Madonna (21 page)

According to Russ Thyret, Warner Bros. Records' head of marketing and promotion: “This is almost unprecedented, for one artist to have so much coming out from so many different places at the same time. We just want to do what's best for Madonna's long-term career.”
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The confusing situation caused big problems for staff members at Warner and Sire, but the effect was an unprecedented blitz of product: six hit songs, five separate videos, and two films all hitting at once. What could happen to blanket the market further with Madonna product? Well, the Madonna concert tour, for instance, which was already under way at this point.

Six months previous, Middle America wasn't really aware of who this Madonna character was. Now, she suddenly had two movies playing at theaters across America.
Vision Quest
, which was a little weak in plot, ended up the least successful of the two.

Vision Quest
is a teenage variation on the
Rocky
movies, this time centered around a high school wrestling team. The film stars Matthew Modine as an aspiring and determined young wrestler, who sets about the task of dropping his body weight to become eligible as a contender in a more competitive weight classification. He falls in love with a tough girl, Linda Fiorentino, and searches for his own identity. It is a basic coming-of-age film, and it had a rock soundtrack album. Sometimes, as in the case of
Footloose
, the album can be a bigger hit than the movie.

Madonna's one scene in the movie is in a club where Modine goes. She is the featured singer onstage. The ballad that she sings, “Crazy for You” became the most remembered aspect of the film. Although she is seen for only fleeting seconds performing the song in the movie, its placement in the film is a nice touch. Madonna's brief performance was listed in the credits merely as a “Special Appearance.”

Since the beginning of November, when
Like a Virgin
was released, Madonna had taken a lot of flak from the press. They portrayed her as a fly-by-night singer with minimal vocal talent, a lot of ambition, and an ability to shock the public whenever she opened her mouth. In
People
, Ralph Novak called her album “a tolerable bit of fluff,” noting that “the lyrics on this album are on the primitive side. They might have been lifted off cave walls, full as they are of ‘oohs,' ‘ahs,' and ‘shoo bee doo bees.'” Dennis Hunt wrote in the
Los Angeles Times:
“This disco star of the 80s really isn't a very good singer. She's great if you like a singer who sounds like Little Bo Peep, but with her bleating vibrato, it sometimes makes her sound like a sheep in pain. Her vocals also have an annoying little-girl quality.” In
Us
magazine, Michael Musto theorized, “With her paper-thin, slightly nasal (but somehow sexy) voice, Madonna is the perfect vocalist for lighter-than-air songs. She's not what you'd call a heavyweight talent—her emotional range is far smaller than, say, Cyndi Lauper. But packaged by the right people, she manages to cram coyness and spunk into a dance beat.”

Probably the biggest slam of all came from Gina Schock of the girl group, the Go-Go's. In 1984's year-end issue of
Rolling Stone
, Schock proclaimed, “People like her give people like us a hard way to go. She doesn't help anybody take women seriously. But you know what? I love the record.”
¹⁰²

Madonna was definitely having the last laugh from all of the critical press. And now to top it all off, she was going to become a movie star.

When disparaging comments were made about her ability to make the transition from a singer into an actress, Madonna argued, “You can cross over—Judy Garland did it. I don't see how it's not possible. If Sissy Spacek can be a country singer, why can't I be an actress? I don't see it as being so diverse, especially with video becoming so strong.”
¹⁰³

Desperately Seeking Susan
, released on March 29, became the surprise hit of the season. Simply and unpretentiously filmed, it had a great ensemble cast and a script infused with a quirky sense of humor. It became an immediate comedy hit, and suddenly people were falling all over themselves with praise for the film—and for Madonna.

“As rotten a singer as Madonna is,” wrote Rex Reed in the
New York Post
, “she's a kooky, swinging actress in a role that fits her like a sequin G-string.” “A modish East Village comedy that features trampy self-parodistic Madonna in the title role… she has been type-cast, and fills the bill with delightful sluttishness,” wrote David Ansen in
Newsweek
, while the
New York Times
simply dubbed
Desperately Seeking Susan
“the Madonna movie!”

