Madonna (31 page)

The filming of
Slammer/Who's That Girl?
took place in New York and in Los Angeles. The first sequence to be filmed was one in which Madonna poses as Griffin Dunne's fiancée at an approval interview in front of a co-op board. The scene also includes Coati Mundi and another of the film's co-stars—a live cougar.

“All of the scenes with the cougar are great,” says Coati, who adds that the scenes with his feline co-star were among his favorites. “I did all of my own scenes with the cougar, so there's a point in the movie where I'm holding Madonna around the throat with the knife, and the cougar is supposed to get the knife out of my hand. So, the way they do that is, I hold a piece of raw meat in my hands, and then the cougar goes after the raw meat—and then, going after the raw meat, it looks like he knocks the knife out of my hand. I'm supposed to keep my hand on a certain level, up. So he goes up for the meat with his paws. He's declawed, but the first thing he does is go for the meat with the paws. When he hits my hand, I'm supposed to let it go, but the meat is attached to the knife. So he goes for the meat. So we rehearsed it a couple of times, and it came out okay.”
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It was a different story, however, when the cameras started rolling. “So I've got both my arms around Madonna, with the knife, and I'm waiting for the director to say ‘Action.' The handlers have let the cougar go before the director said action. Being the actor, I'm waiting for action. But the cougar doesn't know the word
action
. So, here I have the corporation—the star—in my arms, I've got a knife to her throat, and the cougar is going for the knife. And then they start yelling, ‘Drop the knife!' If the cougar had jumped up on her, there goes the corporation, there goes the movie, there goes me. And Madonna wasn't fazed at all by it,” he says.
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In another sequence, Nikki Finn is in the process of abducting Coati Mundi's character. The Cadillac limousine that they are driving in is on the twelfth story of a parking structure. When the car crashes through the guardrail, it teeter-totters on the edge of the concrete building. (The scene was actually shot fifteen feet off of the ground in a Los Angeles soundstage; the backgrounds were filled in later.) In an onscreen ballet, Coati, Madonna, and two of their co-stars had to do a balancing act on the hood and trunk of the car. According to Coati, the sequence was actually choreographed, by Errol Flynn's old fencing instructor, and was the most physically challenging one to film.

Toward the end of the movie, Madonna and Coati are seen running into a room after a mad chase sequence. Recalls Coati, “She said, ‘Lookit, when we go in there, we're supposed to be out of breath, so let's do some push-ups.' She said, ‘I'll bet you I can do more push-ups than you.' I said, ‘O.K., let's go for it!' So we started doing push-ups. We never did find out who did more, because it was time to do the scene before anybody gave up. We were huffing and puffing when we walked in.”
¹⁵⁰

One of the things about Madonna that surprised Coati was his discovery of her rapport with children. “During the filming,” he recalls, “I noticed on the set that she was sitting real comfortable with kids because the whole crew would bring their kids to meet her and get autographs and everything. And she would just keep them around and play with them and everything like that. And I even brought my nephews to meet her, and she was cool about it. She has no problem with that.”
¹⁵⁰

The real “touch of class” casting coup that occurred during the filming of
Slammer
was the addition of Sir John Mills, as Montgomery Bell. Mills plays a millionaire who has a microcosm of a rain forest in his rooftop apartment. The first day that Mills showed up on the set, he came clad in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt with the National Theatre emblem on it. Sir John, who is known for his roles in such great movies as
Ryans Daughter, Tunes of Glory
, and
Great Expectations
, reportedly went out and bought a copy of Madonna's
True Blue
album to acquaint himself with his co-star.

