Madonna (20 page)

Witnesses remember that Madonna was cool with Penn on the set that day, acknowledging him simply with a brief hello. Penn stuck around for several hours, and Madonna ran into him again. According to her, “I was like, ‘Oh, you're still here?' So I went outside to talk to him.”
²⁶
With the production people still swarming around, it was difficult for the two to have a conversation, but just before Penn left the set, Madonna gave him a rose. She had bought roses for all of the cast and crew members, and as an afterthought she presented him with one.

That was their less than dramatic first meeting. Later that evening, Sean went over to a friend's house and couldn't stop talking about Madonna. Holding a book of quotations in his hand, he would choose a selection about love and claim that it described her. When he wouldn't quit talking about her, the friend finally advised him: “Go get her!”
⁹⁷

From Los Angeles, Madonna flew to Hawaii to shoot a series of photo sessions that would yield a
Madonna 1986 Calendar
. The photos of her wallowing in the black sand of the volcanic beach at Kaanapali, Hawaii—in a Jean-Paul Gaultier backless outfit and a huge crucifix—have since been reproduced in several publications. The sessions marked her first solo work with the photographer Herb Ritts, who was known for his unique celebrity portraits on the covers of
Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair
, and
Esquire
. Madonna had met him only months before when he photographed her with Rosanna Arquette for
Desperately Seeking Susan
. They have worked together countless times since then.

Her next stop was Japan, for a promotional visit. Then she quickly returned to Los Angeles to appear on the January 28th American Music Awards telecast, where her date was Jellybean Benitez. Madonna was nominated for Favorite Female Pop Vocalist, but the award went to Cyndi Lauper. Also on the show, Madonna presented an award to Prince and his band, The Revolution. She and Prince chatted backstage, and Madonna happily posed for the sea of photographers who swarmed around her. She was in her element—basking amid the glow of dozens of flashbulbs.

That night was to be Madonna's final date with Jellybean. Their relationship was now officially over. The former New York City dance diva was now the hottest new Hollywood arrival, and her dance card was soon filled.

Madonna had known for a while that the relationship wasn't going to last. “He's a Scorpio and we both want to be stars, so it's tough going all the way,” she said.
⁸⁴

According to Jellybean, at the time he was still in love with her. However, he simply was not on her agenda for the future. He realized that her career came first. “She really wants it—that's the difference between her and a lot of other artists,” he claims.
⁷⁶

After Jellybean flew back to New York, Madonna stayed behind. For the first time, Madonna was in Los Angeles with time on her hands, and she was soon intrigued by a whole new world full of people, places, and thrills to discover. In her eyes, suddenly New York City was looking comparatively gray and dirty.

Several days later, back in Manhattan, and unhappy about his breakup with Madonna, Jellybean sat in a posh restaurant on East 12th Street called the Gotham Bar & Grill and confided, “We had gone through changes just like any other couple—we'd break up for a week or two.” Tracing his history with her, by the apartments she dwelled in, he reflected, “She went from Fourth Street, to 13th Street, to SoHo. We were living together in SoHo, until we started not getting along.”
⁷⁰

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, the day after the American Music Awards, Prince contacted Madonna and offered her tickets to his upcoming concert at the Forum. She gladly accepted the invitation to attend one of the concert dates, which were three weeks away.

Among her activities in L.A. that month, Madonna had her first date with Sean Penn. The initial night they were together, Penn took her to a party at Warren Beatty's house. “I guess he wanted to show me off—I'm not sure.”
⁹⁸
Not only did she meet future love interest Warren Beatty, but she was also introduced to her future buddy Sandra Bernhard, as well as Mickey Rourke and several other members of the Hollywood glitterati. “He was introducing me to all his friends.” she recalls.
⁹⁹

Also during that same visit to Los Angeles, Sean took Madonna on a sightseeing tour around town to all of the places he thought would interest her. Sean took Madonna to Marilyn Monroe's grave in the West-wood Cemetery. “Joe DiMaggio's rose was there,” she sighed, at the sight of the regularly delivered flower, “he really loved her.”
²⁴

At the time, she was impressed with Sean, but she wasn't exactly blown away by his charms: “I don't feel swept off my feet, but he is somebody whose work I have admired for a long time. He's wild, though.”
²⁴
The two had very much in common: both were temperamental, they were born one day apart, and, according to Madonna, he resembled her father.

