Suddenly, Madonna had scored a coup that had previously eluded her: a banned video.
As soon as the video was banned, Madonna’s publicity juggernaut once again began to roll. There was much protestation from Madonna, who talked a great deal about censorship and how “unfair” it all was to her. By this time, though, the media and public had long ago caught on to Madonna’s game of “controversy before product.” Still, Sire Records executive Seymour Stein seemed to buy into the game, or at least act as if he did: “When she went in to make the video for ‘Justify My Love,’ she didn’t make a video for the purposes of having it banned, so it couldn’t be shown . . . I think she just believes in what she is doing.”
When ABC-TV’s respected late-night program, Nightline, decided to air a special devoted to the controversy, and then show the video in its uncut entirety, Madonna agreed to be interviewed for the program on December 3, 1990. “There was this enormous hoopla over a music video,” recalls Forrest Sawyer, her interviewer. “It was all kind of astonishing.” During the interview, Sawyer pointed out the obvious: as a result of the controversy, the video — available in stores within a week of its ban, and just in time for Christmas at $9.95 — would most certainly make even more money for all concerned. “Yeah,” Madonna said, shrugging, “so, lucky me.” The video single sold over 400,000 copies.
While “Justify My Love” was controversial, breaking all the rules, by comparison, the second single from The Immaculate Collection, the up-tempo “Rescue Me,” written and produced by Madonna with Shep Pettibone, was standard, pulsating dance fare. It rocketed itself to Number 9 on the pop chart, inducting itself into the exclusive club formed by sixteen other Number 1 and Top 10 hits that made The Immaculate Collection a project both to behold and respect.
Michael Jackson
On March 25, 1991, Madonna was scheduled to perform Stephen Sondheim’s Oscar-nominated “Sooner or Later” from Dick Tracy at the Academy Awards ceremony. However, she had a dilemma: who should accompany her to the awards? Who would make the biggest impact on the media, cause the biggest sensation? For Madonna, it was always about “sensation,” when it came to public appearances with dates, as opposed to a selection based on with whom she might have the best time. She had no one in her life, anyway. She was between men and, after the quiet but powerful revelation that was Tony Ward, her standards had been raised. “Who is the last person on the planet people would expect me to be seen with?” she asked her manager, Freddy DeMann.
“Prince?” he offered. No, she said, “I hate him, now.”
“How about Warren?” No, she said, again. “I hate him, now.”
“Tony Ward?” Again, no.
Then Madonna exclaimed, “How about Michael Jackson? Oh my God, what a great idea. Don’t you love it?”
Freddy DeMann agreed that such a pairing would be “surprising,” especially since Jackson had just signed the biggest recording deal in history with CBS Records, potentially worth $1 billion. “Maybe he can teach me how to make money,” Madonna joked. “And maybe I can teach him how to spend it.”
Since he had once managed Jackson, it was a matter of a few telephone calls before DeMann arranged a “date” between his present and former clients, two of America’s greatest and most controversial pop-music icons. The date was set for dinner at the Ivy restaurant in Beverly Hills, a week before the awards show. But, on the appointed evening, Madonna almost forgot about it. She was having a bad day. Freddy had sent over to her home, as a gift, a three-foot wooden statue . . . of Madonna. “Now, why would he do that?” Madonna asked, scratching her head. “I mean, it’s so spooky. Look at it,” she told friends who happened to be with her when it arrived. There, in the middle of the floor, stood the statue, carved in teak, a perfect likeness of Madonna, smirking. “I’m afraid that if I go to sleep, it’ll come after me with a knife,” she said, and she didn’t seem to be joking. She sent the statue back to her manager.
An hour before she was to collect Michael (he told her he would drive but, according to Michael, she said, “Are you crazy? I’ll drive!”) Madonna was still wearing her hot-pink silk robe, eating a snack and watching a piece about herself on a tabloid television program. According to a friend who was with her at this time, as she watched the broadcast, she said, “Look at this report about me and Warren [Beatty] breaking up. Why, it’s all true. Every fucking word of it is true!”
