Madonna (53 page)

Madonna was the first to note the striking similarities between Evita and herself. Said Madonna of Eva, “Because of her enormous impact, her detractors tried to tear her down and desecrate her image. People were frightened of the power she had, and undermined her accomplishments by calling her a ‘whore.' I can certainly relate to that. People intimidated by me feel the need to denigrate me.” (252)

In Madonna's favor, a talented cast of supporting actors surrounded her. In the crucial role of Che, the musical's narrator, Antonio Banderas, was cast to add a sexy male presence to the film. Jonathan Pryce, who won a Tony Award for his performance in
Miss Saigon
, was signed to play Juan Peron, Eva's husband and political partner. And British singer Jimmy Nail brought a dapper darkness to his portrayal of the tango singer Migaldi, who first “discovered” young Eva Duarte. Before filming began, the complete soundtrack had to be recorded. For the entire filming, the cast would be lip-synching their own prerecorded voices, making sure every gesture matched the music.

Knowing that all ears would be evaluating her vocal ability to interpret the familiar score, before she even entered the recording studio Madonna worked with vocal coach Joan Lader for several months. The role was extremely daunting, and Madonna knew it.
“Evita
is the first movie big enough to contain me,” she said at the time. “I know I have a very big presence. If I overpower the movie, the movie fails.” (252)

Alan Parker also knew that the film's success or failure would rest mainly on the merits of its star. According to the director, “The hardest work that anyone had to do was obviously by Madonna. She had the lion's share of the piece, singing as she does on almost every track. Many of the songs were comfortably within her range, but much of the score was in a range where her voice had never ventured before. Also, she was determined to sing the score as it was written and not cheat in any way.” (266)

During preproduction Alan Parker recognized one major weak point in the shooting script. When Eva Peron knew she was dying, her dictator husband bluntly ignored her. Reportedly, Juan Peron couldn't stand the smell of the cancer on his wife, and his only visits to her tended to consist of walking by her room and waving. The original stage musical never slowed down long enough to acknowledge this moment. Parker felt that another song might best touch on this sad fact. Unfortunately, the show's creators were still in the midst of a long-standing feud and had not collaborated with each other in years. It became Parker's quest to reunite the composer and lyricist and to convince them to write one more song—especially for the film. Miraculously, he was able to do just that.

According to Parker, “Getting the two of them in a room to collaborate after all these years wasn't easy, but they finally succumbed. Madonna loves this song the most. She sings it so beautifully, it becomes hers, and hers alone.” (266) The new song was entitled “You Must Love Me.”

On her very first day in the studio Madonna recorded the most important and most famous song from the movie. “I had to sing ‘Don't Cry for Me Argentina' in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber,” she recalled. “I was a complete mess and was sobbing afterward. I thought I had done a terrible job.” (266)

Reportedly, the first day of recording the soundtrack in the studio was a disaster in the first degree. The members of the 84-piece orchestra had never played together before, and Andrew Lloyd Webber was upset with them. Parker was jittery, and Madonna indeed went home in tears. The orchestra was fired, and Webber brought in a new conductor.

According to Madonna, “I was so nervous, because I knew that Andrew had had reservations about me, and here I'm singing the hardest song in the piece. All of a sudden there, with everybody for the first time, it was really tense.” (251)

Instead of copying the actresses who had previously sung the part of Evita, Madonna chose to interpret the material in her own way. Anyway you sliced it, this was a score that required singing unlike any she had done in the past. “Because the entire movie is sung instead of spoken,” she explained, “it has an operatic quality, which inspires over-the-top delivery. I was going after something much more naturalistic. We had to make an intimate, emotional connection at the same time that we were acting and trying to hit our notes. It was an experience that I think has had a real impact on the other aspects of my singing.” (266)

With
Evita
, Alan Parker not only had a dramatic musical, but he also had a political story fueled by power and passion. Both the music and the action had to mesh perfectly. No one was more acutely aware of this necessity than he was. “We were all daunted by the mad mountain we had all decided to climb,” said Parker. “All of us came from very different worlds—from popular music, from movies, and from musical theater—and so we were all very apprehensive.” (266)

The shooting schedule was expected to encompass 85 days in Buenos Aires, Budapest, and London. Budapest, unlike many of the more celebrated European cities, is known for not having its classic architecture compromised by modern glass and steel towers. For this reason, it is a favorite location for films set in pre-1950s' European capitals or in European-styled cities like Buenos Aires.