Sean Penn already had a reputation for burning the candle at both ends. The son of director and actor Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan, he and his brothers Chris and Michael were encouraged to pursue careers in show business.

Hanging out with a group of BMW-driving young actors, Sean and his cohorts became the talk of Hollywood in the eighties, not only for the screen roles, but for their camaraderie. Soon they became dubbed the “Brat Pack,” reminiscent of Frank Sinatra's “Rat Pack” in the fifties. Sinatra's clan included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Law-ford; the Brat Pack included Penn and pals Timothy Hutton, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson.

Growing up in affluence with other Hollywood brats, Penn was always a thrill-seeker, fascinated with guns and violence. He recalls one sick gag he staged as a school kid, involving a .22-caliber machine gun loaded with blanks and a movie studio “blood bag.” The objective was to stage a drive-by machine-gun shooting, kidnap a school friend named Kelly, and scare him senseless. Sean and another friend, with ski masks over their faces, pretended to machine-gun their buddy Emilio. At the sound of the gunfire, Emilio clutched his chest, bursting the bag filled with stage blood, while terrified Kelly looked on. They then kidnapped Kelly at gunpoint, dragged him into a car, and drove him to a secluded wooded area.

Recalls Penn, “We stop and tell him to get out of the car, and we say, ‘We're not going to hurt you, but we're gonna tie you to this tree, and then we're gonna take off.' This was the greatest ever—out of the back of the car we take this gasoline can—it's full of water—and my buddy lights a match. The guy starts screaming. I pour water on the guy, and my buddy flips a match at him! Then we tell him. Emilio arrives, and we have a little picnic.” And what happened to Kelly? Says Sean, “That guy has never been the same since.”
¹⁰⁰

Growing up in the movie capital of the universe, it wasn't long before Sean began to long to become an actor. Encouraged by his parents, he started going to auditions. With his beady, close-set eyes, long nose, and sneering mouth, he gravitated toward brooding bad boy roles. His mother once gave him an effective piece of advice about going to acting auditions: “When you go in, you have to picture them
not
sitting at a desk but sitting on a toilet.” According to him, “It's amazing how that will make you feel strong.”
¹⁰⁰

His professional acting debut came in a short-lived Broadway play called
Heartland
, which opened and closed in a matter of weeks. However, he was spotted on-stage by an agent who recommended him for his first movie role. He made his debut in the 1981
Taps
, a film about anarchy in a boys' academy. Because of
Taps
, his career, and those of his co-stars—Timothy Hutton and Tom Cruise—were cemented. Penn next starred as a drugged-out high school jerk in the popular teenage comedy
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
. He became the answer to a director's prayer whenever a young, mean, misfit part appeared in a script. Roles in Louis Malle's comedy caper
Crackers
and Richard Benjamin's
Racing with the Moon
followed in 1984. According to Penn, his dream role is to one day portray the disillusioned sixties protest singer Phil Ochs on the screen.

In the early eighties Penn was engaged to marry Bruce Springsteen's younger sister, Pam, but the romance didn't last long enough to get to the altar. When he was filming
Racing with the Moon
he began a much-publicized romance with his co-star, Elizabeth McGovern. Around the time of their affair, Penn's volatile temper began to become a much-talked-about issue. A highly insecure and immature young man, Penn would explode at the mere thought that his current love interest would so much as look at another man. There was a famous incident on the set of
Racing with the Moon
. Elizabeth was in her makeup trailer, chatting with a male reporter, when Sean threw a fit—pounding on the trailer and rocking it. He was so insanely jealous that his only rational response was to cause an insane scene.

The reportedly stormy relationship lasted up until he became infatuated with Madonna. At one point there were discussions of marriage, but Penn's relationship with McGovern was eclipsed when the “Material Girl” arrived in town.

