Madonna (42 page)

Another important aspect of having Madonna in the film was Beatty's decision to have her sing in it as well. The juxtaposition of having Madonna sing three Stephen Sondheim songs was one of the cleverest touches. Warren felt that the combination of Madonna with Sondheim was not only unexpected but it brought a fresh dimension to both of them.

When Madonna first received Sondheim's songs she wasn't used to his sense of rhyme and his wordy lyrics. “They're quite difficult,” she announced before recording them.
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The Sondheim songs captured the 1930s era the film was set in and were especially believable for both characters, Madonna and Breathless.

When filming began in February 1989, one-take Madonna had to comply with Warren's obsessive attention for details. One of her scenes as Breathless performing at the Club Ritz had to be shot over and over to get the right movement when she turns around and kisses her own shoulder. Another scene with take after take was one in which Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice is rehearsing Breathless and the club chorines in a late-night session.

From the very beginning, the idea of Madonna and Warren Beatty having an affair sounded like a press release made in heaven. This was definitely the height of Madonna's “useful boyfriend” penchant. Since Sean Penn was now out of the picture, she clearly needed to align herself with an even more successful man. Throughout the year that they were an item, the whole affair was a gossip columnist's dream. “Madonna and Warren” sightings were published almost weekly, with Liz Smith, Suzy, and Cindy Adams all scrambling to “scoop” each other: Madonna and Warren spotted dining on lemon tagliarini at Hollywood's chic Golumbia Bar & Grill; Madonna and Warren seen dancing at The Daisy in Beverly Hills; and on and on.

However, as famous as Warren Beatty is for having affairs with his leading ladies, Madonna is equally famous for living her entire life in front of a camera. Warren probably had no idea what he was ultimately bargaining for. One of the most telling scenes in Madonna's autobiographical
Truth or Dare
is the one in which Warren questions her obsession with living every moment on video. This clearly irritated him. Madonna's making public every detail of her affair with Warren reached a new height when she was asked by one interviewer about the size of Warren's penis. “I haven't measured it,” she replied candidly, “but it's a perfectly wonderful size.”
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The funniest thing about the whole Madonna and Warren affair was its rapid demise immediately after
Dick Tracy
was released. It was almost as if it was just a convenient fling for both of them. However, throughout 1989 they were almost inseparable. Madonna had just dumped the childishly volatile Sean, so what she needed in her life was a real man. For the time being, Warren Beatty perfectly filled the bill as her knight in shining armor.

The romance was also a great distraction from her career, because the whole Pepsi scandal was exploding while she was in production with
Dick Tracy
. In March 1991, when she launched her
Like a Prayer
album at a gala party Warner Records threw for her, Beatty was among the well-wishers on hand. Fame loves fame, and there is nothing like a superstar couple to magnify and intensify both stars' incandescence. The spotlight that was fixed on Madonna was just growing brighter and brighter and she loved it.

“I learned a lot working with Warren Beatty, who really knows the business,” claimed Madonna. She was also confident about the on-camera results: “It's the biggest role I've had in terms of what I was asked to do, and how important my character is.”
²¹²

Months before the June 1990 release of
Dick Tracy
, Walt Disney Pictures began plotting the $10 million campaign to publicize the film. Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg was busy waging a war of the faxes with his friend Don Simpson, producer of
Days of Thunder
. Simpson sent Katzenberg a fax that read, “Wherever you go, you won't escape the
Thunder.'''
Katzenberg grabbed a pen and faxed back the reply, “Wait till you see how big my
Dick
is!”
²³

Media manipulator extraordinaire Madonna was already busy mounting her own multimedia assault to coincide with the release of
Dick Tracy
. The Pepsi-sponsored concert tour of 1989 had been aborted, and a more elaborately plotted tour was aimed at the summer of 1990. The first year of the nineties was truly the summer of Madonna. Her sound, her image, her likeness were everywhere.

When
Batman
became the summer hit film of 1989, it was accompanied by two separate soundtrack albums. The biggest seller was the
Batman
album by Prince, which was composed of music he had written and recorded for that film, plus several cuts inspired by it that never found their way into the actual movie. The original score album, which was the instrumental and orchestral soundtrack, was composed and recorded by Danny Elfman.

