This intimate documentary, both authoritative and definitive, traces the rise and fall of one of the most famous names and faces in the music industry from the 1980s and 1990s. Houston had over 200 million album sales worldwide, the only artist to chart seven consecutive U.S. No. 1 singles.
Who among us of a certain age didn’t let loose to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and weep to “One Moment in Time” and slow dance to “Saving All My Love for You” and cry in our beer with “Didn’t We Almost Have It All?” and cry some more with “The Greatest Love of All” and goose-bump to her “Star Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl in Tampa? And all of the above — dance, weep, soar, cry, goose-bump — to “I Will Always Love You”?
This film really is a tribute to all those anthems as it shows Whitney as part of a powerful singing family that included her R&B mother Cissy and her cousins Dee Dee Warwick and Dionne Warwick. Rockumentaries, as this genre of pop-star musical documentaries is sometimes called, can provide a fascinating insight into the lives of singers and musicians, and this one by outsider (he’s Scottish) director Kevin Macdonald seems especially forthright and unflinching.
But the tribute turns tragic; even though she also starred in several blockbuster movies, the disappointments and demons begin to garner the headlines. Soon enough, her increasingly erratic behavior, sexual scandals and drug abuse led to tabloids screaming “Dead at 48!”
Macdonald’s riveting take on this incandescent performer sheds new light on Houston's fame and shame. Using archival footage, behind-the-scenes concert photography, home movies, exclusive demo recordings, audio archives, television footage with Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin, Macdonald adds original talking-head interviews to probe Whitney’s life far beyond the headlines. Weaving through it all is a kinetic, cinematic montage of worldwide events simultaneous to Whitney’s career, a glorification, if you will, of the tumult of the time — AIDS, Reagan, Seoul Olympics, Tiananmen Square, space launches, Gorbachev, Saddam Hussein, Persian Gulf War, Newark race riots, Oklahoma City bombing, OJ and more.
Justified or not, it's as if Macdonald were saying that Whitney Houston was the essence — artistic, cultural, racial, geopolitical — of the '80s and '90s. But it's a bit of overstatement to view her churning life through the lens of this ever-churning world. Still, her immense talent cannot be denied and her fall from grace could not have been more devastating.
We meet her family and friends, users and abusers, supporters and self-promoters, who were a part of her rise to stardom and her ignominious slide into the gutter. The entire family is on for the ride from backup singers to baggage handlers and roadie security, but with a limited skill set that made them totally dependent on the Houston bankroll. And, codependently, most were doing drugs the entire time.
Why the plummet from the apex of talent and fame to the nadir of fear and loathing? The reasons are legion, and director Macdonald explores them all.
Ego? Cocaine? Bobby Brown? Robyn Crawford? Childhood abuse? Overbearing, protective mother? Embezzling father? Parents’ infidelities and divorce? Sexual fluidity? Closet lesbian? Addictions? Divided consciousness from being a black singer in a white culture? Al Sharpton’s disgraceful call for a Whitney boycott because she neither looked nor sounded black enough, and the public booing at the Soul Train Awards?
All of the above for sure, but the film spells out a new and startling accusation from Mary Jones, Houston’s longtime personal assistant who was the first to discover Houston’s death by drowning (and the autopsy report added “with cocaine”). Childhood sexual abuse from a family member seems most likely, and Mary Jones names the abuser. That abuse and Whitney’s own sexual ambivalence seems most likely the cause of her inability to ever accept herself as others saw her. Armchair, after-the-fact psychiatry perhaps, but it seems plausible enough.
Still, Houston's music remains, and you can bet this film will add even more sales and downloads of her memorable voice. It’s the classic story — or clichéd, according to your perspective — of the artist who thrilled millions even while struggling to make peace with a tortured past.
Ben Wiley taught literature and film at St. Petersburg College. At USF/Tampa, he was statewide Director of the Florida Consortium/University of Cambridge (UK) International Summer Schools. His interests are film, books, and kayaking Florida rivers. He also writes the BookStories feature in Creative Loafing Tampa. Contact him here.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 5, 2018.