Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  IN JUNE Forbes puts Madonna fourth on its list of the highest-paid entertainers of 2002, citing her income as $43 million. Soon after, she begins filming a small part as a fencing instructor in Die Another Day, the next James Bond movie, for which she records the theme song, “Die Another Day.”

  I see the movie and smile at the irony that as a teenager I studied fencing and one of my dreams was to emulate Errol Flynn in that arena. Trust Madonna, as always, to get there ahead of me!

  ASIDE FROM WORKING on the long, drawn-out, and currently unprofitable Central job, I am also now writing for Interview, Instinct, Icon, and Genre magazines and—with Swept Away about to be released—get an interview with Madonna for the magazines. I’d like to think that she is letting me interview her because she wants to help me, but promoting Swept Away is no doubt her primary motivation.

  I go to Madonna’s Roxbury house for the interview. There, for the first time since her birth, I manage to spend a few quiet moments with my niece Lola. I put her on the tricycle I gave her when she was born and push her around the garden. She laughs and is obviously having a good time. She is learning French and Spanish, and we exchange some words in both languages. The moment is a happy one.

  In many ways, Lola reminds me of Madonna: big eyes, watching everything going on around her, taking it all in. She is now exactly the same age as Madonna was when she, and all of us Ciccone children, lost our mother. I watch her and wish our mother could be alive to see her grandchild. I feel momentarily sad for Lola as well. But other than not ever knowing her maternal grandmother, the world is hers.

  After I interview Madonna, she and I and Lola have lunch. Madonna, who, I think, is probably being stricter just to impress me, makes Lola sit at the counter and eat her lunch there. She gives her pasta with tomato sauce.

  “I don’t want to eat it,” Lola declares, throwing down her cutlery.

  Madonna tells her she has to.

  “But I don’t want to.”

  Madonna starts pleading.

  Lola doesn’t back down.

  Madonna tries negotiating with her. “Look, Lola, if you eat your lunch, I’ll let you wear your special new outfit tonight.”

  Lola’s eyes light up. Then she shakes her head.

  In the end, Madonna agrees to let Lola wear her special outfit as long as Lola eats half her food.

  Lola beams. She has manipulated Madonna and won.

  Even though this scene plays out in kitchens everywhere—a mother trying to convince her daughter to eat—I was fascinated by the dynamics between Madonna and Lola. Lola’s powers of persuasion over her mother were interesting to me. She had managed to handle Madonna in a way that I—and perhaps to one else in Madonna’s life—can do.

  ON OCTOBER 8, 2002, Swept Away, a remake of Lina Wertmuller’s 1975 movie, directed by Guy and starring Madonna, opens in Los Angeles. I love her in the dream sequence, but as with most of her past cinematic output, I am embarrassed by the rest of the film. The movie was slaughtered by critics and won five Golden Raspberry Awards. After the Shanghai Surprise debacle, I think Madonna should have known better than to work with her husband. But just as Sean made Shanghai Surprise as a gift of love for her, I am sure she followed his example and made Swept Away as a gift of love for Guy.

  THIRTEEN

  Remember that everything in your life is there

  for one reason and one reason only: to offer you

  the opportunity to transform.

  Yehuda Berg, The Power of Kabbalah

  AT THE END of 2002, the London Mail on Sunday names Madonna Britain’s second-highest-earning woman and cites her income that year at $56 million. “Die Another Day” becomes her thirty-fifth Top 10 hit, and she becomes second in career Top 10 singles behind Elvis, who had thirty-eight. She has now also surpassed Aretha Franklin to become the female solo artist with the most Top 40 singles in music history. On January 13, 2003, she wins the Michael Jackson International Artist of the Year Award at the Shrine Auditorium. Later in the year, Madonna signs a $10 million contract with Gap to star in TV commercials and print ads for its fall campaign.

  I am nearing the end of working on Central, but so far have made little money from the project. I am forced to further pare down my already Spartan existence by selling some of the small number of antiques that still remain from my New York years.

  MADONNA GETS IN touch and tells me she is selling Roxbury and has bought a new house on Sunset Boulevard. At her suggestion, I go to see the house, a bizarre reproduction of a French château, with a large swimming pool, a tennis court, and an indoor theater.

  I hate it on sight, but when she asks me to design and decorate it in three months flat, I agree. If I hadn’t needed the cash so badly, I would have turned her down because the time frame she has allotted me for the job is so short. After I agree to do the house, the emails fly back and forth between us regarding the design. Madonna senses my feelings about it, and an argument blows up between us, which rages in our emails.

  On May 19, 2003, I write back to her, “M…Once again you have read anger into my letter to you where there is none…. I am fully aware of the fact that you’ve helped me out in the past and it has both contributed to my creative development and financial and now spiritual, since you introduced me to Kabbalah…I did ask you to come and see my new work ages ago…but as to my…photos, they are not just random shots of ass…they are an extension of my creative need as an artist and frankly they are quite good as photos and I intend on showing them in a gallery here in L.A….

