Madonna: An Intimate Biography (Hardcover)

by J. Randy Taraborrelli (Author) "Perhaps the last place Madonna's fans would ever have expected to find her was crouched on the floor of an automobile racing down a bustling..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Los Angeles, Sean Penn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
What's the best part of Madonna: An Intimate Biography? The sex part! According to author J. Randy Taraborrelli, Madonna tried to insure her breasts for $6 million each. Prince dumped her because "he wanted to savor every second [of sex]; she was into multiple orgasms." Sean Penn demanded she get an HIV test. "Screw you," she said. "Not until you get tested," he said. When Penn found out about Madonna and Prince, he punched a hole in her wall. Madonna demanded that Prince plaster it ("You're responsible!"), and he did. JFK Jr. refused to give her a baby, and Jackie objected to his affair with someone called a "Material Girl." "Who in this world has been more materialistic than you?" JFK Jr. asked his mother. When he and Madonna dumped each other, he said, "Easy come, easy go." She compared her Broadway debut in Speed-the-Plow to "having really good sex." After their first kiss, Warren Beatty said, "Houston, we have lift-off." Madonna's tune "Hanky Panky" reflects Beatty's favorite sport, spanking. But Barbra Streisand helped convince him to dump the "floozy," so she picked up Tony Ward on Malibu Beach by putting out a cigarette on his back and pinching his nipple. When she realized he was more of a floozy than she was, she spent 21 and a half hours in the Carlyle Hotel trying to convince the married Penn to father her child. Rebuffed, she picked up Carlos Leon, a fitness trainer at Crunch, in Central Park, and presto, she had a baby. Dennis Rodman (whom she called "Daddy Long Legs") was a dud in bed, but she found true love in the daddy of her second child, Princess Diana's cousin Guy Ritchie, director of Snatch.

There's stuff about her career in the book, but Taraborrelli is a lousy music and film critic. I can't vouch for the accuracy of his dish, but I promise you that as a gossip he's the real thing. --Tim Appelo

Review
'A thoroughly professional job... makes her more, not less, fascinating.' Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph 'Bracingly prurient... a book you will find yourself "just dipping into" for hours at a stretch.' Evening Standard --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Edition ( 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2) edition (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743227093
• ISBN-13: 978-0743227094
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,073,246 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a very good effort at all............................., August 20, 2001

By	ED (New York) - See all my reviews

OK, so being a huge Madonna fan, I was very excited to receive this book as a birthday gift. However, I have to take issue with the author - a VERY SIGNIFICANT amount of information has been lifted (sometimes word for word) from Matthew Rettenmund's exhaustive and indispensable ENCYCLOPEDIA MADONNICA (every Madonna fan should own THIS book).

I kept thinking as I was reading Taraborrelli's book - 'where did I read this before', and sure enough, Rettenmund was the source. Also, the author replicates conversations Madonna has had with 'sources' or that have been 'overheard' by 'sources' who recall these exact conversations from years past. I don't know about you, but I can barely remember the EXACT words I spoke to my boyfriend yesterday!!

The author's opinions on Madonna's music are amateurish and trite - not worth reading. He speculates on what might Madonna have thought in certain situations - WHATEVER!!! This book is badly written and corny, and does not do its subject justice. Hopefully, Andrew Morton's biography, due out later this year will have a little more credibility. Save your money for that one - I have read a couple of Morton's biographies, and the guy really knows his stuff - and can write coherent chapters!!!

Disappointing effort, to say the least.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dishing the Dirt on the Dynamite Diva!, February 18, 2002

By	Suzanne Smith (Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While admitting that I am not much of a Madonna fan, I still enjoyed this book. Yes, it is written in a gossipy manner. No, she did not participate in the writing of it. But as anyone knows, a celebrity-sanctioned biography is also bound to be a "sanitized" one. Madonna is as bitchy as they come and this book makes no bones about it.

Slavish devotees may quibble over the facts in this book. But I feel it's a well-written, solid biography of a woman who continues to hold the attention of the public she once wanted so fiercely.

This book has much to recommend it. It moves in a smooth progression from her youth to her relatively newfound maturity with barely a misstep. The author (who cannot be accused of not knowing his subject, having interviewed her on several occasions), clearly promotes the dynamic diva's agenda from day one: to be fabulous and famous. There's the expected exploration of Madonna's unresolved mother/abandonment issues, her promiscuity, her assertions that she is not the best singer or the best dancer. Clearly, life is one big publicity stunt to the girl who freely asserted, "I want attention." There are many interviews with people who knew her during her rise to fame, and nearly all agree: Madonna's sole ambition was to attain stardom and then glory in it. Talent was optional (as was consideration for anyone but herself).

That being said, there is a definite maturity that begins to define her. One quote that illustrates this: "I learned that in order to attract the right kind of man, you have to be the right kind of woman." Out are the self-indulgent shenanigans of the "Sex" book and the video for "Justify My Love." In is "Evita," Carlos Leon (a man one is tempted to dismiss as merely the "sperm donor," but who emerges from this book a true class act), husband Guy Ritchie, and her two children.

OK, so she's got the marriage and motherhood thing going. Now if she could only lose the quasi-British accent and the gyrating onstage at forty-something...

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, August 28, 2001

By	David Kraguklac "[e-mail]" (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Am I the only person on earth who doesn't know every little thing about Madonna? Judging from the cynical customer reviews here, I must be. I found this book to be well-researched and very well done. The writer is compassionate, and tells both sides of every story -- not just Madonna's side. In the Sean Penn battering episode, for example, he interviewed Sean and Sean denied it ever happened. Sean says he did not tie her up. That's why Taraborrelli wrote that there are "two sides" to every episode of domestic abuse. This was a great book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in a good read, and one that really explores the life of a woman who everyone seems to know ... but not until reading this book did I really feel I knew her. Read this book!