The film did great box office business, and word of mouth was excellent.
Desperately Seeking Susan
was a huge hit, especially considering its modest budget. And although
Vision Quest
was a dud, Madonna escaped unscathed from the wreckage with a Number One hit. Even in the face of disaster, she was able to emerge triumphant.

Desperately Seeking Susan
was basically an eighties' homage to the Preston Sturges films of the thirties and forties. In the film, Rosanna Arquette's character is a dull suburban housewife who gets hit on the head, develops amnesia, and somehow thinks that she is Madonna's character, Susan. The mistaken identity aspect is straight out of Shakespeare, and the visuals are straight out of the East Village.

“We don't actually meet until the end,” Madonna explained of her relationship to Rosanna's character in the plot. “I find her and she's got all my stuff. She takes over, from about ten minutes into the movie. Everyone thinks she's me, because of a jacket of mine she gets from a thrift shop that I've traded for a pair of boots. In it is a key to the locker that holds all my personal worldly belongings. Rosanna gets amnesia after she gets the jacket, so when she wakes up she thinks she's me, and goes and gets that stuff and starts dressing like me. She's completely opposite of me, she doesn't smoke cigarettes, but she becomes me. In the end we meet up and become friends.”
¹

When it was released, no one was more surprised by its success than Madonna. “I think it worked because it's a comedy that defies description.”
⁹³

Hollywood was now taking Madonna seriously as an actress. She was being considered for a biographical film about notorious torch singer Libby Holman, who shot and killed her husband in a delicious scandal of the thirties.

Herb Ross was one of the first Hollywood directors to have a crack at putting Madonna in the movies. When he was casting the lead female role in
Footloose
, Madonna's name was submitted to him. Instead, he used Lori Singer. Said Ross, when
Desperately Seeking Susan
became the surprise hit of the spring 1985 season, “There is a definite buzz about her. It reminds me of what was happening to Barbra Streisand just before we did
Funny Girl
”
¹⁰⁴

Producer Ray Stark was one of the movie people standing in line for a chance to work with Madonna. According to him, “She really projects a feeling of truth and energy in her persona like the stars of the ‘40s.”
¹⁰⁴
According to Madonna, her favorite classic movie stars were Carole Lombard and Marilyn Monroe. Finally she was courting the chance to become a movie legend as well.

In early 1985, Madonna and her
Susan
co-star Rosanna Arquette did a series of photo shoots to promote the film. When Madonna was originally signed to appear in the film, she was just part of the supporting cast, but here she was getting above-the-title billing alongside Rosanna. After the smoke settled following the film's premiere, a couple of bitchy items surfaced from behind the scenes.

Jacquelyn Nicholson, in her gossip column in
Beverly Hills [213]
magazine, announced in catty fashion that there were several distinct personality problems on the set of
Desperately Seeking Susan
. Dispelling the “one big happy family” press releases, Nicholson claimed, “The only family the ‘DSS' gang even remotely resembled were, er, a lesser branch of the Borgias.”
¹⁰⁵

Film reviewer David Edelstein likewise claimed that Madonna's moods on the set of the movie left a bad taste with the cast and crew.

Arquette had no compunction in complaining about the rush release the film received in order to jump on the Madonna bandwagon. Arquette understood why the studio decided to rush the film's release to take advantage of the hype Madonna was receiving, but she did say, “As an actress, I feel cheated.”
¹⁰⁶

Furthermore, Susan Seidelman admitted, “It's no secret that Rosanna and I knocked heads a lot. She was hired to be the star, but her participation was clouded by Madonna's fast-rising star.”
¹⁰⁶
Seidelman claimed that Arquette's performance was affected by Madonna's presence. But she also recognized that most anyone would be shaken by such an upstaging.

Although Madonna has taken on several more acting roles since then, why is it that they have all paled in comparison to her portrayal of Susan in this flick? It's because she wasn't acting in this movie. The Madonna you see on the screen in
Desperately Seeking Susan is
Madonna.

