Madonna

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  While established Argentinian charities shunned her as the wife of the president, Evita had the power to establish her own charity foundations, which brought in enormous sums of money. Though she did a lot of good for the people of Argentina, she also spent lavishly on herself. She dazzled all by spending millions of dollars on jewels and haute couture. Born poor and illegitimate, she understood that the image of a woman who had attained great success against all odds was her most important weapon in reaching working-class people. The masses wanted her to succeed because her success meant the possibility of their own. “I’m one of you,” she would say, throwing her arms forward and becoming a symbol of what an illegitimate child from an impoverished family could attain.

  Fame, money and glamour were not enough for the ambitious Evita. She also craved power on a major scale and had ambitions to be the first woman elected to the office of vice-president. Sadly, her dreams would go unfulfilled. Cancer took her life in 1952 at the age of thirty-three, thereby assuring that she would forever remain, at least in her adoring public’s eyes, a saint.

  It was a terrific story just as it was . . . and certainly the story to which Madonna had originally been attracted. But now she felt it was in need of some tweaking.

  “It’s just not me,” Madonna told director Alan Parker.

  “Indeed, it’s not,” he shot back. “It’s Evita Perón.”

  “But my public will think it’s me. And it’s not.”

  “But it’s Evita Perón!”

  And back and forth they went . . .

  It seemed that Madonna was most offended by the implication of Evita having used so many men in her climb to the top, perhaps because the press and public had often implied just that about her. “It’s a way envious people undermine your strength and your accomplishments,” she observed in a Vanity Fair interview. “I didn’t use any man who didn’t want to be used,” she said. “If anything, I’ve been used. I’m the one who has been used.” Of course, Madonna was really not as blind to her past as that observation seemed to indicate. Anyone who knew her well would remember that she had admitted to having used people in the past — both men and women — and that her conscience had bothered her about such manipulations, going all the way back to feeling regretful for not having Camille Barbone at her side when she finally became successful with her first album in 1983. However, now was not the time for true confessions.

  “I thought it [the original take of Evita Perón] was a male chauvinist point of view, that any woman who’s powerful is a whore or slept her way to the top,” she stated. “There’s that implication right through the musical and it’s ludicrous. You can’t sleep your way to the top,” she concluded. She then stopped abruptly, perhaps thinking about what she was saying, and quickly revised it: “Well, in Hollywood, maybe, but she [Evita Perón] influenced an entire nation.”

  “I hate that she looks like such a bitch,” she complained, making clear her intention to tweak things. “I’d like it if she was . . . snicer, I guess. More dimensional.”

  “Well, a lot of people may have liked it if Madonna was nicer, more dimensional,” said chagrined film critic Gene Siskel when the film was eventually released. “But, at least from what I hear, she’s not that nice, and she’s not that dimensional. What’s true is true . . .”

  As seen through Madonna’s eyes, Eva Perón would no longer be a political animal. Instead, she would be “nicer, more dimensional.” Gone would be the brilliant, scheming, conniving climber who used sex as a weapon to demolish anyone who got in her way — the truth of Evita’s story, and maybe even of Madonna’s, depending on how one chose to look at it. In her place would be a shy, reserved, ethereal Eva Perón who had been pushed around by men but who — by using her brains and willpower — would eventually rise to the top of the political ladder. Because she was so beautiful and persuasive, she would also go on to become a legend. After her death at the end of the movie, the viewer would weep, that’s how much he would respect and love Eva Perón. “A couple of years ago, no one would have cried if I died, people were so sick of me,” Madonna said, privately. “I only hope that will change with this movie.”

  Once Madonna was able to fashion the role in Evita to her liking, it was time to prepare herself to become Eva Perón. As had always been her style, the moment she was sure she had her goal in sight, she would make sure not to stumble. Throwing herself into the project, she began with a plan first to improve her singing range.