Madonna, too, had to undergo her own metamorphosis. In
Evita
, she had to age from a young ambitious brunette into a glamorous blonde icon. Madonna also had to contend with an astonishing 84 costume changes. For the first time in her erratic fifteen-film acting career she really had to inhabit a role, to become Eva Peron in her attitude, manner, and look. One of the things that had to be altered was her famous gap-toothed smile. To eradicate the trademark space in her front teeth Madonna had to wear special dentures over her own teeth to replicate E vita's famous smile. She also had to wear brown contact lenses to match Eva's own eye color.

While Madonna's team of loyal Argentine fans were thrilled that their idol was coming to Buenos Aires, the devoted Peron supporters were appalled that an American sex object like Madonna brazenly thought that she could portray their beloved Evita. Upon arriving in Buenos Aires, Madonna found that Argentina was ready for her. On the drive from the airport to her hotel she saw graffiti that read, “Evita Lives, Get Out, Madonna.”

When the film was released later that year, it proved to be a media blitz for Madonna. One of the most exhaustive magazine cover stories spotlighting Madonna appeared in
Vanity Fair's
October 1996 issue. The 25-page article not only featured photos of the
Erotica
diva glamorously coiffed and dressed in 1940s fashion a la Eva, but also included an exhaustively detailed account of the filming experience, entitled “The Madonna Diaries.” This account of her
Evita
experience featured a lot of Madonna whining, bitching, and complaining. It also found her in some rare, self-reflective, insightful moments and, overall, illustrated her single-minded devotion to making this the cinematic experience of a lifetime.

Madonna knew that her reputation was truly on the line with
Evita
. If this movie was a colossal “bomb,” it could be the end of her film career. If she was not a sympathetic Eva, she could forget about ever going back to Argentina, as they would surely build a retaliatory bonfire out of her albums and videos.

Throughout the production, she had truly been a team player in a theatrical sense. She had made bonds with the majority of the cast and crew, and came to regard them as part of her
Evita
family. She had nothing but good things to say about director Parker. According to her, “Alan was very supportive during the shooting. He let me sort of follow my own instincts in a lot of cases. We had both been prepared to expect the worst from each other. And then we got together, and it was probably the smoothest working experience I've ever had in terms of a collaboration.” (251)

It was rather ironic that her so-star in
Evita
was none other than the same Spanish actor, Antonio Banderas, whom she proclaimed to have a crush on in
Truth or Dare
. He was also one of her co-stars in
Four Rooms
, although their segments were filmed completely apart from each other.

Since Banderas spent the majority of his time during the shooting with his then-pregnant girlfriend Melanie Griffith, he and Madonna did not become especially warm or friendly. In her exhaustively detailed
Vanity Fair
diary, she mentioned him only in passing. She did note that the press was making a big deal about the probability that she would be competing with Melanie Griffith for his attention. With regard to this notion, Madonna dismissed it by stating that she would never date a man who wore cowboy boots.

