Life with My Sister Madonna (15 page)

Meanwhile, Jim Goddard, the director, is forced to grapple with the reality that he is not directing the movie by himself; Madonna and Sean are also directing it.

From the first day of shooting, the all-British crew takes an instant dislike to Madonna and Sean. They regard Sean as an arrogant Yank and Madonna as a jumped-up disco dolly. As far as they are concerned, the “Poison Penns”—their sobriquet—are two troublesome brats who are insisting on star treatment without meriting it.

On the second day of filming, publicist Chris Nixon is fired for not having succeeded in preventing the press from taking photographs. Afterward, he says openly, “Penn is an arrogant little creep and his wife goes along with him.”

Down the line, during one of the biggest scenes in the movie, in which a bomb explodes and Madonna is supposed to jump into the river, she point-blank refuses to take the plunge. The water is pitch-black with dirt, so I don't blame her in the least. But after the crew is forced to wait while crates of Evian are brought to the set and Madonna, in a navy pencil skirt and pin-striped blouse, is doused in bottled water, they become irate.

Instead of attempting to win over the crew, and taking a backseat to the director creatively, Sean and Madonna are always on the edge of an argument. Worse still, instead of focusing on the movie full-time, Sean is far more concerned with the swarm of world press who have flocked to Hong Kong to cover the movie and whose telephoto lenses are trained on him and Madonna 24-7; he is obsessed with keeping them off the set. When a photographer does manage to infiltrate, Sean smashes his camera.

Sean and I never discuss his hatred for the press covering the movie, but if we had, I would have asked him why—if he didn't want himself and Madonna to be subjected to such heavy media coverage—they decided to make this movie together in the first place. Surely he must have been aware that by opting to make
Shanghai Surprise
with Madonna, battalions of press would continually be snapping at their heels, eager to report every single second. A conundrum, if ever there was one.

When Madonna and Sean do venture out together, the press besiege them, and Sean goes ballistic. To please him, Madonna follows his example and pulls a jacket over her head to prevent any photographers from getting a picture of her. In reality, she doesn't care at all and would welcome the exposure.

Each time Madonna and Sean leave the hotel, there is practically a riot. To Sean, any photographer who snatches a shot of Madonna is, in effect, not just taking her soul, but taking her away from him as well, and Sean feels exploited.

Exasperated, Madonna tells him, just as she did during the media mayhem at their wedding, “Sean, don't yell at them. Let's just get in the car and go. They'll get their shot anyway.”

But Sean rarely listens and a brawl invariably breaks out.

Meanwhile, the press is on hand, recording his every move, every tantrum, every fight, Madonna is damned by association, and the legend of the Poison Penns grows by the minute.

Back in London, coexecutive producer George Harrison learns of all the Penn-induced drama swirling around the
Shanghai Surprise
set. He takes the next plane to Hong Kong, hoping against hope that he can defuse the situation and coerce Madonna and Sean into changing their ways regarding the press and the crew.

When George Harrison flies in from London, Madonna introduces me to him, and I am surprised that he seems much older than I expected, and taller, too. Madonna described George as “a sweet, hapless kind of character without a mean bone in his body.”

She may well have been underestimating the canny Harrison, who isn't so hapless that he is afraid to read his willful stars the riot act, nor is he sweet enough to sugarcoat his message. The experience of being lectured by a Beatle, I learn afterward, is sobering for both Madonna and Sean, and I am sure that George has not only stressed budget constraints but has also appealed to Sean's professionalism and pleaded with him to tone down his paranoia.

Although I think that George probably handled Madonna with kid gloves—partly because he knows that she, not Sean, is the big box office draw and also because he is aware that all the problems are down to him and not her—later that evening, back at the hotel I can sense that she is feeling uncomfortable, delicate, and slightly insecure about her acting, about how to keep up with Sean, how to stop fighting with him about the press.

She goes to bed early, and so do I.

At around three in the morning, I wake up to the sound of furniture being thrown around in Madonna and Sean's suite next door. He's screaming at her with all his might. Although I am half-asleep, I can make out some of the words.

“I'm the actor, you're not. You should forget about acting. Stick to singing instead, that's what you're good at,” Sean screams at her.

“And you don't know a fucking thing about handling the media, you paranoid control freak,” Madonna counters.

“Well, at least I'm an actor,” Sean growls.

He's really hitting below the belt now. I can't make out all the words, but I hear him smash his fist against a wall. Then the sound of a table sent flying. I am about to break down the connecting door between our suites when, all of a sudden, it flies open. Madonna—in the black satin pajamas with white satin piping from Harrods that I gave her for her last birthday—runs into my suite. Sean is in hot pursuit, snarling with rage.

For a second, I am reminded of Hank, his guard dog.

Just in time, I slam the door right in Sean's face—and lock it.

Madonna falls into my arms. Her face devoid of makeup, usually so pale, is flushed and she's crying.

I put my arm around her and lead her over to the sofa. I hold her while she sobs. Meanwhile, Sean is banging on the door, yelling her name.

He keeps on thumping at the door for a full five minutes, yelling, “Open the fucking door, Madonna, open the fucking door.”

My first instinct is to open it and beat the shit out of him. But I know that will only escalate the situation. So instead, I hug Madonna.

We listen in silence as Sean yells and bangs.

Finally, Madonna falls asleep in my arms. Soon after, I fall asleep as well.

In the morning, she's gone.

When I see Madonna again on the set later that day, her makeup is immaculate, her hair perfect, and she is smiling her bright, confident smile. Sean comes over to me, but I ignore him completely.

