Madonna is interviewed by director Gus van Sant in the new Interview magazine. Let’s say this now: I cannot wait to see the movie she intends to direct, called “W.E.” It promises to be smashing.
Forget reports from the UK that the script is an abomination. We now have it from Madonna’s own words.
Somewhow “W.E.” concerns the Duke and Duchess of Windsor–aka the former King Edward VIII and his American wife, Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Madonna calls King Edward “the guy” in the interview. Oh yes the guy. She says: “They’re a very controversial couple. People have lots of different notions about them. I mean, the guy, Edward, gave up the most powerful position in the world for this woman.
“But people have accused Wallis of all kinds of things. They’ve said that she put a spell on Edward. They’ve said that she was a hermaphrodite and that he was gay. They’ve said that they were Nazi sympathizers. It’s just the usual lynch-mob mentality that descends upon somebody who has something that lots of other people don’t have. They have to diminish you by saying there’s something wrong with you, or accuse you of something that they really don’t have the knowledge or the right to.”
From this we may draw the conclusion that Madonna is going to ignore the vast historical record of the Duke and Duchess’s relationship with the Nazis and Hitler. I guess she will not include their 1937 visit to Germany as Hitler’s personal guests, and the reams of communication compiled by the FBI and British intelligence. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/25/freedomofinformation.monarchy
Anyway: the Interview interview is full of fun facts including the possibility that Madonna seems to warn her employer, Live Nation, not to expect much in the way of music soon:
“I haven’t really been focused as much as I should be on the music part of my career because this movie has just consumed every inch of me. Between that and my four children, I don’t have the time or the energy for anything else.’
Live Nation rescued Madonna from Warner Music Group last year with a $125 million contract.
(My Live Nation sources say they aren’t concerned. “She just finished the second highest grossing tour of all time,” observes an insider.)
Madonna also questions how people will find out about her new DVD of a tour. “IÂ think I have a fan club,” she says with complete dis ingenuousness. Indeed. Madonna, according to my sources, spends a great deal of time signing autographs and merchandise in her massive West 64th St. home, and directing fan club activity.
