HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM
A RUMINATION ON THE WHITNEY HOUSTON BIOPIC, "I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY": ADDICTION, DIVAHOOD, HEATH LEDGER, BARBARA HOWAR, MICHELLE WILLIAMS, AND HOWARD MOSS
(Above: Naomi Ackie who brilliantly portrays Whitney Houston in the film I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Photograph by Jon Gorrigan. InStyle magazine’s website.)
I saw the new troublingly entertaining Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, last week. Indeed, hers was a life filled with want, the kind that had to be italicized or put into quotation marks or capitalized when associated with her and yet she could never get its spelling right. This movie finally gets right how wrong it was spelled, how misshapen, how off-key such want was in a life set to the tunes heard in the heads of moneymaking others when they saw her or those millions of fans around the world who listened longingly to her. Houston was herself tragically, confusedly infused with longing she could so mightily musically express and yet notedly couldn’t when the music stopped which became the white noise of this Black woman’s own silence that scored her stardom. Scarred it. We addicts know that static in the never-silent silence which needs to be stayed by drugs until we find a way to replace it with surrender and a daily reprieve that is a semblance of serenity until serenity arrives, if it ever really does. Whitney Houston who was emotionally tortured by the semblances of race and sexuality - too white for some, then too black to others, a lesbian who fell for a lowlife Lothario - the semblance of serenity was never really sought. Or maybe the semblance of it was found in that swank bathtub where she drifted off and drowned having never really learned to swim in the swank that her life had become. She sought serenity in the slow-motion suicide of addiction. Death was her semblance of it.
The film, directed by Kasi Lemmons with a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, certainly captures Houston’s stirring musical performances even if it can be a little too paint-by-numbers in its narrative tale of the rise and fall of a pop star. In addition, some impressionism perhaps was more needed for the addiction narrative thread woven into it - or even maybe some of the disquieting dissonance found in the canvasses of Jean Michel Basquiat, another Black drug addict who died of addiction within the White power structure of his own artistic world. I have read other criticism of the film citing its lack of a more narrative delineation of Houston’s own downward spiral into drugs, not just the up-and-downs of stardom. Some have wished that the film, which had, as I understand it, the approval of those who handle her estate, to address the subject of who was really supplying her with the drugs, who was really looking away for so long. That same “some” always want addiction to be explained to them so that they can understand why someone would yield to it. I have been in recovery for over a decade now and have come to this realization about my own addiction: It just is. After years of delineating the whys and whose-to-blames and the making of amends and the psychological traumas that go into addiction and recovery, I have finally arrived at that. One picks up. One likes it. One keeps doing it. One is an addict. The whys I leave to the why-ers. Whether inadvertent or not, the simple fact of the “is” within the “isms” of addiction lands with a heartbreaking realistic thud, as it does in one’s offscreen life, in this otherwise thunderously realized and stirring movie with it hyper-narrative of hyper-stardom.
I last saw Tamara Tunie portray Vice-President Kamala Harris at the Old Vic, the title character in Mike Bartlett’s The 47th which was about Harris’s reaching the Presidency over Trump’s dead body. She plays Cissy Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody with the same keenness but outfits it with the sternness of a taskmaster who was determined to master her daughter’s divahood in a way she couldn’t quite figure out for herself. Each role was about ambition but Tunie - what an appropriate name for such a film and such a character as Cissy Houston - who found Harris’s graceful amble within her ambition captures the way the older Houston’s body and soul practically canter together in rhythmic unison within hers when using her daughter to feel the, well, intoxication of a larger stardom. Stanley Tucci tailors his portrayal of Houston’s Svengali, Clive Davis, into a more bespoke presence than the real man’s too carefully cufflinked A&R arriviste but the scenes with Houston and Davis listening to tapes and picking songs and shootin’ the shit are some of the best in the film and made me long for a two-hander onstage with these two actors playing the same roles doing just this as it segues into production numbers and more nuanced monologues.
It is young British actor Naomi Ackie who is a revelation as Whitney. She lip-syncs the vocals with such precision you never stop and think about it because - here’s another “is” - she is Whitney Houston. Much of that has to do with how stunningly she captures the singer without ever stooping to impersonation. Instead, she does something much deeper and more complex. She finds a way to convey the essence of a person who had worldwide fame, convincing us that she is that person while also embodying a wholly new way of perceiving the person because her own artistry is subsumed within the manifestation of another artist. It is remarkable to behold. And yet I do wonder if she will receive her much deserved rash of nominations for Best Actress because she is not impersonating Houston and these awards always seem to be given out to actors who are cursed with the blessing of mimicry. Naomi Ackie is no mimic. She is a conduit. A channel. A great actor.
