Madonna (45 page)

  It's a great feeling to be powerful I've been

  striving for it all my life. I think it's just

  a quest of every human being—Power.
²³
—Madonna

 

W
hen Madonna's romance with Warren Beatty lasted about as long as it took to make and open
Dick Tracy
, people began to suspect that it was more of a publicity stunt than a love affair. Referring to Beatty's long-running reputation as Hollywood's primo Lothario, Madonna publicly called him “pussy man.”
²⁰⁶
Theirs was the symbiotic romance of the season. He brought her the movie role of her career and a respectability in Hollywood that had been previously unobtainable. She in turn introduced him to young audiences who weren't even born when he made his scorching 1961 film debut in
Splendor in the Grass
.

By the time summer ended, and the hype of
Dick Tracy
had subsided, Warren and Madonna were an item of the past. He went back to dating Isabelle Adjani, and she found a new boy toy to justify her love. It had been rumored that Warren and Madonna were going to follow
Dick Tracy
with another co-starring feature, a comedy called
Blessing in Disguise
, but it never got off the ground. Soon afterward Warren met Annette Bening, became a father-to-be, and the rest is history.

Madonna's new main squeeze was twentysomething aspiring actor and model Tony Ward. She had met him at a birthday party for Herb Ritts, and was immediately attracted to him. He turned out to be the perfect partner for her—at least for the time being. When she attended the premiere of the film
Goodfellas
, she flew him to New York with her. Several days later newspapers in London were announcing that handsome Tony once posed nude for the gay skin magazine
In Touch for Men
. The tabloids wasted no time running the nude photos, paralleling Madonna's nude sessions in
Playboy
and
Penthouse
.

“It didn't bother me,” claimed Madonna. “He had these pictures done when he was really young and needed money. The same thing happened to me. I finally felt like, ‘God, somebody can understand how I felt.'”
²⁰⁶

With
I'm Breathless, Dick Trctcy
, and the Blonde Ambition tour over, it was time for Madonna to move on to the next phase. Aiming directly at the Christmas 1990 season, Madonna was already preparing a batch of cleverly packaged “stocking stuffers” for the holidays. There had been talk of doing a greatest hits package of her recordings, and with an amassed wealth of hit songs and hit videos, two simultaneous packages were already in the preparatory stages. Both were entitled
The Immaculate Collection
.

For the album, Madonna wanted to give her fans a new incentive to run out and buy the greatest hits album, so she recorded two fresh cuts to set off the package. The new songs were entitled “Justify My Love” and “Rescue Me.” Walt Disney Pictures had managed to make her tone down her songs from
I'm Breathless
, and the Vatican and the Toronto police had attempted to censor her that summer, so she was determined to go for broke with her latest project.

The song “Justify My Love” was written by Lenny Kravitz, with additional lyrics by Madonna. (After the song came out, Prince protegee Ingrid Chavez surfaced, pissed off at Kravitz and claiming an uncredited contribution to the lyrics.) An odd, smokey, plodding talk song, Madonna's vocal on the song sounds like a monologue she would deliver while making love. The song oozed sex, and naturally when it came time to do a video for the song, it, too, had to emulate the ambiance of seduction.

Checked into the Royal Monceau Hotel in Paris for two and a half days with director Jean-Baptiste Mondino, photographer Patrick Demarchelier, Tony Ward, and an assortment of sexually charged performers, Madonna filmed the video for “Justify My Love.” The finished product had censors swooning, tongues wagging, and created a new tidal wave of controversy and publicity.

In November 1990, when the finished video was submitted to MTV for a pre-broadcast screening, the music video network that had contributed so mightily to Madonna's success refused to air it. Madonna was appalled that the network would decline the video merely because it contained homosexuality, lesbianism, voyeurism, cross-dressing, and semi-nude bodies. According to her, she felt that MTV was hypocritical in its policies. When she did her “Oh Father” video and showed a corpse of a woman—meant to be her mother—with her lips sewn shut, MTV swore they wouldn't broadcast it. Likewise, when Madonna filmed her video of “Express Yourself,” MTV told her that they wouldn't show it because of the slave collar and chain around her neck. They ultimately broadcast both videos unedited.