Jamie Foley had nothing but glowing things to say about Madonna—on screen and off. “The form is big enough,” he claimed, “she was made for wide-screen Technicolor. And she is precociously talented. Every time I would say, ‘Action!' what she would do made me giggle with excitement. She's very instinctual, what comes out is unencumbered by analysis.”
²⁶

Griffin Dunne found Madonna's screen acting technique to be just the opposite of his. “We work very differently—which worked well for our characters,” he said. “She likes her first take best. I think my best is around the fourth. She always says, ‘You got it,' and she was driving me crazy, just the way her character would. I mean, she's a very noisy girl.”
⁷

One of the most important aspects of the film was the soundtrack album. Not only was it planned to be an outlet for Madonna to record several new songs, she also appointed herself the film's musical director. According to Coati Mundi, it was the soundtrack album that was responsible for the movie's title changing from
Slammer
to
Who's That Girl?
“She couldn't come up with a word to rhyme with ‘Slammer,' so she simply changed the name of the movie to
Who's That Girl?
and wrote the song to go with it.”
¹⁵⁰

Since Coati was signed to Sire Records, he was in a good position to get one of his own songs used on the soundtrack. “All along, Madonna's friend and publicist Liz Rosenberg had mentioned that there was going to be a soundtrack album, and she encouraged me to see about trying to get a song on it, and she mentioned it to Madonna. So one day during shooting, Madonna told me, ‘Listen, we're having a soundtrack album, and see if you can come up with a song.' I said, ‘Yeah, yeah!' I was thinking about it. I wanted to talk to the music supervisor, and see how I could go about doing it.' And she said, ‘You're talking to him.'”
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Coati remembers that “Basically she said, ‘You gotta earn the spot on the album. Just because I know you, I've got to like the song.' In other words, she's not just gonna put it on—it's not gonna be a nepotism deal. Of course—I never get it easy! I said, ‘O.K. Fine.'”
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Coati didn't have any of his musical instruments or recording equipment in Los Angeles, so on breaks between his scenes he would fly back to New York and lay down new tracks. This happened three times. One day on the set Madonna asked him where the song was. He explained to her that he didn't have a completed song, he just had the musical tracks with the background vocals. When she pressed him to let her hear the song, he convinced her that they were useless without the lead vocals, and why didn't he perform it live for her? She thought for a moment, agreed, and an appointment for the musical audition was made.

It was nighttime, and Coati arrived on the set during one of Madonna's breaks, as arranged. However, when he got there she claimed to be too tired to think about it at that moment.

“But I said, ‘Listen, I made this appointment, come on—let's do it.' She said, ‘All right Coati, let's go.' I dressed up to the hilt, like I was performing in a stadium. And I went there, and I brought the cassette, just her and me, we went into her trailer, and she said, ‘O.K., I'll be the soundman here.' And she gets her cassette player and I typed out the lyrics, and I gave her the lyric sheet. We're in the trailer, and she's sitting there watching me, and she starts the tape, and the music comes on, and I start performing—like I'm trying to get into heaven for Saint Peter. Like if you don't do a good show, you won't get into heaven. I did my whole routine for one person—my jumping up, my dancing, my expressions, my singing, everything. I'm doing the whole live thing, and dancing up a storm, like going crazy. And she's loving it and laughing and enjoying it. Mind you, we're in a trailer, and this trailer is bouncing up and down. I don't know what people were thinking outside.
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“Even though I know her, I performed for Madonna ‘the professional,' ‘the business person.' It was an audition to have that song in there. I wanted to put my best foot forward. I didn't just want to give her the cassette, I really wanted to show her what the song is all about. So she was laughing and enjoying it, and she said, ‘Oh, I love it!' Then she said, ‘Wait right here.' And then she went and got Griffin Dunne and Jamie Foley, the director. And she brought them into the trailer and she said, ‘Now do it for them, the way you did it for me.' So—I did an encore performance. I did the whole thing all over again, and the director is laughing and smiling, and said, ‘I love it, I love it!'”
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A couple of days later the song was accepted, and Coati's “El Coco Loco (So So Bad)” became officially part of the soundtrack album.

