Madonna

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  In early 1995, Dennis confided in friends that Madonna was “a lot of fun.” Meanwhile, Madonna told her own confidantes that she loved Dennis, though it seems difficult to imagine that any of them would have believed as much — or that she believed it herself. It’s more likely that she was just carried away by the sexual chemistry between them. When he was unavailable and she couldn’t reach him on the telephone — perhaps he was screening his calls? — she flooded him with romantic faxes with salutations such as “Good morning, Daddy Long Legs.”

  These silly fun and games lasted for just a few months and didn’t amount to much, other than a wild ride in the bedroom for both participants. Madonna ended the relationship when she heard that Dennis was gossiping about her to mutual friends. Later, when some of her faxes to him found their way into publication in the tabloid the Globe, she realized that, if anything, she had been unlucky in lust. Rodman’s comments to Playboy that he had to end it with her when she started pressing him to impregnate her — certainly a running theme in her life at this time with the men she dated — made her even angrier at him. (Rodman recalled to Playboy: “She said, ‘Be in a hotel room in Las Vegas on this specific day so you can get me pregnant.’” He declined.)

  A little more than a year later, Rodman wrote his book. In it, he was explicit about his and Madonna’s foreplay and pillow talk: “She wasn’t an acrobat. But she wasn’t a dead fish, either.” When the memoir was published, Madonna ran to the store and purchased a copy herself. According to sources, she read the chapter about her and became so agitated that she threw the book into the fire.

  “A certain disgusting basketball player I made the mistake of going out with decided to publish an autobiography and devoted a whole chapter to what it was like to have sex with me,” Madonna later seethed. “Complete with made-up dialogue that even a bad porno writer would not take credit for. It’s so silly I’m sure no one will take it seriously, but I don’t feel like reading the headlines and of course I feel exploited once again by someone I trusted and let into my life.”

  She also explained, “When I first knew him, I sent him a few very silly faxes with really childish drawings on them, and months after I’d stopped seeing him, they appeared on [the tabloid TV program] Hard Copy, and I thought, “This is only the beginning . . .”

  Her public may be surprised to learn that Madonna was too discreet to tell the truth about her relationship with Rodman which, as it happened, bore little resemblance to the way he portrayed it in his book. According to close friends of Madonna’s and Rodman’s, the couple only engaged in sexual activity twice — and not “fifty to a hundred times” as Rodman bragged in his book.

  Says dancer Trina Graves, who dated Rodman in Chicago, “He told me very specifically that he and Madonna had slept together one time in Miami, and that it was a big disappointment. He blamed it on her, saying she was frigid. He said he couldn’t get excited when he was with her, because she was too demanding in bed. He said that she emasculated him.

  “But, after having been with Dennis myself, I can see the other side. He’s much too selfish to make love to a woman in a way that would be considered memorable. Mine was a boring experience with him, bland. Nothing to speak of.” Graves recalls that the basketball star didn’t even take off his silk suit for their encounter. Rather, he just dropped his pants in a way that suggested a pornographic moment rather than a lovemaking session. “And, no,” she allows, “he did not become aroused with me, either.”

  A friend of Madonna’s who has known her for twenty years concurs, “Madonna made a vow a long time ago to only have sex one time with a man if he proved himself too selfish to care about her satisfaction — and that certainly defines Dennis’s approach. Also, she wanted more from a man than what Dennis had to offer. Of that, she was certain.”

  To this particular friend, Madonna confided that after she and Dennis became drunk one evening, they tumbled into bed together. “The poor guy couldn’t even get excited for her,” said the friend. “She blamed it on alcohol that night. Then, the next night, she bent her rule and let him try again.

  “This time, Dennis performed, but only to his satisfaction — not hers. The whole thing lasted about fifteen minutes. Then, that was it. They never had sex again.”

  Madonna’s friend says that, after Dennis’s book was published, the singer decided not to tell the truth about her affair with him because she didn’t want to “be as mean to him as he’d been to her, lying about her in his book. None of it was true.” Though she told the media that the book was “full of lies,” Madonna decided to let Rodman maintain his macho image. She did not reveal that he was a dud in the bedroom. “Madonna could have put a dent in Rodman’s machismo reputation if she had decided to tell the truth about his sexual prowess,” says the source, “but, instead, I guess she opted to have mercy on him. She told me, ‘I feel sorry for the creep.’”

  During Madonna’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, Oprah noted that she had read in the press that Rodman wished to apologize to Madonna for the book (which had spent eight weeks at Number 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and had clearly generated a lot of attention for him). Madonna said, “Well, he’d better crawl from here to China.” In fact, Madonna and Dennis had already had a telephone conversation about the book. Somehow, Rodman managed to telephone Madonna in London to apologize “for any misunderstandings.”

  Reportedly, she said to him, “Dennis, you and I both know what happened when we made love . . . and it was nothing to write a book about.”

  Role Model?

