People think the life of Denise Katrina Matthews isn't interesting enough to be on the big screen? Ha! Here's an unfinished treatment that I've written.

Blame it on Vanity--THE MOVIE

Starring:

(Insert actresses and actors here)

This is the story of former '80s model/actress/singer Vanity and her rise to fame from a life of obscurity, poverty and abuse in Niagra Falls, Canada. As a child, Denise Katrina Matthews would pretend with her sisters to be The Supremes, singing in front of a mirror with her hairbrush and dreaming one day of making it big. These were the happy memories from an early life marred with abandonment, lonliness, and abuse suffered at the hands of her father. Growing up of mixed heritage (her mother was white and her father black), Denise always felt odd, and she would spend many days wondering if things would ever get better. Her mother was an alcoholic, and the relationship her parents had was anything but stable and healthy. After her parents' divorce, she, along with her siblings, spent her formative years shuffling from one relative's home to the next, and her self esteem was very low. Dreaming about a life of glamorous Hollywood stardom provided an escape from her bleak reality, and filled her lonely childhood years with hope for a brighter future.

Denise blossomed into a very beautiful teenager, and soon began entering local beauty pageants, winning one in 1977. She moved to Toronto and found work as a model and in Canadian B-movie projects. She landed a bit part in a slasher film alongside Hollywood starlet Jamie Lee Curtis, and relished the experience of being on-set and seeing how real movie-making works. The film, titled "Terror Train", certainly wasn't going to put her in her idol Diana Ross's league, but it was enough to get her name and face out there. She informed the producers that she wanted to be billed under the name "D.D. Winters", and decided that this would be her stage name. After all, "Denise" was just so plain. Never the shy type, she readily dropped trou for various photographers if the price was right, and even performed in the nude through most of what would be her first big starring role--a Canadian film called "Tanya's Island". The movie--a schlock piece about a woman who is romanced by a man-gorilla--wasn't all she'd hoped it would be, but it paid her more money than she'd ever seen in her life, and, at the time, that was all that mattered. For a while after this, Denise worked steadily, and her self esteem grew.

She moved to New York and signed with an agency, and soon found work as a print model. Upon her arrival in the Big Apple, Denise moved into a squalid apartment with several other young show-biz upstarts. It was here that she first dabbled in drugs, experimenting with a little of this and a little of that, but nothing too heavy. After landing a lucrative gig in an ad for toothpaste, she soon ventured to Japan to model for a time, and was quite content until the work dried up. Still bitten by the acting bug, she journied back to the United States in an attempt to jump-start her acting career, this time opting for the sunny skies of L.A. In spite of her radiant beauty and outgoing personality, things went nowhere fast. To say that she was down on herself would be putting it mildly. One night, upon the insistance of her manager, she attended the 1982 American Music Awards whereupon she would meet the man who would change her life forever--Prince. After their racy, albeit awkward first encounter (he got his publicist to ask Denise if she would "take him to the bathroom") she quickly joined The Purple One's fold, becoming "Vanity" (after rejecting Prince's first suggestion of the cheeky stage name "Vageena")--lead singer of his newly-formed girl group, and the leading lady in his life as well.

Through a whirlwind of recording an album, making videos, touring with Prince and assisting in the development of the storyline for Prince's debut film, Denise was overjoyed with the way her life was turning out. Her new group, Vanity 6 (named for the breast count of the three members of the group), had a hit in their single "Nasty Girl", and she and bandmates Susan Moonise and Brenda Bennett performed the salacious track, wearing little more than lingerie, on shows like Soul Train and Solid Gold. Prince decided to give Denise writing credits on the song, which made her insanely happy and her bandmates envious (particularly Moonsie, who was an ex-girlfriend of Prince's). They became even more green with envy when Prince chose Denise to pose on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with him. She became the object of jealousy for any woman who may have had designs on Prince, and the situation became even worse when he penned a song about her titled "Little Red Corvette".

Soon, Denise delved heavily into the drug lifestyle often associated with rock stardom. What she'd done during her days in New York paled in comparison to her newly acquired taste for cocaine, and, never one to do anything halfway, she dove headfirst into the drug life with a vengeance. She found herself taking multiple sexual partners, and partying as if there would be no tomorrow. As exciting as it was in the beginning, this life would eventually grow stale. She hated being the envy of every woman who fancied Prince, and she hated playing second fiddle to his career even more. She also had trouble keeping rehearsal calls and acting classes set up by Prince, due to her hard-partying ways. All these things, coupled with a burgeoning need to be an artist on her own terms, prompted her to leave Prince's camp just weeks before the filming of what would come to be known as "Purple Rain" would commence. Replaced in Prince's film and girl group by California-based model/actress Patricia Kotero, Denise quickly rebounded, joining Motown Records after being offered a lucrative recording contract with Berry Gordy's company. Soon thereafter, she starred in a motion picture funded by Motown-- an urban karate caper titled "The Last Dragon". Denise would again find herself in another whirlwind of recording, promoting and performing. Berry Gordy allowed her free reign in writing lyrics and developing music video treatments for her debut solo album, which would be titled "Wild Animal". This freedom, something she lacked while with Prince, truly made her feel as though the project was her baby.