On the other hand, Banderas had nothing but glowing praise for Madonna. “It was absolutely professional,” he said about their relationship during the filming process. “She was so focused, so obsessed with this movie and what it represents to her in terms of her career as well as the personal commitment to this character. I never did sit down with her and say, ‘Madonna, what is this that you have for Eva Duarte?' But there was something there. She got pieces of truth in this movie that she's never gotten in even the best video she's done. For the first time—and this is a subjective opinion—she's an actress.” (270)

While busy filming
Evita
, Madonna was far from absent from the gossip columns and newspapers. Only weeks after news of her pregnancy had leaked to the press during the filming of
Evita
, she was once again splashed all over the media, thanks to basketball star Dennis Rodman and the publication of his sizzling autobiography,
Bad As I Wanne Be
, which spent eight weeks at Number One on
The New York Times
bestseller list.

According to Rodman in
Bad As I Wanne Be
, when he and Madonna got together, she demanded that he perform oral sex on her. That chapter became one of the most talked about aspects of the entire book, second only to the cover shot of him stark naked on top of a motorcycle. Inarguably, Madonna had met her match this time around. Unfortunately, Rodman's book came out at a time when she was trying to clean up and sophisticate her act. The book's publication resurrected the
Erotica
Ma donna, a persona from which she needed to distance herself in order to effectively launch
Evita
.

Madonna claimed to be incensed by Rodman's betrayal. “It's not the first time I feel he's exploited his very brief relationship with me,” she said at the time. “When I first knew him, I sent him a few very silly faxes with really childish drawings on them, and months after I'd stopped seeing him, they appeared on [the tabloid TV program]
Hard Copy
, and I thought, ‘This is only the beginning.'… It really wasn't much of a ‘relationship,' which is why it astonishes me that he's gotten so much mileage out of it. I'm sure somebody wrote the book for him, and I can only imagine they urged him to be as imaginative and juicy as possible and to make things up and maybe offered him more money if he would talk about me.” (246)

Speaking of Rodman, Madonna said, “He is actually someone I would classify as a borderline psychotic personality. He is a very exciting person to be around, like most crazy people, and during the whole two months I dated him—and that was not on any sort of regular basis—it was like this fun adventure, and then I soon discovered that he was a seriously damaged person, and I really couldn't get away from him fast enough…. Much as I should hate him, I actually feel compassion for him. This is a person with a few screws loose.” (246)

Despite her disclaimer, Rodman's account of their relationship was the talk of all the gossip columns for weeks. “First of all, it was untrue information,” Madonna countered. “Second, I felt violated because I did consider him to be a friend, as crazy as he may appear. I know his depiction of our sex life was probably one reason the book sold so well, and that is highly irritating.” (252)

Naturally, when Madonna's pregnancy became front page news, the first question on everyone's lips was, “Who is the father?” It turned out to be hunky Carlos Leon, a personal trainer whom Madonna had met during a jog through New York City's Central Park.

One of the first things that the outspoken Madonna announced was that matrimony was strictly out of the question. “I don't see the need. I'm perfectly happy with the way things are,” she proclaimed. (252)

In 1998, explaining their short-lived relationship, Madonna said of Carlos, “I was in love with him. A lot of people think I walked out on the street and looked at him and said, ‘You're going to be my sperm donor.' I had a relationship with him for two years. We were together for three…. I had a relationship with him. I still have a relationship with him. We are really good friends.” (258)

When Julia Salamon, a reporter from
Vogue
magazine, interviewed her for its October 1996 issue, she pressed Madonna: had Carlos visited her often on the
Evita
set? The pregnant Ms. Ciccone snapped back, “It's such a long trip and he has his own work, and I'm not someone who needs my boyfriend around all the time. I'm not Melanie Griffith!” (246)

It was undeniably odd that, of all the people in the world with whom Madonna could have had a child, she chose her trainer. On the other hand, it was perfectly in character for her to have a child with a man she could dismiss whenever she wanted. Particularly irritating was the fact that she had to defend what she had done: “It is perfectly socially acceptable for a man to find a beautiful girl who hasn't accomplished the things that he's accomplished, and make a life with her. Why does the man always have to be the one who makes more money? It's pathetic and sexist and disgusting, and if people don't change the way they view this thing—the man and woman's place in society—nothing's ever going to change.” (246)