  Because she is so well known for her public relations savvy, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that Madonna genuinely likes giving interviews to the media. Though she feels that she has said everything she wants to say to the press — and more than once — she fully understands the value of publicity and is always willing to play the game if it’s at a necessary time in her life and career. She dislikes most reporters and writers — “parasites!” — but recognizes that dealing with them is a necessary evil. While filming Evita, she knew that she still had to engage with the press, even though she was exhausted by her schedule. After all, she was making an expensive picture with a lot riding on it, not only for her but also for its producers. Any publicity, she realized, would probably help the picture. Still, she couldn’t help but be distrustful of the media, mostly because of the way her pregnancy was being handled in the press.

  Madonna was hurt, livid at times, to read press editorials debating whether or not she was a decent role model for young girls. Angrily, Madonna told one reporter that society is “sick.” When asked to explain she continued, “This bizarre interest and fascination with . . . well, you would think I was the first celebrity that wasn’t married that got pregnant. It’s just so absurd, the amount of attention and how it’s skewed. Like it’s so unusual, what I’m doing.”

  She was particularly angered to read that Camille Paglia, the controversial gay feminist, had implied that the reason Madonna was having a child out of wedlock was because she was unable to bond with a man. Paglia noted that the public had reason to be concerned for the well-being of the child. “Does anyone complain that neither Susan Sarandon nor Goldie Hawn is married to the father of her children?” Madonna retaliated, smacking a table with her palm. Who said a word when Woody Allen and Mia Farrow had a child and continued to live across the park from each other? Why are these people not expected to be role models?”

  Madonna speculated — and perhaps accurately — that the public would be more comfortable if she simply married Carlos Leon, only then to have the marriage fail. But if she was to be honest about her future with Leon, she had to admit that there was no future with him. She certainly wasn’t about to enter into marriage with him just to placate the public.

  “I don’t want to be a spokesperson for marriage, OK?” she railed to a reporter for USA Weekend news magazine. “I should be able to choose the things I want to be a spokesperson for. Why can’t I be for fr
eedom of expression and for practicing safe sex and those kind of things? That is freedom of expression — to say I don’t feel like I have to get married to have a good relationship and raise children in a healthy way.”

  Perhaps the best course of action would simply have been to stop the madness . . . stop doing interviews, stop reading stories about herself, stop calling reporters to engage in debates with them about what they had written. However, she simply could not help herself. “If she knew that something was being published, oh my God! she just had to read it,” said one of her former associates. “And, oh my God! she just had to debate it. One would have thought she had enough on her mind with the film, but no, not Madonna. She had to take on the media, as well. Why? I don’t know . . .”

  Perhaps the reason for Madonna’s behavior with the press is that — as demonstrated by her past behavior — she seems to be a person who has to have as much drama in her life as possible. When it becomes too quiet, she seems compelled to find a reason for chaos. When she feels that she’s finally focused on a project, she seems to have to find a reason for disarray. That’s Madonna.

  With two weeks left of shooting, the pregnant star was rightfully exhausted. For five months, she had been up each morning at six to endure three hours of fussing and styling, having her hair whipped into the elaborate braids and rolls of the forties. Her nails were manicured to expensive perfection, her eye color changed to brown with painful and irritating contact lenses, and false teeth were awkwardly put into place. For Madonna it felt as if she had put in a full day before she had even started work. Though she tried to focus her vision as she walked onto the set in full regalia, often her surroundings were just a blur. As set designers and costumers looked on approvingly, Madonna performed those last few weeks in a way that seemed somewhat disaffected.

  At this same time, she also felt guilty about any concentration she was able to give to the movie. As she later said, she often found herself “apologizing to my unborn child for any uncomfortable bouncing around I was causing it.” She longed to go shopping for baby clothes, she admitted, but knew that she would have to wait just two more weeks, until the movie was completed, before she could give in to the call of motherhood.

  Ironically, some of the most grueling scenes in the movie were scheduled for the last two weeks. Feeling helpless and anxiety ridden, she was called to do Eva’s draining death scenes, as well as close-up retakes of the dramatic balcony scene, in the last weeks of production. She popped some aspirins in her mouth, and quickly downed them with some Evian water to prepare herself for the ordeal ahead. After throwing a terrified glance in Alan Parker’s direction, she did what she knew she had to do. “The intensity of the scenes we’ve been shooting and the amount of emotional work and concentration needed to get through the day are so mentally and physically exhausting that I’m sure I will need to be institutionalized when it is over,” she would later write in her Vanity Fair “diary.”

  Through it all, the one thing that kept Madonna going was that which had always kept her going: the hope of achieving greater success than she had known in the past. Her gut instinct told her that she was doing her best work in this movie. What she had always wanted for herself, more than to be a pop sensation or successful concert performer, was to be a movie star. Yet, it was the one goal that had always seemed the most elusive. If she could just hold on and continue doing the best work she could with the kind of quality performance she’d been giving since the beginning of work on Evita, Madonna felt certain that her future in movies would, finally, be assured. That kind of success would most certainly make all of the hell in her life worthwhile. Or, at least that’s what she thought at the time.

