Madonna: Truth or Dare

A documentary shot across the 1990 Blond Ambition tour. Backstage in black and white, the concerts in colour. Madonna appears with her dancers, her family, her lawyers and Warren Beatty, who was seeing her at the time. Alek Keshishian directs. Outside North America the film is called In Bed with Madonna. Its most quoted moment belongs to Beatty. As Madonna talks to her doctor on camera he interrupts to say there is no point in saying anything off camera; on his account she does not want to live through anything that is not recorded. That line became the film's own critique of itself. The second issue was legal. One of the dancers sued over the unauthorised use of footage from his private life. It stands as one of the cases in the argument about the limits of documentary at the time. The film is also remembered for the visibility of its gay dancers at the end of the eighties. Madonna's crew, and how at ease they are in front of the camera, had not been given this much room in a mainstream production before. For a concert documentary it did extraordinary business and remains one of the most watched in the form. Who it is for: anyone interested in pop history, backstage documentary and late eighties America. Who it is not for: the film is under Madonna's control and is not critical. How much of it is staged remains an open question.