This time around, MTV found the whole video unsuitable for their audience, composed largely of young teenagers. This really pissed off Madonna. She argued, “Why is it that people are willing to go to a movie and watch someone get blown to bits for no reason, and nobody wants to see two girls kissing or two men snuggling?”
²²⁵

In the video, in crisp black and white, Madonna is seen walking down a hotel hallway, dressed in an overcoat, carrying a suitcase, and holding her hand to her forehead as if she has a headache. Through the half-open doorways of the hotel rooms there are glimpses of people in sexually suggestive poses: a woman dressed for an S&M sex act, a man seated on a bed and gyrating his pelvis as if he's getting a blow job.

When Tony Ward emerges from a doorway out of focus in the distance, Madonna starts singing about wanting and needing someone to “Justify My Love.” As though in heat, she pulls open her coat and drops to her knees, revealing that she is wearing garters, stockings, a black teddy, and little else. There is a nifty close-up of her fondling the inside of her thighs while groveling at Tony's feet in the hotel hallway.

More sex scenes in open doorways come into view: a man and a woman in black leather, a woman exposing her breasts in a skintight bustier and tugging at her nipples, and a man in a black bodysuit wearing gloves with long claws. Meanwhile, in Madonna's room, she and Tony are disrobing, and as he prepares to mount her, she pushes him away. In the next scene we see a woman in short hair and heavy eye makeup on top of Madonna, passionately kissing her. While this is happening, Tony kneels by the side of the bed, obviously getting into watching the lesbian action.

As the song progresses, the viewer is also treated to scenes of female couples drawing mustaches on each other, male couples in drag fondling each other, and Madonna watching as Tony—who is tied to a chair—gets worked over by a dominatrix who is wearing only suspenders as her top. It's a five minute cavalcade of sex, sex, sex. When the steamy video ends, Madonna is seen fleeing from the hotel room with her suitcase. She giggles to herself and bites one of her fingers in disbelief. Having had her love justified, she has obviously gotten rid of her headache!

One of the most talked about aspects of the “Justify My Love” video was the question of who was the French girl kissing Madonna? It was twenty-four-year-old model Amanda Cazalet. Cazalet said of Madonna, “She knew exactly what she wanted. She has this inner power that's incredible.” Regarding the titillating finished product, the androgynous-looking Cazalet proclaimed, “After seeing it, the first thing you want to do is make love.”
²²⁶

Describing the video shoot, director Mondino explained, “It's very real—that's what's so shocking about it.” Regarding the lesbian kiss, he asked in disbelief, “With AIDS, shouldn't we celebrate kissing as a beautiful thing?”
²²⁷

Watching the video was a turn-on. No matter what your sexual orientation, there is sure to be something to push your buttons. Looking like a naughty French film from the sixties, “Justify My Love” was simply a new high point in Madonna's ability to turn moves made for shock value into a scandalously successful hit.

What is even more brilliant than her intuitive sexual power, is Madonna's business sense. The minute MTV turned down “Justify My Love” for airing, wheels were set in motion to market the five-minute clip as the first ever video single. It was quickly packaged and released to the stores. Usually, if a video cassette sells 50,000 units, it is certified platinum and considered a hit. The initial orders for “Justify My Love” were so great that Warner/Reprise Video had to rush-release 250,000 copies before Christmas. The week before Christmas of 1990,
Video Insider
magazine ranked Madonna's “Immaculate Collection” video as Number One, and “Justify My Love” as Number Two. Again, she had taken a potentially disastrous scandal and turned it in her favor.

Addressing the controversy head on, on December 3, 1990, Madonna appeared on the late-night news program, “Nightline.” There was an ongoing recession in America and a war brewing in the Middle East, but those things paled next to the scandal of Madonna's latest video. Whatever Madonna did suddenly eclipsed tawdry and mundane things like current world affairs.

The “Nightline” appearance was a brilliant coup for the television program, especially when it was announced that the video would be screened in its entirety. Interviewed by Forrest Sawyer, Madonna looked sternly serious when she argued about how she had been wronged by MTV's censors. With regard to the censors' contradictions, she pointed out that her nipples were visible through her diaphanous dress in the “Vogue” video, yet MTV had no problem with that. Now that she was writhing in heat, though fully dressed, they made a stink about it.

