iTunes Exclusive Episode Whitney

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At least once in your life, you've checked out the Clubhouse Podcast live every Sunday
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But it also means you check us out on your favorite podcast app because it's time for
another...
Aaaaah, two slums here!
This will be number 397 if I do the math right?
Welcome.
My name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse Podcast and I'm your host tonight.
What I'm not alone sitting in the co-host chair tonight is the official fact checker
of this show and a man who sometimes he just wants to be a bodyguard.
He can do that, he has the skills.
You may know him as fondongo but his mom named him Don Ford, I'm going to call him Don Ford.
I want to get one of them samurai swords from the movie The Bodyguard.
One of them samurai swords, that you can open up and do the little thing.
Your grammar and syntax.
Out.
It's Montana.
No, you're in Texas now sir.
You've been here long enough.
Whatever we do one of these it is to review something, this is no exception.
Kevin McDonald's the guy, he's a documentarian but you also might know him as the director
of the very highly touted last king of Scotland a few years ago.
He's back to being a documentarian with a film and it only needs a one word in its title.
It's Whitney.
Before we get this whole thing?
Yes sir.
Go thank Carol and everybody at Gailor Smith for the invite.
Thank you guys so much.
David Vendors are some of the most wonderful people in the world.
They let us come see movies early so we can talk to you guys about them.
Now in this case, Don and I had to kind of divide and conquer.
He went to one screening.
I went to this one.
As you would know, I would figure this is a documentary about Whitney Houston.
This is a solid two hours which is a little longer than documentaries have been in recent
months.
They're usually hanging around the 90 minute thing.
This covers her entire life from the day she was born to the day she passed away.
Now to give you a little for those who that maybe have joined us recently, I want to give
you guys a little bit of background of the connection of this story to our little show.
February 11, 2012 was the day Whitney Houston passed away.
We were on air when it happened.
Back then the show was on Saturday nights.
So we were doing what we do and I started getting these messages in our live chat room.
But we didn't have any substantial verification as of yet.
My personal philosophy is until I get it from three credible sources, I'm not going to
report it because sometimes people say things early, very quickly, very quickly, we got
that verified, yeah, that night, and it kind of stopped the show down because we had
to get into a discussion of that and this has actually come into back into the forefront
again because, and I don't know how much you know about the story, Dawn, but she had
a family member that took a picture of the bathroom right after she passed away with
the sink and all the paraphernalia involved there.
Kanye is trying, either has or is trying to use it on the cover of an album.
Oh, what a sweetheart.
So this story back in the line line again, what Kanye do there is, there's only one word
I can use to describe this documentary and it's haunting in the best possible way.
There are things that come out because there's interviews with her family members, people
who are former employees, former band members, Clive Davis is interviewed, yes, Bobby Brown
is interviewed in this and he's full Bobby, as all I can say, not the young teen pop
star Bobby.
Well, he was crazy back then too, but, yeah.
This film, I cannot recommend it enough, but it's very, very heavy.
McDonald pulled no punches.
We see Whitney's mountain tops and we see Whitney's valleys from maybe 45 to the, no, from,
I mean, this covers her whole life, but she was a small girl, because you know, her mother
is Sissy Houston, who at one time was a backup singer for Elvis, yeah, but he on warwick
is her cousin.
Yeah, yeah, I know that.
But when you say about mountains is like 80, 45 when I want to dance with somebody, she
was on the top.
And we'll talk about that here.
Yeah.
She rode that wave.
She still has the record to this day for most consecutive number ones by Fino.
Now she doesn't have the record for most number ones out of the gate in a row.
That goes to Mariah Carey, but she had seven straight number ones off of between her first
two albums.
And Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time.
Yes.
In 2009.
There's a lot of people that like to throw around terms like greatest of all time, voice
of a generation, nobody can hold a candle when he Houston in her prime.
And I got it.
This film gave me the chance to reintroduce myself to a time when Whitney wasn't what we
remember.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
There's a moment in this film just as her first albums about to release.
And they actually did some a couple of her videos.
They actually digitally remastered, so it didn't look like you were watching somebody's
VHS tape from 1985.
But when they show the video for, I want to dance with somebody, they isolate just the
vocal track.
No music that they sync with the video.
And they play the first verse in the chorus.
And it's that moment that I was reminded without a shadow of a doubt, the power in that
woman's voice.
When she was, when she was climbing to the top man, that first album, that second album,
she was on top of the world literally.
And then you start to see her slow descent.
Yeah.
And then the peaks and valleys that followed with that.
Good question.
Did Bobby Brown really put that descent into overdrive or was that the beginning of
a descent?
I think the way McDonald tells the story, I think he leaves that up to the audience to
decide.
Okay.
Bobby played a role.
Make no mistake.
But there are also differing opinions amongst the people that are interviewed.
Other, those demons had always been there or if he was, was he the spark that lit the
powder keg or was he the powder keg?
Yeah.
You know, he tells it in a way he tries to stay as neutral as he can.
And I think he does a very good job at that.
And from the movie brothers was there with me and I got to talk briefly.
We both agree there are multiple moments in this film where we had goosebumps.
Okay.
That Amy, a documentary Amy came out a couple years ago, which I hated because it was
oh, poor Amy.
No, I can't have seen that.
I know.
But my take on that was, oh, it's everybody's fault, but her own, you know, and because I
hate that, because no one, you know, held her down and put the drugs into her.
She had the point regardless, okay?
Does this film go in that direction of, oh, it's all poor her.
It's not her fault.
It does not.
Okay.
What, again, what this does is it gives the audience the option to make their own judgments.
Yeah.
Okay.
And all, all MacDonald does is he just plays and there's apparently a bunch of interview
footage that he cut out because he felt it didn't supply any, any, anything that somebody
else didn't.
