Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 15, 1993 TAG: 9301150232
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TERRY LAWSON COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
BEYOND DOUBT
Madonna is sick.No, no, that's not a pejorative statement. We're talking ill-health sick, as in irritated throat and bronchial congestion. She can barely speak three words without violent coughing, or so speaks her apologetic publicist.
This is obviously a blow for Madonna, who was to spend this week rehearsing for a "Saturday Night Live" guest appearance. But it's a bigger blow to the journalists who have been lured to New York with promises of up-close-and-personal interviews. Now they'll be forced to make do with a group Q and A that writers usually refer to as "group gropes." This may be Madonna's idea of fantasy, but not of the writers, each of who was hoping to return home with the juiciest jolt from the $60 Million Mouth.
Instead, we settle for community quotes, issued by the Pale Duchess, who surprisingly arrives right on schedule, dressed in black velvet slacks and matching sleeveless blazer worn over a gray silk blouse. Her bleached-to-blazes hair is unalluringly lank, and the Bored European look is topped off by a pair of those retro-black rimmed glasses so favored by Italian film directors and elderly ladies who carry small dogs in their arms. No wonder she's enforced a ban on picture taking.
Otherwise, she's affable, if not approachable, and quite clearly ailing. Every sentence is punctuated by a hack that would impress an asthmatic smoker.
"Thank you for accommodating my cold," she says, in what is probably about as close to apologizing as she ever gets. "I'll try not to hock all over everybody."
On this day at least, Madonna Louise Ciccone does not sound or look much like an icon or a sex goddess, and nothing whatsoever like the Marlene Dietrich-cum-Dita character she plays in "Body of Evidence," the film she is here to promote. In her latest, most blatant attempt to become a movie star, she elects to sell the same product that has taken her to celebritydom's pinnacle. In a film originally awarded an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, she's a femme fatale on trial for murder.
"It wasn't that calculated," she says when asked if the film was intended as a companion piece to her notorious "book," "Sex," a collection of photographs with the same basic theme as the film, i.e. the appeal of unconventional sexual behavior. "I did the movie before I worked on my book. I read the script a year ago and wasn't really all that interested. I thought it was predictable and the character was too one-note. It was only after [director] Uli Edel and Willem Dafoe became interested that I became interested, because I thought they would elevate it into a better movie."
Edel, who directed the acclaimed "Last Exit to Brooklyn," said he wanted Madonna for his lead because he thought she had been "misused" in such bombs as "Who's That Girl?" and "Shanghai Surprise," and underused in such films as last summer's hit "A League of Their Own." Edel says that whatever the film's fate, "Madonna will now be taken seriously as an actress."
"I don't really think of it that way," she says. "I just want a chance to learn as much about moviemaking as I have about the music industry. I don't define where I am in my life in terms of being a megastar. I think of it in terms of artistry. I've concentrated more on music, so it figures that's where I've accomplished more. In my opinion, it's just the best film role I've been offered."
Ironically, she maintains the film's sex scenes were the hardest thing for her to do, and that "as strange as it might seem," her co-star Dafoe was less inhibited about performing nude for the camera, with such props as handcuffs and hot, dripping candle wax. But she bristles about the decision to cut some of the more explicit scenes.
"I think there should be ratings for violence," she says. "The [MPAA] ratings board is so arbitrary about what they say should be cut. . . . There's so much hypocrisy. Children are allowed to see people blown to bits, but watching someone make love is some evil, horrible thing."
She denies that "Body of Evidence" is just the latest salvo in a personal campaign to push the corners of America's sexual envelope.
"With everything I do, I ask two questions: Am I being true to myself, and does it say what I want to say? It's not about pushing limits, it's about expression."
But she believes people are threatened by her boldness, precipitating magazine cover stories such as the one in this month's McCall's, "How to Protect Your Children From Madonna."
She does allow that she wishes the movie had been released before her book, which featured photographs of her simulating bondage, homosexuality and group sex. But she blames her questioners for perpetuating an image of her as sexual predator, committed to corrupting the morals of all who cross her catty path.
"You're the media. Ask yourself where the preconceptions come from. People do psychological profiles of me as if they know who I am, and everybody believes them. When you're an icon, you're usually allowed to have one personality trait, which is ridiculous. I'm strong, I am vulnerable, and I'm a million things in between, like everyone."
Madonna had hoped to show her vulnerable side in an upcoming film called "Angie, My Love," which she had personally developed, but when she began work on a film called "Snake Eyes" with Abel Ferrara, director of such violent, sexual dramas as "Ms. 45" and "Bad Lieutenant," she had to give the project away; she denies she was replaced in the part, and says a private memo that was published in Daily Variety, in which she castigated producer Joe Roth and Hollywood in general for pigeonholing her in sexy parts, was "taken out of context."
She says she's also cooled on the idea of doing a biography of painter Frida Kahlo, but is still considering films based on the lives of dancer Martha Graham (with whom she briefly studied) and transvestite actor Holly Woodlawn. She says that she has no plans to make an album after being "disappointed" with the reaction to her latest collection, "Erotica" ("Mostly because it contains my best songwriting yet"), and that she's seriously considering having a child, despite the lack of a prospect of a long-term relationship in her life. (Asked if men are cowed by her, she shot back, "Would you be?")
"I'm looking for the chicken before the egg," she says. "No pun intended.
"But how I raise a child is nobody's business. It's ludicrous to me that anyone could pass judgment on me as a parent or anything else."
Before succumbing to a prolonged bout of coughing and taking her leave, Madonna responds wearily to the question someone poses every day, either in print or at the water cooler. When will it end? When will the public finally get sick of Madonna?
"Look, I don't ask anybody to write all the stuff that's written about me. When everyone's sick of me, I guess you'll stop."