I take her to my favorite store, Matsuda, on Madison Avenue near Seventy-second Street.
I pick out a cream silk, man-tailored shirt, grayish brown summer-weight trousers, and brown wing-tip-style shoes. Madonna Part Five is born: a grown-up, elegant woman with style.
Unfortunately for Madonna, her new sophisticated image is destined to be seriously undermined when, in July 1985, nude pictures of her are published in Playboy.
At 6 a.m. on July 10, 5 million copies of Playboy—containing fourteen pages of black-and-white nude pictures of Madonna—hit the newsstands. The pictures were shot in 1979 and 1980 by two New York photographers, Lee Friedlander and Martin Schreiber, apparently when Madonna posed for photographs in the “Nude” course at the New School. A few days later, not to be outdone, Penthouse also hits the stands with a seventeen-page color and black-and-white spread of pictures taken by another photographer, Bill Stone.
The camera has always been Madonna’s major ally, and one of her greatest passions. She loves the camera unreservedly, and the camera loves her back. After all, the camera is responsible for capturing and disseminating the multitude of visual images that contribute to her megawatt allure. Until now—apart from paparazzi shots—she has always exercised a ruthless control over the majority of images taken of her. Now, for the first time in her career, she has lost grip, and the media is now flooded with pictures whose rights she doesn’t control, and from which she will not profit.
I first hear about the photographs while I am working for Madonna’s publicist, Liz Rosenberg, a voluptuous, blue-eyed blonde who is still employed by Madonna today—the only employee in her life, apart from Donna De Lory, who can boast such longevity.
After The Virgin Tour—perhaps as a result of my insider status and the trust she now has in me—Madonna has found me a job with Liz, at Warner Records, in Rockefeller Center.
On this morning, I come into work bright and early to find Liz sitting at her desk, feet encased in pink rabbit slippers, just about to pick up her phone, which is in the shape of a large pair of red lips. Liz has a thing for lips. Even her sofa is in the shape of lips—Mae West’s by Dalí. Liz’s own lips are plump and luscious. She wears red lipstick and generally leaves a perfect bow-shaped stain on the marijuana cigarette she’s been known to smoke at four in the afternoon—a brief respite before she resumes work unimpaired. I’m amazed by her ability to do this.
This morning, though, Liz is far from laid-back. In her birdlike voice, she breaks the news to me: “Some magazines have come out with nude pictures of your sister. Don’t go and buy them, because we don’t want the photographers or the magazines to make any money from us.”
“Does my father know?” I ask.
“I haven’t told him yet.”
I note the use of the word I.
Madonna hasn’t warned me about the pictures. Clearly she doesn’t intend to tell our father herself either, preferring that Liz do the dirty work for her. I blanch at the thought of our straitlaced father arriving at work aware that all his coworkers have probably seen his daughter naked. As for my grandmother, I can’t bear to contemplate her reaction. Later, I will find out that when she learned the news, she started crying.
I can’t fault Madonna for having posed for the photographs, though. After all, many dancers sit for art classes. For a time, I even considered it myself. After all, if you are a starving dancer, making $10 an hour for taking off your clothes seems like a miracle. There was nothing sleazy about the circumstances under which Madonna posed for the nude photographs, but I am still troubled that she didn’t call any of her family, didn’t feel the need to warn me or express concern about how our father or our grandmother would feel when they found out. I begin to realize that my sister doesn’t seem to care how her behavior or career impacts her family.
Liz’s phone never stops ringing, and she fields the calls with the combination of elegance and intelligence that is her hallmark. As for me, I call Danny, and we decide that we ought to take a look at the pictures. After all, the entire country is now obsessed by them.
So on the way home from work, I stop off at the little cigar store on the corner of Christopher Street and Sheridan Square. When I see the Playboy masthead, for a second I flip back to my childhood, the tree house, and all my friends gawking over the center spread, which my sister now occupies for other snot-nosed teenagers to pore over her naked body.
I don’t open the magazines until I get home, and then Danny and I look through them.
