Cher (45 page)

While she sold out shows across the country, she seemed to consistently be dogged by critics from coast to coast during her 1989–90 tour dates. One of the problems seemed to be the fact that there were now so many different versions of “Cher” that it was becoming increasingly more and more difficult to work them all into the same show. There was the teenage pop singer Cher, the glamorous TV star Cher, the singer of trashy story-songs Cher, the unglamorous roles Cher had played on the silver screen, and the scantly clad leather-and-studs Cher she had been promoting via her concurrent pair of Geffen Records albums. To roll all of these different personas into one multimedia extravaganza, the diva and her troupe relied on extensive video footage projected onto the huge projection screens like the Jacksons had made famous during their 1984 Victory Tour.

In these concerts, Cher turned her back on her biggest pre-1980s hits—like “Half Breed,” “Dark Lady,” “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves,” and “Take Me Home.” Instead she presented her own interpretation of hard-rocking songs like Bob Seger’s “Fire Down Below,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than the Rest,” the Eagles’ “Take it to the Limit,” and a clever cover of Gregg Allman’s “I’m No Angel.” If there was anything to be viewed of herself from before the 1980s, it was covered on the video clips. Cher used the extra minutes while they ran to make another dramatic costume change.

Reviewing her show at New Jersey’s Garden State Arts Center in August of 1989, David Hinckley of the
New York Daily News
found her entertaining, but uninspiring.

They cheered the Lady Godiva Cher and the Bon Jovi Cher. They cheered the video clips of the 1965 Cher singing “I Got You Babe,” with Sonny. They cheered excerpts from
The Witches of Eastwick
. With no incentive to pick just one, then, Cher has thrown them all into this show. . . . The result is a production so lavishly Cher-centric it makes Madonna look modest. . . . by inviting all these Chers along, she’s ended up with a celebration of her name—and a rather bloodless show (175).

Months later, on the other coast, Mike Boehm of the
Los Angeles Times
came away with a similar impression, reviewing her show in June
of 1990 at the San Diego Sports Arena. Boehm claimed it was one big ego-fest.

In a lazy hour on stage, some of which she spent singing, Cher was interested only in spotlighting what’s least substantial about herself. . . . Cher’s concert was so much like a testimonial that rubber chicken should have been served. . . . Instead of trying to delve into a song, changing the dynamics, shading tones—doing the things that good singers do to communicate feeling—Cher just kept belting (176).

One can almost imagine Cher herself reading these reviews and saying out loud, “Fuck the critics, my shows are for my fans, and not the critics.” You know what? She was right. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. Cher might be a legitimate twentieth-century diva, but let’s not confuse her with Maria Callas.

On September 6, 1989, Cher appeared in one of her trademark risqué outfits at the sixth annual MTV Awards. That month the RIAA certified her song “If I Could Turn Back Time” Gold for selling over a million copies, as it reached Number 3 on the American record charts. It was her biggest American hit in years.

By late 1989, Cher had a new man in her life. He was someone she had worked with, and became friends with first. All of a sudden she found herself dating Richie Sambora of the rock group Bon Jovi. He had been a producer and a performer on her last two albums for Geffen Records, and he seemed to be in her life at a time when she needed someone. They had attended the MTV Awards together, and, according to an article in the
Star
newspaper, the very next day he went out and bought Cher a diamond ring.

The article, entitled “Cher Says ‘I Will’ After Rocker Richie Dazzles Her with $10G Ring,” shocked Cher’s publicist with the notion that her star client was engaged. Said Lois Smith, “I don’t know anything about this. He’s on tour and Cher’s in Boston, getting ready to work on her new movie,
Mermaids
. Both their schedules leave them little time to see one another. They were together at the MTV Awards, but I don’t know if they can say more than ‘hello’ on the telephone right now until Christmas because of the way their schedules are” (177).

Although Cher and Sambora continued to date on and off, their romance didn’t end up lasting very long. Ironically, after over fifteen years of Cher always having a boyfriend by her side, she was about to enter a long phase of being a single career woman.

