Blond Ambition is a biopic from first-time screenwriter Elyse Hollander about Madonna‘s rise to fame. The script has impressed Universal enough to option the property, with two major producers attached, Michael De Luca and Brett Ratner.
And definitely not on board is Madge. She’s has posted several Instagram messages denouncing the project. Just hours after The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of the project Tuesday, she wrote,
“Nobody knows what I know and what I have seen. Only I can tell my story. Anyone else who tries is a charlatan and a fool. Looking for instant gratification without doing the work. This is a disease in our society.”
A copy of the script now in her hands, her criticism got a bit more personal.
“Why would Universal Studios want to make a movie about me based on a script that is all lies??? The writer Elyse Hollander should write for the tabloids.”
Madonna singled out a line of dialogue on the first page, in which she tells Dick Clark on American Bandstand,
“I was born in Detroit. I’m a famed high school dropout.”
Madonna says,
“I was born in Bay City, not Detroit. And I did not drop out of high school. In fact, I went to University of Michigan.”
But Hollander took that exchange directly from the actual Bandstand broadcast, as seen in this YouTube video, below. Maybe that’s why Madonna later deleted the post.
If Blond Ambition does get made, it will have to survive HER wrath, so it could wind up being a BIG FAT headache not worth pursuing.
The plot needs her early hits like Burning Up, Everybody, Borderline, Lucky Star and Holiday— all singles off her debut album from ’83.
Even if Madonna holds none of these rights herself, one prominent music lawyer estimates that she could prevent them from use in Blond Ambition,
“given her stature in the industry, she probably has an approval right”
Here are a few other things THR is reporting that she might not love…
• In one scene, she’s depicted shoplifting in a drugstore, “stashing a toothbrush and some toothpaste in her backpack.”
• The script also suggests that Madonna stole her iconic look from another fixture on the downtown club scene, a character named “Bianca Stonewell.”
• And as her star rises, the screenplay suggests that Madonna ignores her then-producer and boyfriend, Jellybean Benitez, to cozy up to Prince.
“He tries to move past the bodyguard,” the stage directions note. “Madonna, fully engrossed in a conversation with Prince, doesn’t see him. Or does she?” (Italics Hollander’s.)
• 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.
“I won’t have to choose between my career and a family now,” she says as she applies lipstick in a vanity mirror. “And that’s how I want it.”
• In what 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 .
“This might sound crazy, but when I first got to New York I wanted to believe the best in everyone,” she tells Benitez. “Of course, it wasn’t too long before someone took advantage of that. Took advantage of me…”
“Wait … Do you mean…” Benitez interrupts.
“I don’t want to get into it,” she replies.
And apparently, she doesn’t want to get into it now either. She isn’t talking further on the subject, for now, after passing on a request for comment.
(via THR)