As I was walking around London after seeing the film at Picturehouse Central off Piccadilly Circus, I began to think of my late friend George Hodgman, who loved Whitney so much. He was also so talented - he was a writer and editor and the author of a great and moving memoir about his caring for his mother in Missouri, Bettyville - and yet he also struggled with addiction and died an early death in a bathtub. I momentarily longed for the whys of George’s absence now in so many lives he touched with his friendship and talents so I understand the need for understanding such struggles toward such tragic exits. I have struggled with my addiction to meth - my recovery hasn’t been perfect - but I have made progress in my turning away from such an exit. In fact, I have trouble even typing “exit” without its coming out “exist.” It happens over and over and just did again when I was writing this paragraph. Sometimes repeatedly misspelling something incorrectly can be a good thing, a message to oneself.
A slower more dimly endured exit is being made by my friend Barbara Howar, who is now 89. I thought of her as well on that walk around London the other day and how much I would have loved to have seen this film with her because we were both early on fascinated with Whitney Houston. Barbara was close to LBJ and served as Lady Bird and Lynda Bird and Luci's "fashion consultant," as the press labeled her after she was photographed dancing with President Johnson at his inauguration. She was then the wife of a wealthy real estate developer in D.C. and became her own swinging 1960s version of Perle Mesta, the mod iteration of the "hostess with the mostest." She also wrote a bestselling autobiography, Laughing All The Way, which landed at the #1 spot on The New York Times bestseller list for 26 weeks. Johnny Carson adored her and she was a regular guest on his Tonight Show.
During my childhood in Mississippi, I was fascinated by her well-shod cultural footprint and her media presence and irreverent southern charm. Barbara went on to have a short-lived talk show of her own which she co-hosted with Joyce Suskind called For Adults Only. She was also a correspondent for a while for Entertainment Tonight, among several other television shows. Barbara and Mississippi-born writer and magazine editor Willie Morris were lovers and a social presence in New York City and the Hamptons.
There was a time in my life when she was one of my best friends. That was during her Entertainment Tonight phase. I was then working as a highfalutin flunky at Paramount Pictures and during the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas, a showcase for films for which distributors had high hopes and feted exhibitors from around the country to get them excited about them, I was tasked with being her point-person. We had hired her to host our dais at the dinner we were throwing for the exhibitors. The dais was filled with movie stars from the upcoming year's roster of releases. I wrote her a welcome letter and left it in her hotel room at the MGM Grand but wrote the letter in the vein of a travel piece about Vegas and show business and the stars she'd be introducing and ShoWest itself. The phone rang back in my room. "This is Barbara Howar," she said. "Is this someone named Kevin Sessums who wrote this remarkable essay that was waiting for me in my room when I arrived?”
"Yes, mam," I said.
"Oh, God! You're southern too. I knew you had to be just by reading what you wrote. I don't know who the hell you are but you and I are going to be friends. What are you doing right now? Meet me in the bar. I'm going to buy you a drink."
And from that drink forward for a few years afterward she and I became really close. We even wrote a treatment for a screenplay together which was an update of the G. W Pabst/Louise Brooks film Pandora's Box that we set in New York. We made Lulu a young African American. We even had meetings with Dawn Steel, then President of Production at Paramount Pictures, about it all and there was some initial interest from a young woman who was just making her mark named, yep, Whitney Houston. Barbara and I had written it with her in mind. Alas, as so often happens in Hollywood, the project never quite got off the ground. Dawn went on to run Columbia Pictures before dying of brain cancer in 1997. She was 51.
Barbara and I had fun writing that script together. I spent lots of time at her apartment in the West 50s. God the things she told me of her life in D.C. and literary New York and the Hamptons. I know I write about lots of things here and on social media and in my books, but trust me when I say I know things I never tell. That's one of the lessons Barbara taught me: tell just enough but keep the real secrets so people trust you. I adore her still even though we haven’t seen each other in years.
She was also big buddies with "Swifty" Lazar and was a guest at his famous Oscar parties before Vanity Fair took over that role in Hollywood on Oscar nights. In fact, the last time I saw Barbara was at one of the VF Oscar parties when she came with television producer and director George Schlatter, who created Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. I had such a good time that night sitting next to her and reminiscing about how much fun we once had together. "You've come a long way from that kid I met in Vegas," she said, holding my hand that night. "What did I tell you that first night we met?" she asked me.
"You told me I was a writer," I said. "You told me to quit my job at Paramount and be what I was meant to be: a writer."
