Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  Nor will I be spoken to or treated as you treat the sycophants around you. I am not Ingrid.

  You may not address me in the manner that you did on my phone machine. No one does and no one will. Your questionable status as a star does not give you the right, nor will it ever.

  I expect a full apology from you and an explanation of your rude behavior before I will speak to you again. And I want you to know that it saddens me to think of your child living in the world you seem to want to create around you.

  It’s amazing how the love you have for a person can turn to hate. For me it has not been easy, but if you persist in treating me like you treat others, that is where it will remain and then, one day, it will sadly turn into indifference.

  Christopher

  I know her vulnerabilities, and I hit on all of them. I am furious and I am not thinking, and I don’t step back, I just do it as a gut reaction.

  Soon after I send the fax, I hear through Darlene that Madonna is furious with me and thinks I am a complete and utter drug addict. This is her explanation as to why I wrote her such a vitriolic letter. I must be an addict. I must have been high when I wrote the letter. She can’t imagine that I was angry when I wrote the letter or that she hurt me deeply.

  I realize that these days she only hears what she wants to hear. Nothing gets through to her. But I have finally said some things to her that have been burning within me for years; the concept that I don’t matter. Not treating me as a person, the lamps, the paintings, the fees, the fact that Danny didn’t exist for her. Worst of all, I now understand, after all this time, that to my sister I am just as disposable as any other flunky who might get out of line.

  She doesn’t respond to the letter. A month passes and I start hearing from people around town that she is telling everyone that we are now estranged. I don’t call her, but I begin to regret having written that letter.

  As I ponder the professional repercussions, and my status in Hollywood, I know that I am fucked and have to somehow rectify the situation. Darlene compounds this when she tells me that I can carry on fighting with Madonna, but that having her as an enemy won’t do me any good. Darlene suggests that I swallow my pride, apologize, admit to my hubris, and make the admission sound sincere.

  In a replay of the angel-food-cake scenario, I am about to admit to everything of which I am innocent. I write a letter to Madonna in which I apologize profusely, although I don’t mean a word of it.

  I basically say, “You are right; I need to get control of myself. Drugs are a problem. I am going to take care of it. I am extremely sorry I wrote the fax and I hurt you. I have not been feeling like myself lately, please forgive me.”

  She believes me and is taken in by my apology. I now realize that she doesn’t know me at all. Getting to know someone on a deep level just isn’t her style. From her perspective, she is the only person in the universe, so why should she take the time to get to know anybody? They need to get to know her. Nonetheless, I do believe that she still loves me and that her love has depth.

  She replies immediately. She draws a heart at the end of the letter. She says that she is relieved and happy to have received my fax and that our not speaking feels “strange, foreign, and extremely uncomfortable.” Without exactly apologizing for the message she left, she lets me know that it’s hard for her to trust people and often feels pulled in too many directions.

  True to form, she tells me that she knows that my rage wasn’t directed at her at all, but that I was angry at the burden of being her brother—then adds that although she sympathizes with me, she isn’t going to apologize for that, since being her brother has also brought me great opportunity, which is undeniably true.

  Half of the letter, however, is Madonna outlining her insecurities to me and explaining that they were partly the reason for her outburst against me. Reading it, I feel she is being sincere.

  And if I am still feeling hurt and defensive about her, she fully disarms me by ending her letter with: “I will tell you once more how supremely talented I think you are and how much your happiness means to me. And of course how much I love you.”

  I LOVE HER, too, but that love is tested to the limit after I fax and ask her for a decision regarding designing Cockerham, and she faxes me straight back just a few lines without any explanation—“I’ve decided to use someone else.”

  I am hurt and annoyed, but most of my annoyance is directed at myself. I hate myself for having sent that fax. Then again, a small voice also tells me that perhaps I did it deliberately, perhaps on some level I feel too attached to my sister and really need to detach from her. At the same time, I can’t blame her for cutting me out after the nasty things I said to her. And she did forgive me. Nevertheless, I’m still angry with her, but far more angry with myself.