In October of 1989, while “If I Could Turn Back Time” hit Number 6 in England, Cher was busy filming her latest movie,
Mermaids
. She was very anxious to get in front of the cameras.

I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to do. I was desperately looking. There are not a lot of great scripts and there are so many women in my area. There was two years between
Mask
and
Witches
. I don’t want that to happen again. But I care a lot about this phase in my life. I’ve done things just for money and I’m not ashamed of it, because your work is what you do to put clothes on your back and feed your kids, but, like, I don’t ever want to do TV again. Cable [TV] I don’t think of as television, I’m talking about network TV. TV for me—I say it and it will probably be the next thing I do, because I always make these great pronouncements and then I’m totally full of shit—it’s stifling to do TV for as long as I did, and I ended up hating it. I don’t ever want to do that with movies, and therefore, because of my age and because I’m a woman, I’m not going to get the best script out of 30 scripts. I’m going to hope that I get the best script out of two or four scripts and I’m going to wait a long time for them (119).

With regard to the forthcoming
Mermaids
, she explained,

It’s very reminiscent of
Moonstruck
. It’s a sweet look at people who are totally out of their minds and doing the best job that they can, but they’re just cracked. The story’s not even mostly about me. It’s about Emily Lloyd, and I play her mother. It’s a little bit bigger than Jack Nicholson’s part in
Terms of Endearment
, but then you can’t imagine
Terms of Endearment
without Jack Nicholson (119).

The filming of
Mermaids
was fraught with problems and delays. Originally, the director slated for
Mermaids
was Lasse Hallström (
My Life as a Dog
), but he was replaced with Frank Oz (
Little Shop of Horrors
). Almost instantly, Cher and he did not get along. Finally Richard Benjamin (
My Favorite Year
) was brought in to helm the project. According to Cher, “Look, I’m only difficult if you’re an idiot. If you don’t know more than I know, then I’ll probably be difficult. I know you’re not supposed to say it, but nobody ever says anything if an actor gets fired, but a director gets fired and everybody has a heart attack” (8).

Winona Ryder’s character narrates
Mermaids
, and much of the action is presented from her perspective. Although the family is Jewish, Ryder longs to become a nun. Throughout the film, Ryder never refers to Cher’s character as “Mom” or “Mother”; she is addressed and discussed as “Mrs. Flax.”

As Mrs. Flax, Cher, wore a Marlo Thomas–styled
That Girl
dark flip wig, and inappropriately too-tight and too-low-cut clothes. Instead of cooking dinner for her two young daughters, she cuts up bagels and other food—like Maraschino cherries and marshmallows—and skewers them with American flag toothpicks or colorful
hors d’oeuvres
toothpicks. Describing one of her dishes of toothpick-assembled finger foods, she explains the menu as including “cheese ball pick-me-ups and marshmallow kabobs.”

According to Cher, she didn’t have to look very far to find an inspiration for her characterization—Georgia Holt. “My mother
was
Mrs. Flax,” she proclaimed. “She dressed really provocatively. We lived with all women in our house, too. She had three best friends, and they were beautiful women. My God, these women were knockouts! It was sort of like me and my girlfriends, I guess” (8).

Holt was later to comment,

When I saw
Mermaids
, I went, “Jesus Christ, is that the way I did with my children?” And Cher says, “Mother, do you know how many times you made us move?” But I was always trying to move us to a better place. And I also don’t remember, you know, being a sex machine. Maybe I was. When I went in to get a part, my agent always told me to wet my lips and pad my bra, do that number, and that’s what I did (8).

Once
Mermaids
was filmed, Cher was back on the road in 1990, resuming her North American “Heart of Stone” concert tour. On March 31, 1990, the tour opened at the Starplex Amphitheater in Dallas, Texas. The tour ran until August 29, 1990, closing in front of a sold-out audience of 14,966 at Toronto, Canada’s Exhibition Stadium. Ultimately, Cher performed in front of sold-out crowds in thirty-five North American cities.

The week of July 5, 1990, Cher’s
Heart of Stone
album was certified Double Platinum for over two million copies sold in the United States alone. In October of 1990, Cher was in the British Isles for a short concert tour, and on the nineteenth of that month, she performed at Wembly Arena. She also packed in standing-room-only crowds for her appearances in Birmingham, England and Dublin, Ireland.

