From Owen Gleiberman‘s 4.17 Variety review of Becoming Madonna:

“We’d like an authoritative chronicle of everything that happened [during Madonna‘s struggle to make it], since Madonna intersected with as many notable figures as Zelig. And Michael Ogden, the director of Becoming Madonna, churns through these years in a slipshod way.

“The film keeps tossing out stray bits of information, like the fact that Madonna just about moved into The Music Building, the graffiti-strewn beehive of a studio rehearsal fortress several blocks south of Times Square.

“Yet it leaves out so much lore! Like the fact that Madonna studied under Martha Graham, or that she worked as a hat-check girl at the Russian Tea Room, or that she was sexually assaulted at knifepoint, or that she had a relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat, or the pivotal way that she recruited ‘Jellybean’ Benitez to remix her first album.

“And though it’s part of Madonna’s legend that she pestered the DJs at Danceteria to play her demo tracks, it would have been nice if the movie filled in that chapter instead of just…mentioning it.”

Does anyone remember my 12.16.16 HE piece that praised Elyse Hollander‘s Blonde Ambition (“Popstar Bitch is Born”), a still-unproduced script that explores Madonna’s tough Manhattan years (’81 through ’83)?

I hereby pledge to send a PDF of Hollander’s script to anyone who’d like to read it.

Alas, Madonna didn’t like it and that’s where it ended.