FEATURE:
In Bed with Madonna
Madonna: Truth or Dare at Thirty
___________
AMONG all the big anniversaries this year…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna and her dancers in the 1991 concert film and documentary, Madonna: Truth or Dare (which chronicled the Blond Ambition World Tour of 1990)/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirimax
I wonder how many will mark the thirtieth anniversary of Madonna: Truth or Dare on 10th May. Internationally known as In Bed with Madonna, the 1991 documentary from Alek Keshishian chronicles the life of Madonna during her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. It was initially planned to be a traditional concert film. Keshishian was impressed with the backstage life. He persuaded Madonna to do a full film focusing on that. She funded the project and served as executive producer. The film was edited to be in black-and-white, in order to emulate cinéma vérité, while the performance scenes were edited to be in colour (thanks to Wikipedia for some background). I think Madonna: Truth or Dare is so important, as it arrived at a time when Madonna developed from a Pop artist to a global superstar. I think that Madonna: Truth or DareDare has been developed and adapted by a lot of modern Pop artists. The past year or two has seen some intimate-yet-revealing documentaries from the likes of Taylor Swift and BLACKPINK. I will come to a review for Truth or Dare to finish up. Having released Like a Prayer in 1989 and the film, Bloodhounds of Broadway (the same year), she then appeared in Dick Tracy in 1990. If her film career was not as strong as her musical output, it is clear that Madonna was gaining a lot more exposure and proving herself to be an ambitious and multi-talented artist.
The Blond Ambition World Tour cemented her reputation as a modern phenomenon. On 10th May, 1991, Madonna: Truth or Dare was given a limited released. Although the film/documentary received some positive reviews and grossed $29 million (making it the highest-grossing documentary of all-time – until it was bested in 2002 by Bowling for Columbine), there were some who were more negative. Not only has Madonna: Truth or Dare inspired modern music documentaries and how we perceive a huge artist, it had an impact on reality television and celebrity culture. I want to bring in an article from In Magazine. They looked back on the gold standard of the Pop star documentary:
“There’s a point in Madonna’s landmark documentary Truth or Dare when her then-boyfriend Warren Beatty, perplexed as to why the superstar would want to put everything out there on film, says, “She doesn’t want to live off-camera. There’s nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it’s off-camera?”
Madonna was often a trailblazer ahead of her time, and those words from Warren – uttered long before the days of reality TV and regular people documenting their every move on social media – seem both quaint when seen through the lens of 2020 and also as if Madonna was maybe some sort of prophet.
This year marks the 19th anniversary of the film’s release (May, 10, 1991), and with all of us confined to our homes and craving content, it’s the perfect time to either revisit the iconic documentary or experience it for the very first time.
Showing the good, the bad and the ugly
Truth or Dare famously follows along as Madonna embarks on her legendary Blond Ambition Tour. The singer is at the absolute height of her success during this moment in time, coming off the release of her multi-platinum album Like a Prayer, as well as having appeared in the action adventure movie Dick Tracy (a film that spawned the soundtrack I’m Breathless, which featured her colossal hit “Vogue”).
The Blond Ambition Tour – which was to be sponsored by Pepsi until the brand pulled its dollars after Madonna’s controversial “Like a Prayer” video – consisted of 57 shows across three continents with the film’s director Alek Keshishian in tow, filming 200 hours of footage that would ultimately be edited down to become Truth or Dare. The film was originally supposed to be a straight-up concert film, but it didn’t take long for the filmmaker to realize that what was going down behind the scenes was just as entertaining as what was happening on stage.
Madonna certainly wasn’t the first pop star to invite cameras behind the scenes, nor was she the last. In the years since Truth or Dare, there’s been Beyoncé: Life is But a Dream, Katy Perry: Part of Me, Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two and, most recently, Taylor Swift’s Netflix doc Miss Americana, just to name a few. But while all have their merits, none can live up to what is truly the gold standard of the genre.
Most celebrities present a carefully calculated and cunningly curated image of themselves to the public. While Madonna would certainly never be accused of not being calculating, she allows the cameras to show us the good, the bad and the ugly in Truth or Dare. You get the sense that Madonna truly has no f*cks to give about whether you come away from the doc liking her. It’s refreshing, and also something that a pop star of her magnitude couldn’t do today without an apology tour after the fact.
Madonna doesn’t shy away from shade in Truth or Dare. Belinda Carlisle, the city of Chicago, Oprah and Janet Jackson: these are just a few of her targets. And who could ever forget when she ends Kevin Costner’s life backstage at one of her shows, putting her finger down her throat to mime throwing up after the actor uses the word “neat” to describe her show. “Anyone who says my show is neat has to go,” she says on camera. And this is Dances With Wolves-era Kevin Costner. At the height of his fame, Madonna murders him in front of millions. Madonna saves her most poisonous venom, though, for the city of Toronto. After members of the Toronto Police Service show up to the SkyDome at her third and final show threatening to arrest the singer on obscenity charges, Madonna, ever the provocateur, is positively delighted at the thought of ending up in cuffs. She refuses to back down or change her show, and the concert goes off without a hitch – but not before Madonna reduces Ontario’s capital city to filth, calling it “the fascist state of Toronto.”