All of a sudden Madonna was now the most newsworthy person in the universe. Since the media had virtually burned out Michael Jackson in 1984, the press was actively looking for a successor to the throne. They found the perfect new pop deity in Madonna. It was officially Madonna's year for the blitz, and it was only April. In 1985 she was the cover story in
People
not once but four times! She also made the covers of
Time, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, Interview
, and, of course, the
National Enquirer
and
Star
. Madonna had wanted all eyes poised on her, and finally she had the attention she'd so desperately sought.

When, in March 1985, it was announced that Madonna would be mounting her debut concert tour, it instantly became the most talked about tour of the year. The previous October she had bitched at the mere mention of having to take her act on the road. “I have to admit I'm not really thrilled about it,” she said. “If I go on tour it means I have to start auditioning all the musicians, sit for hours and hours and listen to a bunch of awful musicians, and then I have to get them to play all my songs right! And, I don't like traveling when I'm working.”
¹

For Madonna, the road show, which was christened “The Virgin Tour,” was the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place. When the tour became a huge success it confirmed that she could tackle five simultaneous arenas: records, music videos, video cassettes, movies, and live performances.

Likewise, from the very start, her concert tours have all become cleverly planned and plotted promotional events. Not only does a concert performance advertise her albums and singles, but by reproducing the choreography and look of her videos and her movies onstage, we find Madonna copying and parodying her favorite star of all: herself.

In October 1984, Madonna had predicted, “I'll probably do a major city American tour in the spring. Up to now, I've sung live to tape and used dancers. I'd combine dancing with it.”
¹

By February 1985 she had already begun hiring and rehearsing a band. She wanted to hire the best musicians she could find. In December, Michael Jackson had just completed his much-touted “Victory Tour” with his brothers, so Madonna turned around and hired a band of red-hot musicians, including two members of the Jackson touring band: drummer Jonathan “Sugarfoot” Moffet and keyboardist Patrick Leonard. Both Moffet and Leonard were to become frequently recurring players in the Madonna camp. She also hired two male dancers, Lyndon B. Johnson and Mykal Perea, to visually augment her show and to sing background vocals.

While the Jacksons' tour was still under way, Freddy DeMann was already in contact with Source Point Design, Inc., planning the stage set that Madonna would need to bring her two albums and seven videos to life. DeMann consulted lighting designer Jim Chapman and his partner Robert Roth, who run Source Point and were responsible for the Jacksons' impressive stage set. According to Roth, “Madonna was a child of MTV. She was a visual product, and the images from her videos could be tied into a live show.”
¹⁰⁷
Working from that concept, the preliminary sketches were prepared.

When Madonna approved of the proposed designs, it was already mid-February and the first concert was set for the first week in April. However, when Madonna attended Prince's concert in Los Angeles, she was impressed by several of the auxiliary platforms in his stage set and the use of a central staircase. With only three weeks to go before the technical rehearsals began, Prince's designer Ian Knight was brought in to design and supervise the additions to Madonna's set that she decided she had to have. Whatever Madonna wanted, Madonna got.

Taking Madonna's own self-styled dancing moves—especially those employed in the “Lucky Star” video—Brad Jeffries choreographed and staged the show. Using Madonna's own fashion sense, and Maripol's jewelry, Marlene Stewart designed Madonna's three costumes.

Quickly establishing herself as a performer out of the “What will she wear?” echelon of stardom, Madonna consulted with designer Stewart to get exactly the look she wanted. After all, creating the Madonna look was every bit as crucial a part of making her into a show business legend as every other aspect of the show. She opened the concert in a sixties-style painted jacket with peace symbols and swirling paisleys, a miniskirt, and purple lace leggings. Later in the show she changed into a black outfit, including a top with a crucifix cut into the chest, and a fringed vest. For “Like a Virgin,” Madonna returned to the stage dressed in virginal white, with a crinoline skirt, bare midriff top with a crucifix cut into it, and a white sequined jacket.