Back in the 80s, Madonna was pretty much the queen of everything. Queen of Pop, Queen of Videos, Queen of Rolling Around On The Floor in a Wedding Dress. Her videos were always earth-shattering–they even starred Danny Aiello, for cripes’ sake–everything she said made headlines, and what did she do as a result? She took what was most definitely her most adorable song to date, “True Blue,” and let the MTV hordes have at it. Their prizes included a Madonna-delivered check for $25,000, a Levis 501 wardrobe, Casio keyboards, and “enough Twix candybars to pay off the entire cast.”
This was in the days before iPhones and downloadable video editing software. It was, in fact, in the days when my school had Commodore 64s in the computer lab, and our vo-tech department had just gotten something called a “video toaster” to go with the “green screen.” But it was also when camcorders became more readily available, and, in fact, “Papa Don’t Preach” is video-ized by me and several friends, during a fateful slumber party at which we all ended up hating each other and my five-year-old brother is caught on tape, merrily drumming with invisible drumsticks in the background. (I promise we’ll get it converted to digital someday, although my sister may swear blood oath vengeance if I go public with her braceface.)
As I didn’t have cable, I missed the run of all the entries on MTV. But people of the internet: if you have a submission stashed away somewhere, please share it. The world wants to know.
Here’s the winner, by Angel Garcia and Cliff Guest. It’s as cute as the song, all decked out in innocent 50s Rebel-Without-A-Cause love and Brylcreem. Best part is that they were clearly costumed to evoke an earlier era, but you can’t hide 80s hair: note Depeche Mode in the high school dance scene.
And I would love to know: what happened to the Angel and Cliff? Where are you? Did you go on to make movies or did you rest on your 501-Levi’d behind? Tell us!
slumber party movies 