After Cher’s short-lived affair with Richie Sambora fizzled, she moved her best girlfriends, and her sister, into her huge house. There was certainly more than enough room for them all. In 1990 Cher explained of her everyday all-girls slumber party, “Paulette [Betts] and I ‘live together’
live together,” she said. “And [workout partner] Ange Best is almost always there. My sister was there for a long time, but now she’s getting married. We’re like
The Golden Girls
. Paulette is Rose, Angela is Blanche. I’m Dorothy. And Georganne is Sophia. We’ve even got robes monogrammed with our
Golden Girls
names” (8). Both of her children, Chastity and Elijah, were of the age when they were off living their own lives, and having her best girlfriends around her made her feel better, especially in light of her recurring health problems.

The only other woman in show business at that time who commanded as much media coverage was Madonna. In many ways, Madonna had become adept at adopting Cher-like career moves. With as much as they had in common, it was rather surprising that they didn’t become closer friends. Madonna was not one of Cher’s favorite people. “I must say, I understand Madonna,” Cher explained in 1990. “But, I can’t say that I like her. I understand wanting to make something out of yourself and working really hard and having people make it really difficult for you. But she’s too rude. For me to like Madonna, she’d have to be nicer” (8).

In 1990, Cher continued to make uncomplimentary statements about her ex-husband Sonny Bono. Only two years before, on the
Letterman
show, it appeared that they had buried the hatchet. Yet, in the November 1990 issue of
Vanity Fair
magazine, Cher blasted Sonny by saying, “I don’t talk to Sonny anymore unless I have to. Sonny didn’t even love me, I don’t think. He just didn’t want me to get away from him. I certainly don’t miss him. It just seems like another person was with him, when I look back on it. It’s amazing when you get old—you do have all these lives. If I met that person now, I’d tolerate her” (8). Is it any wonder that Cher’s fans are often left confused by her pronouncements?

That same year, Cher publicly admitted that she had been undergoing therapy to try and help her deal with her hectic life. She said at the time,

I’m in therapy and I think that’s good for me. It’s been about two years. A couple of years ago I had three surgeries in a row, which made me feel unbelievably bad. It was supposed to be two surgeries, but it turned into three. There was a process between the last two that I had to go through, and it was the worst experience of my life. I was reading [the book]
The Road Less Traveled
, and out of the blue I called the doctor who wrote it, Scott Peck. I said, “Hi I’m Cher. I’m having a really rough time. I need some help” (8).

By the end of 1990, Cher was ready for some major changes in her real estate holdings. She sold the spacious New York City loft that was located above Tower Records, off of Broadway in Greenwich Village. Rap record producer Russell Simmons purchased the apartment from her for $1.6 million. She had also finally sold her Mulholland Drive mansion—the Egyptian-influenced house that nearly bankrupted her—to Eddie Murphy for $6.5 million. With her capital gains, she purchased a nice little pad in Aspen, Colorado, for $2.5 million and a Malibu manse, which cost her only $3 million. While she lived there, she began construction of a new dwelling on a two-acre cliff looking out on the ocean. According to her, “I cut the plans down to 12,000 square feet from 16,000” (8). That Cher, so practical.

She said at the time, “I call what I want from my new house ‘prehistoric futuristic.’ I like things made of stone and I like everything one color—very beige. I’m using the house that I’m living in now as a prototype for the next one. I just do it as I do it. It’s like designing my beads” (8).

Cher was relieved to unload the Egyptian palace of a house. According to her, “I don’t like being in situations that I cannot get out of. As much as I loved it, there were times when I was almost bankrupt in that house. When I was desperately trying to sell it, I couldn’t. I’m going to build the house again, just in a different reincarnation” (119). With regard to selling it to comedian Eddie Murphy, she explained, “It’s weird. One day he was in the house and said, ‘This house is so peaceful and beautiful.’ I expected him to be this really punky guy and he was so ethereal, and so it seems to me that if he could see the beauty of the house, he should have it” (119).