BEFORE: I watched that OTHER documentary about Whitney Houston two years ago, and without keeping an eye on the schedule, I missed her birthday then by inches, I was one day late. Whitney Houston was born on August 9, 1963 - so I was seriously debating whether I should take five days off HERE, rather than spread them out through August. Because I am trying to slow things down just a bit, so this is something of an option. But even though the calendar doesn't support this, I'd like to power through, because right now I'm just watching films from streaming services, and not cable or DVDs, and this doesn't make my main watchlist any smaller. Once slots open up on the main watchlist (when I fall below the current cap of 180 films, that is) then I allow myself to record a new movie on the DVR - so until I watch something from the main list, I can't add anything new to it. As it is it's going to be another week before I can record something new, so therefore I'm against taking a break right now.
But if I did take a break, there's another writing project I would like to work on, which is a book about my experiences, good and bad, while working at Comic-Cons. I think there's a space for this in the geek book market, so now I just have to convince a book editor of that, and the fact that I'm the one who should be writing it. But my wife has suggested that I'm only doing this as an excuse, a reason why I can't be looking for a better, or even an additional job right now. I'm determined to prove her wrong, but that nagging feeling tells me that maybe she's right. Even a few days in to the process, I'm already coming up with reasons why I can't write a chapter today - it's too hot, it's raining, we're out of bread and milk. So now I have to trick myself into writing a chapter every time I have a day off, which is usually two days a week (four if I count the weekend, but come on...). I have to remind myself that I already write a short essay nearly every day about a movie, and if I can write a blog entry, I can write a book chapter. If I can write over 3,600 short essays in under 12 years, then I should be able to write a book, or at least something book-length, in under a month. The logic is sound, now I just also have to find the motivation to go with it. Plus I have to learn how to make a book proposal, which is not the same as writing a book. I think today I can finish a chapter I already started, but I'm just not up for a whole chapter's worth today, time's already running out. I'll try again on Thursday, maybe I'll skip a movie on Thursday since I didn't skip one today.
Whitney Houston carries over from "Hitsville: The Making of Motown" - through archive footage in both, of course. I didn't expect her to be seen at the end of yesterday's film, because she wasn't a Motown artist, she recorded for Arista, as seen in other docs. But I'll still take it.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Whitney: Can I Be Me" (Movie #3,018)
THE PLOT: An in-depth look at the life and music of Whitney Houston.
AFTER: After watching "Whitney", I went back and re-read my review of "Whitney: Can I Be Me", and for the most part, both documentaries covered the same territory. For the most part, but not completely, because the shocking revelation here is the one that caught my attention in the news, and put this Hulu documentary on my list, despite having seen a Whitney doc just a few months before. And really, I'm lucky that this one is still available on Hulu, two years after I became aware of it, because so many films on Hulu seem to disappear from the service before I can watch them. And yes, it sometimes takes me two years, or longer, to circle back around if I feel I've missed something.
The footage of Whitney debuting on the Merv Griffin Show is here, that I saw in the other doc - and the famous interview with Diane Sawyer is here, too - the one where she admits to using nearly every drug on a list, but not crack because "Crack is Wack", and also a drug for poor people, and she was not a poor person. Wow, OK, glad we cleared that up. So, you're too proud to smoke crack but not proud enough to avoid the other drugs? Able to admit your addiction, but unable to go to rehab? That's a pretty fine line to draw for yourself. What we learn here is that after her friends and family staged an intervention, Whitney's dad let her off the hook and told her she didn't have to go to rehab, and that's when you wonder if the people around her really had her best interests at heart. Or did they think that if she got clean and came to her senses she might notice how many family members were on her payroll for doing nothing?
Look, I've seen this cycle before, several times in the 2018 documentary chain, like in the Grateful Dead documentary they mentioned how the real money came from going out on tour, only then the band needed to have a company, with staff, to take care of all the tour details, get the equipment and the band and the t-shirts to the next show, and that company would absorb all this responsibility and liability, plus a company is taxed differently than a person, so it just makes financial sense. And then having a company do all the work creates jobs, and you don't want some strangers taking care of everything, why not hire people you can trust, like family members? Sure, it makes sense on paper until the star realizes she's created a giant machine that pays her family, and she's the hamster in the wheel that's powering the machine. Is it any wonder that she turned to drugs to relieve the pressure and the stress?
Look, I'm sure Bobby Brown is at fault to some degree, too. His unwillingness to answer any interview questions related to drugs ends up speaking volumes, especially when the film also has plenty of footage of home videos presumably made while he and Whitney were high, and they were making nonsensical threats to everyone they could think of. But Whitney's family seems like part of the problem, too, for not accepting her faults, treating her like a perfect person when in fact there's no such thing, and refusing to see the warning signs that denoted what fame and success were doing to her. While there's still no concrete answer about Whitney's bisexuality or the nature of her relationship with Robyn Crawford, it's strongly implied as one friend points out that if she were around today, she'd probably identify as "fluid" somehow on the sexual spectrum. But back then, in the 1980's, people didn't understand as much about this sort of thing, if you weren't all-the-way gay then you didn't really fit into any of the categories, and people also didn't understand that orientation could change over time.
Since Whitney's family came from a very religious background, with nearly everyone singing in some kind of church choir, that would have been another hurdle to overcome (again, if it's true) and another barrier to break down, but it seems that even if Whitney could have told them, they wouldn't have wanted to hear it or deal with it. They didn't want that illusion of a perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect singer, to be shattered, and being straight was, according to the religious view, less than perfect.