The image of my sister, the serious dancer newly arrived in Manhattan, leaps from the page, not the pop star. For a moment, I am transported back into the past.
My first thought is that the pictures are lackluster and utterly devoid of any artistic merit.
My second thought is that this is the first time I have seen my sister completely naked. In the dressing room, she always kept her thong on. When we were growing up together, or living together as adults, she never walked around stark naked in front of me, nor did she ever sunbathe topless in front of me. In fact, in close quarters, she has always been relatively modest. Aside from her embarrassment at being naked in the dressing room in front of a stranger, at this stage in her career, she hasn’t exposed much skin onstage either.
My third thought is that she used to be extremely skinny.
My fourth is that she had a great deal of body hair.
I say as much to Madonna when we finally talk about the pictures.
“Well, I wasn’t shaving at that time,” she says, laughing.
I laugh, too.
But, although we quickly change the subject, I can sense that she has been deeply embarrassed by the pictures, but is taking great pains to mask her feelings from me.
Nor will she ever utter the thought that I know must be plaguing her: how would our religious mother feel if she could see the pictures?
And although I don’t voice the sentiment to her, I am acutely aware that—in the eyes of the world—my sister will now no longer have any mystery about her. And any innocence she may once have had is now gone. She has nothing to lose anymore, nothing more to hide. After all, her privacy has unalterably been invaded. From now on, she will forever invade it herself. From now on, she is free to be as outrageous as she wants. And she will be.
As always, Liz helps Madonna weather the PR storm engulfing her, and when it has subsided, Madonna emerges a bigger star than ever. So-called Madonna experts often claim that my sister is obsessed by Marilyn Monroe and that she modeled herself and her career on Monroe’s. They are wrong. Although the release of Madonna’s nude pictures may have had the same effect on her career that the publication of Marilyn’s nude calendar did on hers, apart from in “The Material Girl” video, Madonna has never identified with Marilyn or modeled herself or her career on Marilyn’s. And she has never been remotely self-destructive, which is probably why Madonna has been a star for a quarter of a century and—unlike Elvis and other superstars—didn’t die young either.
Part of the reason for Madonna’s enduring success, I believe, is Liz Rosenberg. In many ways, Liz, who is ten years older than Madonna, has always been somewhat of a mother figure to her. Liz has sometimes been mistaken for Madonna’s mother, and Madonna has once or twice even called her “Mom.”
From the start, Liz knows exactly how to treat Madonna: exactly as you’d treat a big baby, saying yes to every little whim, yes to everything, yet at the same time gently guiding her in the proper direction.
In some ways, she has always treated Madonna as her daughter and considered her to be part of her family. And she has been incredibly stoic in the face of Madonna’s sometimes unkind treatment of her—sometimes ignoring Liz, other times acting as if Liz hasn’t played a part in her success.
After witnessing Madonna doing the same thing over the years to countless other people, me included, I’ve realized that she doesn’t do so out of malice but because, over the years, surrounded by sycophants who always agree with her, she does
truly believe she’s entirely her own creation, and that, in the manner of King Louis XIV, who pronounced “L’état c’est moi,” she has become a superstar all on her own.
Whether Madonna is prepared to admit it or not, one of the other people most responsible for her success—apart from Liz and Freddy—is Sire Records supremo Seymour Stein.
In fact, while I am working for Liz, a job as his personal assistant comes up, and I interview with him. But just before the interview in his office is scheduled to take place, Seymour switches it to his home.
And while I love his apartment on Central Park West, his collection of jukeboxes, and his American art deco furniture, when he opens the door to his apartment dressed in only a bathrobe, I am utterly unnerved.
He was once married to Linda Stein—the celebrated realtor who was tragically murdered in late 2007. That day in 1985, his first words to me are “Come on, let’s talk in my bedroom.” This makes me uncomfortable, so I make my apologies and leave. Although I don’t get the job, I retain my professional respect for Seymour, as, after all, he had the vision to sign Madonna to a record contract in the first place.