  “I see no need to belittle my art simply because you don’t understand it or have not seen it…you of all people…it is true, I have not attended various family functions and video showings because I had other more important things to take care of…. I am making time for Kabbalah because what little I have learned has made a difference in my life already…and will continue with it for that reason…not because I want to please you…. As to the stories that you hear…again, you of all people should know better than to believe that sort of shit…. I have never been thrown out of a club even…and for the most part am quite congenial when in public….

  “However there are times when out, that my reactions to certain people friends and strangers has been rather pointed…but consider this…after 15 years of being prodded and prodded with question after question about you and what you are doing and your movies and records by people who have no interest in me whatsoever…for years and years everywhere I go…I am bound to react in a less than friendly way from time to time…. However, for the most part I take this in stride as best I can…you see it can give a person the feeling that they don’t exist except as a vague outline of you…and I suppose my avoidance of events and things with you may well be an extension of that frustration….

  “This of course is not your fault and I’ve learned to live with it as best I can…and will continue to…but please understand…it is not an easy task to have people look at me but only see you…do you understand this…Anyway…I am not a drunk or a drug addict and have for a long time been doing my damndest to crawl out from under the rather large shadow you cast…the problem is that you have given me a great many opportunities to be creative and work with you…. Now that period seems to have ended I am trying to find my way…stumbling sometime, yes…making the wrong decision sometime, yes…but doing my best always…. Take care of yourself…all my love…Christopher.”

  OUR RELATIONSHIP BEGINS to normalize once more. Then I send her another email asking her to film an acceptance speech for the Gay Film Festival, and on June 19, 2003, she replies, opening with the blunt sentiment “I do not want to film an acceptance speech for the Gay Film Festival but thanks for asking. I get requests all the time for things like this and I always turn them down.”

  I flash back to our life in downtown Manhattan, to Martin Burgoyne and to Christopher Flynn, who both died of AIDS and to whom Madonna owes so much, and I think of her gay fan base. I also think of the good times we both s
hared with her gay dancers, dancing with them at Catch One, Club Louis, along with the drag queens, all of whom adored her. And I can’t believe how alienated my sister has become from the gay world and the fans who made her what she is now.

  She no longer seems to have any sense that she owes the gay world much of her career and that the debt will never be paid, because clearly she thinks it has now been. Or perhaps she has simply erased that element in her past from her memory altogether.

  WHEN I ASK for help in mounting a Las Vegas production of The Girlie Show, in which she would only have to participate by allowing me to open the show with a hologram of herself, she writes to me dismissively: “I really have no interest in participating in the show other than giving them my name and my concept and my songs…. If and when I come to perform in Vegas again it will be because they pay me zillions of dollars up front.”

  Subject closed. I feel as if she has told me to go play in traffic.

  Then she switches to the subject of the house and proposes paying me $45,000 for designing and decorating it over three months. My fee, she tells me, will be paid as follows: $10,000 just to get started, $5,000 at the end of the first month, $15,000 at the end of the second. Another $15,000 at the end of the third month, and another $5,000 if the job takes longer than projected.

  This fee is identical to the one she paid me for designing and decorating the second version of her New York apartment many years before. Next to what other designers get, the fee is insultingly low, but there is more: “This is contingent on you making yourself totally available to me and devoting the majority of your time to this project.”

  She is fully aware that I am working on Central, but is demanding my services 24-7.

  I have no choice but to acquiesce to all her terms. I am broke and no one is beating down my door to employ me. I am my own worst salesman and have never used an attorney to negotiate the fees or contracts for my designing jobs. Then I talk to a friend of mine, another designer, who is shocked at my paltry fee. He tells me I am getting paid a quarter of what another decorator/designer would charge for the same job.

  He explains that on every job, all designers/decorators bill clients 30 percent above the retail price of furniture and all other aspects of an interior. He suggests that I do the same thing, then at least I will at last be properly recompensed for my work. I decide not only to do just that, but also to hire him to work with me on the job, as the restaurant continues to take much of my time.

  I start work on the house. Fortunately, it has exactly the masculine feel that Guy requires, so I don’t have to do much radical work on it. All I have to do for him is change the fittings on his dark green marble bathroom from brass to chrome. Luckily, he decrees that his closet should be a replica of his at Roxbury. One less trauma. When Madonna tells me he won’t be attending any of our meetings, I am relieved that I won’t have to deal with him. I tell myself that this job is destined to go really smoothly.

  However, the first time I am involved in work on Central and I can’t attend a meeting with Madonna and send my designer friend instead, she goes ballistic.

  She calls me screaming, “I fucking told you that if you took this job, you have to be around twenty-four/seven.”

  I start to disagree.

  “I don’t care,” she says. “Just get over here.”

  I do.

  OVER THE ENTIRE three months it takes to complete the house, Madonna is difficult at every turn. My sister, who used to implicitly trust my design judgment, now doesn’t trust me at all, and I am both mystified and frustrated. I can’t fathom why she doesn’t realize that my talent has not diminished but may well have matured. She demands that I supply her with design boards, complete with paint and fabric samples, and, however many I give her, she insists on seeing more. And when I have to go to the fabric store and to the furniture store, she tells me she is coming with me. This is a first, and I am not amused.

