Madonna Greets Adoring Tribeca Festival Crowd With Tales Of Clubbing, Cinephilia & Emotional NYC Return

Deadline and other entertainment outlets routinely publish minute-by-minute accounts of film festival standing ovations.

On Friday at the Tribeca Festival, Madonna‘s appearance at a world premiere drew frenzied ovations that could never be timed on a stopwatch – before, during and after the 90-minute event at the Beacon Theatre.

The reaction was all the more striking because the film in question was a 10-minute short linked to her forthcoming new album Confessions II. “I wish it had been 20 minutes or 30 minutes,” Madonna mused after hearing the eardrum-shredding reaction.

“Do you know when you’re in a club in New York and people start spreading a rumor that Madonna’s coming to the club?” CNN host Anderson Cooper (subbing for the originally scheduled Jimmy Fallon) asked the crowd, yelling over their screaming reaction. “Well, motherf–kers, Madonna is here tonight!”

The short’s directors, David Toro and Solomon Chase (who are jointly billed as TORSO), appeared on the Beacon stage to offer a few takes on the shoot, which took 6 months in total, including a month of production. But the main event was Madonna communing with the nearly 3,000 fans at the premiere, most of whom have followed her for decades. Shouts rang out at regular intervals, sometimes interrupting her mid-flow. “We love you!” one fan called out. “You were always here for us!” another followed.

Celebrity cameos abound in the short film, including one by Sabrina Carpenter, who appears on the new album and performed with Madonna at Coachella. Benedict Cumberbatch, Julia Garner and Debi Mazar are among the many other recognizable faces. “There are a lot of Easter eggs,” Madonna said.

One particularly egg-rich scene featured Mazar in a track titled “Danceteria,” after the famed New York City nightclub. Long before becoming an actress, Mazar used to operate the elevator in the multi-level venue, Madonna recalled. Cocaine and decadence defined the era, but while Madonna made an offhand quip about doing a “line of coke,” she later affirmed she has “made it this long because I don’t drink and I don’t smoke … I need to be here to help you.”

Cooper asked Madonna about her surprise 15-minute mini-set in Times Square on Thursday night, a promotion both for the album release and the kickoff of Pride Month. (Gay fans have “been there for me since Day 1,” she declared.) Sneaking out of her Michigan house as an underaged teen to go dancing got her grounded for the whole summer, she remembered, “but it was worth it” for what she discovered there.

“I felt free,” she recalled, adding a shoutout to her dance teacher at the time, who was an out gay man at a time when that was uncommon. (One track on the album is titled “I Feel So Free.”)

Madonna said she “got emotional” during the Times Square show, which drew 50,000 fans. “It was a full-circle moment for me,” she said. “When I first got to New York, I got in a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the center of everything, so he dropped me in Times Square – which is really not a very nice thing to do.”

While the Beacon event had all the trappings of a concert, save the musical equipment, Madonna took note of the fact that she was at a film premiere. “Film has inspired a good part of my life,” she said. Videos, by comparison, “seem a bit cheap. … I liked it when it was just MTV and me.”

Cooper replied, adjusting the order of prominence, “I thought it was more like you and MTV.”