She admitted that half of her knew she was heading for censorship trouble, and half of her felt that she was again going to get away with it. When Sawyer pointed out that it was going to become a win-win situation for Madonna, the songstress admitted that it had indeed turned out to be profitable for her. “Yeah, lucky me!” she laughed.
²²⁸

The night that Madonna was on “Nightline” was by far the highest-rated episode of the news program that entire year. It outranked the August 24 telecast about the Iraqi troops who had surrounded the U.S. Embassy and the January 19 show centering around the arrest of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry.

Other shows that broadcast edited or excerpted versions of the “Justify My Love” video also experienced record-breaking ratings. “Saturday Night Live” broadcast ninety seconds of the video in the “Wayne's World” segment, making it the highest-rated episode of the show that season. CNN's “Showbiz Today” had the greatest number of viewers they had all week on the day they showed a highly publicized 112 seconds' worth of the video.

The controversy stirred up by the “Justify My Love” video almost instantly thrust the single to the Number One spot in America. Madonna's
Immaculate Collection
album sold briskly and lodged itself in the Number Two spot on the charts for several weeks, with white rapper Vanilla Ice's
To the Extreme
locked in for a long run in the top spot. Madonna's album also spawned another Top Ten single with “Rescue Me.”

When she released a special five-cut remix CD of “Justify My Love,” Madonna pushed the envelope even further with spicier versions of the song. On the six-minute, thirty-second “Hip Hop Mix” of the song, Madonna ends with the words “Fuck me.” And, on “The Beast Within Mix,” she reads passages of the Bible that sound as if she is delivering a Satanic service. Jewish leaders were up in arms over a Biblical passage she quotes that refers to “the Synagogue of Satan,” claiming that this was the same passage that the Nazis based several hate crimes upon. With this controversy, Madonna was truly breaking down prejudice barriers—she had already pissed off the Catholic church and conservative Christian groups, now another religion could get in on the fun.

During the fall of 1990, Madonna's every move was covered in the media. In October, she and Tony attended a Martha Graham tribute in New York City. Master choreographer Graham, at age 97, was in fragile health, and when she became ill that winter Madonna assumed the payment of a reported $150,000 of her medical bills. When Martha Graham died later that winter, it was announced that Madonna would portray the revolutionary dancer in a film about her life.

At the time, Madonna had gotten collagen injections in her lips, and, for several weeks it looked as if she had been socked in the mouth. The photo of her as a biker girl in leather, a cigarette hanging from her temporarily thickened lips, also appeared on the cover of the “Justify My Love” video cassette. The collagen injections, which temporarily thicken the lips, had been all the rage ever since thin-lipped Barbara Hershey had sported them in the 1989 film
Beaches
. Madonna's thick lip phase lasted about as long as any one of her ever-changing hair colors, and within weeks they had returned to their normal size.

Madonna also showed up on television that fall wearing only an American flag. The TV spot was a commercial for a movement called “Rock the Vote.” With two of her dancers, Madonna did a takeoff on her song “Vogue,” rapping, “Dr. King, Malcolm X, freedom of speech is as good as sex.” She was urging people to register to vote in the upcoming November elections. Her message ended with a wink, as she threw open the flag that was wrapped around her, and in her red bikini announced, “If you don't vote you're going to get a spanky.”
²²⁹

The spot was very cleverly done and controversial as only Madonna could pull off. The ironic thing was that Madonna herself neither voted or ever registered to vote in the 1990 elections.

Business world bible
Forbes
magazine put Madonna on its October 1, 1990 cover, and in its headline, questioningly proclaimed her: “America's Smartest Business Woman?” The magazine estimated her gross for the year at $39 million and called her “a rarity among entertainers: a star who runs her own business.”
²³⁰
The following month
Us
magazine devoted an issue to “The Heavy 100: The Most Powerful People in Entertainment.” Madonna was ranked as Number One, above Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Prince. The article refered to her as a “consistently bankable superstar” and “a shrewd businesswoman.”
²³¹