Before Madonna became a global pop star, she appeared in A Certain Sacrifice, an ultra-low-budget Super 8 underground film written and directed by Stephen Jon Lewicki. Production stretched from September 1979 through June 1981 in New York City, with Madonna completing her scenes in late 1980. She reportedly received only $100 for playing Bruna, a sexually dominant Lower East Side woman surrounded by three “love slaves,” partly because she needed help paying her apartment rent. The film’s story involved sexual assault, revenge, abduction, ritualized Satanic sacrifice, semi-nudity, and graphic psychosexual imagery—material Madonna later viewed with deep embarrassment. Her former Breakfast Club bandmate Dan Gilroy subsequently accused Lewicki of exploiting the young performers, saying he felt the director was “using them big-time.”
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Madonna Tried to Bury Her First Film After Its Director Turned It Into a Video Sensation
A Certain Sacrifice / 1980s
Before Madonna became a global pop star, she appeared in A Certain Sacrifice, an ultra-low-budget Super 8 underground film written and directed by Stephen Jon Lewicki. Production stretched from September 1979 through June 1981 in New York City, with Madonna completing her scenes in late 1980. She reportedly received only $100 for playing Bruna, a sexually dominant Lower East Side woman surrounded by three “love slaves,” partly because she needed help paying her apartment rent. The film’s story involved sexual assault, revenge, abduction, ritualized Satanic sacrifice, semi-nudity, and graphic psychosexual imagery—material Madonna later viewed with deep embarrassment. Her former Breakfast Club bandmate Dan Gilroy subsequently accused Lewicki of exploiting the young performers, saying he felt the director was “using them big-time.”
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