According to Coati Mundi, Sean Penn never visited Madonna on the set during the filming. “I saw him at the cast party,” he says of Penn. “As far as the movie was concerned, he came to the cast party. That was in L. A. And at the cast party I was showing him how to dance, because Madonna was dancing the whole night. I practically danced the whole night with Madonna, and one point I'm dancing with Madonna
and
Sean. He came and joined us on the floor, and I said, ‘Oh, let me show you a few moves,' and stuff like that. I started showing him how to dance, so we had a nice time.”
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Concerning whether there were any of the famous Sean Penn violence episodes at the party, Coati states, “For the most part it wasn't a dark thing, as people tend to think when they think of Sean and Madonna. It was cool and fun, and then Madonna was gracious at the cast party with everybody, and she danced, so it wasn't this character.”
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Madonna had high hopes for this movie and anticipated that its modern-day blend of slapstick antics, thirties screwball comedy, and music would be the right formula for success. “I think it's a good film,” she explained. “I could have done others, but I like my character in this one.”
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In November 1986, “True Blue,” the title song from Madonna's third album, peaked on the American record charts at Number Three. A unique situation occurred with the video for that song. MTV sponsored a competition called the “Make My Video Contest.” Two winners, Angel Garcia and Cliff Guest, were selected in the viewer response contest to star in a video for American release to accompany the music of Madonna singing “True Blue.” Garcia and Guest were filmed in atmospheric black and white in a fifties setting of soda shops and pajama parties. In Europe, however, there was a full production video starring Madonna. In her colorful rendition of “True Blue,” she is seen singing and dancing with three backup singer girlfriends. Again in a fifties mode, the video takes place on a soundstage with a blue “no seam” background. The stylized sets include a diner counter with stools and a white Thunderbird convertible. In it Madonna looks sleek in black ankle-length tights and a skirt. The outfit looks like something Patti Page would have worn in the fifties. Madonna's blonde hair was swept back and lacquered down, Elvis Presley-style. Dancing the synchronized choreography, Madonna is cute, fresh, and appealing.

Her next video was the exact opposite of cute and fresh. The song was “Open Your Heart,” and the video presentation was sexy, steamy, and suggestive. Playing the role of an exotic dancer in a peep show, Madonna wanted to turn heads, and when this debuted in December 1986, it did just that.

The “Open Your Heart” video was directed by well-known video director Jean-Baptiste Mondino. It was not only Madonna's first overtly sexual video, it was also her first video to feature homosexual images.

In the plot of the video, a young boy (actor Felix Howard) is seen trying to sneak into the “girlie show” arcade where Madonna is performing. Inside the arcade are several booths with windows looking onto a center stage. When coins are inserted in a slot in a booth, the curtain rises to view the sex show onstage. The first shade to go up reveals a pair of identical pretty boy sailors locked in an embrace, staring intently at the show.

Madonna's exotic stripper is then seen performing with a wooden chair prop, borrowing from Dietrich's
Blue Angel
and Liza Minnelli's similar number in
Cabaret
. In her opening shot Madonna is seen in short black hair, wearing a one-piece bathing suit outfit with black high-heel shoes. Over each of her nipples she wears gold-sequined “pasties,” with black tassels dangling from them. In her first seconds on screen she leans back in the chair and yanks the black wig off her head to reveal her own platinum blonde locks. Madonna proceeds to sing and dance to the song, while the viewer gets intermittent shots of the viewers in the booth. Naturally one of them turns out to be the underage boy, who is most fascinated by the sight of Madonna rolling around on the floor singing “Open Your Heart.”

At the end of the video, Madonna emerges from the arcade in her street clothes—a man's suit, white shirt, tie, and hat. She plants a kiss on the young boy's lips, and they dance off into the evening.

The song became Madonna's third Number One single from the
True Blue
album. Also debuting on the charts in November 1986 was a single by handsome model-turned-singer Nick Kamen. He had become famous in a British television commercial for a brand of blue jeans. In the ad he walks into a laundromat, takes off his jeans, and stands there in his boxer shorts while the pants are in the washer. Madonna met him, was impressed with his James Dean—like good looks, and decided to produce his first single. The single, “Every Time You Break My Heart,” was written and produced by Madonna with Steve Bray. Released on Sire Records, the record didn't do too much on the charts, but it made a big stir in the gossip columns.