Life with My Sister Madonna (30 page)

Then Pavarotti makes his entrance and, although we all know exactly who he is, goes around introducing himself.

“Hello, I'm Pavarotti. Hello, I'm Pavarotti,” he announces to each and every one of us.

Courtney Love is also there, but Madonna avoids talking to her because she thinks Courtney is crazy. Courtney and I have a moment's conversation in which she says, “I see Madonna and me as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, but I can't work out who is who.”

I smile and shrug.

At around ten thirty, Madonna, who always goes to bed at eleven on the dot, leaves, but I stay.

By this time, Donatella has changed from her black outfit into white jeans and a white shirt. Her face isn't tear-stained, but she looks pensive. She sits down next to me briefly, then excuses herself and disappears.

I go upstairs to the bathroom.

When I pass one of the guest bedrooms, I see Courtney—dressed in a beige silk minidress with spaghetti straps, her hair as messy as ever—sitting on the bed, looking sad.

She is all by herself, so I sit with her and we start talking. Then she pulls out a packet of coke, which may well have been half an ounce.

“I've got this,” she says, “but I've never done it before. Would you like to do some?”

I fight to stop myself from bursting out laughing. “You've never done it before?”

“No, I've never done it before.”

“Would you like me to show you?”

Courtney nods, so I go through the pantomime of showing her how to cut lines, which I suspect we both know she knows only too well, but I play along.

We start to party together.

Then Donatella beckons from her sitting room across the hall—furnished with black leather sofas, with a white mink rug on the floor—and we join her. I break my rule about not doing lines and we all do them. It's patently obvious that the drugs are a continuing symptom of her anguish at the loss of Gianni.

Every time Courtney does a line, she proclaims, “Okay, that's my second time. That's my third time. That's my fourth time.”

In the end, I say, “Courtney, just stop counting.”

Meanwhile, Donatella keeps saying, “Chreestopher, Chreestopher, play ‘Candle in the Wind' for me.”

So I put on the CD, and the moment it ends, Donatella asks me to play it again.

“Chreestopher, Chreestopher, play it for me one more time, one more time for me, Chreestopher.”

I do. Over and over.

All the while, Courtney is still counting. “This is my fiftieth time. This is my fifty-first time.”

Then the doorbell rings and it's Ed Norton, whom Courtney is seeing at the time.

She says, “Christopher, go tell him I'm sleeping.”

I refuse. Then I decide that the time has come for me to escape this surreal scenario and get back to reality, so I leave.

 

O
N
O
CTOBER
14, 1997, Demi invites me to escort her to the premiere of
G.I. Jane
. I am slightly nervous that the memory of the photographs of our wild dance at Atlantic on the cover of the
Star
and the
Enquirer
might still rankle with her estranged husband, Bruce Willis, who will be attending the premiere that night.

As I don't want there to be any lingering misconceptions about my relationship with Demi, or about my sexuality, when I am introduced to Bruce, I say, “I want you to know that I'm not having an affair with your wife, and I'm a fag.”

He says, “Don't worry about it.”

Just before Demi meets Ashton for the first time, I am in Manhattan and so are she and Bruce. She invites me over to her apartment at the San Remo. When I tell her I am flying to L.A. the next day, she says that she and Bruce are flying to Idaho the next morning. She is stopping there with the children, but he is flying on to L.A. Would I like a ride? I would and accept the offer.

Their private jet is comfortable, with a sofa, a dining room, a banquette full of candy and mags, a galley, and a big bathroom, and all can smoke whenever they want, which suits me fine.

I suggested to Madonna that she should get her own plane, just so she could fly whenever she wants to. But she says, “That's too expensive. I'm not spending my money on a plane. And I don't have to! I'll use the Warner company jet.” She does, and we travel on it together quite often.

Demi and I talk during the flight, then play cards, but Bruce and I have little to say to each other. We land in Sun Valley. Demi and Bruce have split up and live in separate houses there. She drives to her house alone. While the plane refuels, Bruce and I drive over to his house in his Suburban to get something he needs to take to L.A. He points out the little theater he's restored and all the property he owns there. He seems like a good guy, but a sense of unhappiness surrounds him, a sadness that he and Demi have split up. We stop at his house. I remain in the car and realize that his home is across the street from hers.

During the short flight to L.A., awkward silences occur between us. We smoke cigarettes and read magazines, but the short flight feels like five days to me. When we land, Bruce's Bentley is awaiting him. I have a car pick me up and we go our separate ways.

I see Bruce and Demi again when they bring their daughter up to a music school in Traverse City, Michigan, while I was there visiting my family. They call and ask if they can come over and I show them around the vineyard. There, Bruce meets one of the blondes who works in the tasting room and starts flirting with her. Demi is wandering around somewhere else, and I tell him to stop flirting with the staff.

Three weeks later he calls me. “Remember that blond girl I was talking to? Well, I'd like to go on a date with her. Will you call her up and ask her?”

“Sure, no problem,” I say in amusement.

So I call my father, ask for the girl's name, and call her.

“Listen,” I tell her, “this is going to sound rather strange, but Bruce Willis would like to go on a date with you. His daughter is at school in Traverse City so he is coming up here a lot. Do you feel like going on a date with him?”

She says she doesn't because she has a boyfriend.

I tell her to dump him, but she just laughs at me.

I give Bruce the news.

“Too bad,” he says.

I don't feel that bad for him, though. After all, he's Bruce Willis and has a thousand romantic options.

A year later, he calls me again and asks about her, if she's still with her boyfriend, if she'll go out with him.

