Bad Career Moves

By the end of 1992, many of her fans, as well as critics, were asking if Madonna had gone too far. The release of the Truth or Dare film, the Sex book and the Erotica album and video served to answer that question for some with a resounding “Yes!” (Truth or Dare grossed only $15 million in the United States. As its executive producer, Madonna invested $4 million into the movie, so she did recoup her investment. However, after expenses, the film was not nearly as profitable as she had hoped.)

Who was this woman, anyway? Was she a sexual renegade, or just a spoiled and internationally known brat who liked to take off her clothes and talk dirty? No one could answer the question with much accuracy, she had so clouded her true identity with scandal and sensationalism. Even when she tried to explain herself (“I love my pussy, and there’s nothing wrong with loving my pussy”) she sounded like a lusty porn star no one could take seriously.

“After the Sex book came out,” she has recalled, “there was a time when I could not open up a newspaper or magazine and not read something incredibly scathing about myself.”

Had she foreseen the negative publicity that would be generated by Truth or Dare, Sex and Erotica, Madonna might have chosen a different direction for her next film, perhaps continuing with light family-oriented movies like A League of Their Own. Instead, she chose a lurid thriller, Body of Evidence, as her next movie release — the final of the four unwitting steps in the dismantling of her career.

In the movie, which premiered on the heels of Sex in January 1993, Madonna plays Rebecca Carlson, a gallery owner accused of murdering a wealthy older man when he dies after having sex with her (raising the perplexing question of whether or not a sex partner’s body can be considered a lethal weapon if the act results in a person’s death). She ends up becoming sexually involved with her defense attorney, played by Willem Dafoe.

At the end of the movie, Madonna’s character is murdered, causing some disgusted moviegoers to cheer at her demise. “She’s a powerful lady,” says the film’s director, Uli Edel, of Madonna. “Sometimes you feel like a tamer with a she-lion in a cage. You have to force her to jump through this burning hoop, and there are just two possibilities. Either she’ll jump through the ring of fire . . . or she’ll kill you.”

“In all the movies of the forties, the bad girl has to die,” Madonna has said. “What I originally loved about the role [in the first script] was that she didn’t die. And in the end, they killed me. So I felt that I was sabotaged to a certain extent. For some reason, when that movie came out, I was held responsible for it entirely. It was my fault, which was absurd, because we all make bad movies. I mean Diabolique came out [in 1996] and Sharon Stone was not held responsible for the fact that it was a crap movie.”

Indeed, critics “murdered” Madonna in reviewing the film, declaring Body of Evidence a third-rate rehash of every murder mystery of the past twenty years (and particularly of Basic Instinct, the box-office blockbuster of the year before). Reviewers were quick to compare Madonna unfavorably with that movie’s leading lady: “It’s not just that Madonna does not make an effective Sharon Stone,” a critic for Rolling Stone complained. “She doesn’t even make an effective Madonna. Instead of emoting, Madonna strikes poses and delivers stilted lines that sound like captions from her book Sex read aloud in a voice of nerve-jangling stridency.”

Bad notices and the condemnation of religious groups had certainly never hurt Madonna’s career before this time, but when it was reported that movie audiences had been laughing out loud at Madonna’s supposedly serious characterization in Body of Evidence, it became clear that she had pushed the envelope as far as it was going to be accepted. It was becoming clear even to her that a new reinvention would have to be in the offing, that is if she was going to be able to sustain a career — especially when another film, Dangerous Game, was released (in 1993) to terrible reviews and dreadful box office. In this one, Madonna plays an actress with limited skills who has sex with practically everyone in her life. The sex is violent — Madonna gets to strip several times, and does so with great zest. In one scene during Dangerous Game, actor James Russo says of Madonna’s character, Sarah Jennings, “We both know she’s a fucking whore who can’t act.” Again, it was all more than critics — or her public — could bear. What a disappointment this movie was, especially considering that it was directed by the highly respected Abel Ferrara (known at the time for The Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel, who also co-starred in Dangerous Game) and that Madonna had financed much of it with her own money.

Meanwhile, happily for her, Madonna’s recording and performing career still had enough momentum to overcome the slump that had resulted from such exploits as Body of Evidence and Dangerous Game. Facing the barrage of publicity, Madonna chose not to hide. Instead, she decided to do what she had always done best: she took her act out on the road.

In the last quarter of 1993, Madonna forged ahead with a limited twenty-date, four-continent world tour — her first in four years — which she called “The Girlie Show.” Wisely, she realized that a complete about-face in her career would be transparent, and at the same time would probably diminish much of what she had done prior to this time. She really had expanded the consciousness of much of her public, even if the way she’d gone about it was sometimes questionable. Now, if she was going to come up with a new image, the transformation would have to come about slowly. As a result “The Girlie Show,” was a transitional tour. While still sexy, it was more of an innocent burlesque rather than a blatant attempt to shock. Gone were the hard core S&M images and the blasphemous religious iconology of the previous two years. Rather, this concert had the feel of a racy Barnum and Bailey circus, even revealing a softer, gentler Madonna.

Time described it as, “At once a movie retrospective, a Ziegfeld revue, a living video, an R-rated takeoff on Cirque du Soleil — opens with Smokey Robinson’s ‘Tears of a Clown’ and closes with Cole Porter’s ‘Be a Clown.’” The critic concluded that Madonna, “once the Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth.” “The Girlie Show” enabled Madonna to end the difficult year on a successful note. Many observers and fans considered it to be her best show to date, reaffirming that, as a singer and stage performer — if not a movie star — Madonna could still please her audience. Still, she was now more sensitive than ever to criticism, probably because she’d had to endure so much of it in recent times. Even the slightest negative tone to a review would send her reeling. “No one understands me,” she complained to one close friend. “I’m breaking the rules. Why don’t people get that?”

“Maybe because people are sick to death of you and all of the sex nonsense,” said the friend. “Even toned down, it’s still too much.” Madonna didn’t speak to that person again for six months.