Between 1990 and 1993, Madonna had her most provocative period.
Justify My Love
, the book
SEX
, the album
Erotica
or that forgettable copy of
Basic Instinct
,
Body of Crime
, occurred in those three years.
The official version is that right after, Madonna calmed down to save her career.
That she became formal.
But it is not entirely true: the final blow of that insolent era took place on March 29, 1994 in an interview with David Letterman of just 20 minutes that would become the most censored space in the history of television in the United States.
Madonna had just published a ballad called
I'll remember
that returned her to the charts thanks to lowering her hypersexualized image and accepting the role of a melodic and friendly singer (later the culmination of the stately and formal Madonna would come with the musical
Evita, in
1996).
But that night, in what was supposed to be part of the promotion of that song, which ended up not even being mentioned, the singer didn't want to be nice.
Rather, she wanted revenge.
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As is tradition on late-night talk shows, Letterman began the space with a monologue.
And in it he had been mentioning Madonna for years and making jokes at her expense.
It was not personal: celebrities and their avatars were a source of inspiration for these spaces and Madonna was the most famous woman in the world.
That night of March 29, 1994 he did it again.
He introduced her like this: “Our guest tonight is one of the biggest stars in the world and in the last ten years she has sold more than 80 million records, has starred in countless movies and has slept with the biggest names in the industry. of entertainment.”
What happened on set
There are two interviews in this one: one is the one the viewer sees for the first time;
the second, the one he sees knowing the background and what his protagonists said afterwards.
Let's start with the first one.
Madonna starts off strong: when she arrives, she hands Letterman some panties.
As soon as the interview begins, he encourages Madonna to approach a man sitting in the audience and kiss him.
She asks him, “Why are you so obsessed with my sex life?”
He keeps encouraging her to go up to that man and kiss him.
She, firm in her decision, responds: “You're a fucking sick person.”
This phrase will return at the end of this article and with another meaning.
Madonna on the night of March 29, 1994 when she was on her way to the 'Late Show with David Letterman' to give the most controversial interview of her life. Ron Galella (Ron Galella Collection via Getty)
That
puto
, in English
fuck
, is one of the 13
fucks
that Madonna uttered during the interview.
There was also some
shit
.
Those words, along with others, are part of the language considered obscene by the US Federal Communications Commission even today.
If someone does it, usually because it escapes them, from implementation they have a reaction time to place a beep that makes the swear word not be heard in homes, even in live broadcasts.
Right after that first
fuck
, Madonna went for another one: “I don't know why you throw so much shit at me.”
Letterman reminds him: “You know this show is airing live, right?”
Madonna doesn't respond.
Instead, she asks Letterman to smell the underwear she brought and then indulges in intertwined sexual games involving the length of a microphone and her relationship with Charles Barkley, a baseball player she once dated. It was rumored that he was having an affair.
“You are a lovely young lady,” Letterman concludes.
The give and take continues for a while.
She reproaches him, at one point, why he can talk about her sex life on all the shows and when she herself is on the show she can't talk about her own sex life.
At times, Letterman proves to be in full reflex form as a comedian.
When she points to his hair and asks if he has put a rug on his head, he points to her hairstyle (dyed black and pulled tightly into a ponytail) and replies, “And you're wearing a swimming cap?” ”.
After a cut to commercials, Madonna appears smoking a huge cigar and accuses Letterman of having changed.
“You were a cool guy before.
Money has made you soft.
Now you kiss the ass of all the stars who come here.”
She then calls the host “irritating” (by the way, eight years earlier another successful singer, Cher, had called him to his face and on the same show “an asshole”).
Letterman responds that the feeling is mutual.
Madonna repeats several times, always covered in a beep, “you're always fucking with me on your show.”
“This is American television,” he explains.
“People don't want to hear things like that at home at half past eleven at night.”
“Don't people want to hear the word fuck?” asks Madonna.
Letterman asks to leave her silent: “Cut off her microphone right now, she won't stop!”
After another commercial cut and another exchange of words with frozen smiles (she refuses to participate in a fixed section of the program because she considers that the script "is not funny" and throws the papers where it was written on the floor), Letterman warns that The end of the interview has arrived and they must move on to another segment.
But Madonna doesn't want to leave.
He asks Letterman if he is not going to show the underwear he has brought ("Everyone has already seen your underwear," he replies, and Madonna points out, "No, they have seen me without it!") and then he asks her. says goodbye: “I'm glad you came tonight to offend us all.”
But she refuses to leave and tries to bring up a new topic of conversation: “Do you know it's good to pee in the shower?” asks Madonna.
"It's antiseptic."
He emphasizes again: “We have to say goodbye, we have other guests.”
She uses the forbidden word again: “Don't fuck with me, Dave.”
He keeps trying to finish the interview.