  Anticlimax

  After all of the hard work, anxiety and anticipation, the last day of shooting Evita, on May 27, 1996, proved to be anticlimactic for Madonna. She would later admit that she had fantasized an emotional ending to her long ordeal. Imagining herself breaking down in front of her co-workers once having uttered her final lines, she thought she would be completely overwhelmed by the experience. While she would feel grateful that the job was over, she would also feel sad that the time had come to say good-bye to all of those wonderful people she had so grown to love and admire, and who had shown her such love and admiration in return — or at least they had in this particular fantasy. Madonna had even gone to the trouble of rehearsing a dramatic, tearful farewell speech, one that each crew member and co-star would take home as part of his or her fond memory of her, one that they would be able to recount to family and friends . . . and maybe even to future Madonna biographers. Running a trembling hand over her brow, she was all but prepared to deliver her comments in regal, Evita style when, at the conclusion of the last shot, Alan Parker shouted out, “That’s a wrap.” However, before she had the chance to deliver her speech, everyone scattered and quickly went about the business of breaking down the sets. No one paid her a second thought.

  Suddenly, it was all over. However, Madonna didn’t feel the way she thought she would feel, as she later explained. There was no sense of sadness, elation or gratitude, as she would later tell it. Rather, she just felt . . . numb. She blinked as quick tears came to her eyes. Then, she looked about helplessly, as if she was trying to comprehend what had just happened. Perhaps noticing her confusion, someone came over to her — she doesn’t remember who — hugged her warmly and then whispered something — she doesn’t remember what — in her ear.

  As the crew packed up its gear, there were no speeches, no sad good-byes. “I was just too damn tired,” Madonna later recalled. “And so was everyone else.”

  All told, there had been 299 scenes. Four thousand extras appeared in period dress. Almost 6,000 costumes were needed from twenty different costume houses in London, Rome, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Madonna’s wardrobe consisted of 85 changes, 39 hats, 45 pairs of shoes, 56 pairs of earrings and as many different hair designs — while the art department created 320 different sets, including 24,000 props.

  For Madonna, the filming ended just in time, for not only was her belly pressing against her tailored suits, she was on the brink of an emotional meltdown. “I couldn’t have taken one more minute of it,” she would recall.

  Yet, even though she was finished with the movie, the pregnant star would not be permitted much of a rest. To sell Evita to the masses, Disney Studios’ publicity machine went into top gear. The studio was determined to create an “event” around the opening of the film by announcing advance bookings, “exclusive-run” launches in major American cities. Within weeks of her return to the States, Madonna found herself an integral part of a massive campaign that included publicity in fashion magazines intent on promoting the “Evita look.” In its November 1996 issue, for instance, Vanity Fair allowed her to publish what would, perhaps, turn out to be one of the world’s longest press releases, something called “Madonna’s Private Diaries.”

  “This is a diary of sorts,” Madonna wrote in an introduction to the lengthy feature, “a sketchbook of feelings, ideas, and dreams, all relating to one subject — the making of Evita . . . the month before shooting began I made a promise to myself that I would write everything down that happened to me. I had butterflies in my stomach and I knew I was in for the ride of my life. I wanted to remember every detail.” Madonna’s public devoured this course, just as they did everything she served, not taking the time to figure out that people who keep “private diaries” to document important events in their lives usually don’t publish them several months later in international magazines. But Madonna’s “sketchbook” of feelings did provide some useful background information on the making of the film which, as it was designed to do, did make the reader curious to see it.

  *

  By September 1996, Madonna had been profoundly affected by her pregnancy. On September 9, she began keeping a journal about her pregnancy. In it, she wrote that there were days when she couldn’t even function because she felt at the mercy of mood swing
s that made life impossible for her. She also wrote of hemorrhoids, back pains and said, “My life has been hell.”

  Still, she managed to have some fun with friends. “Once she finished Evita, we got to spend a lot of time together,” says her good friend Juliette Hohnen. “It was probably the first time in years she was forced to stay in one place for a while. We giggled when we went on our trial runs from her house to the hospital in preparation for the big moment. No matter how many times we practiced, we always made a wrong turn somewhere and then, like a couple of squabbling sisters, we would blame each other for bad driving or bad navigating.”

  As well as a written journal, Madonna also kept a video account of her pregnancy. Friends who have seen her video history say that it is so touching it should be released to the public. Says a source, “She talked about how hard the pregnancy was, how sick she became, how her face broke out in blemishes, how unattractive she felt and how she knew it would all be worth it for her child. I know that when her daughter sees these videos in years to come, she will feel a special closeness to her mom that Madonna never felt with hers — which was one of Madonna’s goals with this project.”

  “M [many of her friends call her “M”] told me that feeling a baby growing within her made her want to make an effort to straighten out some of the things she’d done in the past that she wasn’t happy about now,” said her good friend. “For instance, I know that during her pregnancy she at least attempted to mend her years-long rift with Michael Jackson.”