  October 14, 1996, Madonna’s assistant Caresse calls and tells me that Madonna is about to give birth to Lola. I jump into my pre-owned black 560SEL Mercedes, which I’ve finally managed to buy, and drive to Good Samaritan Hospital. Outside the hospital, hundreds of press scream out my name.

  Security checks my credentials from the list of five—Caresse, Melanie, Liz, Carlos, and me—who have clearance to visit her. I go up to her suite of rooms, 808, on the eighth floor—living room, bedroom, chintzy florals everywhere, and browns and pinks—hideous, and not Madonna’s or my taste, not that it matters. I am happy she is about to have the child she’s always wanted so much. I put aside my hurt and anger at the way in which our relationship has deteriorated so badly.

  She is lying in bed in a white flannel nightgown. Her hair is washed and pulled back. She isn’t wearing any makeup. She looks pale and wan.

  “I love the decor,” I tell her.

  She throws me a weak smile.

  She is in a break from labor.

  She tells me that they may do a C-section.

  “Is that what you want?” I ask.

  “Well, they think it’s best. They just want to make sure the baby is all right, so I think I’ll agree.”

  I tell her to do whatever she thinks is best.

  She doesn’t seem afraid at all and says she is looking forward to giving birth. “I can’t wait to get this thing out of me.”

  Then her mood changes. “I wish Mom were here.”

  “I wish she were as well,” I say. “She would be so happy to see you give birth, and to know her grandchild.”

  Outside the suite, Carlos is pacing the hallways. Liz is there, too, and so are Caresse and Melanie. Around noon, they take Madonna away for the procedure. Melanie suggests I go home and wait for news there.

  Just after four, Melanie calls and tells me that at 4:01 p.m. on October 14, 1996, Madonna gave birth to six-pound-nine-ounce Lourdes—“Lola”—by C-section and that mother and daughter are resting comfortably. I am simultaneously relieved and overjoyed.

  The following day, I go to visit Madonna at home. I bring her gardenias, and a tricycle to give to Lola when she’s old enough.

  Arriving at the house, I feel strangely ambivalent. I am excited to be seeing my new niece, but I also feel weird about visiting Cockerham—the only one of Madonna’s homes I have not designed—for the very first time. I loved creating and designing the look of my sister’s homes in the past, but now I feel cast out in the cold.

  The house is a Spanish, single-level Wallis Neff house. A brief glance at the interior and it’s obvious that all Madonna has done is bring over the furniture we purchased for Castillo. It hurts me to see furnishings I’d purchased for her now redone and reorganized by someone else. For the first time ever, Madonna’s home is foreign territory to me. But I am gratified to see that my painting of Eve is hanging in the living room and hope it indicates that, on some level, she still intends me to be part of her new life.

  I go down the hall to Madonna’s bedroom to see her and to meet Lola.

  Madonna looks tired and places Lola in my arms.

  “Lola, this is your uncle Christopher.”

  “Hi, Lola, y
ou’re very pretty,” I say, terrified that I’m going to drop her.

  I hand Lola back to Madonna and ask how she’s doing.

  “I’m exhausted; I feel like I’ve given birth to a watermelon.”

  Then she shows me the incision on her belly. I can’t believe how small it is. No more that five or six inches. I am amazed at the thought of a baby fitting through such a tiny opening.

  I can see my sister is really sleepy, so I leave quietly.

  On the way home, I remember thinking how thrilled I am for her, how sweet Lola looks, but how her birth means that our relationship will change even more.

  There is now a growing distance between Madonna and me. I don’t feel as close to her as I did before. For the first time ever, I have no connection to her home and no longer have my own room there, either. She has always been more my family than anyone else, but I can sense that connection weakening immensely. I’m happy that she’s starting her own family, just as she wanted; still, I mourn the loss of the old “us.” And I miss Danny and think about him constantly. I feel bereft and sad.

