Madonna
This story begins in 1983. Not for me, as I was far too young to be aware of anything outside of Sesame Street. But, for the other star of this retrospective: Madonna. In 1983, Madonna was working her ass off to become the supermegastar she would be recognized as by the end of the 80s. Her first album had a couple pre-singles before it, but would slowly climb the charts to reach number 8 (of the Billboard 200) in January of 1984. Her music videos looked like the cheap on the fly style videos that were churned out at a mall.

The video for Lucky Star was shot in a single afternoon on a limited budget and featuring a costume that was marginally designed and also marginally inspired by Madonna’s everyday dress. Madonna owns the camera, looking straight into the lens with a hunger and confidence that few talents can possess.

At the time of casting Desperately Seeking Susan, an adult feminist Euro-inspired rom-com, this was what director Susan Seidelman had to work with. A writhing girl who had a presence, but was generally untested in an acting role¹. Besides, the movie had originally been written for mature women to play the role. The first instincts were to hire Diane Keaton for the role of Roberta and Goldie Hawn for the role of Susan. And, initially, the Magic Club was supposed to be the Natural History Museum.

Seidelman, however, had a limited budget and needed to go with unknowns, so ended up with Rosanna Arquette and the newly discovered Madonna. After screen tests proved that Madonna’s acting chops were, um, negligable, she made Madonna take acting classes and run through more screen tests. Still not that great, Madonna had an undeniable presence that got her in for the titular role, though not the lead.

In a 104 minute movie, Madonna has about 25 minutes of screen time. And, a good portion of that is spent in music-video-esque mime. Desperately Seeking Susan rarely asks Madonna to act, instead requiring her to just project or be her persona. The majority of her scenes were condensed into the music video for Into the Groove, which shows how much Susan is an extension of Madonna’s music video persona at the time.

In between hiring Madonna and starting filming, her fame started skyrocketing. During or just after filming, Madonna performed Like a Virgin at the MTV Music Awards in a wedding dress (note Arquette’s pink vintage dress in the Into the Groove video). The album Like a Virgin would release in December of 1984, and Desperately Seeking Susan would release in Spring 1985. Now known as the Madonna movie, despite her getting second billing, and being in only 25 minutes of the film, and most of that is silent.

Julius
This article isn’t just about her. It’s about my obsession with her as an actress. And, it’s also my reconciling her cinematic presence with her time period as opposed to when I discovered the particular movie.

By the time I finally saw Desperately Seeking Susan, it would probably be 1993/1994. The video cover had always called to me, and to this day the iconic image of the pair will always bring memories of the Thorn EMI/HBO logo in the corner. Note the New York Times quote at the top: “The Madonna Movie.”

But, it was a girl movie, and I wasn’t a Madonna obsessive. I had much more interest in seeing Madonna’s Truth or Dare because I was a teenage boy, and it was supposed to be dirty. Also, the video for Justify My Love was of particular interest due to Wayne’s World’s love affair with it. I had been taken to see A League of Their Own, but Madonna hadn’t registered as much as Rosie O’Donnell. Basically, Madonna was a symbol for sleaze and occasionally catchy music to me as a teenage boy when I finally saw Desperately Seeking Susan…on Comedy Central.

Comedy Central, back in the day, used to have a stable of about 20 films (probably more, but not by much) it would show in the afternoons around 4 or 6 pm, and Desperately Seeking Susan was one of the regulars. I caught it once or twice and thought it was nothing really special. Madonna the megastar had not really affected me yet, and Madonna the actress didn’t move me. Talk about a big fat meh. The music video and the fish tank scene were all I remembered from the film until I caught up with it years later.

Catching up with Madonna’s ouvre post-Swept Away is like a veritable hatewatch. The major exception has always been Desperately Seeking Susan. Watching Desperately Seeking Susan from the vantage point of 30 years after filming, one has the fascination of seeing just how savvy of a business movie it is. And, really, this is the film for my second favorite incarnation of Madonna. The outrageous, kind of needy but sexually forward, New York City Girl who has a drive to exist on her own terms. This is a positive Madonna incarnation.

Madonna as Susan
Madonna’s role in Desperately Seeking Susan is less an acting gig and more a performance. It almost seems that Susan Seidelman basically said, “Hey Madonna. Go out there, and do some shit while I film it. Here’s the frame of the scene. Make it work.” For the first half hour, Madonna’s Susan is practically a silent role. In the first 20 minutes, this scene is the bulk of Madonna’s dialogue:

She’s not actually doing a bad job. She has to be aloof, distant, kind of reserved. It’s a perfect performance of her persona. She delivers dialogue in a reasonable manner, and is able to hide behind shades. She does a less credible job when she has to make believe a feeling she has not experienced on a regular basis.

Even though “Good going stranger” is a repeating statement (Susan says it again at the end of the film), Madonna’s delivery in both cases are exceptionally weak. This is a three second cut-away/throwaway scene, but this single weakness is a major sign of the awfulness to come. Her delivery is flat and unexcited, her smile is fake and theatrical, and her motions feel more like community theater than film star. In the films to come, this fake theatricality will be combined with a massive ego and an desire to control, so that weaker directors will wither under Madonna’s stubbornness.

Desperately Seeking Susan is like the Rosetta Stone of Madonna films. It shows her strengths, and her weaknesses. If there’s further proof needed, this is one of two other heavy dialogue scenes that Madonna has to do.

Madonna the boytoy. Madonna the egomaniac. Madonna the seductress. All in one scene. When she has to emote with her speaking voice, she almost loses it. Luckily, she doesn’t need to do much emoting in this scene, nor throughout much of Susan. She’s a supporting actress in this film, and she doesn’t need to do much other than be an icon.

Desperately Seeking Susan is the perfect movie for Madonna. She’s playing an icon idolized from a distance. People either want to be her, or be with her. And, she holds the power for that desire. That’s the essence of the Madonna persona. It was to Seidelman’s good taste and fortune that Madonna knew how to intelligently manage her persona to perfectly manufacture herself with the film as the culmination of everything in Madonna version 1 before she became Madonna v.2, the Material Girl. It’s to Madonna’s fortune that Seidelman knew how to make Madonna look good and minimize her screen time while maximizing her essence. The synergy of the two created a perfect Madonna movie where the magic has never been replicated.

Julius Now
A couple of years ago, I won a copy of the novelization of Desperately Seeking Susan at a showing of Collide-O-Scope. Susan is even smaller in the novel. Roberta’s breasts have more of a life than Susan. Hell, even the dummy in the Magic Club has a bigger life than Susan. The dummy is a gossipy queen in the novel, and has the dirt on everybody. The couch out front is a mystical couch that seems to embody the trapped spirits of the junkies out front. Roberta’s tits are ginormous and the envy of all women and the desire of all men. I’m not making this up. The novel of Desperately Seeking Susan is worth checking out on its own.

The movie itself has changed. It’s a strongly feminist movie for 1985. It’s two women being caught up in a madcap mystery but the camera is rarely off either Arquette or Madonna for more than a couple of minutes. The movie doesn’t reduce them to being dependent on men, nor being helpless. Interestingly enough, the women do receive and accept help from men, namely Roberta accepting help from Des. Not because she’s helpless, though she does have amnesia, but because we’re all in this shit together.

 

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¹Actually, Madonna had been in an Adult movie, A Certain Sacrifice, when she was young and desperate in 1979…but it was made by an amateur and we’ll not speak any more about it because any student work should be off the table.