When Prince's concert dates at the Los Angeles Forum arrived, he sent around a limousine to pick up Madonna. When she arrived, she was besieged by autograph seekers and fans. She joined Prince onstage for his finale, and attended an after-concert party with him. Two days later, following the Grammy Awards, Madonna and Prince went out for Japanese food at a restaurant called Yamashiro, in the Hollywood hills, and made an appearance at a discotheque called Facade. On another occasion, they dined on sushi at an “in” eatery called Sushi on Sunset.

By now Madonna and Sean were seeing each other regularly, and according to the tabloids, on March 2, they had their first blowout fight—over her dating Prince. Penn reportedly stormed out of Madonna's apartment, after punching his fist through one of her doors.

Their antics continued in New York that spring, where Madonna had by now become a weekly staple in all of the gossip columns. The fourth estate had a ball when Sean and Madonna had one of their early scenes in a Manhattan eatery. While dining in a local restaurant, Madonna and Sean had an impromptu encounter with Elizabeth McGovern. She stopped to chat with her ex-beau, but soon the conversation became heated. Patrons were shocked when Madonna suddenly exploded into a tirade of expletives and stormed out of the restaurant.

While all of this intrigue was blossoming in Madonna's private life, her career seemed to have a life of its own. In the first half of 1985, Madonna virtually dominated the pop charts, with singles seemingly being released right and left. Right after “Like a Virgin” peaked, Sire Records released “Material Girl,” with the Marilyn Monroe—inspired video debuting on MTV February 1. Meanwhile,
Vision Quest
, which had been filmed fifteen months before, was finally released on February 15. More important, the soundtrack album, featuring two of the three songs that Madonna had recorded for the movie—”Crazy for You” and “Gambler”—had been released by Geffen Records. Using movie clips of dramatic action, plus movie footage of Madonna performing the songs, MTV videos of both songs were prepared by Geffen and began showing up on the music video programs. To top it all off,
Desperately Seeking Susan
was released on March 29, and along with it came another video comprised of movie clips, set to Madonna's song “Into the Groove.” This meant five current Madonna videos were in rotation at once. To meet the demand for “Into the Groove,” which was a bona fide hit on MTV, when the third single off the
Like a Virgin
album, “Angel,” was released in April, “Into the Groove” became the dance hit B-side of the special twelve-inch single. Including MTV airplay, radio airplay, and dance club airplay, in the first six months of 1985, Madonna had six separate hit singles on the charts.

While Warner Brothers had control over their product, they couldn't prevent Geffen Records from doing all that they could to capitalize on Madonna's sudden popularity. The irony was that
Vision Quest
, which was bombing at the box office, was being distributed by another wing of the same company, Warner Brothers.

The
Los Angeles Times
reported that there were “enormous arguments” between top execs at Warner's record and film divisions “over the timing of the releases of Madonna singles,” particularly in the case of “Crazy for You.” Eddie Rosenblatt, president of Geffen Records, said then, “In retrospect, the concern may have been unwarranted.”
¹⁰¹
There was plenty of room in the marketplace for two Madonna singles.

It was an accurate call: “Material Girl” peaked at Number Two and soon was surpassed by “Crazy for You,” which became Madonna's second Number One hit. The week of May 11, 1985, both songs were in the Top Five on the charts. “Angel,” which peaked at five, kept the Madonna phenomenon hot into summer. There was a planned video of the song “Angel,” but that was killed, simply because there were too many Madonna videos on television, all vying for broadcast time.

Meanwhile, by February of 1985, Madonna's
Like a Virgin
album had been certified triple platinum in America, for sales in excess of three million copies. Her debut
Madonna
was at 2.5 million album sales domestically, and it was still in the Top Forty on the album charts.

During that same month, Madonna had three singles out that were produced by Jellybean Benitez. “Gambler” and “Crazy for You” had been recorded in late 1983, with Jellybean and Phil Ramone producing the cuts for
Vision Quest
, but when it came time to release the soundtrack album, Jellybean was called in to rerecord them without Ramone. In addition, Madonna wrote and sang background vocals on a song called “Sidewalk Talk,” which was the first single off Benitez's debut album,
Wotupski!?!
Based on Madonna's participation on the record, “Sidewalk Talk” became a Number One dance hit. Now, instead of club D.J.'s playing a record because Jellybean's name was on it as producer, they were playing it because Madonna wrote it.