Madonna (37 page)

Mantegna was a bit blase at Madonna's mention: “We have different heroes and bases of reference, but our roots are similar, and on a lot of levels, I relate to her. I feel as comfortable as I could possibly be with someone fifteen years younger.”
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“She was early to every rehearsal, and the only time she ever got mad was when I ended a rehearsal early. She came and stuck her neck out, and she did a great job,” Gregory Mosher said.
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“She is an honest-to-God actress. She's got a clarity and transparency.”
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When the show was still in rehearsal, Madonna had high hopes for her portrayal of Karen. “She's a sympathetic, misunderstood heroine who speaks the truth at any risk.”
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That was certainly a common thread that she could identify with.

Prior to opening night, Madonna admits that she was scared shitless of what was going to happen. With two widely acknowledged film bombs behind her, and word on the street that
Bloodhounds of Broadway
was going to be embarrassment number three, she knew the stakes were great.

The first night
Speed-the-Plow
was performed in front of a public audience, Madonna sent all of the cast and crew members flowers to wish them luck. “Not just the actors, but the dressers, the guys on the crew, the stage doorman,” recalls Mosher.
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When the play officially opened on May 3, the critics were finally able to get a look at it for the first time. At the opening night party at Tavern on the Green, Madonna glowed triumphantly at the experience. “It was like good sex!” she exclaimed for the press. “It's great writing, and I have two great actors to work with.”
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Sean was not present for his wife's Broadway debut because he was in Thailand filming
Casualties of War
.

The next morning the reviews appeared, and they were decidedly mixed—especially as far as Madonna was concerned. Mosher's direction called for Madonna to keep the audience guessing. According to him, “The audience is meant to go out asking one another—Is she an angel? Is she a whore?”
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Unfortunately, there were other gnawing questions left unanswered, the most frequently asked being: Can Madonna act?

To acknowledge this query, the New York
Daily News
headlined their review of the show, no, she can't act. Clive Barnes in the
New York Post
claimed, “Madonna tries hard in a Judy Holliday role, but sounds more as if she were auditioning than acting, and the audition is scarcely for the big time. There is a genuine, reticent charm here, but it is not yet ready to light the lamps on Broadway.” Frank Rich in the
New York Times
praised both men, and only lightly criticized Madonna: “Madonna serves Mr. Mamet's play much as she did the Susan Seidelman film
Desperately Seeking Susan
, with intelligent, scrupulously disciplined comic acting. She delivers the shocking transitions essential to the action and needs only more confidence to relax a bit and fully command her speaking voice.” Dennis Cunningham, the reviewer for CBS-TV, disagreed. “Her ineptitude is scandalously thorough,” he said, then publicly blasted Rich for accepting her performance: “Frank has taken leave of his senses. He should apologize to every actor he has ever given a bad review to.“
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When it came time for the Tony Awards, Madonna wasn't even nominated, but Ron Silver ended up winning the Tony for Best Actor in a Dramatic Role. To add glitz to the telecast, Madonna was one of the presenters. With her dark brown hair—the color she wore for
Speed-the-Plow
—and a dress covered in cloth flowers, Madonna basked in all the attention and flashbulbs.

Madonna's fans didn't care about the bad reviews, they wanted to see the pop star in the flesh, and up close. Tickets for
Speed-the-Plow
were consistently sold out for the entire run of the play through the end of summer.

She knew she was in over her head, but Madonna was determined to display another side of herself. To have completed a run on Broadway, regardless of the reviews, had to show her off as being serious about becoming an actress. She was dead set on being seen as something more than a pop star. “I knew I was up against a lot,” she recalls. I'm from a world they have no respect for. It was a really good experience for me to prove myself in that context. “
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Since the character of Karen was that of a victim, it turned out to be an excruciating personal experience. “It was devastating to do that night after night,” she claims. “I saw her as an angel, an innocent. They wanted her to be a cunt.”
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The other aspect that drove her crazy was the sheer confinement of the role. There was no room for ad-libbing, or stepping out of character, and there was also the routine of doing and saying precisely the same thing night after night. “Sometimes it feels like being in jail,” she explained during the run of the play. “It's the monotony of one thing. It's having to do the same thing every night.”
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Every night after the show, a throng of Madonna fans would encircle the backstage exit of the theater. They would be holding their cameras, plus Madonna photos and record albums that they wanted autographed by their favorite star. She would sign one or two and then be whisked into her waiting limousine by her bodyguards. But this was the most accessible she had been in ages.

