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IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna shot by Helmut Werb in the 1980s
Might a Madonna Biopic Finally Hit the Screens?
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DESPITE some T.V. shows and films…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna captured in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Francesco Scavullo
resuming filming, there are still guidelines in place regarding what can be filmed. I am going to limit my Madonna features, as I tend to latch onto anything vaguely interesting to do with her but, as she is a Pop icon who continues to turn heads and whip up discussion, there is always going to be interest around her. There is no predicting what Madonna will say and do next, and I like the fact that she still sort of does what she wants and is not scared of what the record label will think! This all stems back to her earliest days, and the fact Madonna has always been bold and individual. Because of that, I have asked whether we will ever see a biopic on the screens. I mention it frequently because, over the past few years, a lot of great artists have had their stories brought to life. I can understand why there is an appetite to see an artist’s life translated for the screen, as it can introduce them to new fans and it is a chance for people to see that artist away from the music – to learn more about their life and story. There have been rumours that a Madonna biopic is taking shape, and, as The Independent report, a star might have been found:
“A rumoured Madonna biopic may have found its star, after the Queen of Pop began following Ozark actor Julia Garner on Instagram.
Fans spotted that Madonna and her long-time manager Guy Oseary both followed Garner last week (28 August). The actor’s striking resemblance to a young Madonna sparked speculation that they have their eyes on her for a rumoured biopic.
IN THIS PHOTO: Julia Garner
While a Madonna biopic has yet to be officially confirmed, the pop star has posted a series of videos to her Instagram this month in which she appears to be co-writing the story of her life with Oscar winner Diablo Cody.
Cody wrote the screenplays for films including Juno, Jennifer’s Body and Young Adult, as well as the book for the Alanis Morissette musical Jagged Little Pill. The show, which premiered in 2019, uses the musician’s songs as the backdrop to a story of a family struggling through personal woes in Nineties suburbia.
“When you’re stuck in a house with multiple injuries what do you do?” Madonna wrote on her Instagram on 8 August. “Write a screenplay with Diablo Cody about..............?”
In her Instagram Stories, Madonna has also posted various photographs of old diaries dated to the early 1980s, suggesting the possible biopic may only chronicle her early rise to fame.
In 2017, Madonna condemned plans for an unauthorised film biopic about her life. Titled Blonde Ambition, and put into development by Universal Pictures, the script was written by Elyse Hollander and explored the star’s early days and the making of her first album.
“Nobody knows what I know and what I have seen,” Madonna wrote on Instagram at the time. “Only I can tell my story. Anyone else who tries is a charlatan and a fool looking for instant gratification without doing the work. This is a disease in our society”.
It would be great if the rumours were true, as there have been attempts to make a biopic and they have come to nothing. I get why Madonna would want to be protective and not allow something onto the screen she is not happy with. As it seems like Madonna herself is closely involved with the project and script, I wonder whether it will be something factual, or there will be some fantasy in there. In terms of biopics, a Madonna film is a pretty big one! Although her career has spanned five decades, I do think that her early years is the most exciting and interesting.
From her first movements in 1982 to, say, 1990’s Blond Ambition World Tour, that period was a whirlwind and a real time of transformation. From the somewhat innocent Pop artist of her eponymous 1983 debut album to the more mature and boundary-pushing woman who released Like a Prayer in 1989, that was a really interesting and memorable time in music! There are many artists today who would like to learn Madonna’s story and how she managed to arrive in New York with next to nothing and succeed. I don’t think a lot of people know about Madonna’s years before her debut single, Everybody, was released in 1982. Maybe a film will focus on 1978-1982 – or spend the opening half hour or so around that time. This article from i-D explains more about Madonna’s earliest years around New York:
“According to pop legend, Madonna Louise Ciccone arrived in New York City in 1978 with $35 in her pocket, and told a taxi driver: "Take me to the centre of everything." He dropped her off in Times Square, where she worked for a while at Dunkin' Donuts before being fired, so the story goes, for squirting jelly in a customer's face. Right from the start, this college dropout from the Detroit 'burbs was a true rebel heart.
Madonna would eventually cut her creative teeth in edgier neighbourhoods like Manhattan's then-rundown Lower East Side and Corona in Queens, home to a large Hispanic and Latino population. Recalling her first impressions of the Big Apple nearly four decades later, she said: "I felt like I plugged my finger into an electric socket."
Madonna wouldn't score her first really big hit, Holiday, until 1983, but her pre-fame years running around NYC’s scuzzy underground are key to understanding who she is as a person and as a pop star. She didn't study at stage school like Lady Gaga, or hone her craft on a TV show like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. She learned on the street, figuring out who Madonna was and what sort of artist she wanted to be. She had room to grow and space to make mistakes because she didn’t become super-famous until she was 26 or 27.
She worked as a waitress at the Russian Tea Room and posed for nude photos to make extra cash. After she became famous, these pictures reappeared with depressing inevitability in Penthouse and Playboy magazines, but Madonna refused to be slut-shamed. "I was expected to feel ashamed when these photos came out, and I was not. And this puzzled people," she recalled during her 2016 Billboard Woman of the Year acceptance speech.
She also earned money as a dancer, and played drums in a band called The Breakfast Club before leaving to form her own group Emmy and the Emmys. She hung out at Studio 54, where her best friend Martin Burgoyne was a bartender, and played her first solo show at another iconic nightclub, Danceteria.
"It wasn’t until I really decided to switch into being a musician and a songwriter, and I moved to the Lower East Side, that I started meeting artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol," she explained in a 2015 Noisey interview. "While I felt we all fed off each other’s energy and we were all inspired by each other and jealous of each other, collaborating with each other, I had no idea then what their place in the world would be now. But not my own, either. So we were just artists having fun, happy that anyone was interested in our work."
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Hochberg/Getty Images
It was an intensely inspiring period for Madonna, but at the same time, we shouldn't romanticise it too much. "It wasn’t safe to be gay; it wasn’t cool to be associated with the gay community," she recalled in her Billboard speech. "It was 1979 and New York was a very scary place. In the first year I was held at gunpoint, raped on a rooftop with a knife digging into my throat. And I had my apartment broken into and robbed so many times I just stopped locking the door. In the years that followed, I lost almost every friend I had to AIDS or drugs or gunshots”.
Although it was not a perfect time, Madonna did learn a lot in her first years in New York. From her 1983 debut album to today, she has battled against sexism, and she has faced more than her share of critics and doubters! From the epic tours, big films, flop films, and those albums that reinvented her, there is a lot to focus on. Many would want to see Madonna’s 1992, where she released Erotica and her Sex book more or less at the same time and, from then, she faced backlash and criticism – even though the album is terrific and the book is tame by today’s standards. For all the glamour and eventfulness that encapsulated so much of Madonna’s career, I think bringing it back to the earliest days would be best; maybe a look from 1978 through to 1983 (her debut), or 1984 – when Like a Virgin was released and her popularity was heightened and sealed. Whatever is planned and whatever might come about, I am glad that there seems to be some substance in the biopic rumours – something fans have been waiting for for years now! When (or if) the biopic does arrive, it will definitely…
GIVE inspiration to so many artists coming through.