The director who hates Madonna with a passion: “I’ll never forgive her for it”
Any director who hires an objectively bad actor to play the lead role in their movie runs the risk of having them sink the entire film with another lamentable performance, but that wasn’t the reason why one filmmaker developed a searing hatred for Madonna.
Let’s face it, she’s not good. If science calls somebody the worst actor in the history of cinema, then it’s hard to argue. The ‘Queen of Pop’ has had her moments, but for the most part, her feature-length credits are comprised almost entirely of woeful turns, terrible films, and woeful turns in terrible films.
She eventually grew cognisant of the constant critical drubbings that she was taking, and decided the best way to counteract them was with a spot of self-sabotage. However, blasting her latest film before it had even been released was hardly conducive to its prospects, and it seriously pissed off Abel Ferrara.
By the time his drama, Dangerous Game, began shooting in February 1993, everybody knew Madonna was a rubbish actor. At the time, she’d already won two Razzies for ‘Worst Actress’ and been nominated another four times, but the bullish auteur felt like she’d be well-equipped to play Sarah Jennings in his film about filmmaking.
It was Ferrara’s ninth feature, tenth if you include that time he helmed a porno, so he knew what he was getting himself into. That said, what he didn’t expect was for his leading lady to launch a pre-emptive attack on the picture, saying, “I don’t think it should be called Dangerous Game, it should be called The Bad Director.”
She accused Ferrara of sabotaging her performance, leaving her in tears at an early screening. “Madonna killed it,” Ferrara told The AV Club. “The first impression people get on a movie is the one that never gets out of their mind. So after Madonna got so trashed for doing Body of Evidence, she thought she was going to beat critics to the punch and badmouth the film. And she actually got good reviews.”
What little buzz there was for Dangerous Game had evaporated by the time it was released, thanks in part to Madge denigrating the movie and its director before anyone had a chance to form their own opinion. It bombed thunderously at the box office, and yet, she managed to avoid another Razzie nod.
She’d been shortlisted the year before for her documentary, Truth or Dare, and she added another ‘Worst Actress’ prize to her collection for Body of Evidence, which arrived in cinemas ten months before Dangerous Game. Ironically, the one she slated in public got off scot-free, leaving Ferrara fuming.
“She never got a good review from the Voice or The New York Times in her life, but she got good reviews for this movie, which she came out and trashed,” he raged. “I’ll never forgive her for it.” It’s never a good look for an actor to belittle their own film, especially when it wasn’t even close to being the worst one they’d starred in that year.
