Moving to the music of money $ S~~~~~1-r V; -, <-ARTr *~~~~~ ~ ~ ~ *4. .. 'adonna t) ht), the latest pop craze, self-proclaimed b toyy t m ed only at the weekend, is turing -HoIlywovds Orthodox financial pinon'ties ripbt over on ., tieW &t he4s: Simon Baoner reports- Earlier. thtis year,'when Atiivans' were not out for rev,enge - Porky's Revenge, that is - they were very Desperately Seeking Susan. In its first weekend of release Susan took more than $2m at the box-office. In city after city it had Americans doing something they rarely do, and do not have a prc 'er word for. cgueueing. They patiently stood in line long enough and often enough to make Desperatelv Seeking Susan the sur- prise hit of the year so far. The reason for all the fuss? Certainly not the director's name - Susan Seidelman's previous film, the cultish Smithereens, may have been well liked in Cannes, but it never did much business in Kansas City. And Susan's small-change budget of $S5m could hardly have paid for the special effects department to bust your average ghost. No. the box-office miracle was worked by Madonna, American youth's favourite role- model-cum-pin-up of the moment. With the self-styled "boy-toy " playing the part of Susan. the film has so far grossed more than $25m. Madonna's publicity department reckons "she's the hottest crossover dream to burn up the charts since Elvis". Which is a picturesque way of saying that, with record sales of over gOm in the last year or so, Madonna is undoubtedly the most successful female singer of the Eighties. It might be objected that her voice is very ordinary. But she pouts a lot. wears crucifixes in the oddest of places, and has an amazing dress sense (picture it, one commentator wrote, "as a wrestling match between knitwear and lingerie, with major damage sustained on both sides"). Either way, Madonna gets people to the movies. Hollywood. permanently haunted by t iui .fiist~wn demise has, of course, long since been adept at attracting-some of pop music's more lucrative glamour to itself Saturday Night Fever set the trend back in 1978. significantly becoming thg first film to earn more 'from soundtrack album. sales than at the-botfflic.. Next c;7ne. :Gr.ease. .-aanotfier 'moi which -sold. records which sold, movies. In the wake of more.of the. same (Fla$hdance and the phenome- nally successful Footloose), the sto- dios seem to have decided, not without a hint of des'peration, that every vaguely teen4irected fin should, have its own soundtrack album, its own hit singles. Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called' to Say '. Love- You", from the sound- track of The Woman in Red, was, Stevie Wonder. cheaper and more pervasive publicity apart from being an excessively long title, a monster hit which topped sales charts all over the world. As publicity goes, it was much cheaper and much more pervasive than straightforward advertising. Indeed it was profitable in itself. No matter that Wonder's song suggests only a passing acquaint- i-nce with the film. Other soundtracks. such as. those for Mask The Karate Kid or.,Tearhers. are merely arbitrary rag-bags of hits~ and- would-be hits. They are interchangeable. As for current box-offlce winners like The Breakfiast Cl:ub and The Last Dragon. there is nothing to say except: nice video, shame about the film. IThe'economic wisdom of all this is clear. Chart-topping singles drum up business for a film from amongst the infinitely larger audiences of tele- vision and pop radio. And the songs themselves do not need expensive videos for their own promotion - you simpily, in the case of Beverlev Hills Cop, release footage of Eddie Murphy clowning around in L.A. It is an astonishing closed circle of publicity and profit - several birds killed with just one stone. Another cunning variant is Vision Qzuest, which has the actor Matthew Modine just chancing upon a club where Madonna just happens to be giving a performance of her latest hit single. Available from all good record shops, naturally. In Desperatelv Seeking Susan. Madonna-as-Susan prances around a disco to one of Madonna's.songs. It seems there are few rules left Giorgio Moroder can transform Fritz Lang s 1926 masterpiece Metropolis into a video for Adam Ant or Freddie Mercury. And Virgin Records can impose their will on a director and have the Eurythmics on the sound track of 1984. Annie Lennox is a good deal more famous than George Orwell and Madonna is more famous than evervbody. With ':Into the Groove". the pop star's song from Desperatel/ Seeking Sutsan. already at the top of the British charts. the movie is getting four minutes' free publicity each week on Top (fthe Pops. with its 8m viewers. The American success of the film seems certain to be repeated here. Desperatel/ rSeeking Susan will further cement Hollywood's marriage of convenience with the world of pop, so it is ironic that Hollvwood's own pop involvement is in some ways a chance one. It was oniv as the film went into production that the release of Madonna's second album surpris- ingly established her as the focus of teen-dreams, and enormous amounts of attention from the press and media as well. Overnight Desperately Seek- mng Susan became. incontravertibly, 'the Madonna movie". The would-be co-star, Rosanna Arquette. peevishly told reporters that she would not have become involved in the project if she had foreseen the incredible upturn in Madonna's fortunes. Production behind her, though. Arquette is happy enough to pose lovingly with the pop star for press photographs. What is good for Madonna is obviously good for Arquette too. And it is even better for business. Hollywood has its lesson by heart. To keep the teenagers in America's movie theatres it knows which way to turn. More pop to sell more pap. As is often said. cinema itself is unlikelv to have a happy ending, but it is sure to go out with a song. Movig to th ,M usic of money