  THANKSGIVING 1996. MY parents fly out to see Lola for the first time. The entire family gathers at Madonna’s house, including my older brothers. Melanie and I are in the kitchen, cooking. Madonna pops in every now and again to check that everything is all right. Although Melanie and I are doing the cooking, Madonna is still somewhat frantic.

  I set the table. Madonna flies past me. I sense something odd about her tonight. I go into the kitchen and bring back a stick of butter on a butter dish. Madonna takes one look at it and blows up.

  “What the fuck are you doing putting butter on the table, Christopher?” she yells.

  I am completely thrown by the tone of her voice—the identical tone she used with me on my answering machine many months back.

  “But, Madonna,” I say patiently, “we are having bread. So we need butter on the table.”

  “But we have enough butter in the food. We don’t need it on the table as well.” She snatches the dish from the table.

  I grab it back from her. “I want butter on my bread and so will everyone else.”

  “Well, I don’t.” She picks up the butter and stomps out of the room with it.

  When she isn’t looking, I put it back on the table. It dawns on me that she hasn’t really forgiven me for my fax at all. Just as my apology was fake, so was her forgiveness. I thought I was handling her, but realize that, in actuality, she was—more than skillfully—handling me. In fact, we were handling each other. She is still mad at me, still angry, and our relationship has altered almost beyond recognition.

  Nevertheless, after the butter incident, from that point on, Thanksgiving Day passes uneventfully. I visit Lola in her crib, which is in Madonna’s bedroom—the most feminine bedroom I’ve ever known her to live in, pink and cream with silk curtains, pretty and soft. After dinner, Melanie and I spend a few moments in the kitchen, bitching about Madonna. Then we all go home.

  Despite the tensions between us at Thanksgiving, Madonna still invites me over for Christmas Day, which also passes uneventfully.

  Madonna spends the rest of 1996 promoting Evita wherever and whenever possible. I believe that the movie deserves to do well, and that she should be honored for her performance, but audiences are not flocking to see it. She invites me to be her date on March 24, 1997, at the Oscars at the Shrine Auditorium. She has already won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, for Evita, and I’m disappointed that she’s not up for the Best Actress Academy Award.

  At the ceremony she performs “You Must Love Me,” written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, which she sang in Evita. It wins Best Original Song, and this reflects on her well, and I am delighted.

  WHEN Madonna: The Girlie Show—Live Down Under is released on DVD, I am temporarily pulled back into pleasant memories of our work together. But I am now playing hard, doing drugs a couple of times a week, and Madonna is hearing about it. She calls me and says, “I am hearing awful things about you. Are you addicted to cocaine?”

  I don’t think that I am, and I tell her so.

  She hangs up, unconvinced.

  TEN

  Big Sister is watching you.

  Adapted from 1984 by George Orwell

  IN MAY 1997 I direct Dolly Parton’s “Peace Train,” my seventh music video. We meet and she is friendly. She’s dressed in a tight dress, but her arms are covered, as they will be whenever I see her. She tells me she doesn’t want a bunch of dancers behind her. I ask her what kind of dance she plans to do herself.

  “I’m a mover, not a dancer. And I’m a bit top-heavy…” she says.

  Before the shoot, she asks that we send a car to the airport to pick up her wig lady, and a second one to pick up her wigs.

  Some of the video is shot with her placed on a dolly in front of a wall. As I don’t want the wall to be much higher than Dolly, I call her manager, Sandy Gallen, and ask how tall she is. He says he will get back to me.

  After a few hours, he calls: “Dolly is five foot nine in hair and heels.”

  She’s probably five three without. On the day of the shoot, I arrive at 5 a.m. The wig lady arrives at six in one car, as do the wigs in another. Dolly arrives at seven, completely made up, in a wig and outfit. She disappears into her trailer for two hours, while the makeup man does her makeup. He leaves, then the wig lady goes in and does her hair.

