Advance copies of Peter Biskind's new biography of Warren Beatty, Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, have started circulating and in an effort to be the best homos we can be, we turned directly to the sections featuring the actor's former paramour, Madonna, and transcribed a few of our favorites for your reading pleasure:
Beatty was never long without female companionship, and Madonna was waiting in the wings. She was 30, while Beatty was 51. According to Sandra Bernhard, "Madonna and I were in the back of a limo driving to some concert in L.A., and she said, 'Sandy, did you fuck Warren Beatty?' I said, 'No.' And then a month later she started dating him. I always thought, What if I had said yes, I'd fucked him, would that have meant she wouldn't have wanted him? The deal would have been off? I guess she was just testing the waters.'
Beatty began seeing Madonna in January 1990, shortly after Sean Penn famously tied her to a chair, which didn't prevent the younger man from phoning her to point out that Beatty was 'old enough to be your damn father.' According to a friend of his, Penn 'would follow her at night and, always, they would end up at Warren's... He'd sit in Warren's gate, waiting for her to leave. Often, she wouldn't do so until the sun rose.'
As Madonna reportedly recounted to a friend, Beatty called her from the car, said, 'I'm half a mile from your house. Take off your panties.' A few minutes later, he called again: 'I'm four blocks from your house. Take off your bra.' And again, when he pulled up outside her Malibu home: 'Now I wanted you to go downstairs and unlock the door. Then I want you to lie on your bed and wait for me to come to you and make love to you like you've never been made love to before.' Apparently that wasn't good enough, because she said she didn't have an orgasm. She complained the sex was better with Penn, and wondered why she was with Beatty. But high maintenance at the best of times, she was in particular need of an island of calm. The actor supplied it. Moreover, her interest in him was piqued by rumors from the Inge-Williams days that he was bisexual.
At that time, Madonna was racking up column inches by teasing the envelope of gender ambiguity with her friendship with Bernhard, who was a lesbian and proud of it. During a dinner with Beatty at the Sushi Cove (sushi was his food of choice), Madonna was offered a selection of vanilla or chocolate ice cream for dessert. She chose both, which got him thinking. He asked her, 'You seem to like to try everything. Have you ever made it with a woman?' 'Have you ever done it with a man?' [she responded]. 'Do you want a woman?' he replied, ignoring her. 'Because if you do, it will be my present to you. I'll get you a woman...if I can watch.' 'All this, just from ordering two kinds of ice cream?' [she said].
Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America will be in stores on January 5.
"[Beyoncé] called me and she said, 'What do you want to do?' And I'm like, 'I don't want to show up in some frickin'
hair bow and be fashion Gaga in your video'. I said, 'I want to do
you.' The whole time I was learning the
choreography they were calling me Gee-yoncé."
-- Lady Gaga speaking with the Z100 morning show about her upcoming appearance in Beyoncé's "Video Phone" video. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the release of Gaga's debut album, The Fame, which has sold over 4 million copies and spawned four top 10 singles.
To see our slideshow from Out's September issue featuring Lady Gaga on its cover, click here. To read the cover story, click here.
"I joined the Church of Scientology thirty-five years ago. During my
twenties and early thirties I studied and received a great deal of
counseling. While I have not been an active member for many years, I
found much of what I learned to be very helpful, and I still apply it
in my daily life. I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist,
but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was
criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed
was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them
internally. I saw the organization -- with all its warts, growing pains
and problems -- as an underdog. And I have always had a thing for
underdogs.
But I reached a point several weeks ago where I no longer knew what
to think. You had allowed our name to be allied with the worst elements
of the Christian Right. In order to contain a potential "PR flap" you
allowed our sponsorship of Proposition 8 to stand. Despite all the
church's words about promoting freedom and human rights, its name is
now in the public record alongside those who promote bigotry and
intolerance, homophobia and fear.
The church's refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots,
hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word.
Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent."
"We didn't know it was going to be a big hit. We thought Tom [Cruise] was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth. He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn -- we were all very young at the time, Tom was 20, I was 23. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don't agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names. He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, 'You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?' I mean, his lingo was larded with the most … There was no basis for it. It was like, 'It's a nice day, I'm glad there are no gay people standing here.' Very, very strange.
Years and years later when people started to torment him with that, I used to think God, that's really fitting, because he tormented a lot of people as a 20-year-old. He made such a big deal about it. Same thing with Eddie Murphy -- I remember somebody calling and saying, "You'll never guess who was just caught with a transvestite!" [Laughs.] And I remember thinking that seemed fitting, because there are certain people in showbiz who make it an agenda, every third sentence has to have something knocking that life choice, and you think, What are you doing? … I just thought it was very funny that years later, that became his bugaboo. Which is a nice 1930s term I thought you'd enjoy."
"I say stuff like 'oopsie-daisy.' Growing up, I didn't feel cool. I didn't fit into any crowd. 'Geek' is not a word anyone uses to describe me, though, except perhaps [Confessions on a Dance Floor producer] Stewart Price, who once said, 'You know, you're a nerd at heart, nobody knows it." I took it as a compliment. I'm silly and geeky and nerdy and not cool."
-- Madonna responding to the question "Do you still consider yourself a geek" in her new Rolling Stone interview.
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