![]() “Of course, it wasn’t too long before someone took advantage of that. “This might sound crazy, but when I first got to New York I wanted to believe the best in everyone,” she tells Benitez. Oddly enough, what could have been one of the most incendiary and emotionally wrenching chapters - Madonna’s rooftop rape at age 19, something she spoke openly about in 2015 - is barely referenced in Blond Ambition. “And that’s how I want it.” (The scene was shot by students at the Los Angeles Film School and uploaded to YouTube, making for an inadvertently hilarious piece of Madonna ephemera.) “I won’t have to choose between my career and a family now,” she says as she applies lipstick in a vanity mirror. Or does she?” (Italics Hollander’s.)Īnd in the final scene, just moments after her triumphant performance of “Like a Virgin” at the 1984 MTV Music Video Awards, she callously informs Benitez that she aborted their child. “Madonna, fully engrossed in a conversation with Prince, doesn’t see him. “He tries to move past the bodyguard,” the stage directions note. ![]() The script also suggests that Madonna stole her iconic look from another fixture on the downtown club scene, a character named “Bianca Stonewell.”Īnd as her star rises, the screenplay suggests that Madonna ignores her then-producer and boyfriend, Jellybean Benitez, to cozy up to Prince. In one scene, she’s depicted shoplifting in a drugstore, “stashing a toothbrush and some toothpaste in her backpack.” But while there is plenty of material in Blond Ambition to which the Material Girl might object, calling it defamatory would be a legal stretch. The resulting film - a Madonna biopic without any Madonna music in it - greatly runs the risk of coming off like a big-budget Lifetime movie in the vein of Britney Ever After.Ī second and far less promising tack would be to go after the script for defamation. For Universal to include these songs, they would need to secure a sync license for the master recording (if they use the originals) and the music publishing rights.Įven if Madonna holds none of these rights herself, one prominent music lawyer estimates that “given her stature in the industry, she probably has an approval right” over the songs and could prevent them from use in Blond Ambition. It certainly won’t be the first unauthorized biography to make it to the screen, but other recent notable instances - The Queen, The Social Network, Foxcatcher - were not reliant on a highly recognizable musical catalogue.įiguring heavily into Blond Ambition‘s plot are such early Madonna hits as “Burning Up,” “Everybody,” “Borderline,” “Lucky Star” and “Holiday” - all of them hit singles off her self-titled debut album from 1983. For Universal, it could wind up being a headache not worth pursuing. If Blond Ambition does get greenlighted, it will have to survive the wrath of Madonna. Madonna Appears to Criticize Unauthorized Biopic: "Only I Can Tell My Story" (Perhaps that is why Madonna later deleted the second Instagram post.) But Hollander took that exchange directly from the actual American Bandstand broadcast, as evidenced by this YouTube video. In fact, I went to University of Michigan,” Madonna counters. “The writer Elyse Hollander should write for the tabloids.”Īs an example of the script’s inaccuracies, Madonna singled out a line of dialogue on the first page, in which Madonna tells Dick Clark in an interview on American Bandstand, “I was born in Detroit. “Why would Universal Studios want to make a movie about me based on a script that is all lies?” she writes. On Wednesday, a copy of the script now in hand, her criticism grew more pointed and personal. Anyone else who tries is a charlatan and a fool.” In the first, posted just hours after The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of the project on Tuesday, she writes, “Nobody knows what I know and what I have seen. ![]() The singer has posted several Instagram messages denouncing the project. Still, no director has yet been attached and the film is not yet an official green light.ĭefinitely not on board, however, is Madonna herself. The script impressed Universal enough to snatch up the property, with two major producers - Michael De Luca and Brett Ratner - attached.
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