ON JULY 13, 1985, Madonna and I drive to Philadelphia together, and I watch her perform in front of a live audience of ninety thousand, and a global television audience of millions more, at Live Aid. She believes in the cause so much, and I know she desperately wants to take part today. As a nod to the nude-picture controversy, she performs wearing a brocade overcoat. As she struts her stuff, it occurs to me that my sister is now more famous than practically any of the other performers at Live Aid.
But although I hate even admitting it to myself, while no other star is now so world famous, her performance is outshone by the performances of many of the huge stars there. After the show, we drive straight back to Manhattan because she doesn’t want to hang out with any of the other stars. During the journey home, we discuss them. I, of course, tell her she was the best, and she probably believes me.
As her publicity machine grinds on, her phenomenal success continues to escalate. Like a Virgin is certified for sales of 5 million copies, the first album by a female artist to be so, “Angel/Into the Groove” goes gold, and I fly back to L.A. to stay with Madonna and Sean at their home on Carbon Mesa.
With his wedding to my sister on the horizon, Sean decides that now is the perfect time for us to undergo some hard-core manly bonding.
We are alone in his Mexican-tiled kitchen.
He’s wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. I’m in a black T-shirt and jeans.
He pulls out a jackknife. “Christopher, let’s be blood brothers.”
I’m shocked, but fight not to show it. “Be what?” I ask as nonchalantly as possible.
“Blood brothers.”
“Oh, sure.”
He and the jackknife are now menacingly close to me.
“Show me your thumb,” he says, his tough-guy growl even more exaggerated than usual.
I’m left-handed so I hold out my right thumb. Well, I suppose I don’t really need it that much….
Sean grabs my wrist with one hand and slices the middle of my thumb with the other. Blood drips out.
I wince, but not much because I don’t want Sean to think I’m a pussy.
Then he slices his own thumb.
He presses his thumb against mine and—for a couple of seconds—I return the pressure.
“Now we are blood brothers,” he says, and slaps me on the back.
Then he goes off to find Charles Bukowski, who has just finished throwing up in the bathroom.
AFTERWARD, I FEEL good about myself. I’ve passed my initiation test. I didn’t chicken out. I’m one of the guys at last. And Sean and I are now well and truly brothers.
I never tell my sister what we did, though, and I’m guessing that Sean doesn’t either. We both know that if we did, she’d laugh like crazy. She just wouldn’t understand. After all, this is man stuff.
Six years later and I’m at a party at the old Argyle Hotel on Sunset. Sean and Madonna are now divorced. He’s with Robin Wright now, and after his courageous public admission that he was blind drunk through most of the making of Shanghai Surprise, I’ve almost forgiven him for the way he treated my sister. I’ve also grown to admire his acting immensely. This is the first time I’ve seen him since the divorce, and I’m glad to see him.
So when he walks over to me, we start chatting.
“How’s Madonna?” he asks.
For a second, I consider telling him that she’s still in love with him, which I think she is. But I don’t and instead say that she’s fine.
“Tell her I said hello.” There is an awkward silence while Sean shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Christopher, do you remember that night when we became blood brothers?”
“Sure. How could I ever forget?”
Sean takes a deep breath. “You don’t have AIDS, do you?”
I give him an unprintable answer, then walk away.
ON AUGUST 16, 1985, in an open-air ceremony on Wildlife Road, just up the Pacific Coast Highway at the $6.5 million home of developer Kurt Unger, Madonna marries Sean. The invitation reads, “The need for privacy and a desire to keep you hanging, prevents the Los Angeles location from being announced until one day prior.” I am living back in New York with Danny again, but fly out to L.A. and meet my grandmother and family at the Shangri-La, the thirties art deco hotel in Santa Monica where they are all staying.
As a wedding present, I give Sean and Madonna a glass window on which I’ve painted two vines growing together. They both say they like it, but end up not displaying it in their home. Later that year, I will retrieve it from its dark closet and take it back to my apartment.