  Generally, when those types of stores are dealing with a decorator/designer, bringing the client to the store is frowned upon. Only this time, of course, the client is Madonna.

  We arrive at the fabric store, and everyone from the manager to the assistants all swoon, “It’s Madonna! It’s Madonna!”

  I cringe and try to do my job. But I know it’s going to be a long afternoon.

  I show her fabric, but I know she isn’t listening to me. My anger is mounting.

  I show her something else. She tells me she doesn’t like it, but won’t give me a reason.

  I try to remain patient, to explain to her why a particular color fits a particular room. And that we aren’t just decorating one corner but the entire house, and that everything has to mesh.

  But she insists on seeing the house in fragments, not as a unit.

  She argues with me at every turn.

  This light switch shouldn’t be here.

  This electrical outlet shouldn’t be there.

  Suddenly she is a decorator and a designer and knows better about everything. We are continually at odds with each other.

  I think back to the days when she had so much faith in my taste that she gave an interview to Architectural Digest declaring, “We call Christopher the pope because everything has to get his seal of approval. Who could I have more in common with than someone I grew up with? We like the same things, from music to what we eat.”

  Now, though, my sister has morphed from being my best and most appreciative audience to an amnesiac, carping stranger fixated on undermining me whenever possible. On August 26, 2003, she dashes off an imperious memo with a curt list of items about which she wants updates. Have I ordered fabric for a living room bench? Have I purchased a wood frame for screening the powder room? Should a curtain rod in her bedroom be cut down for another room? Have I purchased a small area rug to be placed in the hallway? There is more—including her demand that I send her photographs of the various curtain rails I intend to use in her yoga room and in what she describes as “GR’s office.”

  I respond as politely as I can. I realize that her obsessive need to control every aspect of my work on the house has partly been prompted by her belief that as I am still working on Central, I am not devoting my entire time to her.

  Her refusal to listen to or even attempt to understand my design ideas for the house frustrates me even more. The best element in the house is a two-story sunroom constructed entirely of floor-to-ceiling glass windows. I conceive of turning it into a botanical music room, furnishing it with white-painted metal furniture, hanging plants from the rafters, so that being in the room would feel like being in the middle of a garden, with sunlight flooding in—the perfect setting in which to make music.

  I try explaining the concept to Madonna.

  “I don’t get it,” she says.

  “Try picturing it.”

  “I still don’t get it. Can’t you draw it for me?”

  “But I’ve described it to you in detail.”

  “I wanna see it before you do it.”

  I give a big sigh.

  She glares at me. “You want to keep this job?”

  I nod miserably.

  “Then don’t give me attitude,” she says.

  SHE ALSO INSISTS on hanging a weird, larger-than-life, eight-by-twelve-foot photograph of her—in the style of Helmut Newton, but taken by Steven Klein—in the hallway.

  I think it sad that poor Rocco and Lola have to wake up each morning and come face-to-face with this huge picture of their mother dressed in a blatant S&M outfit, lying on a bed with dead animals all around her. The creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. This is a Madonna I don’t know anymore.

  SOON AFTER, MADONNA leaves for New York. It’s now the middle of summer, and L.A. is in the throes of a heat wave.

  One afternoon, I call Caresse and ask if some friends and I can use Madonna’s pool. Madonna sends word that we can.

  So four of us hang out by the pool, drink beer, and sunbathe.

  We don’t set foot in the house and, at sun
set, go home.

  Later that night, Madonna calls me, fuming.

  She says that a security guard has reported that we spent the afternoon taking drugs and having an orgy.

  Nothing is further from the truth.

  But the die is cast.

  By now, Madonna has convinced herself that I am a major drug addict and smoke crack daily, whereas I have never once contemplated even trying it.

  She suggests that I have weekly individual sessions at the Kabbalah Center with our teacher, Rabbi Eitan Yardeni.

  I agree, as I am increasingly interested in Kabbalah.

  I see him once a week for a few months and each time give a $50 donation to the center. I grow to view the sessions as therapy, enjoy them, and trust Eitan with my innermost thoughts.

  By now, the Kabbalah meetings are held in either Madonna’s, Demi’s, Lucy Liu’s, or Caresse’s house.

  When the meeting is at Madonna’s house, she serves vegetarian appetizers. Demi Moore serves the best food of all—shrimp and other delicacies.

  Each meeting begins with Eitan lecturing from the perspective of Kabbalah on the topic of the day, such as “Finding Your Soul Mate,” “Making Money,” “Speaking Ill of Other People.” Afterward, we all discuss the topic. As the meetings rotate between houses, I notice that the person at whose house the meeting is held that week gets to monopolize the conversation, to hog the limelight from everyone else.

  AROUND THAT TIME, Demi calls me: “Something really strange happened last night. Your sister invited Ashton and me over to her house for Sunday dinner. We got all dressed up, but when we arrived at the house, your sister and Guy were in workout clothes.