“Oh My God! Look at Me!”

Was Madonna really as upset about the nude photographs as she had indicated to Tommy Quinn? Perhaps an example of her mercurial nature was that she could later make light of the predicament in which she had found herself.

“I remember when we were both broke and living in New York, Madonna showed me some of the nude shots,” recalls Erica Bell. “We were just sort of being lazy, and a little drunk, and she brought out this envelope and spread the pictures on the floor. ‘Look at me, Rica,’ [Madonna’s nickname for Erica Bell] she said. ‘I’m as flat-chested as you are!’ And we just laughed and laughed, for some reason, thinking the pictures were hysterical. She said, ‘One day I will be world famous, and Playboy will publish these photos, and it’ll be the greatest scandal of all time.’ I asked her, ‘My God, won’t you be embarrassed?’ And she laughed and said, ‘What do you think?’”

When the photographs were published many years later, Erica received a telephone call from Madonna.

“Oh my God,” Madonna said, nearly hysterical with laughter. “It’s happened, just as I predicted.”

“I know,” Erica said, giggling. “I can’t believe it, after all of these years.”

“But I’m so flat-chested,” Madonna said. “Just like you,” she added, joking.

Years later, Erica said, “I don’t think she was that upset about the pictures. If she was, I didn’t know it. I just know we laughed a lot about them. We thought it was pretty damn funny, the whole thing.”

More of Madonna’s past was excavated when filmmaker Stephen Jon Lewicki decided to exploit his association with her by releasing a home-video version of A Certain Sacrifice, the low-budget movie they had made in 1979. Perhaps hoping that Madonna would pay him to keep the film from commercial distribution, Lewicki was dismayed when her people offered him a measly $10,000, which he flatly rejected. Although Madonna took him to court in an effort to keep the film out of circulation, Lewicki ultimately won the right to release it, making him a millionaire in just a short time — not bad for the producer of a movie made six years earlier on a $20,000 budget.

“I think Madonna tried to stop the movie more as a publicity stunt than anything else,” says Lewicki today. “It was also an interesting use of her power, really, to get the kind of exposure she wants when she wants it. The New York Post had huge headlines on the front page, ‘Madonna Seeks Nude Movie Ban.’ I mean, the hysteria she whipped up over this film was amazing. But in the end, when it came right down to it, she really didn’t put a wholehearted effort into suing me. I think even the judge realized that all that was happening was a certain amount of posturing, and just for publicity. So he threw the case out, and I released the movie.”

At this point in her career, Madonna really didn’t need to seek out publicity — it came to her in tidal waves. She had a love/hate relationship with the press — for the most part, she loved seeing herself in the media, but at the same time she pretended to hate the attention. Once at a birthday party in her honor she stood up to model a green silk pants ensemble. “I like it,” she told her guests, “because it’s green, the color of envy. I envy all of you,” she continued melodramatically, “because you all have your privacy . . . and I don’t.” Madonna, however, did nothing to stop the media’s attention — on the contrary, she almost always courted it.

In May 1985, Madonna made the cover of Time, with the accompanying headline: “Madonna — Why She’s Hot.” Though she seemed to some observers to be blasé about much of her newly acquired fame, this particular tribute from such a well-respected publication was not one that she took lightly. According to one of her manager Freddy DeMann’s assistants at the time, “Madonna waited by the front door for the messenger to arrive from Freddy’s office with a first copy of the magazine. I remember the day so well. She was wearing black mesh stockings, a short skirt and brief top, with four crucifixes around her neck. Because she was working, she also had on her herringbone glasses. When the magazine arrived, she ripped the envelope apart trying to get to it. Then, when she saw it, she let out a shriek.”

“Oh my God, look at me!” Madonna said, dancing around the room in her Gucci flip-flops, magazine in hand. “I am on the cover of Time magazine! Can you believe it? Just look! Can you imagine it?” Earlier in her career, she had said, “I won’t be happy until I’m as famous as God.” Maybe now she was beginning to feel that she was on her way to that goal.

Truly awed by Madonna’s appearance on the cover of one of the most respected magazines in the world, the incredulous assistant said, “No, I just can’t believe it.”