  Being a filmed musical, all of Evita’s cast members would be expected to sing their parts themselves and not rely on other voices. Madonna’s ability to do so — she was, after all, a singer — was at least one of the reasons the producers chose her for the starring role in the first place. However, the reason Madonna was thought to be ideal for the job could also have been the very reason she would have been terrible at it. Yes, she was a singer . . . but a popsinger. While Broadway and Hollywood’s acting community pondered her ability to deliver her lines convincingly in front of the camera, Broa dway’s music sector smugly considered the idea of Madonna singing Tim Rice’s lyrics over Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical creation with tongue firmly in cheek.

  In some respects, Madonna felt she was up to the job. Over the years, she had unwittingly prepared for it through every little cheap demo she’d ever financed, through every music track she’d ever cracked her vocals over, through every recording studio couch she ever fell asleep on, toiling to make another hit record. The problem, however, was that nothing she’d ever done could totally prepare her for the recording of Evita — she’d never done anything quite like it. She’d participated in film soundtracks before, but in those situations she usually wielded considerable control over her musical contribution. She wrote and produced several of the songs for the I’m Breathless album, from Dick Tracy, but that was a “Music from and Inspired By” production, not a soundtrack album in the classic sense. The Evita soundtrack would be integral to the film. After all, this was a musical; the soundtrack was the film.

  Madonna immediately went into vocal training with respected New York vocal coach Joan Layder. “She had to use her voice in a way she’d never used it before,” observed Layder. “Evita is real musical theater — it’s operatic, in a sense. Madonna developed an upper register that she didn’t know she had.”

  Ironically, one of Layder’s clients was Patti LuPone. Always competitive, Madonna feared falling short when being compared with the bombastic-voiced LuPone. Layder joked that Madonna felt that LuPone had her ear to the door during the lessons.

  Vocal training for the film was difficult. Madonna was forced to stretch herself vocally in ways she had never before attempted. However, even she was amazed at her own vocal dexterity, once she became accustomed to using her “tool” (as Layder called it) in the proper way — singing from her diaphragm rather than her throat. Whereas she had often sounded tinny and thin on her recordings prior to this time, suddenly — after just a few weeks of training — her voice was full-bodied, rich and theatrical. Every time she opened her mouth to sing, she was amazed to find herself accessing elements of her voice she never knew were there. It was as if she had gone to bed and, magically, awakened a real singer. “Where did that come from?” she would ask Layder of her new sound. “God,” she told her. “God!”

  “I suddenly discovered that I had been using only half of my voice,” Madonna later told Los Angeles Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn. “Until then, I had pretty much accepted that I had a very limited range, which is fine. Anita O’Day and Edith Piaf had very limited ranges, too, and I am a big fan. So I figured I’d make do with the best I had.”

  As it happened, she wouldn’t have to “make do” with a limited vocal range. At the end of each lesson, she would excitedly telephone friends and say, “You won’t believe this! Listen!” Then, she would sing into the telephone at full volume, completely amazed by her own proficiency.

  When, in September 1995, Madonna arrived in London with Antonio Band
eras and Jonathan Pryce to start rehearsals for the recording of the Evita soundtrack, she was ready. Every professional musical experience Madonna had up until this point — every song she sang, how she learned to breathe, how she learned to position her mouth in front of the microphone, how she learned to maintain vocal stamina, as well as her new vocal training — served to prepare her for the day she first stepped into the door of CTS Studios in London.

  Parker was delighted to hear the “new” Madonna. Since all the filming would consist of the actors lip-synching to prerecorded vocals, the making of Evita was double the work for all involved. First, the actors were required to perform their roles in the recording studio, and then they would have to repeat the performance in front of the camera on a film set.

  On the first day of actual recording, though, it became apparent that special consideration would have to be given to the film’s female star. “I’m used to writing my own songs and I go into a studio, choose the musicians and say what sounds good or doesn’t,” Madonna later explained. “To work on forty-six songs with everyone involved and not have a say was a big adjustment. It was difficult to go in, spill my guts, then say, ‘Do what you will with it.’” Moreover, Madonna was not comfortable laying down a “guide vocal” simultaneously with an eighty-four-piece orchestra in a huge studio. She was used to singing over a prerecorded track and not having musicians listen to her as she made mistakes natural to the recording process. “Three worlds were colliding,” Parker observed, “musical theater, pop, and film.”

