MADONNA

THIRTY YEARS AGO, MADONNA INVITED CAMERAS BACKSTAGE, INTO HER DRESSING ROOM AND EVEN HER BED FOR TRUTH OR DARE, WHICH LIFTED THE LID ON WHAT WENT ON BEHIND THE SCENES OF ONE OF THE MOST SCANDALOUS TOURS OF ALL TIME

MARK LINDORES

Madonna with her Blond Ambition Tour dancers, circa 1991

© Getty

It’s hard to imagine now, given that we live in an age where the concept of overexposure has been largely eradicated from the realm of celebrity thanks to reality TV and social media, the vilification and criticism that Madonna faced when she released her Truth Or Dare documentary 30 years ago.

Retitled In Bed With Madonna outside of the US due to the game after which it was named being relatively unknown at the time, it granted fans an access-all-areas backstage pass to the lives of Madonna and her touring family as they travelled the world on her groundbreaking Blond Ambition Tour in 1990.

Unflinchingly honest in its depiction of a superstar at the peak of her powers, Truth Or Dare was unlike any other music documentary that had come before it, such is its prismatic portrayal of its subject as demanding, outrageous, lonely, funny, bitchy, maternal, vulnerable and flirtatious. Presaging the raft of carefully curated ‘documentaries’ serviced by artists today, it is Madonna’s openness and willingness to be seen in an unflattering light that makes the film as much an anomaly in its genre now as it was then.

Originally envisioned as a straightforward tour film, Madonna had tasked David Fincher, director of her Express Yourself, Oh Father and Vogue videos, to commit the concert to celluloid. However, after a rumoured love affair between the two of them cooled, Alek Keshishian, a recent film school graduate who had been directing music videos for artists including Bobby Brown, was enlisted as Fincher’s replacement. He came to Madonna’s attention after a mutual friend showed her a production of Wuthering Heights using the music of Kate Bush and Madonna which Alek had created for this thesis at Harvard. Just three days after Madonna called to offer him the job,

Alek was on a plane to Japan to document the opening of the tour. 

Aside from the concerts themselves, Keshishian was also instructed to shoot some behind-the-scenes footage to intersperse with the live performance for its release as a home video. Watching back what he had fi lmed, Madonna found herself drawn more towards the backstage reportage than the live sequences and decided to make that the focus of the fi lm instead. 

Her decision horrifi ed her manager and record label, who believed it would be career suicide to dispel the mystique around which superstars were built. Seeing an opportunity to not only show the reality of her life on the road, but also shine a spotlight on causes that she was passionate about, Madonna was unrepentant and funded the fi lm herself, granting fi nal cut to Alek.