In retrospect, Ron Silver claims that he is thankful about all the hoopla that was generated by Madonna's appearance in the play. If it were not for Madonna's name on the marquee, ticket sales might not have been great enough for the play to move to a Broadway theater, and Silver might never have gotten the notoriety that ultimately brought him the coveted Tony award.

“I felt very privileged,” says Silver, whose career has soared since winning the Tony. “I think she's a lot smarter than people give her credit for. I think she can be a very good actress and I like her very much.”
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While in New York, Madonna began to start a new life away from Sean, who was busy with his own career. In his absence, Madonna surrounded herself with a new circle of supportive friends, including Jennifer Grey and Sandra Bernhard.

Stand-up comedienne Sandra Bernhard had long been a cult favorite in comedy circles and had made an impressive movie debut in the 1983 film,
The King of Comedy
. In this particular summer of 1988 she was appearing in her one-woman show in the Village called
Without You I'm Nothing
. Jennifer Grey, the daughter of Joel Grey of
Cabaret
fame, was also riding a crest of success of her own, having just starred in the 1987 box office smash
Dirty Dancing
, with Patrick Swayze. The threesome made quite a high-profile unit, hanging out together as a trio, or accompanied by a circle of mutual girlfriends. While Sean Penn's young actor clique was known in Hollywood as “The Brat Pack,” Madonna, Sandra, and Jennifer demurely referred to themselves as “The Snatch Batch.”
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The Sandra Bernhard connection was one of the most talked about and most fascinating relationships in Madonna's career. The media attention that was drawn to this odd couple raised several questions: Are they just friends? Are they having sex with each other? Or are they just fucking with everyone's head?

Sandra Bernhard recalls when she first met Madonna, three years before: “I met her up at Warren Beatty's one night. It was kind of an uneasy situation. Nobody was really getting along, and Madonna was very quiet, kind of taking it all in.”
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In the intervening three years, Sandra had added a section about Madonna—as pop icon—to her comedy act. In the context of the skit, Sandra begged Madonna to phone her up and be her friend. One of her on-stage ad-libs would include her pleading, “Be my friend, come live with me, Madonna. Push me over the borderline, Madonna. Fuck up my head, Madonna.”
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Little did she know, but that was exactly what was to happen. In 1988 both Sandra and Madonna were performing extended runs in their shows, Madonna in
Speed-the-Plow
and Sandra in her one-woman show
Without You I'm Nothing
.

“Afterward, I'd run into her here and there at parties and stuff, but we didn't really communicate,” says Bernhard. “Then our shows were opening the same time in New York and I sent her an invitation. She came on Easter Sunday, and came backstage, and was so nice. She was so sweet, so excited, and then I went to see her show, and we just started hanging out. It seemed like the right thing at the right time.”
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Both Jennifer and Sandra were on hand on opening night of
Speed-the-Plow
. It wasn't long before the press began trailing the trio and reporting all sorts of antics, including dressing identically. A couple of Madonna's evenings with Sandra found the duo staging belching contests at high-profile Manhattan restaurants. When Madonna's old graffiti-painting buddy, Futura 2000, opened an art exhibit at a local eatery, Madonna, Sandra, and Jennifer were on hand. “Her insanity is refreshing,” explains Madonna of Bernhard.
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Bernhard recalls that their fast friendship was almost immediately misinterpreted. “Although the New York newspapers like to write about us terrorizing the town and stuff like that,” she says, “actually neither one of us is as wild as we were made out to be.”
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When Sean returned to the country, his reunion with Madonna picked up where it left off: he was a total pain in the ass to her and almost immediately reports of his caustic behavior spread through the press like a brushfire. On June 27, Madonna and Sean trekked down to Atlantic City to attend the Leon Spinks—Mike Tyson fight. Among the notables present were Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Donald Trump, Jesse Jackson, and Richard Pryor. When the ringside celebrities were announced on the loudspeakers, the mention of Madonna's name drew a huge round of applause. When they announced Sean's name it was met with a mixture of cheers and extended booing.