The soundtrack of Beatty's
Dick Tracy
upped the ante with three separate album releases. Since Madonna was involved in the project, Sire Records president Seymour Stein was brought in as a music consultant. Warren's idea was to fill the soundtrack of his film with songs and music that were fresh and new, yet sounded as if they were from the 1930s. Stein turned to singer/songwriter Andy Paley to begin writing, producing, and supervising the recording of over a dozen songs that would evoke the era.

Paley consulted with Beatty, who described the kind of songs he envisioned. Paley immediately went to work and submitted the songs to Warren and Madonna. The song that most impressed Madonna was one called “Now I'm Following You.” Madonna ended up recording it as a duet with Warren Beatty. Unfortunately, the song isn't heard in the film, because Warren felt that it would be uncharacteristic for the stoic Dick Tracy to suddenly burst into song. The version that made it into the film is the version recorded by Paley himself.

The songs that Paley wrote and/or supervised the writing of were recorded with an all-star cast. Paley chose several of his all-time favorite singers, including Brenda Lee, Darlene Love, Jerry Lee Lewis, and LaVern Baker, and gave them each a cut on the soundtrack album. He also turned to several contemporary artists, including k.d. Lang, Take 6, August (Kid Creole) Darnell, Al Jarreau, and rapper Ice-T, and took them into the studio. All of Paley's songs ended up on the
Dick Tracy
album, although only half of them actually ended up in the film.

For the orchestral album, Warren tapped
Batman
composer Danny Elfman to score the
Dick Tracy
action scenes and incidental music. This music is found on the album
Dick Tracy: The Original Score
.

Meanwhile, Madonna came up with her own album called
I'm Breathless
. It included the three songs that Stephen Sondheim wrote for her character, which appeared in the film, in addition to two of Andy Paley's songs: “Now I'm Following You” and “I'm Going Bananas.” She then wrote five songs with Pat Leonard that were based on the characters and ambiance that the film inspired. “He's a Man” was written as though sung by Breathless and dedicated to Tracy, and “Hanky Panky” was an outgrowth of a line Madonna delivers to Beatty in the film: “You don't know whether to hit me or kiss me.”
²⁰⁸
The song is about being sexually aroused by having one's behind spanked.

The very idea of sexually explicit Madonna doing a film for squeaky-clean Walt Disney Pictures is something of a stretch of the imagination. Although the character of Breathless Mahoney absolutely exudes sex, Madonna found herself battling the Disney censors. They managed to talk her out of a couple of explicit S&M lyrics in the song “Hanky Panky,” although she did manage to get a couple of “dick” jokes into her ad-libbed version of the song “Now I'm Following You (Part II)”—which did not appear in the movie.

The biggest song from Madonna's
I'm Breathless
album is one which not only did not appear in the movie, but had nothing at all to do with
Dick Tracy
. That song was “Vogue.”

While Madonna was still pulling singles off her
Like a Prayer
album, she was working with dance remix producer Shep Pettibone. Shep had remixed “Into the Groove” for Madonna's
You Can Dance
album, and in the fall of 1989 the pair made their first stab at collaborating. While they were originally trying to come up with a B-side for one of her singles, what they ended up with was Madonna's next Number One international hit. Explaining the unexpected success of “Vogue,” Pettibone recalls that he and Madonna were just trying to create a fun dance record. However, when the record company executives heard it they recognized that it was a Number One smash record and insisted that it become Madonna's next single release.

With lyrics mentioning Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, and Bette Davis, the song qualified for the 1930s theme of the
Dick Tracy
project, which is how it ended up being the instant smash that launched the
I'm Breathless
album.

Vogueing is sometimes misconstrued as a mere dance floor move, characterized by lightning-fast arm movements around the face. It is in actuality the result of a whole New York City fantasy trip. In the mid-eighties groups of predominantly black and Hispanic drag queens got together for vogueing balls or events in which they would simulate the actions of runway models. The hand motions and spins were meant to mimic the demonstrative poses of high-fashion models, such as those on the cover of
Vogue
magazine—hence the name.