While spreading butter and marmalade on a croissant, she cocked her head and closely examined her friend. “Listen, if I ever find out you’ve been snitching on me to these shows, you are out of here. Do you hear me?” she said. When the friend assured her that she wasn’t the source of the story, Madonna said, “Well, they got it all right, so someone is a snitch around here, and it sure isn’t me.” Then, after a moment’s thought, she concluded, “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Warren. He loves publicity, no matter what he says, especially if it makes him look like a big shot.” Meanwhile, as Madonna continued to watch the program, it hit her. “Oh my God, Michael Jackson,” she exclaimed, jumping from the couch. “I completely forgot. How could I forget about Michael Jackson?”
There had probably been times when Michael Jackson wished he could forget about Madonna. As he once said, “She’s always in your face, isn’t she? I don’t get it. What is it about her? She’s not a great dancer or singer. She does know how to market herself,” he said. “That must be it.”
Two years earlier, in 1989, Warner Bros. Records had paid for an advertisement in one of the industry trade publications pronouncing Madonna “Artist of the Decade.” Even though most people in the business understood that this ad was the kind of empty compliment record labels often paid artists in promotions they financed themselves, Michael Jackson was particularly annoyed by it. An irate Jackson, who had sold more records with his Thriller album than anyone in history, telephoned his attorney John Branca to complain that Madonna didn’t deserve such acclamation. “See, it makes me look bad,” he explained, as Branca later remembered. “I’m the artist of the decade, aren’t I? Did she outsell Thriller?” Michael asked Branca. “No, she did not,” he said, answering his own question.
In response to his client’s agitation, Branca suggested that they approach MTV with the idea of a fictional award they could give to Michael. Off the top of his head, Branca came up with “The Video Vanguard Artist of the Decade” award. Michael liked it. “That’ll sure teach that heifer,” he said, referring to Madonna.
Now, two years later, Michael found himself sitting across from Madonna at a table at the Ivy, and staring at the object of his derision. Madonna was wearing a black jacket and short pants with lacy stockings and a cross around her neck. Her blonde hair lay shining, bright and brassy against her sleek, bare shoulders, dark roots proudly on display. Jackson was in black jeans, a red shirt and matching jacket emblazoned with a cartoon sailor’s image. He had on his trademark fedora, his black, curly hair shoulder length. To the author he recalled of the date, “I had my sunglasses on. And I’m sitting there, you know, trying to be nice. And the next thing I know, she reaches over and takes my glasses off. Nobody has ever taken my glasses off . . . And, then, she throws them across the room and breaks them,” Jackson continued. “I was shocked. ‘I’m your date now,’ she told me, ‘and I hate it when I can’t see a man’s eyes.’ I didn’t much like that.”
Later during dinner, Madonna caught Michael sneaking a look at her cleavage. With a lascivious grin, she grabbed his hand and put it on her chest. “How do you like them?” she asked, teasing him.
Jackson pulled his hand away, nervously.
Later, during dinner, she dropped a piece of bread down her cleavage, and then fished it out and ate it just to see Michael’s reaction.
“Oh my God, you should see the muscles on that woman,” Michael recalled. “I mean, she’s got muscles in her arms way bigger than mine. They’re, like, rippling, you know? I wanted to know how she got muscles that big, but didn’t want to ask because
I was afraid she’d make me show her my muscles.”
A week later, the odd couple — described by People magazine as “Pop’s Billion-Dollar Boy and the Queen of Steam” — showed up at the Academy Awards presentation at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
Madonna looked perhaps more like Marilyn Monroe than ever before in a low-cut, strapless, white-sequined, body-gripping Bob Mackie gown and ermine wrap. Her lips were cherry red. Her blonde hair, which framed her face in soft waves, seemed to catch and hold all the light around her. On her neck she wore $20-million worth of jewels on loan from Harry Winston. Michael looked spectacular in a matching white-sequined suit with a large diamond brooch, gloves and gold-tipped cowboy boots. The two sat in the front row, on the aisle. During the broadcast, Madonna’s performance of “Sooner or Later” was more than just a tribute to Marilyn; it seemed as if she had appropriated just about every one of Monroe’s mannerisms and characteristics. The audience was appreciative. However, the crowd’s acceptance didn’t mean as much to Madonna as a telephone call she received the next day from her father telling her that he thought her performance was “great.” Coming from the rarely complimentary Tony Ciccone, this was praise indeed. Much to her and Michael’s clear delight, the song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Song.