When spectators roamed by with cameras or pieces of paper for the duo to autograph, Penn went into a tirade of acidic remarks: “Fuck off!” “Get that mother-fucking camera away from me.” “You mother-fucking asshole, don't take my goddamn picture!” “I ain't here to give a fucking autograph, dipshit, I'm here to watch the fight. Why don't you watch it?”
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On Sunday, July 3, Madonna and Sean were in New York City, walking down Columbus Avenue near 70th Street.
New York Post
photographer Paul Adao was in his car when he spotted the superstar couple, and he began shooting photos through his windshield. Sean spotted Adao's camera and immediately threw one of his fits.

Recalls Adao, “He left Madonna and kicked my car. When I saw him coming I shut the windows and locked the doors.”
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After Sean kicked $800 worth of dents into the photographer's car door, Adao summoned a cop. The officer made Sean follow him to the local precinct, where he was ordered to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court later that month.

On July 28, at his Criminal Court appearance, Sean was once again surrounded by press photographers. Adao agreed to drop his charges against the actor if Penn paid for the damages to his car. Adao's boss,
New York Post
photo editor Harry Siskind publicly proclaimed that if Sean ever accosted another press photographer, he would make certain that Adao would be on hand to testify against Penn. It seemed that wherever Sean went, trouble soon followed.

Meanwhile, Madonna was becoming increasingly more disenchanted with her marriage. She had more fun with Sandra Bernhard than she did with her husband. Comparing the two relationships, in retrospect Madonna said, “I'd say that my friendship with Sandra was just beginning as my relationship with Sean was dying.”
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On July 4, Madonna was accompanied by both Sandra Bernhard and Sean Penn to a Fourth of July party hosted by artist Peter Max. He chartered an 82-foot yacht and took his guests on a cruise in the Hudson River. Also aboard were Liza Minnelli and her husband, Mark Gero, Paul Sorvino, Melanie Griffith, and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. When the boat passed by the Statue of Liberty, actor Sorvino led the group in a singalong version of “America the Beautiful.” Madonna and Sandra then went into their rendition of the theme song from “Gilligan's Island.”

Later that month came the most talked about television event of the summer. Sandra Bernhard was booked to appear on “Late Night with David Letterman” and decided that she would turn it into a raucous impromptu event by bringing Madonna along with her. No one was more surprised than David Letterman.

Sandra wore a pair of cutoff bluejeans, a white T-shirt, white socks, and klutzy-looking black shoes. When Letterman questioned Sandra about her much-reported friendship with Madonna, he produced a copy of the
Star
, and inquired, “Let's talk about you, and your new good friend, Madonna. Is there any truth to this nonsense?”
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Sandra proceeded to read the headline of a story from the publication's June 28 issue:
IT'S ALL-GIRLS NIGHT AS MADONNA LEADS TERRIBLE TRIO ON LATE-NIGHT LULUS
.
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When Letterman asked her to explain what she and Madonna did when they went out, she replied that they go out and drink tequila and party. Teasingly, she announced, “As a matter of fact she happens to be here tonight.”
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When Madonna made her surprise appearance from backstage, she was dressed identically to Sandra—right down to the klutzy black shoes. What transpired was nearly ten minutes of nonstop bantering and inside jokes. When the subject of
Speed-the-Plow
came up, Bernhard exclaimed, “She hates it!” and Madonna screamed, “I want out!”
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