Madonna sets the trends in 'Truth or Dare'

Madonna commands the stage in 1991’s “Madonna: Truth or Dare.” (Miramax/MovieStillsDB.com)

"Madonna: Truth or Dare"
Released May 10, 1991
Directed by Alek Keshishian
Where to Watch

Thanks to a much-hyped scene featuring Madonna performing oral sex on a bottle, her concert tour documentary, "Truth or Dare," was considered controversial and titillating when it finally released all over the world. 

Watching it then and now, Madonna wouldn't have it any other way, but maybe even she didn't realize how ahead of the curve she was at the time. "Truth or Dare" is revolutionary in establishing the many conventions of reality TV and how pop culture artists can define themselves in a documentary. 

"Truth or Dare" is also, very simply, an excellent film and one of the great music documentaries of all time.

The documentary blends Madonna's performances during her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour with behind-the-scenes filming her and the touring company traveling the world. At the time, Madonna was one of the most famous stars on the planet, having scored several hit singles and albums beginning in the early 80s and later branching out to feature films and a well-publicized marriage to actor Sean Penn that ended in 1988. A year later, Madonna released her fourth studio album, "Like a Prayer." The video for the lead single featured religious symbolism and sexual suggestion, inspiring the Vatican to decry the singer. Madonna's controversy cost a sponsorship with Pepsi, but ultimately, it only made her more popular and apt to push boundaries through her artistic expression. 

The Blonde Ambition tour arrived in 1990, featuring many songs from "Like a Prayer." It debuted at the same time as her subsequent work; a high profile role in the comic-strip-turned-blockbuster-movie, "Dick Tracy," and the accompanying soundtrack album, "I'm Breathless." The album featured songs from the movie (three of which were written by famed theater composer Stephen Sondheim), along with one last single that was one of Madonna's biggest hits, "Vogue." The singer also happened to be dating Warren Beatty, famed Hollywood playboy and director/star of "Dick Tracy." Madonna was reaching the peak of her illustrious career.

That's one of the features that make "Truth or Dare" so compelling. The behind-the-scenes footage gave audiences one of their first real-time glimpses into the hassles of being that famous. The film reveals Madonna to be authoritative and vulnerable, compassionate and prickly. As an executive producer of the film, she had enough control over the final product to understand what kind of impression people would make of her after seeing it. And yet, other pop stars who would produce their own documentaries have been known to give themselves a golden edit that makes them look like saints. By leaving in the warts, Madonna pulls us into her perspective even more.

"Truth or Dare" also spends a great deal of time with the Blonde Ambition tour's backup dancers and backstage crew. Madonna considers herself the mother of all of these people, caring and advising them through their travels. Many of the dancers are gay, and looking back, this was likely one of the first times I saw a non-stereotypical depiction of LGBTQ individuals. Maybe this is the buy-in straight teenage boys need for movies, "Come for the sexy pop star, stay for the humanization of people who are not you."

Director Alek Keshishian brings a beautiful visual style to the movie that makes it distinct from other music documentaries; concert footage is shot in color, while everything off stage is filmed in black and white as the crew captures the "Fellini-esque dysfunctional family," according to Keshishian (To which we say, "... yeah, that seems right.")

"I looked at the film of me and the dancers and my relationships with the people I worked with and said, 'No, this is what interests me, more than my performance onstage,'" Madonna said of "Truth or Dare." "The audience already got a chance to see my performance on the stage. What they never get to see is life behind the scenes."

"Throughout 'Truth or Dare,' (Madonna) displays both the impish sincerity and the compulsion to dominate that can be so naughty and winning in her interviews," writes Owen Gleiberman in his original review for Entertainment Weekly. "Yet she also reveals the workhorse behind the pop idol: the show-biz perfectionists whose concerts are as intricate as Broadway shows and who reigns over managers, technicians, musicians, and dancers like a combination dictator and den mother."

Behind the scenes and after the movie's release, several of the dancers sued Madonna and the production company because they weren't paid for their participation in the film. The lawsuit was eventually settled, and going by this week's oral history of the movie, many of them still love Madonna … warts and all.

The documentary had a limited release on its opening weekend with only 51 theaters, grossing $543,250, an average of $10,651 per screen. Distribution increased to more than 500 theaters the following weekend, lifting its weekend to a gross of $3.3 million, enough to break the top five for the week. By the end of its run, "Madonna: Truth or Dare" grossed $15 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing documentary of all time until it was dethroned by "Fahrenheit 9/11" in 2004.

While Madonna isn't the cultural force she was thirty years ago, it's hard to not admire her career even more while watching "Truth or Dare." A perturbed Beatty appears early in the movie, lamenting she can't do anything off-camera, but the truth is, Madonna gave us exactly what she wanted to show on camera, and that's the point. Her radical vision of femininity at the time - blending intelligence, personality, opinions, sexuality, and love for all - was groundbreaking, even if we didn't fully realize it at the time. But therein lies her power, transforming music into art.

At the Box Office: The top movies for the weekend were the two newest wide release films, led by "F/X 2." Folks, back in the days before Hollywood tried to push out the next edition of a famous franchise every other week, they made a lot of interesting choices. Take this movie, for example. Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy star in a story about a master special effects artist teaming with a New York City detective solving mysteries. This is the sequel. They made two of these, and Dennehy is playing a lead role. I know it sounds like I'm making fun of this, but this sounds cool as hell and potentially the pitch for a television show.

The second-place movie was the genuinely bizarre movie, "Switch," in which a sexist male prick is killed by his ex-lovers and reincarnated as Ellen Barkin. There were many body switch plots during this era, but at the very least, do yourself a favor and read the Wikipedia plot summary because it is a ride.

Closing out the top five were "Oscar," "One Good Cop," and "The Silence of the Lambs," the latter still going strong after 13 weeks of release. "Madonna: Truth or Dare" reached 13th place in its first week of release.

In the News: Speaking of Madonna, baseball player Jose Canseco was reportedly seen leaving her apartment on May 10; Iraqi President Saddam Hussein rejected the United States plan to have a United Nations police force supervise the northern portion of the country, following Iraq's failed invasion of Kuwait in recent months that brought the US into conflict; The season finale of NBC's "LA Law" topped the Nielsen charts for the week with a 16.7 rating; The pop duo Roxette topped the Billboard 100 with their single, "Joyride;" The Minnesota North Stars topped the defending champions Edmonton Oilers to advance to the Stanley Cup finals.

Next Week: "What About Bob?"