Madonna's 'Tonight Show' appearance included one flashing and several revelations

Madonna's impulse was prompted by a discussion about her new Paramount Plus concert film Madame X, out today, and what she hopes people will take from it.

"That art is important in our lives," the seven-time Grammy winner explained. "I don't think people emphasize that enough. I'm really inspired by James Baldwin, the writer. ... He was a great source of inspiration for me growing up, and he was a great source of inspiration for the show. And one of the things I quote over and over again in the show is that artists are here to disturb the peace."

She then disturbed Fallon's peace but sprawling across his desk, which clearly worried him to the point of throwing his suit jacket over her rear.

"No one's gonna see anything, my god!" she insisted while walking back to her chair, and that's when she made sure that everyone saw everything.

Elsewhere in the interview, she described the first time she heard her 1982 debut single "Everybody" on the radio:

"I remember I was living on the Upper West Side, on 99th and Riverside Drive, and was just broke and wondering if things were ever going to work out for me. And I had signed my record deal, and I was told that they were gonna start playing my song on the radio—'Everybody'—and then suddenly, my roommate had her radio on down the hall. And I heard it, drifting down the hallway. I was like, 'Wait, what is that?' I ran down the hall, and she's like, 'They're playing your song on the radio!' And I just stood there, like, 'Wow! It happened. It works.' It was like magic. It was the most amazing moment."

Moments like that may be captured in the "visual autobiography" of Madonna's life that she is writing and directing herself.

"The reason I'm doing it is because a bunch of people have tried to write movies about me, but they're always men. Ugh!" she said, then conceded that "some men are good" after Fallon playfully protested. "'Good men' is pretty much an oxymoron, but anyways. Universal was doing—like, they sent me the script because they wanted my blessing, and I read it, and it was the most hideous, superficial crap I ever read."

Madonna then learned a very misogynist director whom she didn't name was going to direct it, and that put her over the edge.

"I'm thinking, 'Why would these people make a movie about my life?' There's nothing true in the script," she continued. "The guy who is making it has no understanding of women, no appreciation of women, no respect for women."

Outsiders continued to try and develop Madonna biopics that she disapproved of enough to "call up heads of studios, call up my agents, and threaten them" to the point where she was willing to "stand in front of the building and protest and make everybody's life a misery," and yet, "they still did not take me seriously."

Madonna, as she has always done, is now taking matters into her own hands because she realized that "there's nobody on this planet that can write or direct and make a movie about me better than me."

She also expressed regret for turning down roles in Catwoman, which she thought turned out "pretty fierce," and The Matrix. 

The appearance was rounded out by a brief impromptu performance of "Virgin," a game of dispelling Madonna myths and a "Kid Theater" segment. Watch below.