Suddenly, Madonna stopped dancing. Whipping around to face the employee, she said, “What do you mean, you can’t believe it? Why shouldn’t I be on the cover of Time?”

“I didn’t mean . . .” the secretary began to stumble over her words. “What I meant was . . . I’m sorry.”

“Oh, stop your groveling,” Madonna said, exasperated. “You’re so weak. Just get Sean on the phone. I want him to see this.”

When the assistant telephoned Sean to ask him to come by Madonna’s home to see the magazine, Sean indicated that he was busy. He asked that she send the magazine to his home, by messenger. Madonna, pacing the room and staring at the magazine cover, overheard the conversation between the assistant and her boyfriend. She went to the employee and grabbed the phone from her. “You get over here, now, Sean,” she said into the phone. She had an angry, imperious edge to her voice. “How many girlfriends have you had on the cover of Time? One! Me! Now, get over here.”

Penn showed up thirty minutes later.

The fact that Sean Penn was also such a combative person only added fuel to the bonfire of publicity that seemed to erupt on a weekly basis for Madonna. On June 30, 1985, he was charged with assault and battery after he beat up a couple of journalists outside a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was filming a movie.

That morning, he and Madonna had received a bouquet of balloons delivered to their room, sent by someone in the media and with a card that read, “Madonna and Sean. Congratulations, Mom and Pop. How about an exclusive?” Penn, who was annoyed by the constant scrutiny, as well as rumors that Madonna was expecting, bolted out of the room, heading towards some waiting journalists.

Lori Mulrenin, who witnessed the ensuing attack, recalls, “He was screaming at them like he was going to break open their heads. Then, when one of the journalists took his picture, he blew up. He picked up a rock and threw it carefully and precisely at the photographer. Then he ripped the cameras off the photographer’s back and slammed them against the photographer, who fell down. He then picked up the rock again as the other newsman tried to step in. Sean hit that one in the eye with his fist, and also hit him on the head with the rock. Madonna, who had been in the background when the fight started, pulled her hat over her eyes and then ran back into the hotel.”

Sean Penn would enter a no-contest plea to charges that he assaulted the two journalists. He received a ninety-day suspended sentence and was fined fifty dollars on each of two misdemeanor charges.

*

While some of Madonna’s publicity ploys seem fairly unsophisticated in retrospect, they always worked. For instance, when the time came for the planning of her wedding to Sean Penn, she insisted that she wanted it to be a private affair with no publicity. She acted as if she did not want the kind of international attention she knew was bound to be generated by such an event. Besides simply going to Las Vegas where she and Penn could have quietly and quickly married, there were any number of ways Madonna could have ensured an intimate wedding, if such a thing was what she really desired. However, savvy as she is, she no doubt realized that the air of secrecy she pretended to foster only made the press more determined to cover the event . . . and the public more determined to read about it. Of course, to make matters even more tantalizing, Madonna banned the press from the wedding.

The only thing Madonna could not control was Sean, and his ambivalent feelings about the impending nuptials. Two nights before the ceremony, he threw his bachelor party in a private room above Hollywood’s Roxy nightclub. Among others present at the party were his brother, Chris, actors Harry Dean Stanton, David Keith, Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall. Stripper “Kitten” Natividad, who entertained at the party, recalls, “Those guys were pretty drunk. They had a good time. But Sean didn’t fall on his face, or anything. When he talked, he made sense. Sort of.”

Sean told his friend Isaac Benson, also at the party, “Man, I don’t know that I can go through with this thing.”

“Do you love her?” Benson asked.

“Hell yeah, I love her,” he said, sipping a Bacardi and Coke. “But we’re gonna tear each other apart. We’re nuclear, together, man. Nuclear.”

“So maybe you shouldn’t marry her,” Benson suggested.

“Oh yeah? And then what?” Penn asked, raising an eyebrow. “She’ll kill me for embarrassing her in front of the whole world, that’s what. No,” he decided after tilting back a beer. “I love her. So, I’m marrying her. God help me. Look, if the whole thing falls apart,” he offered, trying to be optimistic, “at least I’ll have acting, right?”

Then, the two friends toasted the upcoming nuptials. “Hopefully, no one will find out where the wedding is gonna happen,” Sean said. “That’s what Madonna wants. A nice, quiet ceremony.”