  Dolly never wears the same dress twice in public. She has three dresses made for the shoot, all in a similar cut: long sleeves, tight cleavage, arms covered.

  On the set, she is casual, easy to work with, cracks a few dirty jokes, and says, “I’m not all boobs; I’m partly brain, too.”

  She finds it difficult to move around, though, because her shoes are so high and her wig so carefully balanced. She ends up doing a little wiggle that I christen the Dolly Chug, and she is amused.

  We break for lunch and she sits between me and my producer, Michelle Abbott. Dolly is rail thin, with a tiny, tiny waist, but orders fried chicken and collard greens. Michelle asks her how she can eat that kind of food and stay so slim.

  “Well, aah always leave a little on ma plate for the angels,” she says.

  In part of the video, we use doves supplied by a dove wrangler. Dolly is supposed to hold one of the doves, then let it fly away, but the doves refuse to fly. So every time the wrangler puts a dove into Dolly’s hands, instead of flying away, it flops to the ground again. He puts it in her hand again, she throws it up in the air, and it flops to the ground.

  “I’m sticking my finger up its ass, but I think it likes it,” Dolly jokes.

  She’s great to work with, we have fun, and everything goes really well. The next morning, she leaves me a phone message: “Hi, Chris, I just want to tell you that I had a good time last night.” I am so amazed by that. The first time in all the videos I’ve shot that an artist has done that.

  Not long afterward, I suggest to Dolly that she and Madonna record an album together, each one recording five of the other’s hits. Dolly tells me she thinks it’s a great idea, but Madonna just says, “I’ll think about it,” which really means no. She and Carlos have now split for good, and I am not surprised.

  I ADD ANOTHER string to my bow; I’ve become a screenwriter. Before I started, I read a basic book on the rules of screenwriting, then just began to write. I know I could take screenwriting classes, but I don’t want to. As usual, plunging headfirst into a new endeavor without any training for it challenges my creativity.

  My screenplay, “Nothing North,” is inspired by a documentary I see about a female bullfighter named Christina. At first, though, I write it as a short story set in Seville, Spain. I send it to Madonna.

  She calls me and says, “This is a really beautiful story. Have you ever been to Seville?”

  I tell her I haven’t.

  “Well, I have, and you described it perfectly. What are you going to do with the story?”

  I ex
plain that I am going to adapt it into a screenplay.

  She tells me to go for it, then offers me space at her Maverick Records offices in West Hollywood, and I am grateful.

  I write for four months, and when the script is finished, send it to Madonna asking whether she would like to help finance it. She says she wouldn’t. Naturally, I am disappointed. Her clout as executive producer could easily have gotten the movie financed, but she simply doesn’t want to get involved. I find her refusal both disappointing and confusing. But once my disappointment has subsided, I come to the inescapable realization that—because I so wanted my sister to like my script—I had mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that her sisterly enthusiasm and encouragement meant that she wanted to produce it as well.

  IN MAY 1997, Naomi, Kate, and Johnny Depp—whose movie The Brave is showing at the Cannes Film Festival—rent a house in Cannes. Naomi invites me to join them and generously offers to pay my fare. So I fly to France, and by the time I get to Cannes, the Gallagher brothers (Oasis) and Marc Jacobs join me at the house. After a day or two—with the exception of Johnny, who only smokes pot—we are all well into the party scene and have a great time.

  Later, on May 11, I meet Demi Moore at the opening party for Planet Hollywood, and we immediately hit it off. Iggy Pop sings, and during his song he accidentally spits on Kate. I duck. Kate is swigging champagne straight out of the bottle and doesn’t even notice.

  All of us—Kate, Naomi, Demi, Harvey Weinstein, and Johnny Depp—go back to Demi’s room at the Hotel du Cap. Naomi dances around the room in a perfect imitation of Tina Turner, while Johnny and Harvey have a serious conversation concerning why Harvey doesn’t want to distribute Johnny’s film. “Because it’s bad,” Harvey tells him in the end.