"And now you are," she said. "You always were."
(Above: Barbara Howar with Irving “Swifty” Lazar.)
Another person who early on told me I was a writer was poet Howard Moss who became a mentor in many ways. He was Poetry Editor at The New Yorker from 1948 until his death in 1987. A colleague at the magazine, fiction editor Linda Asher, was also a champion of mine and he asked to see one of the short stories I had sent to her. After reading it, Howard wrote me a detailed letter back in 1983 that began with this sentence: ”Your story makes one thing clear - you’re a writer.” Reading that sentence around the same time I met Barbara was the start of my life in many ways. In fact, I realized to survive my own addiction I had to be my truest self, which is a writer. I was working on my second memoir, I Left It on the Mountain, at the time and wrote myself into recovery in that book. I wrote the narrative of recovery so I had to live it.
I often say that everything connects. I was thinking of Howard while strolling around London after seeing the Whitney Houston movie because I was first thinking about Heath Ledger, another star who died from an overdose. I write about him a bit also in I Left It on the Mountain. I remembered thinking how cool it felt to smoke pot with him on the Charles Bridge in Prague where I went to interview him for a few days when he was 21 and filming A Knight’s Tale. Back then when I was at Vanity Fair, I'd often do these cover stories on young actors that Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter would spot and deign that they be stars. It was one of the many great instincts he had as the Editor. I'd salute and do my part in the VF star-making machinery. But it always helped immeasurably when I liked these up-and-comer, as I did with Heath. His death really did deeply affect me, so much so it put me on the road to recovery.
I later interviewed Michelle Williams, who had a child with Heath, and wrote about that as well in that second memoir of mine, I Left It on the Mountain. I gave her a book of Howard Moss poems because I knew she loved poetry. Michelle gasped when I gave her the book by Howard because a poem of his had helped her heal after Heath's death. She was trying to remember the poem just that morning and there it was - “The Pruned Tree” - in the book she now held in her hand. She read the poem aloud for us and afterward I made an amends to her about smoking that joint with Heath in Prague. Because of the way he died, it no longer seemed cool. It had begun to haunt me. "Don't be haunted," she softly said.
But as I strolled about London I felt haunted once more by Heath, and by Whitney and George and even myself, the self that once was an active addict. I was haunted too by this quote from Heath, who told me, “When anything is blocking my head or there’s worry in my life, I just—whoosh—go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth.… You don’t see the fear. You don’t see the pain. You don’t see the movie industry. You don’t see this interview. You don’t see thought. It’s just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn’t.” I know what he was getting at. I feel a bit of that when I daily surrender, but I don’t have to leave this planet or my body to do it. I didn’t tear up while watching I Wanna Dance with Somebody. But I did tear up when I remembered that quote. You mattered, Heath. You mattered, George. You mattered, Whitney. Barbara Howar and Howard Moss helped me realize I did too when they affirmed for me that I was a writer. Their mentorship mattered. I try to pay that forward. This column itself is in some way doing just that. Anyone who is considering suicide or trying to stop any of your addictions that are destroying your lives, know this: You matter. You matter. You matter.
(The cover story on Heath Ledger ran in the August, 2000, edition of Vanity Fair. Here is the Contributors photo of Bruce Weber and his team and stylist Joe McKenna and Heath and me in Prague where we did the story. Such lovely, haunting memories. He was a dear, talented young man. )
(Above: Heath Ledger photographed by Bruce Weber.)
THE PRUNED TREE by Howard Moss
As a torn paper might seal up its side,
Or a streak of water stitch itself to silk
And disappear, my wound has been my healing,
And I am made more beautiful by losses.
See the flat water in the distance nodding
Approval, the light that fell in love with statues,
Seeing me alive, turns its motion toward me.
Shorn, I rejoice in what was taken from me.
What can the moonlight do with my new shape
But trace and retrace its miracle of order?
I stand, waiting for the strange reaction
Of insects who knew me in my larger self,
Unkempt, in a naturalness I did not love.
Even the dog's voice rings with a new echo,
And all the little leaves I shed are singing,
Singing to the moon of shapely newness.
Somewhere what I lost I hope is springing
To life again. The roofs, astonished by me,
Are taking new bearings in the night, the owl
Is crying for a further wisdom, the lilac
Putting forth its strongest scent to find me.
Butterflies, like sails in grooves, are winging
out of the water to wash me, wash me.
Now, I am stirring like a seed in China.
Thank you for this. It touched me very deeply, as I was admittedly rather obsessed with Barbara Howar, at one time. Your words never fail to move me.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am constantly enthralled by your thoughts and writing.