Life with My Sister Madonna (19 page)

“But you aren't going back to your own home?” I ask.

She tells me she isn't because she wants to avoid Sean and that she needs to find a new house for herself right away. She asks if I'll help her. I tell her I am happy to.

The next day I fly out and check into the Bel Age Hotel. She picks me up in her black 1988 convertible Mercedes 560SL, a car she loves. But because she is rigorous about protecting her skin, during the ten years she owns the car she never takes the top down.

When we meet, she looks pale and wan, and I can tell that she hasn't slept for days. She seems depressed, but when I ask her if she wants to talk, she squares her shoulders and tells me that she doesn't. “No, let's concentrate on houses,” she says.

Over just a few days, I look at more than twenty-five houses for her. The last is on Oriole Way. Although it is perched on the edge of the Hollywood Hills, it has the air of a Manhattan penthouse, and I sense that Madonna will be happy there. The house is ready to move into, and just needs furnishing.

I tell her about it, show her the house, and she signs the papers immediately, and I set about furnishing her new home.

She has total confidence in my taste and tells me to buy whatever I want, money is no object. So I go to the Design Center, aware that they never sell anything straight off the floor. But, as I suspect, when I tell them the furniture is for Madonna, they immediately go against their policy and sell me whatever I want to buy for her.

Then I shop Melrose Place for antiques—primarily Italian, including eighteenth-century chairs and a pair of candelabra—and all over town for sheets, towels, dishes, soap, potato peelers, everything. Two weeks later, Madonna moves into the house and is delighted by what I've wrought for her in such a short time.

On January 25, 1989, Madonna signs a deal to make a $5 million, two-minute commercial for Pepsi, which also includes Pepsi sponsoring her upcoming tour. She is slated to appear in the commercial, and “Like a Prayer,” her upcoming single, will play in the commercial as well. It's a perfect financial deal and a great way of launching “Like a Prayer.” Michael Jackson had previously made a similar deal with Pepsi, so I assume Freddy has suggested and brokered the deal for her.

On February 22, 1989, during the Grammy telecast, Pepsi takes the unprecedented step of running a television commercial
for
the commercial. And on March 2, an estimated 250 million people worldwide tune in to see Madonna in the commercial itself. I imagine that Pepsi feels it got its money's worth out of her.

Soon afterward, Madonna's “Like a Prayer” video bursts upon the world, featuring Madonna dancing in a field of burning crosses, simulating stigmata and seemingly crying tears of blood, and kissing a black saint. To me, what happens next is predictable.

On April 5, 1989, Pepsi announces that it is dropping its ad featuring Madonna and “Like a Prayer” because of boycott threats sparked by the religious imagery in the video.

I visit her at Oriole Way and she shows me the video.

“Can you believe it—they canceled my video!” she says.

“Well,” I say as gently as possible, “you have burning crosses in it, you are pretending to have stigmata, and you are kissing a black saint. Didn't you think that might be a problem?”

“But I don't understand why.”

She really has no idea that what she has done is eminently shocking because she simply didn't do it to shock. She isn't upset about the ad being canceled—because, after all, Pepsi has already paid her $5 million for it—but is genuinely surprised.

Soon after, I come to the house again to see Madonna and almost pass out in shock. Her lips are enormous.

“Did somebody sock you?” I ask.

“No, I just hurt my lips.”

Concerned, I ask how.

“I don't know,” she says. “Perhaps I've got an allergy.”

Of course, she's lying, but I don't suspect. I haven't yet heard of collagen. If I had, I would have fully understood her reasons for wanting to acquire sultry, sensuous lips: she is about to meet one of the most notoriously libidinous men alive, Warren Beatty.

Madonna is determined to win the part of Breathless Mahoney in
Dick Tracy,
the upcoming movie based on the comic strip that Warren Beatty's producing and directing. Breathless—a femme fatale who schemes to lure Dick from his loyal girlfriend, Tess Trueheart—is the perfect role for Madonna and she knows it.

Initially, Sean Young was cast in the part, but she backed out, claiming that Warren had made sexual advances to her. Undeterred, he set his sights on casting either Kim Basinger or Kathleen Turner in the role. Then Madonna threw her hat in the ring. Warren, however, was far from a pushover. Through the grapevine, he let it be known that he was now considering Michelle Pfeiffer for the part. Madonna countered by offering to play it for union scale, just $27,360—plus a percentage of the box office take.

Warren still held out. Then he and Madonna had dinner together at the Ivy, and the deal was done—just as I believe Warren had always intended. According to
Desperately Seeking Susan
's director Susan Seidelman, as far back as 1984 Warren had asked to view the dailies of the movie and was palpably intrigued by Madonna. Madonna, too, had always had a yen for Warren. I flash back to her bedroom in Michigan and remember that when Madonna and I were teenagers, while I only had maps hanging over my bunk bed, Madonna had a poster of Warren Beatty. And when his seminal movie
Reds
, the story of revolutionary John Reed, who wrote
Ten Days That Shook the World,
is released in 1981, she insists that we go to the movies and see it together.

They finally meet for the first time in 1985 when Sean introduced her to him at a party.

 

Madonna tells me she has the Breathless Mahoney part, and that she's dating Warren, as well. Not a surprise to me, as he is notorious for becoming involved with his leading ladies, including Julie Christie, Diane Keaton, and Natalie Wood. As for Madonna, she will be intrigued by the ghosts of girlfriends past and will find following in the footsteps of Brigitte Bardot, Vivien Leigh, Joan Collins, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Susan Strasberg, Britt Ekland, and a legion of other legendary—and not so legendary—beauties who have loved and been loved by Warren not only challenging, but also massively erotic.

