Borderline

Work of Art

Like a painting come to life.

An article on MTV from Vanity Fair - Birth of an MTV Nation.

On making Like a Virgin. Look at that gorgeous cinematography. Worth every cent.

Photographs featured in the Borderline Video

Who the fuck took these photographs that were in the Borderline video and why don't we have them? I've been waiting since 1984!!!

Madonna/Madonna VHS Cassette plus Record Store Counter Promo

When this 4 track Video VHS came out in late 1984, it was bliss! Borderline (still my all-time fav), Burning Up - finally in great quality - I used to have to watch MV3 with Richard Blade here in Los Angeles to get Burning Up and Everybody because MTV didn't play those. The club version mix of Lucky Star. And, of course, the original Like a Virgin - which is Mary Lambert's original cut and the first one they showed on MTV for the first couple of weeks of their exclusive.

This is the Record Store Counter Promo they had for the VHS. It folds under and it stands straight up like a pyramid. Fab.

Giovedi 2 Marzo 22:25 - Madonna and Pepsi - The Big Bang

The Italian Madonna Pepsi Teaser Commercial. I always loved how there was a commercial for the commercial. The American version of this was first shown on February 22, 1989 during the Grammy Awards revealing the forthcoming March 2 debut of Madonna's Pepsi commercial that would feature the new song from her new album, Like a Prayer.

The actual commercial was shown just once on March 2, 1989 during America's number one television program, The Cosby Show. It was simultaneously shown in 40 countries around the world to 250 million viewers. The first time in media history that a commercial had an around the world satellite premiere.

The following day on MTV, Madonna premiered her fabulous video for the song, Like a Prayer. The shyt hit the fan. Pepsi withheld further airings of the commercial which were to be edited down 30 second spots of the original. Madonna was also supposed to shoot a second commercial that would announce her upcoming tour with the Pepsi logo all up and through. Never happened.

Christian groups went berserk. Christian fundamentalist, Reverend Donald Wildmon was so appalled with Madonna's video that he threatened to have his American Family Association 380,000 subscribers boycott Pepsi. Then Catholic Bishop, Rene Gracido also called Madonna's video offensive and threatened to not only going after Pepsi but it's other multi-million dollar fast food restaurants, as well. To top it all off, the Pope and the Vatican released a statement damning Madonna. Pepsi bowed out. We never got the second commercial and Madonna said, Eat It!!! - (not an actual quote) - and kept the 5 million bucks.

Click Here for a previous post that shows a great program explaining and illustrating not only the Pepsi controversy but also one of Madonna's Greatest Videos of All Time - Like a Prayer: Videos That Rocked The World.

Trivia: On March 3, 2010 - 21 years to the day Like a Prayer premiered on MTV, Rev. Donald Wildmon stepped down from the American Family Association.

Happy Birthday Mary Lambert!

The best Madonna video director ever. She's cinematic, she's fabulous and she captures the true beauty of Los Angeles and Madonna like nobody else. And a Libra, too! Well, of course. xo

On the set of Borderline

Just Can't Get Enough

Perfection.

Sending an Early Message to Warner

From the Venice set of Like a Virgin

I had a dream about Mary Lambert last night.

It's always been about the Orange Pumps.

Mary was so wonderful in my dream. It was a dinner party atmosphere. I was telling her and her guests how fabulous she was. That I was 13 when I saw the Borderline video in early 1984 and how she and Madonna are responsible for my aesthetic. I was on about (when am I not?) the orange pumps(!!!), florescent green socks, the Keith Haring/Vivienne Westwood devil skirt, the cinematography, to the Los Angeles Salvadorean restaurant/bar on 6th Street. I was raising one arm to the sky to explain that's where Mary is and the other arm to the dirt floor as to where the others dwell. It was a hoot.

I guess this all has to do with Mary's sister, Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and all the shyt regarding her senate seat this and last week . By the way, she triumphed when the odds were against her. xo

Anyway, here's Mary and what she's doing lately. She made the documentary about women in the senate called 14 Women and talking about an art show she had and how she tells stories with pictures. Still as brilliant, smart, beautiful, and wonderful as ever - check it out. She directed The Attic with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) from my favorite television show Mad Men. I love Mary!!!! And she's a Libra.

We had a really hard time raising the money because women politicians are not as newsworthy as men...and I was told that. - Mary Lambert on 14 Women.

All I Had To Do Was Shoot Her Face...

My photographs of the 4th Street Bridge in Los Angeles where the beginning of Borderline was shot.

Like church bells on a Sunday morning after a hard night, Borderline beckons us to the Church of Madonna. That voice, that song, that face, those orange pumps. I still haven't gotten over it, 26 years later. Neither have you.