A pictorial spread in Playboy magazine soon followed, and Denise became the object of desire for many. She began to date many men in the industry, including rockers Adam Ant and Billy Idol. In a unique twist of fate, she found herself presenting an award to her former mentor and lover Prince at the 1984 American Music Awards--the same event in which she had met him not more than two years before. She looked at it as a way of closing the Prince chapter of her life, and was looking forward to the future. Her future, however, included old habits, and, as they say, old habits die hard. The partying and drug use continued, often hampering her during interviews and performances. She appeared on various talk shows in bewitching, barely-there outfits, usually making non-sensical remarks about her father, gorillas, and her love for animal fur and the like, but people often dismissed her quirkiness because of her exotic outer beauty. Secretly, Denise was unhappy. She had obtained money, fame, and the adoration of many, but these things were not enough to fill the emptiness she felt inside.

The movie roles continued, as did the singing. She completed an action film with KISS rocker Gene Simmons and soap opera stud John Stamos called "Never Too Young to Die", and was less than happy with the end results. Never mind that her first album for Motown had made little more than a blip on the pop music landscape (although a song she'd written for the album titled "Strap On (Robbie Baby)" garnered some attention when it became one of the Filthy Fifteen, a list of songs deemed morally inappropriate by senatorial wife Tipper Gore's committe, the Parents Music Resource Center), she knew that, despite all this, it was time to move on. She landed a lead role in "52 Pickup", a dark film opposite show-biz veterans Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret. Playing a hooker, she put her all into the role, and garnered good reviews for her work. Her life at the time was hectic to say the least. While filming "52 Pickup", she also began work on her 2nd solo LP, titled "Skin on Skin". She was working with a different set of producers this time around, and felt that the new material was a step in the right direction. In spite of this upswing in her professional life, old demons continued to resurface and, while promoting her new album, she'd often appear under the influence (which was ironically the title of her new single) on shows like American Bandstand and Solid Gold.

Denise would often find herself doing absurd things at the most inappropriate times. On a night when she couldn't sleep, she crept from her house in Hollywood and ventured to an abandoned mansion not too far away. It looked haunted, and, being into mysticism at the time, she decided to break in and wander around. She wasn't in the house long before the blaring sound of police sirens filled the night, and soon she found herself being carted off to jail for trespassing. Film star Eddie Murphy, a friend of her sister's (also a model), would eventually bail her out. She began a passionate relationship with Nikki Sixx, the bassist for the popular rock band Motley Crue. Sixx was a sexual beast and ardent drug-user, which were just two things Denise had in common with him. Denise often romanticized the idea of marriage and, as such, would tell people that Sixx had proposed to her (though he had not), and that she would soon once again be "Vanity Sixx". The relationship was bad for her to say the least, and she continued to spiral into a haze of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.

With her personal life a veritable hell, she somehow contined to land acting work. Roles in TV series such as "Miami Vice" and "Mike Hammer" came easily. She often found herself playing the part of the hooker or villain, but it was work, and it was panning out better than her music career was. She landed another film role starring alongside Billy Dee Williams in "Deadly Illusion", and was more than ecstatic because she had grown up having the biggest crush on the star. The film came and went without much noise, but it was a wonderful experience nonetheless in that she got to work with Williams. The brass at Motown were not happy at all with the way Denise's albums were selling, and she decided to take matters into her own hands. At the time, Janet Jackson was becoming a huge star, and Denise knew that Jackson was working with two of her old chums from her days with Prince--Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis were ex-members of the Prince-formed outfit The Time, and they were now major players on the music scene. She decided to give the producers a ring to see if they'd be interested in working with her, but the decision was cut short when her agent notified her of two things: Hugh Hefner wanted her to pose for Playboy again, and he was offering her an even larger sum of money this go 'round, and she was being considered for the female lead in "Rocky"-alum Carl Weathers's break-out film--to be titled "Action Jackson". With her plate this full, she decided to put her album plans on hold for the moment.

(to be continued)

There were reports on here a few months ago that a movie was going to be made about Vanity 6 but I haven't heard anymore about it.

purplethunder3121 said:

There were reports on here a few months ago that a movie was going to be made about Vanity 6 but I haven't heard anymore about it.

The likelihood of it getting made is probably slim, but there is certainly enough drama in Vanity's own life for at least an HBO biopic.

SEANMAN said:

purplethunder3121 said:

There were reports on here a few months ago that a movie was going to be made about Vanity 6 but I haven't heard anymore about it.

The likelihood of it getting made is probably slim, but there is certainly enough drama in Vanity's own life for at least an HBO biopic.

Uhhh, try Lifetime maybe. No, probably just a webcam episode from an unknown site.

sosgemini said:

SEANMAN said:

The likelihood of it getting made is probably slim, but there is certainly enough drama in Vanity's own life for at least an HBO biopic.

Uhhh, try Lifetime maybe. No, probably just a webcam episode from an unknown site.

Are u kidding? Lifetime wouldn't be able to show half the shit that went down with her in the '80s.

A while back it was stated on the org that Rihanna would be taking the lead role in the remake of The Last Dragon, originally played by Vanity. Although I've not heard anything since.

^^I've read that as well. I think they were considering Samuel Jackson for the Sho'Nuff role.

and here's the perfect person to play Vanity.....Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls

^^Yass! She could totally play her. I think she should play Laura Charles as well, if they ever do decide to remake The Last Dragon. Corbin Bleu could play Leroy.