The only thing Madonna could not control was Sean, and his ambivalent feelings about the impending nuptials. Two nights before the ceremony, he threw his bachelor party in a private room above Hollywood’s Roxy nightclub. Among others present at the party were his brother, Chris, actors Harry Dean Stanton, David Keith, Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall. Stripper “Kitten” Natividad, who entertained at the party, recalls, “Those guys were pretty drunk. They had a good time. But Sean didn’t fall on his face, or anything. When he talked, he made sense. Sort of.”
Sean told his friend Isaac Benson, also at the party, “Man, I don’t know that I can go through with this thing.”
“Do you love her?” Benson asked.
“Hell yeah, I love her,” he said, sipping a Bacardi and Coke. “But we’re gonna tear each other apart. We’re nuclear, together, man. Nuclear.”
“So maybe you shouldn’t marry her,” Benson suggested.
“Oh yeah? And then what?” Penn asked, raising an eyebrow. “She’ll kill me for embarrassing her in front of the whole world, that’s what. No,” he decided after tilting back a beer. “I love her. So, I’m marrying her. God help me. Look, if the whole thing falls apart,” he offered, trying to be optimistic, “at least I’ll have acting, right?”
Then, the two friends toasted the upcoming nuptials. “Hopefully, no one will find out where the wedding is gonna happen,” Sean said. “That’s what Madonna wants. A nice, quiet ceremony.”
The Remaking of Apocalypse Now
It would seem that Sean Penn actually believed that Madonna wanted “a nice, quiet ceremony,” the location of which was to be kept a closely guarded secret, even though such a concept was at odds with everything everyone else believed they knew about the publicity-hungry superstar. No address, location or telephone number was printed on the invitations, written by her brother Michael and printed on shocking pink paper. (“Please come to Sean and Madonna’s Birthday Party. The celebration will commence at six o’clock. Please be prompt or you will miss their wedding ceremony.” Those on the select list realized that the bride would turn twenty-seven on her wedding day; the bridegroom twenty-five the day after.) Guests were to be informed of the location by telephone at their homes or hotels less than twenty-four hours before the ceremony. Only key employees at the caterer, chair rental firm and florist were to know of the location of the ceremony. Delivery drivers were to be given the address only when their trucks were loaded and ready to go. Also, supervisors were to follow the trucks just to be certain that no driver stopped on his way to the ceremony to make a telephone call that (for a few bucks) would tip off any press people to what was happening, and where.
Of course, it didn’t take long for word to get out that the Penn/Madonna wedding would take place outdoors on the very visible Point Dume, Malibu, hilltop property of real estate developer Don Unger on August 16, 1985, at six P.M.
Four days earlier, the couple took out a marriage licence. Sean Penn listed his middle name as “Justin,” born August 17, 1960. His residence at the time was at 6728 Zumirez Road in Malibu. Highest school grade completed was twelfth. His father was listed as Leo Penn, mother Eileen Annuci. Occupation: actor.
Madonna filled in the same address as Sean’s — they were living together at the time. Her occupation: entertainer.
In the days before the ceremony, there was a great deal of acrimonious discussion regarding Sean’s refusal to sign a prenuptial agreement. Madonna’s handlers were adamant that she should not marry without first having a “prenup” in place with her fiancé, and they pestered her until she finally — and, one might speculate, with some hesitation — asked Sean to sign one. He was adamant that he would do no such thing. “I equated it to a death warrant in a marriage,” he explained, years later. Perhaps he knew that the request wasn’t coming from Madonna; it was coming from attorneys and managers (whom he later referred to as “a bunch of pathetic idiots who were accusing me of trying to cash in, move in on Madonna’s money. It was completely ridiculous, and it really pissed me off.”) Sean must have quickly become concerned about what would be in store for him as Madonna’s husband. “She had become a one-person megacompany,” he said, “and all of those people were on the telephone with her every day, to make sure I wasn’t looking for cash, as if I didn’t have my own career. Buncha’ chumps.”
“Look, Sean, just sign the goddamn papers,” Madonna told him in front of one of her attorneys.
“Fuck you, Madonna,” he said, his tone acrid. “I ain’t signing nothing.”
“Then, I ain’t marrying you,” she told him.
“Fine,” he said. “Fuck you, anyway.”
“No,” she countered. “Fuck you, Sean.”
“No,” he responded. “Fuck you, Madonna.”
And on it went . . .
In the end, after all of the screaming and shouting, Sean did not sign a prenuptial agreement. The wedding plans were finalized, though to some observers it seemed that these two people barely liked each other, let alone loved one another. There wasn’t much warmth between them. Sean was distant, Madonna aloof. They seemed to annoy each other. Still, the marriage was on. Perhaps in their quiet moments alone, out of the public eye, they shared something no one else was aware of, something that they may have interpreted as genuine love and trust: a foundation for a life together.
There was simply no way to ensure that the news of this marriage ceremony wouldn’t somehow be leaked, despite the “precautions.” Some of her friends joked that Madonna probably sneaked into a guest room and called the National Enquirer herself. In a matter of an hour, it seemed that practically every tabloid reporter in the Los Angeles area — more than a hundred of them in any case — congregated in front of Unger’s $6.5-million estate, scheming to find ways to get a closer look, bribing caterers so that they could sneak onto the property. Media outlets began making deals with the locals to rent neighboring houses so that cameras with telephoto lenses could be implemented for exclusive photographs.
