‘Whitney: Can I Be Me’ Tells Tragic Tale Of Legendary Singer’s Fall From Grace

“Whitney Houston actually died from a broken heart,” a voice tells us at the outset of Whitney: Can I Be Me, the new documentary about singer Whitney Houston, which premieres on Showtime tonight at 9 pm ET/PT. Sadly, many people would be responsible for her heartache before her tragic death at the age of 48. The singer drowned after passing out in a bathtub at the Beverly Hills Hilton on February 11, 2012 with cocaine and other drugs in her system, an ignominious end for one of the most important female artists of her era.

Directed by Nick Broomfield, the somewhat controversial documentarian behind 1998’s Kurt & Courtney, and veteran filmmaker Rudi Dolezal, the film uses interviews, flashbacks, and archival interviews with Houston herself to tell the story of the singer’s rise and fall. The film is built around footage from Houston’s 1999 My Love Is Your Love World Tour, which in text overlay we’re told was “Her last successful world tour” and marked a “major turning point in Whitney’s life.” The premise is rather suspect, however, considering she toured Europe several times afterwards. Much like the idea of Houston dying from a broken heart, this is the filmmaker’s conjecture, which they then spend the next hour and forty minutes trying to prove.

What the tour footage does ably do is display Houston’s deep well of talent as a singer and performer. Houston had the kind of soaring, soulful voice that attested to her upbringing in the New Hope Baptist Church Youth Inspirational Choir, led by her mother, the singer Cissy Houston. Raised in Newark, New Jersey, the dynamics of the Houston household were complex; Cissy was a domineering mother, Whitney was the baby and a Daddy’s girl at that. Despite the presence of the church in their lives, Whitney’s two older brothers admit to exposing her to drug use at an early age, while friends of hers describe her relationship with her family as “weird.”

Signed by music industry legend Clive Davis at 19, Houston fell prey to the industry machinations that often befall young and inexperienced artists. Regardless of her gospel roots, Davis envisioned her as an all-American pop star. Her music was overtly commercial and devoid of any black influence in its pursuit of a white crossover audience. Fortunately for everyone, it worked. Her debut album, 1985’s Whitney Houston, would go on to sell 22 million copies and win a gaggle of music industry awards.

While there’s no doubt Houston’s music lacked any sort of urban grit, her talent was undeniable. It’s rather galling when you see an interviewer condescendingly ask her about the “pop clichés” of her debut album, considering how many copies it sold and the fact that she was probably the greatest vocalist of her generation, male or female. Still, her success brought about scrutiny and backlash. Rumors began to circulate that she was romantically involved with her assistant, Robyn Crawford, a gay woman she had known since high school. The film doesn’t come right out and say they were a couple, but it is strongly insinuated.

To many in the black community, Houston had sold out for mainstream success and was famously booed at the 1989 Soul Train Awards. Ironically, it was there that she also met New Jack Swing bad boy Bobby Brown, whom she would eventually marry. While many in Houston’s inner circle considered him a bad influence, backup singer Patti Howard says Brown “loved her as herself…He understood her pressures and he understood her pain.” Despite their different career paths and a seven-year age difference, Houston and Brown shared a similar background, both having grown up in hardscrabble urban communities in the Northeast. Home movies of the couple show they had a lot of fun together. Maybe too much fun, as they cavort with the sort of ecstatic frenzy little kids exhibit before everything devolves into a wash of tears. Unfortunately, both entered the relationship with addiction issues, which only got worse in combination with each other.

Houston’s role in the $11 million grossing movie The Bodyguard brought a new level of fame, which made her paranoid and exacerbated her drug use. In 1995 she had a cocaine overdose while filming the movie Waiting To Exhale. In interviews filmed after the incident, she seems changed; defensive, fidgety, and odd. Her relationship with Brown drove a wedge in-between her and Crawford, who left the singer’s orbit following the ’99 tour. Without her long-term friend there to provide support, Houston sunk deeper into addiction. In an attempt to get sober, she and Bobby moved to Atlanta, and while he was initially supportive, he soon returned to his philandering ways. In 2007 the couple divorced, which precipitated Houston relapsing into the drug use, which would eventually take her life.

At the time of Whitney Houston’s death, Bobby Brown was quoted saying, “I really feel that if Robyn was accepted into Whitney’s life, Whitney would still be alive today. Whitney didn’t have close friends with her anymore.” Perhaps this is the heartbreak the film’s opening alludes to, but if so, it’s a simplistic, easy answer. The truth is drug addiction, abusive relationships and mental illness regularly claim countless lives. Music documentaries often peddle the myth that suffering is the hallmark of a great artist, and redemption always lies on the other side of hardship. Whitney: Can I Be Me, on the other hand, is a simple tragedy. Talent is squandered and lives are lost. Pain didn’t make Houston a great artist, it came naturally to her, a God-given gift as her friends say, but that pain did take her life in the end.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

 

Watch Whitney: Can I Be Me? on Showtime