”I would love to direct a film,†Madonna told United Kingdom Channel 4 news when promoting her documentary I’m Going to Tell You a Secret. The juicy soundbite is one way to garner extra publicity for Secret, but let us suppose she is for real. Is any filmmaking adventure she undertakes guaranteed to end in humiliation and disaster? Or is she likely to make a better job of it than husband Guy Ritchie?
Madonna hasn’t always been terrible in the movies. With a good script, sensible direction and a functioning sense of humour, she has managed to put two good films on her acting CV: Desperately Seeking Susan in the 1980s and Dick Tracy in 1990.
Most of her other acting work has resulted in unalloyed humiliation. Whoever she has allied herself with — Sean Penn, Warren Beatty, Ritchie, Woody Allen, Abel Ferrara, John Schlesinger — the result has almost always been bad.
In an article on why musicians make bad film stars, humourist Joe Queenan advances the idea that the qualities that make someone a successful pop star — acting like a maniac, treating everyone like dirt, exaggerated performing — work directly against what it takes to come across well on screen.
But one aspect of Madonna’s output, music videos, gives us some hope. She has developed a certain cinematic style in her videos, though this doesn’t necessarily mean interesting narrative content. At one end of the 1990s, Vogue and Justify My Love did a good job in evoking Hollywood golden-age glamour and sleaze; at the other, Frozen and Ray of Light made simple but effective use of the advances in digital effects that the decade had seen.
She certainly has the strength of will to become a filmmaker. And she knows the worth of a good photographer and art director, which is half the battle of filmmaking. With her relentless drive, Madonna would have no trouble as a producer. But putting yourself into the creative arena is a step of a different magnitude. The opening title, however, may be too much to resist: A film by Madonna. —