madonna wanted, and what the plot needed—what Susan Seidelman needed. I mean, there are certain clothes—there's a pair of boots which are very important to the plot. They're like glitter boots, and that's a very important part of the story of the film. And, I think that those might not be boots that Madonna would want to wear, but they looked very good on film. Certain things had to be worked out. It was a mutual discussion.”
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Explains Madonna, “In the beginning, the costumes Santo had gotten for me were things—I never would have dressed that way. They were from vintage shops, like Cyndi Lauper dresses, like lots of layers of antique clothing. I hated it! Stiletto heels and stuff.” When she saw what he had chosen for her, she very vocally protested. “So now,” she said, amid production, “I wear a lot of my own accessories—I have rags tied in my hair, tights in my hair. I wear a pair of men's trousers. I didn't want to wear these fifties dresses, chiffon black dresses. I put together things, like one outfit will be my shirt, their skirt, my socks, their shoes. It's a combination.”
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Explaining the character of Susan, Madonna illuminates, “I thought I shared a lot with Susan. She's a free spirit and she says and does what she wants. She's a clever con artist and she doesn't let you know when you're being conned.”
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That is Madonna to a T.

“Acting is just another kind of performing,” claimed Madonna during the filming. “It's just an expression, it's just being honest with your audience.”
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After Madonna read the script for
Desperately Seeking Susan
, she was confident she would be able to pull off the part. Susan, like Madonna, was the character that everyone flocked to. She had few roots, but she had a strong sense of personal freedom.

Madonna claims that there were both similarities and differences between herself and the character she played on the screen. “She's exciting and unpredictable—irresponsible, vulnerable,” she says on the shared characteristics list. “But, we're not exactly alike. She doesn't have any goal, it seems, except to complicate everyone's life. And I did. I want to be somebody. I have goals and directions. Susan doesn't have an occupation or any skills. She just appears and disappears. That gives her a real enigmatic feeling, a sense of fantasy. I think I have more of a definition about myself.”
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According to Seidelman, Madonna was a charm to work with. “She is an incredibly disciplined person,” she says. “During the shoot we'd often get home at 11 or 12 at night and have to be back on the set by 6 or 7 the next morning. Half the time the driver would pick Madonna up at her health club. She'd get up at 4:30 in the morning to work out first.”
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Film acting requires a lot of patience, which was difficult for Madonna. One can often sit for six or seven hours before shooting a three-second scene. More than once, Madonna lost her composure altogether. According to her, “I'll be working on a scene and doing it the way I think it should be done. Then the director will tell me to try it a different way.”
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Criticism often angered Madonna. But thanks to a supportive cast, she was able to work through her bad moods.

Waiting around between takes was what pissed her off the most. “I would like to work the whole time I'm on the set. They get you in in the morning and you're all made up and you don't work till after lunch. Or you have one scene really early in the morning, and you don't work again till five, and you're just sitting there—you can't screw up your makeup or your costume. I'm a hyperactive person. I'm used to dancing eight hours a day, and now I'm sitting around eight hours a day.”
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In her scenes as Susan, she always seemed either to be eating junk food or kissing one of the actors. “I'm making out in every other scene,” she claimed. “I don't sing in the movie, but I eat Cheez Doodles a lot. I'm always stuffing my face in this movie—constantly! I spit a lot of it out. In the morning I do not want to eat gumdrops and Cheez Doodles. She's really a pig, you know. She eats all the time—always has something in her mouth, whether it's a cigarette, a drink.”
¹

According to Madonna, her favorite scene is one in which she's in bed smoking a joint with a married man while his wife is out of the house. “I don't have any method of acting, but I just knew that scene was funny.”
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Added pressures arose that threatened the filming schedule due to Madonna's mounting fame. When the production began in September, she was still relatively unknown. However, by November, when “Like a Virgin” began to hit the airwaves, she was an overnight celebrity. But there was an unwritten law on the set that
Desperately Seeking Susan
was not to become “the Madonna movie” and that it was not going to end up a vehicle for her recording career. It was an ensemble film, and everyone who appeared in it was to have equal importance in it. However, Madonna being who she was, and by the sheer coincidence of “Like a Virgin” just happening to take off when it did, the movie ended up with its own Madonna hit song: “Into the Groove.”

One sequence of the movie needed a song with a strong dance beat, so the director, Susan Seidelman, asked Madonna whether she had something that might work. Madonna brought in a tape of “Into the Groove,” which she and Steve Bray had made. They played it a few times and eventually the director, the producers, and Orion recognized that it perfectly suited the film's needs.