Madonna is a big star now, bigger than Warren, sure of her status, but curious about what hanging out with him will be like. Above all, my sister being my sister, she's acutely aware that being Warren Beatty's girlfriend is wonderful for her mythology, her status in Hollywood, not to mention its positive effect on the final cut he, as director, will make on
Dick Tracy.

As for Warren, he is fifty-two now, and a romance with the biggest female star in the universe—more than twenty years his junior—is clearly a canny career move for him.

Meanwhile, true to form, Madonna doesn't allow her liaison with the playboy Warren Beatty to distract her from the main event: her career. Filming begins on
Dick Tracy
on February 28, 1989, around the same time she makes the “Express Yourself” video—which is filmed on a $5 million budget, the highest in music video history—and still summons up the energy to take part in an AIDS Dance-a-Thon benefit at the Shrine Auditorium.

At the height of her romance with Warren, Madonna tells me that he wants to meet me. I'm both flattered and immensely curious. I accept Warren's invitation to join him and some friends for dinner at his house on Mulholland Drive, overlooking the San Fernando Valley. I arrive at the lower driveway. There is no security. I ring the bell at the gate and Warren's assistant opens it and shows me into a large area between the dining room and a glass veranda, with a roof opening up to the sky.

A long table set for twenty people is covered with a simple tablecloth, no table decoration, and set with rather ordinary china.
Cozy
is not a word I'd apply to the house. There are no plants, no art, no photographs on display, everything is austere. A Sinatra song—redolent of hot women and cool sexual conquests—plays in the background, but other than that, there is no sense whatsoever that this is the home of a legendary lothario whose conquests number many of the world's most desirable women, including my sister. Warren's soulless house doesn't betray an iota about the nature of his charm, his capacity to seduce practically everyone who crosses his path.

Then I shake hands with him and within ten seconds experience perfectly the full megawattage of his all-embracing allure.

His hand is big. He slides it into mine slowly. Then applies slight pressure. He keeps hold of my hand a split second longer than is usual. The moment has a distinctly sexual feel to it.

He stares straight into my eyes, says hello, and I say hello back.

“So, Christopher,” he says in his deep, slow, measured voice, without hardly skipping a beat. “Can I ask you something?”

I nod, already enraptured by him.

“What is it really like being gay?” he asks, as intently as if he has been yearning for half a lifetime to meet me and pose that question to me. “And do you feel you had a choice, or do you think you were born gay?” he adds, as he guides me over to a couch and we sit down there together.

Within moments, I am pouring out all kinds of intimate details about my sexuality to him.

“So has it been difficult for you—being gay?” he asks, gazing intently into my eyes.

By now, Debi Mazur, Jennifer Grey, and a few of the tour dancers are also in the room, standing near the couch, but Warren makes me feel as if he and I were the only people there.

I am totally won over, sucked into the maelstrom of his irresistible persona, instantly under the sway of his lethal charm, and I've only known him for about ten minutes.

Warren's potent spell over me does momentarily weaken when—on our second meeting—he again asks me similar questions about my sexuality. And on our third. And on our fourth. I am left with the strong impression either that Warren is obsessed by homosexuality, or else that asking so many questions about it is simply his tactic for putting me at ease, and he is just being charming to me because—in the eventuality that I become his brother-in-law—he wants me on his side.

Back to our first meeting chez Warren. Dinner conversation is light; Warren drinks little. His chef serves us run-of-the-mill California cuisine. Madonna, in a short black skirt and black top, sits next to Warren, but isn't the least bit kittenish and definitely doesn't cling to him.

“Wa-a-ren Batey,” she whines halfway through dinner, “I'm getting bored.”

Of course she is. Warren has been expounding on his friend Senator Gary Hart's chance of making it to the White House, and my sister always gets bored unless the conversation centers on her, her next tour, or her next album.

Warren, however, isn't the least bit insulted. Instead, he smiles indulgently. I can tell he's amused by Madonna, but that their relationship is more father and daughter than highly passionate fling. Throughout dinner, they rarely touch. In all the subsequent times the three of us are together, I never see Warren and Madonna kiss or cuddle or even hold hands.

Chocolate mousse is served. My sister wolfs it down, stands up, announces, “I'm done,” and then walks out of the dining room.

I am transported back to Monopoly. I am nine, she is eleven. I succeed in buying Park Place, but because I am not yet aware of the natural scheme of things in my little world, I refuse to relinquish it to her. Now I'm going to win, and I'm glad.

“I'm done,” my sister declares, throws her pawn—always the top hat, whereas I always get the iron—onto the board, and flounces out of the room.

The game instantly ends.

Years later, and nothing has changed. Warren, however, remains unperturbed.

He makes no attempt to control Madonna. And she knows better than to try to control him. She understands only too well that countless women before her have tried and failed. She has no intention of making the same mistake.

Whatever else her machinations entail, they clearly succeed on a big scale, because one morning, when we are in the kitchen having coffee, she tells me Warren has asked her to marry him.

I put down my mug, completely surprised.

“So do you think I should, Christopher?”

“Well, do you love him?”

“I think so. What do you think?”

I hesitate. She exuded more passion for Sean and will in the future have more for her boyfriend John Enos and Carlos Leon, the father of her daughter.

So I tell her that I like Warren and think that he will make a great father, but I don't say much else because—despite his devastating charm, his political clout, and his vast power in Hollywood—I sense that my sister isn't truly in love with him. She likes him, admires him, and they have fun together, but love doesn't come into the equation.

In the end, she stalls the question of marriage, and the fun goes on.