It is a film about family secrets
Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald says he was stunned by the attention generated when his film exposed the agony singing superstar suffered
KEVIN Macdonald was well into the shoot when the bombshell dropped.
After spending months searching for the truth about Whitney Houston’s tragic fall from grace for a new documentary, the Oscar-winning Scots film-maker found himself at the centre of the showbiz story of the year – that she had been sexually abused as a child.
He was amazed not only by the revelation he had coaxed out of her family and friends but also by how it made headlines around the world.
Kevin said: “We didn’t realise it was going to be quite such a big story. When you spend such a long time making something, you forget what bits of it are going to be the most surprising.
“I guess it said a lot about how people still think about Whitney and love her.
“It was absolutely everywhere. Every newspaper carried it and I thought it amazing that people really, really cared. That’s testament to her and her long-term impact.
“If you look back at that music, you recognise its power and the ability it still has to communicate such strong emotions . People all over the world have been moved by it. That’s whyy theyy care and that’s why it’s on the front page of newspapers that she had ad been abused.”
Kevin’s film Whitney was unveiled at Cannes in May and launches in n cinemas today after a UK K premiere at Edinburgh h International Film Festival, al, winning best documentary ry award in a tough field.
It’s the Glasgow- born orn director’s third pop star tar documentary – after films lms about Mick Jagger and Bob Marley – and chartss her amazing spirit and descentt into drug addiction.
Whitney first shot to fameame in 1985, selling 22million copiespies of her self-titled debut album,, which featured singles such as How Will I Know and The Greatest Love of All.
The hits kept coming. I Wanna Dance with Somebody, So Emotional, I Will Always Love You and an incredible Super Bowl rendition of the US national anthem made her America’s sweetheart.
But behind the mic, she was a victim of sexual abuse who struggled with her sexuality and had a fractious relationship with her late father John, who sued her for £75million after a major fall-out.
Her marriage to pop star Bobby Brown was turbulent and she suffered from serious drug problems for years.
Brown is often blamed for her downfall but Kevin believes he wasn’t the villain – their troubles were a codependent codepend mire. In 202012,
she was found dead, aged 48, after a drug-related accidental bath drowning. Kevin, who won an Oscar for One Day in September and is also well-known for hits such as Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland, wanted to find the truth. He said: “When I first started it, I had no sense of where it was going to lead, I followed my nose. I’d been watching archive footage and was frustrated that she never seemed to open up in interviews. There seemed to be a feeling of her being uncomfortable in her own skin. I felt it was like someone who had suffered some kind of trauma. “Simon Bates interviewed her for radio in 1989 and asked what makes her angry. She said, ‘Child abuse’. He said, ‘What do you mean, you’re from a very happy family?’ Then she said she hated it when that happens.
“I began to think some kind of abuse had gone on. Then when I was talking very late on to her brother, Gary, I asked about his own addiction and if there was one thing that drove him back again and again. He said about being abused as a child. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Then that led me to think, ‘Was it the same with Whitney?’ I found out that it was and, finally, Whitney’s assistant, right before we finished editing, said she wanted to talk about it.
“She said this was the elephant in the room and didn’t want to talk unless the family were aware of it.
“Then she talked about her long conversations with Whitney on the subject and how it had affected Whitney so very much.”
Whitney and Gary were abused as children, allegedly by their late cousin Dee Dee Warwick, the sister of Dionne Warwick. Kevin added: “Often I felt like a therapist on this film. At the end if it, Whitney’s brothers both said to me it was the therapy they should have had a long time ago.
“The key line for me in the film is the moment where Gary says, ‘There are a lot of secrets in our family’. If you don’t talk about the secrets, they don’t go away. If the film is about anything, it’s about family secrets.”
While the child abuse discovery answers a lot of questions about Whitney’s demons, it’s an honest account and doesn’t absolve her of responsibility.
Perhaps the greatest victim of the tragic story was Whitney and Bobby’s daughter Bobbi Kristina, born into a toxic lifestyle.
Whitney’s aunt talks in the film about the little girl’s traumatic upbringing: “The things Krissie had to endure, no one would ever imagine.”
Three years after Whitney’s death, Bobbi was found unconscious, face down in a bathtub in a terrible echo of her mother’s fate. She died in a hospice six months later, aged 22.
Kevin said: “It was a weird experience because normally you start making a film about someone who is a hero, become a bit disillusioned about them but you know them better.
“In this case, I started not feeling a huge amount of sympathy for her but began to like her then really began to dislike her, before coming back and feeling more empathy and respect for her music more than anything else.
“It’s hard to forgive someone who has destroyed their own daughter’s life and been a bad parent, and there’s no getting away from that.
“Yet, of course, it’s the cycle of abuse isn’t it?”
Whitney, Cert 15, is in cinemas from today.
When I first started it, I had no sense of where it was going to lead
KEVIN MACDONALD ON MAKING HIS MOVIE