During the annual Oscar party hosted by the late literary agent Swifty Lazar at Spago in Hollywood, Madonna and Jackson caused a media sensation with their much anticipated arrival. As flashbulbs popped all around them, Madonna was asked by Hollywood reporter Army Archerd how she was able to convince the usually reclusive Michael to accompany her to such a public event. “Oh, Michael’s coming out more,” she answered with a laugh.
Once inside Spago, however, Madonna drifted from the persistently shy Michael and wound up at Warren Beatty’s side. Who can explain her actions? Perhaps because Michael is so insulated by power, money and his own obsessive need for privacy, she couldn’t find anything to talk to him about regarding the real world. Beatty’s date, model Stephanie Seymour, had neglected to show up, leaving him open to Madonna’s attention; Madonna seemed not to hold a grudge against Warren. She was flirtatious, even.
Poor Michael Jackson stood awkwardly alone in the middle of a roomful of celebrities, many of whom couldn’t help but gawk at him. Luckily, his mentor Diana Ross was present to take him under her protective wing.
“Well, I just don’t understand it, Michael,” she told him loudly enough for anyone standing near them to overhear. “I mean, she’s supposed to be with you, isn’t she? So, what is she doing with him [Beatty]?”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “I guess she likes him better.”
Across the room, Madonna cuddled with Warren, nibbling his ear and whispering to him as if they were still a couple. Diana Ross, sipping a glass of champagne, eyed Madonna with scepticism. “Well, I think she’s an awful woman,” Diana decided after a few moments. She drained her glass. “Tacky dress, too.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed, glumly. “Tacky.”
“Michael didn’t much like her, but he knew a good thing when he saw one,” one of his attorneys recalls, “and so Michael decided to ask Madonna to appear in the video for his song ‘In the Closet.’ They had a few meetings, which I personally arranged. She was interested, but she said something like, ‘Look, if we’re going to do this thing, it’s not going to be just a silly little love song. I mean, we have to do something completely and utterly outrageous or I won’t be into it. Agreed?’ Michael said, ‘Cool. Let’s do it. Let’s do something wild.’”
A few days later, Madonna telephoned Michael with her “outrageous” video concept: since the song was called “In the Closet,” she would appear in drag as a man, while he would appear as a woman.
Perhaps because Jackson’s sexuality had for years been a topic of discussion in the media, Michael was immediately concerned. He told Madonna that he would need time to think about her idea, and he then telephoned his closest ally, his sister Janet. Janet also never had much respect for Madonna. (“If I took off my clothes in the middle of a highway, people would look at me, too,” she once said. “Does that make me an artist?”) However, Janet felt Michael should agree to Madonna’s terms. “They’ll never expect that from you,” Janet said of the public. “It’ll be your way of making fun of them for the way they think of you. And with Madonna? Wow, what a statement.” Still, Michael decided to pass on the idea.
Of Michael, Madonna said to the gay magazine the Advocate, “I keep telling Michael Jackson, ‘I’d love to turn Jose and Luis [her dancers at the time] on you for a week. They’d pull you out of the shoebox you’re in. Anybody who’s in a shoebox in the closet cannot be in one after hanging around with Luis and Jose. Or me, for that matter.’”
Some years later (in October 1994) in speaking of Michael, and of Prince as well, she concluded to the Los Angeles Times, “I could never say that either of them were friends. I’ve spent a great deal of time with both of them. They’re very different people, but I felt the same with both. I felt like a peasant next to them, like this big clumsy farm girl. Like, when I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it. And they have these manners and they’re just so careful about what they eat, and what they say. But it’s never too late to start being a human being. If they could just try being something close to that. I can’t imagine either of those guys putting on sweat pants and sneakers and going out for a run, playing outside with a dog or just being silly and hanging out with your friends without your makeup on. You know what I mean? I don’t think they do that.”