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The video:

The brilliant Mary Lambert speaking of it:

"We were up on a rooftop trying to steal a shot and the sun started to set and that beautiful golden light lit up her face and I was looking through the camera and I just looked down and I knew we were going to have a great video, all I had to do was shoot her face." - Mary Lambert on Borderline.

Gloss

My best friends and I, back in the day (1983-1986), were always on a mad search (still are) for Madonna magazines and pics. It was almost like baseball trading cards for fags. Anyway, whenever one of us wanted to let the other have it, we would say, "I found Gloss". Haha! Someone who was in the art dept. on Borderline or Mary Lambert has Gloss. Or maybe, it got tossed in the trash - wouldn't that be blasphemous?

It All Seems Like Yesterday, Not Far Away

Warm wind carried on the sea, he called to me

Videos That Rocked The World: The 'Citizen Kane' of music videos - Like a Prayer.

The year was 1989. For fans, Madonna had taken a very long hiatus. Very long being a year and half but back then it felt like an eternity! Anyone that lived through it knows what I'm talking about. Although she had filmed a new movie, Howard Brookner's Bloodhounds of Broadway and was extremely busy doing her first Broadway run of David Mamet's Speed the Plow, there was very little media output from Our Lady from late '87 to early '89. Basically, all we got were paparazzi pictures of her coming and going from Speed the Plow, an Entertainment Tonight coverage piece of the play, rumors of divorce from Sean Penn and the relationship with Sandra Bernhard. After her Who's That Girl world tour in 1987, she told Spin Magazine that she was burnt out on music and the music video medium.

Spin magazine article early 1988 - Madonna not feeling the music landscape and about to come in and funk things up.

There was a written piece on her in the now defunct Fame magazine in late 1988 written by novelist Harry Crews, and it was in there that she dropped the name of her new album, Like a Prayer. I remember thinking, Is she kidding? Like a Virgin, Like a Prayer? After hearing her discontentment with music and video, I was kind of like, On no, its going to be horrible. She's over music and over videos and the last taste in our mouth was the Who's That Girl video. Although that is one of my favorite Madonna looks, it is, in my opinion, one of her worst videos. But then about 6 months later the Like a Prayer song and video were released and my initial thoughts were immediately eradicated. Obviously. She came back with a vengeance and with one of the greatest songs ever written and recorded in the history of popular music and with a video that put all others to shame. The greatest and most controversial video ever made. The Citizen Kane of music videos. Never doubt the woman.

Here is the program Videos that Rocked the World from 2007 - which discusses in length not only the brilliant video but also the Pepsi commercial and all the influence and controversy it caused. With commentaries from the video's director - the brilliant Mary Lambert, producer Sharon Oreck, co-star Leon Robinson, the awful, back stabbing horrible and hypocritical Niki Harris, cinematographer Steve Poster and a slew of others.

So without further ado here is the program, Videos That Rocked the World, analyzing the greatest video ever made, Like a Prayer.



Fighting for the National Endowment of the Arts

perfection

The hair, the face, the eyebrows.

25 years ago today - Madonna and Mary Lambert's 'Material Girl' Video

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The perfect marriage of song and video was presented to the world with the premiere of Madonna and Mary Lambert's Material Girl, 25 years ago today. Nothing in the video world has ever come close - although all have tried. It's difficult to imagine one without the other.

This was Madonna's first foray into the back catalog of Hollywood, creating the 'New Movie Star'. A star that came into our living rooms and for four and half minutes, gave us glamour, beauty, attitude, pathos, story, drama, sex, comedy - and myth. All delivered with the perfect soundtrack sung by the actress herself. For Generation X, Madonna is the greatest actress that has ever lived.

She had already given superb performances in two previous Mary Lambert 'films', Borderline and Like a Virgin. Madonna was a silent film star to a new generation that was on par with Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson and Pola Negri.

It is here with Material Girl, that Madonna truly solidified her status as The New Movie Star. In fact, she is a composite of all the great stars.

Without further ado, Material Girl.

Borderline - When 'The Voice' merged with 'The Face'.

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She had already bewitched me with 'the voice'. Then one day about 6 months in and a few magazine clippings later, while getting ready for school, I heard Borderline playing on MTV - I had been waiting forever. No longer was it just that voice from the heavens above - now I saw her in motion and it couldn't have been any more glorious.

...Behind the Music didn't do their research, Borderline was shot in Los Angeles but nevertheless..."I knew we were going to have a great video, all I had to do was shoot her face."
- Mary Lambert

The Lion's Bride - Gloria Swanson and Madonna

Cecil B. DeMille's Male & Female (1919) and Mary Lambert's Like a Virgin (1984)










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I'm fascinated by both Swanson and Madonna and in my bizarre head I've always seen them as kindred. They both hang in the same room.

your voice can take me there

La Isla Bonita