The wedding ceremony — complete with a celebrity-driven guest list of more than two hundred (including Andy Warhol, Tom Cruise, David Letterman and Cher) — turned out to be a highly publicized fiasco. Not only was the property surrounded by press, but photographers were hanging from the trees. Earlier, Sean had tried to convince Madonna to allow the press a few quick photographs in private just to let some of the steam out of the event, but Madonna would not allow such a “photo op.”
At first, the helicopters stayed five hundred feet above the wedding. However, as soon as Madonna walked out of the house, they came dangerously close to the ground, whipping the hair of the female guests with the power from their rotating blades. A cursing Sean Penn ran around the perimeter of the seaside mansion with a gun, shooting at the eight helicopters circling above. Madonna looked stunned. The naked hatred etched on her groom’s bitter face must have been a startling sight. “I would have been very excited to see one of those helicopters burn and the bodies inside melt,” he later declared. “They were non-people to me. I have never shot a firearm at anything I considered to be a life form.”
“I realized then,” Madonna would remember years later, “that my life would never be the same.”
Madonna looked stunning in a strapless, white (!) $10,000 wedding gown (created by her “Like a Virgin” tour designer, Marlene Stewart), on the arm of her father, Tony, who gave her away. For some unknown, odd reason, under her veil — which she had to hold down to keep it from flying away — Madonna wore a black-rimmed hat. Under the hat, her hair was spun into a French twist. Sean wore a double-breasted $695 Gianni Versace suit. His tie was clumsily knotted. He had missed a few patches while shaving.
With their long dresses flying up, female guests began screaming as Madonna furiously shook her fists at the helicopters. “Welcome to the remaking of Apocalypse Now,” said Sean Penn to the windswept guests. Then, the angry-looking bride and groom began shouting out their vows to Malibu judge John Merrik over the roar. In the mi
ddle of “I do take you,” Madonna jabbed her middle finger upward. Sean’s mouth was grimly set throughout the service.
The ceremony lasted five minutes, during which time the couple exchanged plain gold rings. Penn then lifted his wife’s veil, and to the accompanying theme from Chariots of Fire, he kissed her as the guests stood and applauded. Afterward, on a balcony a few feet above the guests, Sean toasted “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Then, he was to remove his wife’s $700 custom-made garter. Delicately, Madonna raised her gown so that Sean could find it. But, just as indelicately, Sean completely disappeared under the billowing skirts, where he acted as if he was scrambling about and having a difficult time finding the garter. Finally, he emerged with it. Madonna, her eyes twinkling, threw it out to the crowd, where it was caught by her sister Paula, who was also her maid of honor. (She handed it over to the young daughter of Madonna’s manager.)
The wedding dinner — lobster in a white cream sauce, swordfish and a mixed vegetable side dish — was then held under a large tent on the front lawn of the home (of course!), catered by Los Angeles chef (and owner of the famous Spago restaurant) Wolfgang Puck. Three fully stocked bars, each eight feet long, kept the guests distracted from the continual noise of the circling helicopters. No live band played at the wedding reception — much to the amazement of some of the guests such as Cher who, in shocking purple spiked wig, said, “What? She couldn’t afford live entertainment? We have to listen to records? I could listen to records at home! And without helicopters!”
At the reception, Madonna danced with the guests to records by Prince and Michael Jackson. Meanwhile, Sean seemed glum and depressed, much as he had seemed at his bachelor party.
Later, acting as if she was in a sour mood, Madonna called the wedding a “circus,” as if that were a bad thing — a thing she hadn’t counted on. “Damn them,” she told one associate when speaking of the press’s intrusion. “Damn them all to hell for ruining my special day.”
“Really?” the associate asked her. “You didn’t expect all of this to happen?”
“I didn’t say that,” Madonna answered, sheepishly. “But damn them, anyway,” she concluded, with a smile. (Later, demonstrating either her sense of humor about the ceremony, or the fact that she really wasn’t that upset about the way it turned out, she spoofed it hilariously on a Saturday Night Live sketch.)
In fact, Madonna had staged the ultimate press event. “What better to get on the cover of Time. And People, and Life. And every other magazine,” Madonna’s brother Martin Ciccone said. “It was all calculated. She’s a marketing genius, no question about that.”
“I thought it was a lovely affair,” observed her father, Tony, fifteen years later. Perhaps only a father would be able to overlook the fracas in order to see the beauty of his daughter, in white, marrying the man of her dreams. He recalled that, just before she married Sean, Madonna asked him, “Are you proud of me, Daddy?”
“I have always been proud of you,” he told her.
“Daddy, that’s not true,” she said. “Just be honest with me, for once.”
“But why won’t you just believe that I am proud of you,” he asked her.
Tony would later recall that Madonna had tears in her eyes as she answered, “Because you never wanted any of this for me. You didn’t even want me to be a dancer, let alone what I became. You just wanted me to stay home, go to college, get married and have children.”