Ingrid
After the Academy Awards of 1991, Madonna met a fascinating woman who was to become one of her closest friends, Ingrid Casares. Casares, an attractive and stylish Cuban-American, was introduced to Madonna by Sandra Bernhard. At the time, she was working as a model booker at Wihelmina Modeling Agency in Los Angeles when her lover, Sandra, took her to Madonna’s birthday party. Casares, who proudly declared, “I don’t classify myself sexually,” has since become a staple in gossip columns for being involved with a string of female lovers, including Bernhard, k.d. lang, the model Maureen Gallagher and singer Billie Myers. “You get involved with certain groups, make social contacts,” she explained years later, “that’s how I met my friends, and Madonna especially, who’s my best friend.” Although she once quipped that she could “discover a cure for cancer and still only be known as Madonna’s girlfriend,” Casares has proved herself to be a capable businesswoman. She has owned three successful nightclubs in Miami — Liquid, Joia and Bar Room.
With her boyish, short, dark hair and contagious personality, Ingrid appealed to Madonna who, after meeting her, said that she wanted to get to know her better. The two became fast friends, much to the dismay of Sandra Bernhard.
Photographer Chita Mavros was a friend of Ingrid at the time. She recalls, “Ingrid and Sandra were having certain relationship problems. Sandra asked Madonna to talk to Ingrid, to intervene and help her work things out. However, in the course of doing that, Madonna and Ingrid became very close, very quickly. Suddenly, all Ingrid could talk about was ‘Madonna, this’ and ‘Madonna, that.’ Sandra was upset.”
Since that time, Sandra has said she could have solved her problems with Ingrid if only Madonna had stayed out of them. “She felt that Madonna — with her show-business lifestyle and wild days and nights — was a complete distraction to Ingrid,” said Chita Mavros. “Then, she accused Madonna of sleeping with Ingrid, though Madonna denied it.
“Madonna and Sandra had some horrible fights about Ingrid. One day, Sandra went to Ingrid’s apartment, and who did she find coming out of the shower in nothing but a towel? Madonna. Sandra went berserk, screaming and hollering and accusing Ingrid of cheating on her with her best friend. There was no controlling her, she was that irate. After that, she and Ingrid broke up, and she and Madonna were no longer friends.”
The irony, at least according to Chita Mavros, was t
hat Ingrid and Madonna were probably not involved in a sexual relationship. Ingrid had said that Madonna wasn’t her “type,” and that she just appreciated her friendship. Certainly, both women deny the relationship went any deeper.
But the rift with Sandra Bernhard has continued. Today, she has nothing but contempt for Madonna. “Madonna is a woman who doesn’t have the vaguest idea who she is,” Bernhard says. “I gave her everything — friendship, love. How did she pay me back? By stabbing me in the back. I’m telling you as sure as I’m standing here, Madonna will steal everything from you, even your closest friends if she can get her grubby little hands on them.”
Sandra — who was once Madonna’s greatest ally and supporter — now says that she has always found Madonna’s tributes to icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich reprehensible. “I could hear Dietrich screaming from her grave, ‘Kill that trash, and kill her now,’” says Bernhard. “Did I tell you about my nightmare?” she asks. “I dreamed I was Madonna, shopping at Tiffany’s, where I was trying to buy some class. Then, suddenly I turned into a toothless cleaning lady. I woke up with a big smile on my face and then it crossed my mind — didn’t Carol Burnett already do this?”
Madonna seems wounded by Sandra’s comments whenever she hears about them through friends, most of whom have managed to stay neutral. “I never did anything to her. Not a thing,” she says. “The reason the relationship ended is the reason most friendships fall apart: envy and jealousy. She’s a brilliant woman who has a lot of talent. I can’t believe she would say those terrible things about me. Every year that goes by, I think she’s going to just get over it, but she doesn’t. So, on some level, I guess I must still be important in her life or she wouldn’t keep trashing me in the press.”
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