She is and she won't.

And then again a year after that.

The blonde is still with her boyfriend, so Bruce strikes out.

 

I
AM STILL
painting. In Miami, over lunch with Ingrid, I meet a fourteen-year-old Colombian schoolboy named Esteban Cortazar, whose parents are artists. He tells me that when he grows up, he wants to become a fashion designer. I sense a fire burning in him—an intensity that reminds me of the young Madonna. Following my instinct, I invite him to dinner that night with her and Bruce Weber.

Once I study Esteban's fashion design book, I discover that my hunch about him was right—he is an original talent. So I tell him that I believe that he has a bright and brilliant future ahead of him and that I want to make a documentary about him that I will film over at least ten years. After his parents consent to the project, I set up a dinner for ten of the people closest to Esteban and interview them about him on camera. Over the next decade, each year I will do the same thing, as well as film him during important moments in his life.

At the time of this writing, Esteban has just been appointed the head of women's wear for the house of Ungaro. I almost burst out with pride in him and am also delighted that my faith in Esteban has been eminently justified.

 

T
HANKSGIVING
1997
AND
Madonna says I can invite a few friends down to the Coconut Grove house, which she doesn't visit much anymore now that she has Lola. Naomi, Kate, and Demi come down; so does Barry Diller. I realize that I am getting far too caught up in the celebrity thing. It's fun, but I am also quite lonely.

At the start of 1998, Madonna calls and tells me she is planning to go on tour and asks me to come over to Cockerham and talk possibilities with her. I am thrilled at the prospect of touring again. I bring my ideas book, in which, through the years since
Girlie,
I've been collecting photos, art, anything that I think might be inspiring.

Madonna and I have an in-depth conversation about the tour. I suggest that onstage, she have a big tree with leaves that change color, symbolizing the change in seasons—and that her songs parallel those changes. She likes the idea. She keeps the file containing my tree concept. I am excited, and—once more craving the heady euphoria of collaborating creatively with my sister and the adrenaline rush of being on tour with her—can't wait for rehearsals to start. A few weeks later, she calls and tells me she has decided to postpone the tour, and I am bitterly disappointed.

However, I don't voice my disappointment to her. And I am happy when, on July 1, 1998, she invites me to see the Spice Girls concert at Madison Square Garden with her and Lola.

We arrive at the last minute. When the crowds see Madonna, they start shouting and screaming. Madonna and I sit on either side of Lola and are invited backstage to meet the girls forty-five minutes into the show, during intermission.

We go into Madonna's old dressing room, and it looks just like a girls' dorm room. Clothes are everywhere. The girls are sitting on the sofa, eating hot dogs.

Madonna can't believe her eyes. “What are you guys doing? How can you eat a hot dog and onions in the middle of the show, and then go out and sing?”

They tell us that it doesn't bother them, and when Madonna and I go back to our seats, it seems that the hot dogs don't have any impact whatsoever on their singing or dancing.

“They can't really dance; they can't really sing. And who the hell eats hot dogs between sets!” she says, shaking her head in disbelief.

For Lola's sake, we endure another fifteen minutes of the show, then split.

Madonna and I see
Cabaret
on Broadway, starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson. The production is set up with the audience seated café style in front of the stage, affording us the illusion that we are participating in the show. Madonna loves it, even though she isn't big on Broadway musicals.

By now I have written a second screenplay, “Fashion Victims,” based on a Cunanan-style serial killer, who sets about murdering all the world's great fashion designers. I show it to Madonna. She tells me I am going to get in trouble over the script, as it is a daring but funny take on the fashion industry. I go ahead anyway and try to interest producers in it, but no dice.

 

D
ONATELLA
V
ERSACE AND
I are now extremely good friends. Only a year has passed since the death of Gianni, and she is extremely delicate. She was his sister, his muse, but was never intended to run an empire.

Nonetheless, in July 1998 she launches her first collection and invites me to Paris to see the show. She is still wounded by the loss of her brother, and I can see the sadness in her eyes. She tells me how frightened she is about doing the show on her own. I know that everyone is waiting for her to fail, and I sympathize with her.

I suggest that I make a documentary about her, starting in Calabria, where she was born, through her brother's death, and ending with her first solo show. She loves the idea. She arranges a ticket for me and a room at the Meurice. I arrive there at seven on a Sunday morning, take a nap, and call Donatella, who tells me to come over to the Ritz and bring my camera. Liv Tyler, Billy Zane, and Catherine Zeta-Jones are all staying there as well.

I say hello to Donatella, then sit in a corner and film the models. Suddenly, I notice that none of the clothes have been completed. I can't understand how Donatella can put on a show in five days. Then she walks me into the Ritz ballroom, where fifty Italian women, all with sewing machines, are primed to make the collection. In a second ballroom, the fitting models are waiting around, with cloth draped around them.

The following three days, I go over to the Ritz and shoot. Every half hour, someone brings food down for Donatella to eat, but she refuses to touch it. Every couple of hours, she grabs me, pulls me up to her suite, and we do blow together. This goes on 24-7 for three days, during which I get about two hours of sleep a day.

The show models arrive on Thursday. On Friday, an hour before the show, Kate walks in, comes right up to me, and says, “Christopher, I need some coke and a glass of champagne.”

I say, “Kate, are you crazy? You just got out of rehab and you are not getting it from me.”

The day after the show, Donatella and I are supposed to fly to London together, but when I get back to the Ritz, I find out that she is sick. Her assistants tell me she is staying in Paris and that I should go ahead to London without her.