There's some other finger-pointing here because Whitney's mother was always traveling, in order to perform music and provide for her children. But there's a bit of a disconnect there, because if you're spending all your time traveling, then you're not with your children, so you might be providing money, but at the same time, you're depriving them of their mother. Look, I don't have kids so I can't speak from a competent place here, maybe a lot of people have to travel for their jobs and they might find themselves in the same boat, away from their children a lot, even though they're working for their family at the same time. Well, what kind of a family is it if Mommy or Daddy is always out on the road? Then it's not too hard to draw a direct line from this to the point later in the film where Whitney gives birth to her daughter, and after a few days hands her off to a family member to raise for the next eight years? Was Whitney being, in turn, the only kind of mother that she knew how to be?
Sure, there are clips from "The Bodyguard" here too, and it's significant that Whitney played in the first MAJOR Hollywood romance with an interracial couple, or at least that's the way it's pitched here. Kevin Costner said he didn't really think about that at the time, but later realized what a ground-breaking moment it was, kissing Whitney on screen after she stopped her plane on that runway. He's probably right, you'd like to think that movie audiences would have been ready for something like that before 1992, but it's not the case. There are some other notable insights here, like I didn't know that Whitney was performing "The Greatest Love of All" so early in her career, before she even had a recording contract. I thought that was a new song in 1985, but it turns out it was written in 1977 and recorded by George Benson before Whitney covered it.
They made a big deal here out of Whitney performing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XXV in January 1991, which was also during the Persian Gulf War. I do remember this got a lot of attention, and was a critically-acclaimed rendition of the anthem, and from the testimonials here it seems it made a lot of African-Americans feel patriotic about the U.S., more so than usual. OK, so it didn't exactly fix racism or make up for slavery, but for a brief time it represented a step toward unifying the country. But then there was also some controversy after (not mentioned in this film) about the fact that her vocals were pre-recorded as a safety measure, and in fact her microphone was turned off. This could have been a huge scandal in the post-Milli Vanilli years, but eventually it was downplayed when it was revealed that this was standard practice for the Super Bowl performances. Plus Whitney donated her profits from the release of the single to the American Red Cross, and then when it was re-released after Sept. 11, 2001, those proceeds went to charity, also.
This documentary then skipped over her other movies, except there are clips from her last film, a 2012 remake of the 1976 film "Sparkle" - but they had to make room for the big scandal, where (in case you haven't heard) that some family members believe that Whitney was molested at a young age by a female relative. Several other family members have denied this, and Whitney's "special friend" Robyn has also said it couldn't be true, or she would have known about it. So there's still perhaps a big question mark there, and we can't really draw any conclusions after the fact, except that perhaps it WOULD explain a lot about Whitney's inner demons and addictions, but we shouldn't necessarily believe an accusation just because it ticks off several imaginary boxes.
Then there's the footage from Whitney's "Nothing But Love" tour in 2010 - it's nearly as painful to watch as the Christmas song that got murdered by Crosby, Stills & Nash at the Washington DC tree-lighting ceremony in 2015 (the version on YouTube is after a professional mixed it, seek out the original, as seen in the film "David Crosby: Remember My Name" if you don't believe me.). Finally in May 2011, Whitney entered rehab again (or, as many people believe, this was essentially for the first time). This was actually before the film "Sparkle" started shooting in September 2011, but Whitney died before the release of the film in August 2012.
Look, I don't know what it all means in the end, I don't know why Whitney Houston is gone and why Debbie Gibson and Tiffany are still here. Why is Amy Winehouse gone but Lady Gaga is still here? Why Kurt Cobain and not Dave Grohl? (My apologies to Lady Gaga and Dave Grohl, I think...) I don't know why the fame machine grinds some people down to nothing and lets others off easy. It's a tricky thing, that's all I know. It's futile to second-guess things like this, and it's also futile to deny who we are on the inside, doing that only leads to greater problems down the road. So be in touch with who you are, I guess, even if that's somebody your parents don't approve of. Boy, that really sounds like horrible advice on some level, but maybe it's not. Most millennials don't seem to have a problem with this, but the Baby Boomers do, and maybe Generation X got caught in the middle?
Also starring Bobby Brown (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Cissy Houston (ditto), Patricia Houston (ditto), Donna Houston, Gary Houston (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me"), Mary Jones (ditto), John Houston III, Joseph Arbagey, Laurie Badami, Debra Martin Chase, Kevin Costner (last seen in "The Company Men"), Nicole David, Clive Davis (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), L.A. Reid (ditto), Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Steve Gittleman, Cinque Henderson, Brad Johnson, Keith Kelly, Steve Lapuk, Ellin Lavar, Rickey Minor (last seen in "Quincy"), Deforest B. Soaries Jr., Bette Sussman, Lynne Volkman, Ray Watson, Ellen "Aunt Bae" White,
with archive footage of Byron Allen, Bobbi Kristina Brown (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "Bombshell"), Irene Cara, Bill Clinton (last seen in "Shine a Light"), Robyn Crawford (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me"), John Russell Houston Jr. (ditto), Randall Cunningham, Princess Diana (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Jimmy Fallon (ditto), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Carmen Ejogo (last seen in "Selma"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Wine Country"), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Hitsville: the Making of Motown"), Marvin Gaye (ditto), Michael Jackson (ditto), Nelson Mandela (ditto), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), David Letterman (ditto), Arsenio Hall (last seen in "Gilbert"), John Tesh (ditto), Lester Holt (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Saddam Hussein, Alan Jacobs, Peter Jennings (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Matt Lauer (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Don Lemon (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Julian Lennon (last seen in "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky"), Madonna (last seen in "Swept Away"), Tracy Morgan (last seen in "Top Five"), David Muir (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Joan Rivers (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2016)), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "Booksmart"), Diane Sawyer (last seen in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), Jordin Sparks, Philip Michael Thomas, Mike Tyson, Barbara Walters (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne Warwick (last seen in "Quincy").
RATING: 5 out of 10 tracks on her debut album
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