This Day In Pop: Madonna Releases ‘Truth Or Dare’ Documentary

‘Truth or Dare’ sheds light on Madonna’s most loyal fanbase: the queer community.

Truth Or Dare debuted ‎May 10, 1991.

Celebrity access comes in abundance these days. Pick up your phone, open Instagram and scroll down your feed to see the latest happenings with your favorite stars. Still, a lot of that easy access is executed with a strong level of curation, particularly from the major pop acts. Filters. Double takes. Edits. To that effect, we’ve grown to love certain feeds for their more authentic portrayal of stars. Cue Cardi B’s rise to fame. On the other end, Madonna is still seemingly working on navigating Instagram, but even if she does conquer the platform one day, it’ll never offer the same unprecedented pass to her celebrity as she did in in 1991 with the release of her very first concert/doc film. For our inaugural installment of This Day In Pop, BreatheHeavy decided to kick off our series with one of the most important documentaries in pop music: Madonna: Truth or Dare (also known as In Bed With Madonna).

Back on May 10, 1991, Madonna’s (mostly) black-and-white doc was given a limited cinematic release by Miramax Films in various North American markets. 14 days later, the film was treated to a wide release across the country. Whether that was a tactical move from the studio or not, an even bigger scope of the public got a dose of Madge in the 122-minute film and it lifted the veil (more so than it had been done before) on what it meant to be one of the biggest stars on the planet. Extensive for even today’s standards, the access shines bright as the film’s biggest star, and like her early career accolades, the project made its mark, netting over $30 million at the box office. If you haven’t seen the concert doc, it’s best to try and watch without any current day views on Madonna and instead with the framework of a 1991 release. From afar, it seemed like it was meant to chronicle the then-32-year-old’s life while on her 1990 three-continent “Blond Ambition World Tour,” but the self-funded film did so much more and, surprisingly, left a fair amount of her vanity out the picture. It scaled magnificent footage of concert performances in color in between then-new backstage editing aesthetics. It pushed the ****** envelope with aggression. It presented an A-lister in a raw and authentic space, putting the singer’s thoughts at the forefront, for better or for worse. Most importantly, it shed a light on the queer community at a really important time. 

s** was, is and probably will always be some component to the Madonna blueprint, but there’s absolutely no hiding it in Truth or Dare. It appears overt and almost uncomfortable. In one notable scene from her show in Toronto, the singer is told that plainclothes officers are prepared to arrest her if she performs simulated female mas*******n within a dance routine of “Like A Virgin.” Her response is defiant and potentially more controversial than the bit from the tour itself, which is also paired with Chatholic imagery, in case you were wondering. “Last time I was on tour, Sean [Penn] was in jail. I guess it’s my turn,” she responds. Law enforcement decided not to arrest the singer, but that doesn’t mean she got away with all of her sexcapades while filming. Later on in Italy, the Pope pushes back on the trek, forcing her to cancel two shows. In another prominent scene from the film, Madonna plays a game of “Truth or Dare” and shows her backup dancers just how she gives head using a glass bottle. Again, it might seem tame-ish in this day and age, but we’re talking almost 30 years ago.

Beyond the s**, Truth or Dare sheds light on Madonna’s most loyal fanbase: the queer community. The film frequently goes beyond Madge as a focal point, offering viewers a rare glimpse of her family, childhood friends and collaborators, but the most memorable batch within her inner circle is her backup dancers (made up of mostly gay men). With hundreds of hours of footage, director Alek Keshishian takes the theme of family (chosen family, if you will) and hones in on their genuine dynamic. It’s close-knit friendship. It’s a celebration of LGBT love. It’s AIDS activism when stigma ran high. As the film progresses, viewers learn just how important they are to her life and that’s something that Keshishian didn’t realize until mid-filming. “I felt instinctively that I wanted to get across how in Madonna’s world homosexuality was just a fact of life,” he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 2016. “These dancers, who she felt so close to, they were going through that age of AIDS. There was still so much stigma against it. I felt personally the power of putting that out, buT I had no idea that it might resonate with others quite the way it did.”

It’s a tender notion throughout the film that carries its own weight and fills Madonna’s presence with compassion, balancing her overt behavior. At one point, her makeup artist admits that she was *****. “All I can think of is that she started talking about how she’s on tour with me. She’s staying at the Ritz Carlton and those guys got it in their mind they were going to **** with her,” the singer responds. That’s the kind of attitude that Madonna can’t stomach nowadays. Back in 2015, she made it clear that the cult classic isn’t on top of any of her must-see lists. “I sort of gag when I watch it, ’cause I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t.’ It’s hard to watch myself do anything,” she explained to Andy Cohen, admitting that she’s scared she’ll come off as a brat. But as fearfully as she might be, there’s no taking away just why the film comes off as quintessential M-A-D-O-N-N-A and that’s part of why it helped dictate the tone of how we view celebrity today. In one scene, the singer is seen mingling with a batch of stars backstage of one of her shows. One of those faces is then freshly-Oscared winner Kevin Costner, who greets the star, saying, “You were great. Thanks for having us. That was very generous. I thought it was neat.” Madge isn’t pleased with the reaction. “Neat? Anybody that says my show is neat has to go,” she says once he leaves the room while pretending to gag herself. 

Her overall sense of truth and candor even seems to be too much for her then-boyfriend Warren Beatty, who can’t deal with the cameras following her around. At one point in the film, the dynamic between her and the production crew becomes too much for him. “She doesn’t want to live off-camera, much less talk,” he says of the Madonna and the production. “There’s nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it’s off-camera? What point is there existing?” 

That’s an argument that still holds up in today’s heavily-documented Instagram culture, but there’s a good chance that you still won’t see that kind of Truth or Dare access from today’s pop stars — unless you’re able to bypass label reps, publicists and the stars’ own sense of media training.

Written by @JamesExhale for BreatheHeavy.