“Have you ever smoked endo [a type of marijuana]?” she asks him.
Music begins to play that, like at awards shows when someone goes on and on with their thanks, aims to convince Madonna that she should leave.
“Don't tell me you've never peed in the shower,” she insists.
In the audience, they shout: “Get out!”
Letterman tries again.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart, it has been a pleasure having you here tonight.”
The audience applauds.
She doesn't get up and look at the camera.
“When we come back, I will still be here.”
He goes into advertising.
When they return, Madonna is gone, but it's too late for her next guest, the supermarket bagging champion of 1994. There was only time for Counting Crows to sing
Round Here
.
Letterman signed off with: “I'm sorry.
Good night all".
A rookie's nightmare
The Los Angeles Times reported a few days later that Madonna's interview had given David Letterman's show one of the ten best ratings in its history.
But the general opinion was that Madonna had crossed the line (again).
The
New York Post
reported: “Unfortunately, this is what we expect from Madonna.
She has built a career around blasphemy and obscenity.
A pathetic milestone by a woman lacking talent and ingenuity.
She has nothing to sell except scandal.
Since she cannot fly like eagles, she searches for food like mice.”
One of the show's producers, Robert Morton, told the
Los Angeles Times
: “If she's going to repeat last Thursday's show, I don't think we'll invite her again.
But if she wants to come sing a song, I am willing to listen to it.”
One of Morton's employees on the show was a twenty-something named David Kellison, who later became the producer of important late-night shows like Jimmy Kimmel's, but then his career was beginning.
In a biographical piece published in
Grantland
, Kellison gave details about that interview, which he himself managed and closed.
And he showed that those who said that everything was planned were right... and at the same time they were wrong.
That night in 1994 was not the first time that Madonna sat before David Letterman: in 1988 she had already done so with her friend Sandra Bernhard.� (©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Kellison says that Madonna agreed to go on the show with a clear idea: to show three of the worst phrases that Letterman had said about her in his monologues and ask him for explanations about them.
When Kellison went to greet her in her dressing room to explain what the program would be like, she said that her instructions were too long to remember and then told him something that those who have seen the program might already suspect: that before arriving she had been smoking marijuana. .
At the controls the situation was tense.
When the singer refused to leave the interview, Morton yelled at Kellison: “You created this problem!
Get rid of her!”
The young Kellison entered the set during the publicity, asked Madonna (who was still in her chair) to greet the audience and when Madonna raised her hand to greet, he took it and gently pulled her to invite her to stand up.
“Confused,” Kellison writes, she “continued to greet the audience as I guided her to the door.”
Kellison says: “It was impossible for us to imagine what was going to happen.”
But Madonna gave a somewhat different version of events the following year in a long interview in
Spin
in 1996. Do you regret that interview? Asked journalist Bob Guccione Jr. "I regretted it at the time, but over time I'm glad." having done it.”
Of her repeated use of the forbidden word (fuck) she said: “One word, one word, it's just a word!”
And he added: “David Letterman knew he was going to do it.
I talked to the producers of the show and everyone agreed that it would be funny if I said fuck a few times and got bleeped.
Well, when I went out and did it, David started to get nervous.
The way they introduced me was offensive, so I thought: if that's how you want to do it, I know how to do it much better.
In his recreation of the events in the Grantland article, Kellison implies otherwise: “If you think Letterman was happy about all the publicity the interview gave him, you're wrong.”
Like many other episodes from the past that are re-examined with today's sensibilities, Madonna's interview with Letterman has not only gained interest over the years as a kind of outpost of a more hooligan and spontaneous way of making television, but it has recently been has turned history around.
An article by
Unilad
published in 2023 reflects how various resurfacings of the video of the interview on Twitter have highlighted that specific moment of the program in which the presenter pressures Madonna to kiss a man who is in the audience.
She refuses, several times, and the presenter tells her: “Someone else would give in to pressure and kiss him,” to which she responds: “I never give in to pressure.”
“That's why we love you, Madonna,” he replies.
And she blurts out there, right there, her first curse: “And by the way, you're a fucking sick person.”
The interview, seen today, seems ahead of its time and at the same time a perfect capsule of its time.
Madonna was playing at being sassy and rude, but at the same time asserting herself and leaving some lessons on how to respond to certain male behaviors.
And Letterman lends himself to certain sexist games and attitudes of that time that would not be accepted today, but at the same time he proves to be fast, funny and shrewd as the tamer of a difficult guest and leaves, even despite himself, 20 minutes of a type of television that anticipate spaces of free, corrosive and rapid interviews that triumph today in capsule form on social networks, be it Graham Norton in England or, yes, David Broncano in Spain.
If this interview that took place exactly 30 years ago occurred today, it would already be divided into dozens of memes.
And on the networks you can say “fuck”.
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