But it’s not just the shade that makes the film memorable. Name a modern-day pop star at the height of her fame who would, during a game of Truth or Dare, allow herself to be filmed showing how she performs fellatio on a bottle, or who would reveal on camera that her ex-husband (in Madonna’s case, Sean Penn, whom she had divorced a few years earlier) is the one true love of her life? And remember when she shows us how thirsty she is for Antonio Banderas and how, upon finally meeting him, she’s highly (and vocally…within earshot of his wife) disappointed that he’s married? Taylor, Beyoncé or Katy wouldn’t dare!
Truth or Dare is also notable for its cast of supporting characters. Who could forget Madonna’s childhood friend Moira McFarland from Michigan, whom Madge hasn’t seen in years, showing up and asking Madonna to be the godmother of her unborn child. The singer tells cameras that Moira once “finger f*cked” her and showed her how to use a tampon, claims Moira denies with, “Madonna, I did not teach you how to insert a tampon and and if we got into bed together naked, I don’t remember that”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Alek Keshishian, the director of Madonna: Truth or Dare, alongside Madonna in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Miramax
I wonder whether we will see an anniversary release or anything down the line that commemorates the importance of Madonna: Truth or Dare. It is fascinating looking back at clips from it in 2021, as Madonna has hugely evolved and grow as an artist. In another feature, this time from The New York Times in 2016, we hear from Madonna: Truth or Dare’s director, Alek Keshishian:
“Madonna gagging after Kevin Costner calls her concert “neat.” Her backup dancers at the New York gay pride parade. Warren Beatty as condescending scold. Singing “Like a Virgin” on that velvet bed. A variety of cone bras. The glass bottle.
Those are only a few of the enduring images from “Truth or Dare,” the 1991 concert film and documentary that chronicled, with extraordinary access and results, Madonna’s “Blond Ambition” tour.
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, this film, directed by Alek Keshishian, who was just 26 upon its release, has transcended cult-classic status and been elevated to the modern canon by pop obsessives and queer audiences of a certain generation. It also in many ways presaged the celeb-reality complex, though, crucially, it caught Madonna at a career apex, not in desperation. Celebrated earlier this week with a screening at the Museum of Modern Art, “Truth or Dare” begins a seven-night run on Friday at the Metrograph on the Lower East Side.
“When you were making “Truth or Dare,” did you feel like an employee of Madonna’s or did you have real independence?
I technically had complete independence, insofar as she gave me final cut. But as I’ve since realized, final cut means nothing if you’re in disagreement with your financiers — they just won’t promote or release your film. It was definitely a very specific relationship because she was funding it. There were times I needed more money. But in terms of the editorial, or seeing what I was shooting, she left me completely alone.
How did she react when you first showed her the film?
I remember sitting on the floor of her bedroom, sticking in the VHS with a three-hour cut. She just watched it — it was almost out-of-body. She was laughing at the right moments and was actually kind of thrilled with it the first time she saw it. One of the most surprising things was that she didn’t ask me to lose anything. She only wanted to keep more. I think it captured the roller coaster that she had been on; that had been her goal. Weirdly, her vanity didn’t come into it much.
Does anything about “Truth or Dare” make you cringe in retrospect?
I hadn’t seen it for 24 years before I saw it at Outfest last year. I was amazed by how it did hold up in a lot of ways. It felt distinct from reality TV. It lets in a lot of ugliness or truth. I think today pop stars are so highly curated. They wouldn’t allow those things — ever.
Some of the best moments are Madonna’s interactions with other stars — Kevin Costner, Al Pacino, of course Warren Beatty. Were there other cameos that got cut?
There were comments about other stars that were cut because it felt superfluous. Generally, I tried to not just throw in arbitrary digs at people unless they were actually involved in an interaction with Madonna. The only exception to that was when Madonna says something like, “That’s another reason to not live in Chicago, besides the fact that Oprah lives there.” That is the only moment that I probably cringe at now because it was unprovoked. The Kevin Costner thing says something about her when she puts the finger down the throat — about how she reacts to earnestness. The Warren thing, again, it says something about her. I did my best to hold it to that and not just do it for the sake of sensationalism”.
I want to end by quoting from SLANT’s review of Madonna: Truth or Dare. They reviewed the fascinating documentary after twenty-five years - and, to me, they made some interesting observations:
“Twenty-five years after Madonna: Truth or Dare’s original theatrical run, its ostensible subject—Madonna’s worldwide Blond Ambition tour—is now one of its least interesting aspects. It was easy to recognize the tour, which premiered during the waning days of Tipper Gore’s war against the music industry, as a deliberate provocation, a salacious mix of Catholic imagery and overt sexuality, with a few Art Deco trimmings thrown in for good measure. Outfitted for much of the show in an iconic cone-bra corset designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, Madonna blared a commanding sexual power from the stage, performing muscular choreography that included crotch-grabbing, erotic flexions on her scantily clad male dancers, and, in the show’s most controversial moment, simulated masturbation. The idea of a female artist performing such defiantly sexual material proved so threatening to local authorities in Toronto and Rome that they threatened to shut down the show.