It was difficult for Tony to comprehend the reasons for his daughter’s statements. While it was true that he had wanted her to go to college, he had simply never shown as much indifference to her career as she had repeatedly maintained he had. It was clear that something else was wrong, that Madonna had feelings of anger toward him about another matter. However, because father and daughter had never truly communicated their emotions in an honest, direct manner, the real source of Madonna’s resentment toward Tony would have to remain unaddressed.
“Well, you’re getting married now, aren’t you?” Tony Ciccone concluded. “That’s gotta count for something, doesn’t it?”
Shanghaied
After the wedding, the newlyweds moved into a Spanish-style canyon villa in Malibu with a stunning view of the ocean. The estate chosen by Penn sat on fifty acres; surrounding hills shielded it from prying photographers. Just to be on the safe side, Penn hired contractors to build a wall around the property, topped with spikes. “We’re also going to have gun towers,” Sean said, and only half joking.
Ensconced in her safe haven, Madonna then tried her hand at married life, even making halfhearted attempts at doing housework. Sean was bemused to come home with friends and find the queen of pop washing dishes. Laughingly, he would introduce his sponge-wielding wife as one of the richest women in America.
Like most young couples, the Penns had their share of first-year challenges. Of course, the difference between their relationship and those of most others was that Sean’s and Madonna’s was played out in the public eye. Because they were, arguably, the most famous young couple in the world, their spats — many of which took place in front of strangers outside the privacy of their home — always made for splashy headlines. Young, glamorous and exciting to watch — and unpredictable in every way — they were constantly followed by the press, spied on in restaurants and reported about as they went about the business of screaming at each other in public, which seemed to be a commonplace occurrence. Madonna, accustomed to the attention and even used to courting it, seemed to take the scrutiny in her stride. “Well, you have to expect a certain invasion,” she said, “such as people walking up to you on the streets. But I draw the line when I get to my house. People hang out at the bottom of our driveway a lot and ring our bell constantly. They want to see us. They think we’re going to invite them in for a cup of tea or something.” Such intrusions drove the fiercely private Sean Penn to exasperation. In one interview, he scornfully observed, “I hate it. I hate those people. I hate the whole goddamn thing.”
At this time, Sean entertained several ideas that would team him up with Madonna in a film. She wanted to be a movie star; he was already one. It seemed natural that he would help her to achieve her goal. Eventually, the couple settled on ex-Beatle George Harrison’s movie Shanghai Surprise. The film — about a missionary in China — seemed doomed almost from the start. The script was lousy, and soon after filming began (Madonna and Sean had to fly to Asia for the production) the Penns started making changes to the story. At first they had great faith in their director, but they soon grew to despise him.
“We had the wrong script, the wrong director [Jim Goddard] and the wrong stars,” George Harrison now says of the film. Of the Penns, he says, “Don’t ask.”
There was trouble off the set as well as the Penns continued to engage in almost daily battles with the press. Although they were both highly paid stars who relied on the public’s interest and support for their livelihoods, Sean Penn seemed determined to keep himself and his wife from the media — he regularly brawling with and spitting at reporters and photographers, she looking on, beaming and seemingly bemused. They were already being tagged “the Poison Penns” by the time they flew to London for more work on the film.
Once back in America after the movie’s completion, and against a backdrop of anger and hostility — toward each other as well as the outside world — the couple attended the premiere of Sean’s latest movie At Close Range (for which Madonna wrote and recorded a song for the soundtrack entitled, “Live to Tell’). At the premiere, Madonna sported a new, gamine look: short hair, softer makeup and a short black cocktail dress. As they rushed into the theater, a reporter asked Penn, “Does your appearance tonight have anything to do with you trying to sort of patch things up with the press. Is that part of why you’re here?” Sean stopped walking. He watched with a disgusted face as photographers jockeyed for position to get the best shot. Meanwhile, Madonna smiled broadly . . . this way . . . then that way . . . then, this way again . . . at the ca
meras that were pointed toward her. All about her, fans cheered and waved. “To the press that slams me,” Sean suddenly announced, as his wife lapped up the attention, “I say, fuck you.”
Considering the hoopla and interest surrounding the couple who had starred in it, the real surprise of Shanghai Surprise was that no one was interested in seeing it. Rolling Stone declared the film “Madonna’s first flop,” after the $17 million film grossed an embarrassing $2.2 million. Producer George Harrison blamed Penn and Madonna for the film’s failure. Both of the movie’s stars had refused to breathe life into the anemic box office by doing any publicity for it, and Madonna had even badmouthed it. “The director turned out to not know what he was doing,” she complained. “We were on a ship without a captain and we were so miserable while we were working on it that I’m sure it shows . . .”
“I had just gotten married,” she would say years later when talking about Shanghai Surprise. “It was still really new to me, and my ex-husband was really kind of railroading his way into the whole project. Because I was in such awe of him, I kind of let him make a lot of the decisions that I shouldn’t have allowed him to make. I was so green. I just found myself in a situation where I felt completely bullied and out of control, and I didn’t know what was going on, and it was not pleasant.”
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