  Despite all of her hard work, the first day of recording was a disaster. She had to sing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” on that day, and in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Believing that she had done a terrible job, she stormed from the studio, tears rolling down her face, pale as porcelain. (“How can I go on?” she lamented. “I can’t work like this. I’m an artist. Not a puppet.”) Later Parker would dub that first day “Black Monday.”

  “I was so nervous,” she recalls, “because I knew that Andrew had had reservations about me, and here I am singing the hardest song in the piece. All of a sudden there, with everybody for the first time, it was really tense.”

  An emergency meeting was held among Alan Parker, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Madonna. The entire eighty-four-piece orchestra was fired, and Webber also brought in a new conductor. It was also decided that Madonna would record all of her vocals at a more contemporary studio in which she would be more at ease, while the large orchestrations would be conducted and recorded elsewhere. It was also decided that Madonna would sing only in the afternoons, and every other day. Days off were allocated for her to rest her voice. Still, regardless of the accommodations for her, the recording of the soundtrack was an arduous task. The cast and director worked for four months putting in over 400 recording hours — and that was before a single foot of film had been shot.

  The Stalking Trial

  On Wednesday January 3, 1996, Madonna arrived at a Los Angeles courthouse under tight security in a large black luxury car with tinted windows. She could be seen inside wearing dark glasses as the automobile was driven into an underground garage that is also used to bring prisoners into the building. Reporters were brought into the courtroom before Madonna was led in by a contingent of armed bailiffs and bodyguards. The new, toned-down Madonna was dressed in a smart, double-breasted charcoal suit with a calf-length skirt, simple jewelry, black pumps and red lipstick, her auburn hair pulled back into a French twist. She looked lovely, but appeared to be nervous.

  The time had finally come for Madonna to testify in the case against Robert Hoskins, charged with stalking and threatening her. Because she had previously ignored a subpoena to be a witness in the case, she was now ordered to appear in court under the threat of being jailed on $5 million bail. From the witness stand, she testified that she had not previously appeared because she was afraid of Hoskins and did not want to give him the opportunity to see her up close. She proceeded to describe how she had been disturbed by his unruly appearance and “the look in his eye,” when she passed him one day as he stood in front of the gate at her entranceway. She said that she became terrified when Hoskins told Madonna’s assistant (Caresse Norman) that he was Madonna’s husband and would slit her throat “from ear to ear,” and then kill Norman and everyone else in the house if he was not allowed to see his “wife.” She said that she began to have “nightmares that he was in my house, that he was chasing after me.”

  As her stalker stared at her from just across the room, Madonna, at first visibly nervous but then becoming increasingly angry, made it clear that she was perplexed by the judge’s decision that she be forced to testify in the trial. Her attorney, Nicholas DeWitt, had tried to convince Judge Jacqueline Connor to allow Madonna to videotape her testimony or at least to have Hoskins taken from the courtroom while she testified. The female judge ruled against both motions, saying that Hoskins had a constitutional right to face his accuser and that she did not want to provide him with grounds for an appeal. Madonna was amazed. “She’s a woman,” Madonna said privately. “Why would she be so spiteful?”

  “I’m sick to my stomach,” Madonna said from the witness stand. Looking grim, she elaborated, “I feel incredibly disturbed that the man who threatened my life is sitting across from me and he has somehow made his fantasies come true. I’m sitting in front of him. And that’s what he wants.” She avoided making eye contact with Hoskins during her seventy-five-minute testimony; she glanced briefly at him, twice.

  The following day, on January 4, Madonna’s bodyguard, Basil Stephens, testified that Hoskins had been at Madonna’s Hollywood Hills property (called Castillo DeLago) on three occasions. On his first visit, Hoskins threatened to kill the bodyguard if he did not give Madonna a note he had scrawled on a religious pamphlet. On his third, Hoskins brought his bags with him and “looked like he was moving in.” Although Hoskins’s lawyer argued that he was just an unfortunate, homeless person, Stephens disagreed, saying that he considered the stalker to be “extremely dangerous.” As further evidence, the jury was also shown footage from a security camera taken the day of the shooting. It showed Hoskins ignoring a “No Trespassing” sign, climbing the front gate, jumping from a wall onto Madonna’s property, and peering into her front door.

