Madame X is adding auto-biopic screenplay writer to her long list of titles, as the pop icon shared details about the movie telling her life story during an Instagram Live Thursday night (Sept. 10).
Oscar-winning Juno writer Diablo Cody has been accompanying Madonna in her quarantine hobby for the past few months, which they teased also involves Oscar-nominated Little Women producer Amy Pascal. Although the pair have yet to settle on a title for the project, Madame confirmed they’ve already written 107 pages of the script, which they said will likely translate to a two-hour film.
“So it’s kind of like a form of therapy. And sometimes I get confused and forget that I’m writing about me, and I start to refer to me as ‘she.’ That’s a bit weird,” the 62-year-old superstar said during her hour-long IG Live. “The focus is really about my struggle as an artist trying to survive in a man’s world as a woman, and really just the journey, which has been happy, sad, mad, crazy, good, bad and ugly.”
Some of the pivotal pop star moments Madonna’s putting in the screenplay include writing her seventh No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Like a Prayer” with Patrick Leonard, “all the way to the end, all the way to the devastating experience with Pepsi,” she noted. The notorious accompanying visual directed by Mary Lambert in 1989 stirred controversy for involving scenes with burning crosses and Madonna kissing and later having an erotic encounter with a Black saint in the midst of stigmata and other religious imagery. Pepsi brokered a $5 million deal with the singer at the time that involved an advertisement playing the song, which the company immediately pulled following the video’s release.
The film also tells the story of when she first met Jose Gutierez and Luis Camacho Xtravaganza, the couplet of dancers from New York City’s 1980s ballroom scene whose involvement in her 1990 No. 1 Hot 100 hit “Vogue” launched the voguing monomania in pop culture. Madame described the scene where the two auditioned for her Blond Ambition World Tour as a “fun” one, which was previously filmed for the Madonna: Truth or Dare musical documentary in 1991.
“They were a very important part of my life for quite a while,” she recalled, to which Cody added, “There is some voguing in this film.”
Both dancers expressed their excitement about being included in Madonna’s untitled auto-biopic on Instagram today (Sept. 11). They posted the same video snippet of her IG Live on their respective accounts, as Gutierez wrote, “THERE IS THE MOMENT THAT I MET LUIS&JOSE” and Camacho wrote, “She was an important part of our lives as well!!”
Madonna confirmed she doesn’t plan on portraying herself in the movie, and fans suspect she has her eye on Primetime Emmy-winning Ozark actress Julia Garner after they noticed the “Like a Virgin” singer and her manager Guy Oseary followed the 26-year-old star on Instagram.
“It’s not a musical, but there’s a lot of music and there’s a lot of the actress who will play me singing my songs, but in places where she’s supposed to be singing,” Madonna explained.
Watch Madonna and Cody’s hour-long IG Live Q&A session below.
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