Having appeared in movies with titles like Life is Too Long and Swan Song, it was always apparent that Udo Kier didn’t tremble in the face of death. After all, Kier was essentially born into death, with the hospital where he was delivered bombed mere hours after his “entry” (or exit, depending on how you look at it). He and his mother had to be removed from the wreckage. So it was that Kier was birthed amidst what could be called “high drama.” A polite euphemism a gay man might use to describe the nonstop barrage of bombing during WWII. As for Kier the Queer Icon, he never felt obliged to explicitly mention his sexuality, perhaps because there was an automatic assumption that he was “that way.” As he told The Bay Area Reporter in 2021, “No one ever asked about my sexuality. Maybe it was obvious, but it didn’t make any difference because all that mattered was the role I was playing. As long as I did a good job on the part, no one cared about my sexuality.”
Madonna, of course, undeniably cared about his sexuality. For this was part of the reason she cast him in her 1992 video for “Deeper and Deeper.” Although Kier had already been brought into Madonna’s, er, fold by way of collaborating on the Sex book (hence, also appearing in the video footage from the shoot that was repurposed into the “Erotica” video), it was “Deeper and Deeper” that he was truly tailor-made for. This because Madonna’s aim with the concept was to re-create the seedy Andy Warhol aura of the 1970s, Hollywood-style. Indeed, she remade herself into something of an Edie Sedgwick (herself a California girl) figure as she’s shown driving down the freeway as the backdrop of Downtown LA leads her into Hollywood.
Pausing along the boulevard to commune with some of the “trade,” the version of Madonna with a finger-wave, 1920s-inspired hairstyle is the one who has the most in common with Edie. As for that 1920s aesthetic, it was hardly a coincidence. For as the video’s director, Bobby Woods, would later remark of Madonna’s 70s-oriented nostalgia infusion, “She believed, and I think this is accurate, that there was a similar feel to the times of America in the Roaring 20s and the Disco 70s.”
As though to get across that point in her handwritten notes for the concept, Madonna had drawn a square around the phrase “pre-AIDS” that was placed alongside the words “free for all.” Indeed, Madonna arrived in New York City just as the “free for all” was still going on, pulling up the same year that a place like Plato’s Retreat opened. Which meant that the free-for-all spirit had even transferred to straights. To be sure, some of that “Plato’s Retreat energy” is what she’s trying to channel in one of the photo sessions with Kier in the Sex book, wherein they play something to the effect of a “swinging couple” as Kier delights in the company of other men while Madonna, on her knees in evening wear, looks up at one of those men longingly. In truth, this is an image that sums up the crux of Madonna’s love life. After all, as she’s said before, she’s a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. Alas, gay men are quite visual—a.k.a. not exactly physically allured by Madonna except in the way that gay men covet female beauty for emulative purposes.
In addition to tapping Kier to help her pay homage to the Warholian look and feel of “Deeper and Deeper” (even if it was set on the opposite coast), she also managed to snag Holly Woodlawn—though Joe Dallesandro would turn out to be an impossible get. She then looked to her own personal “stable of stars” to fill out the rest of the canvas, as it were. One that appeared very evocative of what she would have experienced in her early club-going days in New York. That sense achieved in the way she enters the club (which is actually The Roxbury, still at the peak of its powers before it closed in ‘97), almost as if reenacting her manner/routine every time she flounced into a joint like Danceteria or The Pyramid Club.
To get across the familial, “I’m a regular here” aura, Madonna also included the likes of Guy Oseary (the Afro’d bloke she high-fives), Seymour Stein (the head of Sire Records who signed her to her first record deal) and Ingrid Casares (her newfound bestie that she had “stolen” from Sandra Bernhard) as those among the revelers she greets immediately upon entering the club. She would have probably gotten Warhol himself to be there had he not died in 1987 (after all, the two were well-acquainted throughout the 80s, with Warhol even coming to her 1985 wedding to Sean Penn). Another person she greets with a hint more warmth is a blatant Joe Dallesandro lookalike wearing a red bandana around his forehead in the same way that Dallesandro would. Because, barring the ability to get “the real deal,” M had to settle for a dead ringer. And oh, how he passes.
As for casting Kier in this particular “batch” (Sex, “Erotica” and “Deeper and Deeper”) of her oeuvre, while Madonna might have seen him in a Paul Morrissey/Warhol production, it was Gus Van Sant’s 1991 film, My Own Private Idaho, that ostensibly sealed the deal for her in terms of wanting to snag him for the queer-centric universe she was creating. A universe that ran parallel (and antithetically) to the conservative Christian rhetoric of the U.S. in the early 90s. So it was that appearing in the visual work of Madonna marked Kier’s biggest ascent into the mainstream (even if the Erotica era was arguably her least mainstream phase). Particularly the mainstream in terms of speaking to the LGBTQIA+ community. Something he essentially negated just two years later by appearing in 1994’s ultra-transphobic Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (which some might deem his most “truly” mainstream outing, but those who understand the full weight of Madonna are aware that it’s not). Fortunately (and thanks to M), it is “Deeper and Deeper” that will stand the test of time over Ace Ventura when it comes to remembering Kier for some of his most queer-friendly contributions to pop culture.
As for Udo’s angrily-delivered line at the beginning of “Deeper and Deeper,” “Beware! Our idols and demons will pursue us until we learn to let them go!,” it would seem that, as a simultaneous idol and “demon,” Kier has been the one to let himself go. Into that good night. Or, in Kier’s likely scenario, into that glittery night.