Although Madonna was for the most part dedicated and professional in her work on
Desperately Seeking Susan
, she still displayed her arrogant side from time to time. “She had attitude,” recalls Reid Rosefelt. “She's cool, but there's also a kind of wink in it as well. I've worked with people like that before, and I wasn't surprised by it. And, I figured that if she acted like that, that she wasn't really serious. I think that some people can meet her for one meeting for a half-hour, and they can get the wrong idea. When we finished up publicity, Madonna gave me a poster, and she signed it, and it said: ‘To Reid: You've been a real pain in the ass. Thanks a lot!—Madonna.' That sort of sums up the whole thing.”
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In January 1985, before the release of
Vision Quest
, and before the release
of Desperately Seeking Susan
, Madonna had a full schedule ahead of her. “Like a Virgin” was still the Number One single in America, but it was time to prepare for the release of her next hit song, “Material Girl,” by filming the accompanying video.

The resulting video was a concept piece for Madonna, one that would start off a career-long theme: her obsession with Marilyn Monroe. Madonna had always been fascinated by the legend of Marilyn, and it was her idea to mimic one of Monroe's most famous scenes, from the film
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
.

“Well, my favorite scene in all of Monroe's movies is when she does that dance sequence for ‘Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.' And when it came time to do the video for the song, I said, I can just redo that whole scene and it'll be perfect,” she claims.
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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, based on a famous Anita Loos novel by the same name, was about a pair of gold diggers—girls out to snag a rich man—on a wild romp. “Material Girl,” which was written by Peter Brown and Robert Rans, immediately struck a chord in Madonna. Pondering the stance that holds true for all gold diggers—herself included—Madonna explained, “I'm very career-oriented. You are attracted to people who are ambitious that way, too, like in the song ‘Material Girl.' You are attracted to men who have material things because that's what pays the rent and buys you furs. That's the security. That lasts longer than emotion.”
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With regard to the whole Marilyn connection, Madonna feels a link with Marilyn Monroe. “In those days, you were really a slave to the whole Hollywood machinery, and unless you had strength to pull yourself out of it, you were just trapped,” she reflects.
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For the “Material Girl” video, Madonna again tapped the talents of director Mary Lambert. She was originally set to work with Jean-Paul Goude, Grace Jones's husband, but she didn't like his ideas for the song. She had worked with Mary on her “Borderline” and “Like a Virgin” videos. Lambert has since graduated to feature films, including the wildly outrageous
Pet Semetary
.

Just one year earlier, Mary had worked with Madonna on “Borderline.” Since then, she felt that her whole strategy in a Madonna video had changed. For the first video, Lambert wanted Madonna's video persona to gibe with her off-screen personality, so that viewers would feel as if they knew her. After the first video, however, Madonna had reached star status, so Lambert felt free to let her play any image she chose for “Material Girl.”

The conceptual work on the “Material Girl” video began just before Christmas 1984. Lambert had one concept of what the video should look like; she wrote up the scenario, storyboarded it, and presented it to Madonna. However, Madonna was insistent on her “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” concept. Taking that idea, Lambert went back to the story board, and on New Year's Eve day, came up with a new concept in which to set the takeoff on the Monroe number. The pressure was on to produce the video almost immediately, so the whole production was a mad dash.

On New Year's Day the concept was approved, and preproduction began. “Madonna had two days during the entire month of January when she could shoot it,” recalls Lambert.
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With her newfound stardom, Madonna was booked to go to Tokyo and Hawaii shortly thereafter. Once the concept and the treatment were finalized, Lambert and her crew had to work fast.

The concept is that Madonna is an actress filming the musical number on a soundstage and behind the scenes she is being pursued by a handsome filmmaker, played by Keith Carradine. The musical number is intercut with the behind-the-scenes action.

The dress that Madonna wears in the video was an identical copy of the one Bill Travilla designed for Marilyn in Howard Hawks's 1953
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. It is an ankle-length, pink satin shoulderless gown, worn with three-quarter-length evening gloves. Over the gloves she wears sparkling diamond bracelets, in addition to a diamond necklace and diamond earrings. Watching the Marilyn number back-to-back with Madonna's video, it is clear that “Material Girl” was done on a smaller budget, but on television the effect it creates is perfect.

According to the video's producer, Simon Fields, in her videos Madonna creates an air of beauty and charisma. Designer Bill Travilla claims that by mimicking Marilyn, Madonna is “searching for herself.”
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While in the original number, Monroe projects a bubbly joy along with the gold digger posture, Madonna gives off more of an air of cold calculation. The effect, however, is hysterically amusing, driving home the materialistic message of the song.

On January 10, while she was filming her “Material Girl” video at a breakneck pace, someone totally unexpected showed up on the sound-stage in Los Angeles. It was actor Sean Penn, the sullen, brooding “Brat Pack” actor. He was friendly with director Mary Lambert, and she had invited him to stop by if he found the time. That chance meeting was to culminate in one of the most headline-grabbing unions of the entire decade.

Madonna was in the middle of one of her scenes and there before her eyes was Penn. She recalls, “I noticed this guy in a leather jacket and sunglasses kind of standing in the corner, looking at me. And I realized it was Sean Penn, and I immediately had this fantasy that we were going to meet and fall in love and get married.”
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