If the concert may not seem shocking to contemporary audiences used to strong, unapologetically sexual female performers, that’s because Madonna paved the way for so many singers interested in embracing their sexuality through their music. Still novel, though, is the sheer ambition and syncretic aesthetic of the tour, which drew its inspiration from Metropolis, hip-hop, S&M, and A Clockwork Orange, among other sources. In the context of the film, these performance excerpts, shot in richly hued color 35mm, exist not just for their own sake, but operate in dialogue with the film’s backstage scenes.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna performs on stage at the Feyenoord stadium on 24th July, 1990 during the Blond Ambition World Tour/PHOTO CREDIT: Michel Linssen/Redferns
In essence, Truth or Dare is less of a concert film than an elaborately constructed exegesis on pop mythmaking and the construction of identity. One part of Madonna’s genius has consistently been the creation (and reinvention) of her persona. Rather than purporting to give an unvarnished look at the woman beneath the bustier, the Alek Keshishian film calls into question the very idea of a consistent identity. Filmed in high-contrast black-and-white 16mm, the backstage scenes intentionally evoke the vérité style of D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, but here the aesthetic is an ironic appropriation of the idea of observational cinema.
Madonna’s decision to allow cameras to follow her around constantly during her tour wasn’t about capturing some unguarded moments, but rather the opposite. The camera offers an omnipresent excuse for performance, an opportunity to turn every interaction, no matter how dull or personal, into a work of art. As Warren Beatty, Madonna’s then-boyfriend, at one point famously observes: “She doesn’t want to live off camera, much less talk. There’s nothing to say off camera. Why would you say something if it’s off camera? What point is there existing?” Even in ostensibly private moments, Madonna cleverly plays to the camera, switching between a handful of personae, each incarnation amplified by hair, makeup, and costume: Marilyn Monroe for coquettish charm; Marie Antoinette for an air of luxurious decadence; brassy, streetwise Italian girl to suggest her roots.
PHOTO CREDIT: The Kobal Collection
Truth or Dare offers some particularly succulent red meat for Freudians, including Madonna’s patronizing descriptions of herself as the “mother” to her dance crew. Twenty-five years on, the film offers the opportunity to re-enter an emerging intellectual milieu, one that emphasized the centrality of performance to our identities, particularly our expressions of gender. Released a year after Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, True or Dare is marinated in many of the same ideas surrounding gender, power, sexuality, and performance. (Paglia, who recognized in Madonna a fellow provocateur, even lauded her as “the future of feminism” in the pages of The New York Times.)”.
I think that, thirty years later, Madonna: Truth or Dare is still being examined and influencing artist. As this Wikipedia article documents, Madonna: Truth or Dare has an incredible and powerful legacy:
“For Amy Roberts, Truth or Dare was "ahead of its time in many respects", as it raised "vital questions about culture and society that were crucial for the time it was made", concluding that "its legacy remains to make an impact, and its influence helped change the pop music industry for the better". Noel Murray said that it can be seen as a study in marketing. Keshishian concluded that "it takes a very special type of person at a very special time in their lives to want to do that kind of movie [...] There aren’t many who pull off what Madonna pulls off in Truth or Dare". Further influence can be seen in other music-related documentaries, such as White Diamond: A Personal Portrait of Kylie Minogue (2007), Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2011), One Direction: This Is Us (2013) and Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (2019).
IN THIS PHOTO: Lady Gaga
Singer Katy Perry cited Truth or Dare as a major inspiration for her 2012 film Katy Perry: Part of Me. Both Gaga: Five Foot Two (2017) and Miss Americana (2020) were compared to Truth or Dare; Lorraine Ali from the Los Angeles Times wrote that while Truth or Dare was "an orchestrated look into [Madonna]'s life", Five Foot Two is "too amateurish to do any of that, let alone cut its own path". Selena Gomez hired Keshishian to direct the music video for her song "Hands to Myself" (2016) because of his work on Truth or Dare. In 2018, The Guardian named Truth or Dare the greatest music documentary of all time. Amy Roberts said it was "doubtful that we'll ever see a music documentary make the same visceral impact".
Three decades down the line and Madonna: Truth or Dare remains hugely fascinating! Whether you see it as an honest and revealing insight into Madonna’s life and career in 1991 or think that it is a little staged, one cannot argue against the fact that its impact is still being felt today – and many modern artists have used it as a template for their own documentaries. I think that Madonna: Truth or Dare deserves…
A lot of love.