There he met Madonna.
All that angst-ridden talk has made the suddenly hot filmmaker a controversial figure and won him both friends and detractors since his school days. He knows that and so, when pressed, he smiles and acknowledges that he can also be the most “arrogant son of a bitch”-not unlike Madonna, who hired the unknown director to film “Truth or Dare. “Just because he’s now close pals with Madonna, and obsequious movie execs call with scripts (he next wants to film his “Wuthering Heights” opera), he doesn’t want anyone to think his life is perfect. Or easy. Sort of like Madonna’s life, if on a less grand scale.
And that’s what he wanted to show in “Truth or Dare” - a star’s life. He didn’t want to make a traditional concert film, with the obligatory shot of tired musicians schlepping on and off tour buses. He wanted to document the startling dichotomy of Madonna’s world: surrounded by millions of tugging fans and a handful of sychophants stands a lonely Madonna, a “pretty logical girl lost in a surreal world.” But is the film real life? “How much of any of our lives are manipulations of each other? How much of all our lives is acting?” he asks. “My job was to manipulate. Her job was to live.”