Groups of voguers compete with each other for the top prizes at vogueing events. They copy the pretentiousness of real-life fashion “houses,” as in the “House of Chanel,” the “House of Cassini.” The drag versions would be outlandish things like the “House of Extravaganza,” and the “House of Swatch.” The whole vogueing phenomenon was ultimately captured on film in the hit documentary
Paris Is Burning
.

Although it was more of an uptown New York “in”-joke than anything else, Madonna took vogueing and its whole “strike a pose” attitude to the masses. When the single was Number One in America, only a tiny segment of the record-buying public realized that Madonna was giving a nod to a bunch of drag queens in Harlem. As usual, she had the last laugh when the single shot to the top of the charts.

With an album in the works, and her role in
Dick Tracy
finished, Madonna was on to the next layer of her marketing scheme for 1990: the concert tour. The tour had been in the planning stages since September 1989. This time around Madonna was determined to go all the way with sets, costumes, and outrageousness.

In January 1990 she placed a two-by-four-inch classified ad in the Auditions section of
Daily Variety
. Headlined
MADONNA WORLD TOUR
1990, the casting call read: “Open Audition for FIERCE Male Dancers who know the meaning of TROOP STYLE, BEAT BOY and VOGUE. Wimps and Wanna-Be's need not apply.”
²¹³

Two of her dancers, Jose Guitierez and Luis Camacho, she discovered on an evening nightclubbing in New York. “I went to the Sound Factory with my girlfriend Debi M. because I wanted to go dancing,” Madonna explains. “At the time I was trying to visualize things for my show, and I was hanging around a lot of clubs—watching different styles, looking for dancers.”
²⁰⁶

They spotted a group of dancers who were part of the vogueing group House of Extravaganza. She immediately found herself blown away by the dancers, especially two of them: Luis and Jose. She approached them and set up an audition. When they really let loose at the audition, she hired Luis and Jose on the spot for her upcoming concert tour.

At this point, Madonna's friend Karole Armitage was set to choreograph the show. Present at the dancer's auditions at Landmark Studios in Hollywood were Madonna, Armitage, and Shabba Doo, who had choreographed her last tour. Madonna wore strategically torn jeans* and a black top, and she snacked on vegetarian health food chips.

The dancers auditioned in groups of ten, and they danced to a hot remixed dance version of “Keep It Together.” She shouted at one group of dancers, “Sexy, we want to see sexy!” When one of the dancers showed up with a bandanna and a cap, Madonna shouted, “Get that stuff off and take that bandanna off. That shit went out in the sixties. I don't care what Axl Rose is doing!”
²¹⁴

Not long after the rest of the dancers were cast, Madonna had a change of heart about using Armitage as her choreographer, and replaced her with Vincent Paterson. Apparently Karole's vision of the show's choreography conflicted with Madonna's. According to Armitage, there was no room for her own thoughts and ideas, so Madonna fired her.

When contacted for the job, Paterson claims, “Madonna told me to break every rule I could think of, and then when I was done to make up some new ones and break them.” With that they began staging the show. According to him, “This is Madonna's every fantasy come true. It's one hallucination after another—a combination of rock and roll, theater, and Broadway. It's a real mixed animal.”
²¹⁵

She gave similar rule-breaking instructions to the tour's costume designer, Jean-Paul Gaultier. “We all have feminine and masculine aspects to our personalities, it's a reflection of reality,” claims Gaultier of his perception of life and its effect on his fashions. Madonna sketched out some of her ideas herself, and sent them to Gaultier in Paris. “A tough outer shell at times protects hidden vulnerability,” Jean-Paul said, explaining the costumes with the sensational metallic cone breasts he devised for the tour.
²¹⁶

In addition to Gaultier's revolutionary costumes, Madonna's friend Marlene Stewart was also responsible for costumes used on the tour—particularly the marabou-trimmed dance hall outfits used in the “Hanky Panky” number, and the bathrobes used for “Material Girl.” Since this show was to have several settings and themes, Madonna felt that she needed some contrasting looks for the show.