The following day, Grandma Elsie and my sisters and I all ride in a car to Malibu. Beforehand, we are told that picture taking is banned. Given the ban on photography, I am surprised that the wedding that has launched every paparazzo in the universe on a do-or-die quest to snatch a picture of it isn’t taking place indoors. Consequently, to me at least, what happens next is highly predictable.
Helicopters carrying journalists and photographers from tabloids with unlimited budgets hover above the house, taking pictures. Sean growls at the sky above, turns to the guests, and snarls, “Welcome to the remaking of Apocalypse Now!” As Madonna later puts it, “I didn’t think I was going to be married with thirteen helicopters flying over my head. It turned into a circus. At first I was outraged and then I was laughing. You couldn’t have written it in a movie. No one would have believed it. It was like a Busby Berkeley musical. Or something that someone would stage to generate a lot of publicity.” For once, that somebody was not my sister. The wedding venue was Sean’s decision and his alone.
I know that at this stage in her career, Madonna would never have selected such a remote location for her wedding where photographers could only snatch aerial views of her looking so beautiful on her wedding day. She would have preferred to pose for them. Stunning in a $10,000 strapless gown, with a ten-foot train, and a silver sash with a pinkish tone, embroidered with jewels, designed by Marlene Stewart, The Virgin Tour designer, Madonna has, of course, opted to wear white. Lest she be lambasted for being conventional, under her wedding veil she wears a black bowler hat. Sean wears a double-breasted, $695 Versace suit, and, as a nod to nonconformity, leaves the knot of his tie loose.
The ceremony is conducted by Malibu judge John Merrick and takes five minutes. I am sure the words are moving, but we can’t hear a single word of the vows because we are deafened by the racket of the helicopters above us. Madonna and Sean exchange gold rings. Then, to the tune of the rousing theme to Chariots of Fire, which I can just about hear above the din, Sean kisses her and we all applaud.
Sean makes a toast to Madonna, but we can’t hear it. Then he ducks under her skirt and removes her garter. At one point Madonna looks up at the helicopters and flips them the bird, but I know she doesn’t really give a fuck. Fed up, Sean charges straight into
the house and gets a .45.
Madonna shouts after him, “What’s the big deal, Sean! Leave it be! Otherwise, they’ll just get pictures of you with a gun. And they aren’t going to go away.”
She’s having a good time. But Sean, still in character, remains in a rage and starts firing shots in the air, while Andy Warhol, Steve Rubell, Cher (in a purple spiked wig), the rest of my family, and I watch, kind of amazed.
Fortunately, Sean is distracted by the announcement that dinner is served, and we all file into an open-air tent on the front lawn. Once inside, we are still deafened by the noise of the circling helicopters, but manage to enjoy Wolfgang Puck’s menu of caviar, curried oysters, lobster ravioli, broiled swordfish, and rack of lamb, followed by a five-tier hazelnut wedding cake.
However, my abiding memory of the dinner will always be the image of the helicopters circling above us like ravenous vultures. I know that Madonna ultimately got a kick out of the entire media invasion of her wedding. As always, Madonna more than welcomed any media attention whatsoever. After all, media attention is her middle name. And part of the reason she’s a star and has stayed a star is because she’s always known how to work the media. Sean, of course, doesn’t. In fact, the wedding day sets the tone for the entire marriage: Sean running around with a gun, and Madonna smiling radiantly at the cameras.
FIVE
Brothers and sisters are closer than hands
and feet.
Vietnamese proverb
IN THE FIVE months since Sean and Madonna first met, her career has rocketed from triumph to triumph, scandal to scandal, and I sometimes feel sorry for Sean, who, despite his professed horror for the media, still wants to be a star in his own right. Yet the Madonna juggernaut hurtles on, sometimes with him, sometimes without. As soon as he has weathered the nude-photographs scandal, less than three weeks later Madonna loses a court battle to suppress the release of A Certain Sacrifice, a low-budget, one-hour soft-core porn movie made by Stephen Lewicki, which she made in 1979 during her early years in Manhattan.
Life with My Sister Madonna Page 11