  On his last visit to Madonna’s home in May 1995, Hoskins’s behavior had gone from bizarre to violent. Stephens testified that he was forced to shoot him during an altercation. Thinking Hoskins was dead after having fired three shots at him, Stephens left the scene to call the police. However, ten minutes later, he returned only to find Hoskins sitting up, near Madonna’s pool, with wounds to his arm and abdomen. Stephens told him that there was an ambulance on the way. In what sounded like a surreal scene from a bad movie, Stephens recalled having told the obsessed fan, “I’m sorry I shot you,” to which Hoskins answered, “No problem.”

  When Madonna heard about what had happened at her home, she became so upset that she decided to sell the $7-million estate. She said, “How can I lie by the pool knowing this thing had occurred there? I felt it was an attraction to negative energy, and I had to get out.”

  After the eight-man, four-woman jury found Robert Hoskins guilty of stalking, the judge gave him a stiff ten-year sentence, noting that “his apparent mental illness appears to increase the danger.”

  After the trial, Madonna continued to have nightmares about Robert Hoskins who, if he intended to become her focus, was sickeningly successful. Madonna said that she couldn’t help but feel that her dreams were premonitions to tragedy. Still, to this day, she has not gotten over the Hoskins ordeal. Say those closest to her, she now can’t help but feel responsible for inciting this kind of potentially cataclysmic event in her life just by virtue of some of the overtly sexual publicity campaigns (such as the Sex book) she’s done in her career, many of which could be perceived by some less emotionally stable people as an invitation to harass her. It would seem that growing up has not been easy for Madonna, especially the pa
rt having to do with facing the repercussions of, and claiming responsibility for, her past actions. Still, as an adult — and especially as a woman who was evolving into a person who understood that, as she put it, “each of our actions has a reaction” — she couldn’t just dismiss the Robert Hoskinses of her life as merely a casualty of her celebrity. Perhaps he was just the inevitable result of some of the ways she went about achieving fame.

  Making Evita

  In early February 1996, following the ordeal of the stalking trial, Madonna left Los Angeles for Buenos Aires. After recording the soundtrack to Evita, she may have thought the worst was behind her. However, Madonna was still in for a bumpy ride. When she arrived in Buenos Aires a few days before she was scheduled to begin filming, she realized that life wasn’t going to be easy for her in “this godforsaken place” (as she referred to the city). Plastered all over the city was graffiti screaming, “Madonna go home.” It was apparent that some Argentinians were unhappy with the notion that a brazen pop star would be portraying their beloved Evita.

  To make matters worse, living conditions were, at first, a lot more challenging than those to which Madonna had become accustomed during the last twelve years of being a superstar. “No gyms! No decent food!” she groused. “I can’t live like this,” she shouted at one of the film’s production assistants. “I need Evian. Do you hear me? Ev-i-an!’

  Soon, though, Madonna was ensconced — at least on weekends — in a lavish $12-million mansion, renting it for $70,000 a week. Of course, as would be the nature of any diva, she made a couple of demands deemed outrageous by some observers — such as floating gardenias in the bathroom bowls, and white orchids in all of the other rooms — as well as some other less unreasonable requests: a blender, apple and mango juices, popcorn, Gummi Bears, Special K cereal, oatmeal, potato chips, assorted fresh vegetables, teriyaki chicken, and a CD player in every room. She also asked that one room be transformed into a gym equipped with a treadmill, Lifecycle, StairMaster, Versa Climber and free weights. Of course, there was always shopping to keep her busy, as well. On one Sunday, she went on a shopping spree at the sprawling San Elmo flea market, where she stayed for three hours. Then, it was off to Antigona, a vintage clothing store where she bought fifty hats, ten pairs of gloves, a dozen dresses and ten lace mantillas. Bodyguards, chauffeurs and assistants waited to open doors for her, write out checks for her, or compliment her on her good taste.