There's a couple of moments where again, confessions and revelations are made that kind of made me go
whoa.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Again, this is very heavy.
It is rated R because there's a lot of language in this.
There's a couple of moments where she takes shots, it's of course the archive footage where
Whitney herself is taking shots at other female vocalists who are popular at the time.
And so does her mother.
And I won't say who you'd see in the film.
Yeah.
But I really feel that this is an honest look in a two hour time frame of Whitney's life.
Now, it does concentrate a lot more on her as a human than her as an artist.
Okay.
Say.
Yeah.
I would have liked, if I had my brothers and I put this in my written review currently
located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
That's our website.
I would have liked to see this turn into a documentary series so they could parallel
the two a little bit better.
Like this is what she was going through in her personal life as she was preparing for
this album because they talk one of the things that's that's really talked about is the
bodyguard in this film.
Yes.
Yeah.
And how that movie just thrust her into the stratosphere.
Yeah.
And the she was already there, but that just got her right.
Yeah, put her way up.
Well, and it's also looked at from the aspect of while she's taking off and Bobby still
kind of stagnant and his reactions to certain things and in costiners in it they interview
costiner in this and there's some really great behind the scenes footage from the film.
I mean, it's it doesn't it doesn't lean one way or the other.
There's a point when they talk about some of the demons or they start talking about some
of the demons.
Bobby's reaction to the question made me shake my head.
Really?
And I won't say what it is.
Yeah.
Again, you need to see the film.
I don't want to ruin this.
But this film is amazing.
Question.
Yes, sir.
Remember when you we did a audio review for Weiner about Anthony years ago?
Mm hmm.
And you said on that one, sometimes you watching this and you're just shaking your heads
in are you just shooting yourself in the foot or what?
Okay.
Does she do does this kind of show that too?
Because some of the you know when she goes on downside, there's a responsibility and
it's like, why are you doing this?
I don't know if I would put it that way.
Okay.
But you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
You stay down.
Even the producer you're going, dude, what are you doing?
Right.
Well, there is or what were you thinking?
There are some interesting discussion during the film of the people that surrounded her.
Because a lot of the people that worked for her were family and friends.
Yeah.
If you can't trust family, well, it wasn't a trust thing.
Yeah.
It was, it's an interesting discussion of where people afraid to stand up because they
were afraid to lose their jobs.
Even if they were family.
And it's a very interesting discussion that's done with three or four different people because
it's all, there's no group interviews.
It's all separate interviews.
You know, people were more worried about losing their check than they were for her health
is the discussion.
Because if you said something, you're fired.
Even if it's your story.
They weren't, they, it was never verified that that ever happened, but there was definitely
a concern there.
Yeah.
I think that this documentary is brilliant and my hope is, and I know there's been talk
about this for a while, I really hope that there's not a narrative version of this, that
they don't do the Whitney Houston story.
I know that one time there was talk of it, don't do it.
Let this film speak for Whitney's story because it's done very, very well.
It's done very, very respectfully.
Because it's a very look, the good and the bad.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
What did the other critics that you think about it?
I talked to a few people and they were all kind of engrossed that this is very, very well
done.
I mean, this debuted at the Cannes Film Festival.
Okay.
So it's out there.
Now, granted by the time you hear this, you'll be able to go see it.
I mean, I saw this kind of in advance, so we're recording this in advance.
But this film is amazing.
It's well told.
It runs the gambit of emotion.
It's just, I felt the hurt all over again.
I just, to lose a talent like that in the way that we did.
And in the wake of losing a couple more talents recently that we felt were gone too soon.
Yeah.
It's kind of in that thing of the Morrison, the Elvis, the Hendrix, the Joplin.
Yeah.
And it's Whitney.
But it's really, really good.
Anything she want to know for us to get to the Final Analysis?
No, I think I'm good.
All right.
This is the Final Analysis.
We'll do the Final Analysis on the show.
I'm not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs down, letter, grades, numbers, anything like
that.
Don's going to ask up to two questions.
Question number one is, would I see this film again?
The answers know that we're done here.
But if the answer is yes, then Don's going to ask me to follow up question, which is,
how far am I willing to go to see it?
From the best of the best of the worst of the best, here's the list.
Full price at a theater, down to a twilight showing, down to a matinee showing, down to
early morning on a weekend, down to second one at the dollar theater, down to leaving the
house to get it from red box, down to streaming on Netflix, down to cable.
Rob?
Yes, sir.
Would you see this film again?
Absolutely.
So, there we go.
There we go.
So, question.
What level are you willing to see it in?
I'm going to give it full price at a theater.
The coveted?
Absolutely.
Okay.
This movie is that good, this documentary, it's solid, it's told well, it doesn't allow
any bias to come into play, it shows, it shows the story as it's told by multiple people.
I know it July's this broad start July, do you think it might make an awful mention
or top 10?
I'm not willing to go that far yet.
Okay.
But I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sniffing around it come award season.
Okay.
It's that good.
Okay.
It is Kevin MacDonald directing Whitney.
Throwing this whole thing?
Yes, sir.
Got the carol here by Gailor Smith for the invite.
Thank you guys so much, we're such big fans of our vendors, they give us the opportunity
to see films before they're released so that we can talk to you guys about them and
you can make the best possible choices you can make for your entertainment dollar.
That being said, let's do the plugs.
Oh, that's not, oh, because I'm in the wrong mouse, that's probably why that happened.
Visit our website, the app for mentioned, www.theclubhousepodcast.com, you can find my written
review for this film there, and you can find everything you need to know in some stuff
you don't, so check it out.
Follow us on social media.
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Jules Womack hanging out with her husband, Faith Ford waiting on hers.
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