Until last night, I was his biggest defender. No matter how weird I thought our blood-brother ceremony was, I felt that it meant something, that we had really and truly become blood brothers. From then on, I always defended him no matter what everyone said about his tantrums and press paranoia. Not just because I felt honorbound, but because I did really feel that we were brothers beneath the skin.

Here in Hong Kong, I was Sean's only defender amid a cast and crew who generally despise him. But that no longer holds true. Now I am neither Sean's defender nor his friend. Although I don't say this to Madonna, I wish that I weren't his brother-in-law.

Remembering Sean's admission that he was drunk during
Shanghai Surprise,
it becomes eminently clear to me that once again my sister and I have made similar choices: we have both fallen in love with men who have, at one time in their lives, become violent from the effects of too much alcohol.

Filming in Hong Kong ends. Sean and Madonna fly to Berlin, where his movie
At Close Range
is being premiered. He stays there for a few days while Madonna flies ahead to London. I fly in from Hong Kong in time to meet her.

At Heathrow, I am escorted to the tarmac. Madonna, in a black scarf and dark sunglasses, along with a bodyguard and her trainer, disembarks. A police escort is at the end of the Jetway and walks with us to customs.

After the officers have finished with everyone's bags, the police throw open the door between the customs hall and arrivals. A posse of photographers lie in wait for us. All hell breaks loose. The hall is ablaze with exploding flashbulbs and the glare of TV cameras. Fans scream and photographers yell, “Over here, Madonna, over here.”

As we walk past the barrier, fans and photographers jump over and surround us. With the bodyguard and the trainer, I form a protective circle around Madonna. We try to edge our way to the curb and our waiting limo.

The police are being less than helpful, and although they make a halfhearted attempt to clear the way for us, it takes us a full fifteen minutes to make it to the exit.

I push cameras out of Madonna's face. What seems like three hundred photographers keep right on snapping.

I can see Madonna's about to crack.

I hold her more tightly. “Stay close, Madonna, I'll get you out of here,” I say.

Finally, we get to the car, a black Mercedes. The door is already open. Madonna and I jump into the back. Cameras are shoved against the car windows. A massive thump, and the car shakes. A photographer has jumped on the roof. Another on the hood. Five or six are banging on the windows.

“Madonna, Madonna, talk to us.”

She slides down in her seat. I hold her close. We are both near hysteria.

Another loud thump and a photographer lands on the back of the car.

“Get me out of here, get me out of here!” Madonna screams.

But the driver can't move because we are surrounded.

“Just drive,” Madonna yells.

We inch forward, and I feel a little bump.

A photographer has slid off the roof and onto the road.

We pull away.

I look back.

He is on the ground.

All the other photographers start to snap his picture.

He tries to get up.

“Lie back down again,” the other photographers yell.

He does, and they take his picture.

As the car pulls out of the airport, we look out of the back window at the crowd of screaming photographers behind us, and the thought flashes through my mind that we are a long way from flying Air India, economy class, eating curry in Soho, and buying jeans in Camden Market.

“Great,” says Madonna. “A whole month in London, and that's what we've got to look forward to!”

When we finally get to read a British newspaper, we discover the reason for the airport riot. While we were in Hong Kong, leaks from the set were pouring into the British tabloids. Now Madonna and Sean are big news. In Britain, the Poison Penns are now the target of every single paparazzo in the country.

Moreover, we now understand exactly why George arranged for Sean to fly ahead separately.

“If he'd have been at Heathrow today, he'd have slugged them all,” Madonna says. And she's right.

But no matter how much I now despise Sean, after that terrifying airport experience I feel a flash of empathy for him. After all, I only had to endure the full force of the paparazzi for a few hours, but Sean is condemned to endure it for as long as he and Madonna are married.

 

M
ADONNA AND
I arrive in Holland Park, where George has rented Madonna and Sean a house, and me an apartment, and just as we stop, a group of cars skid around the corner in a screech of burning rubber.

The ever-resourceful paparazzi have caught up with us.

The exterior of the house is rather like an Elizabethan chalet. We duck inside before the media grab a shot of us. The inside is furnished seventies style, with shag carpeting and a sunken living room overlooked by a big glass window stained with an illustration of a rainbow.

I am relieved that Sean isn't here. Madonna and I spend the evening together. We chat about how difficult the movie has been for her, but neither of us broaches the subject of her abortive relationship with Sean, or that upsetting night in Hong Kong.

Outside, it is cold and wet. I go home to my rented apartment to bed and leave Madonna, protected by her bodyguard, waiting for Sean.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
followed by a bunch of paparazzi that have slept outside the house in their cars all night, we drive to Shepperton Studios, where we are due to start filming the movie's interiors. For the next months, the routine is the same: Every morning the media lie in wait for us outside our house. Each night after shooting, they follow us home again. They spend the night in their cars outside and follow us to the studio again the next morning.

And so it goes for most of our London stay.

Finally Madonna explodes: “I've had enough of being a fucking prisoner.”

So we book a table at one of London's foremost restaurants, Le Caprice. Then we hatch a plot. Madonna enlists a male and female extra, and the following evening they cover their faces and dash out of the house and into a waiting Daimler.

The Daimler roars away, with the paparazzi in hot pursuit.

“It worked! It worked!” Madonna exults.

Then the three of us duck into the black Mercedes parked outside and are promptly driven to Le Caprice, where we spend a relatively peaceful evening without the paparazzi recording our every moment.