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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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One, two, three, four, we don’t want your stupid war.

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- Five, six, seven, eight... - As midnight draws closer,

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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the anti-war protests grow,
countered by the president's supporters.

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Saddam Hussein is a dangerous man.

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If we do not take care of him now
and stop his aggression, we will have

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to pay a very heavy price in the future.

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If it does come to war, officials here

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say, the president's inclined to order
an attack sooner rather than later.

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He's said to be at peace with himself,

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ready to make the tough
decisions that are necessary.

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[bombs exploding]

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1991 was a memorable year
for the USA and its citizens.

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At the time, America was in the Gulf War.

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A lot of people had sons and daughters overseas.

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It was a time of great patriotism.

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And at the same time, you know, any

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time you're at war, there's a deep insecurity and fear.

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In the hours since we
suspended military operations

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in the Kuwaiti theater of
war, considerable progress

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has been made in moving towards
a ceasefire and postwar planning.

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As our forces moved into Kuwait City, and

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as the faces of these jubilant Kuwaiti citizens

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have warmed our hearts,
the coalition leaders started

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the arduous task of addressing the next stages

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of the Persian Gulf situation.

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The United States was at war in Iraq.

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It was Operation Desert Storm.

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And there was a lot of patriotism in the air.

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It was still the first Bush administration.

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And the U.S. hadn't been at war in a very long time.

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So there was a lot of support for the war.

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And Whitney Houston performed the
Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl.

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And it was just such an obviously phenomenal

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performance that she released
it, and it became a chart hit.

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The moment in time I remember, everyone remembers,

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1991, Whitney's rendition
of Star-Spangled Banner, was

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absolutely flawless, beautiful, and effortless.

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She still looked so youthful.

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And she rocked up, a little bow in

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her hair, a tracksuit or a
jumpsuit, looking very girly.

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And wow, who could have expected
what was going to come out of her mouth?

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It was a difficult time for the United States.

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The first Gulf War had just started.

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I think it was about eight,
nine, ten days old at that point.

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And she came in and she gave this

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rendition of the American National Anthem, which is

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generally recognized to be the finest rendition of

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the Star-Spangled Banner that has
ever been performed by any artist.

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And Whitney got up dressed in this tracksuit

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in red, white, and blue, just the epitome

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of youth and beauty, and opened her
mouth and sang, to this day I cry every

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time I hear it, the most beautiful rendition

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of the Star-Spangled Banner that
has ever been done before or since.

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In fact, it was so popular that they
actually released it as a single, as a

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single on the music charts, because
everybody wanted a copy of it.

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It was the best-selling
Star-Spangled Banner of all time.

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And Whitney donated all of the profits to

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the Gulf Relief Fund and the Red Cross.

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Never before had a National Anthem been released

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and zoomed into the top five.

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It was a huge achievement and no wonder.

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And again, Americans just kept loving her more.

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That was their song.

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This was their girl.

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And she was hugely patriotic.

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I really don't care what anyone says.

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I don't think anyone has ever sung
Star-Spangled Banner like Whitney did.

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And I've always said that.

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And, you know, she has owned that one rendition of that.

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Every single other person that's come and sung

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it, I don't remember except her one.

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She completely nailed it.

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Everyone was just like... This
was, and is now, still one of

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the greatest moments in NFL history.

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It was a defining moment in Whitney's career.

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If she wasn't before the Star-Spangled Banner,

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after she sang that, she was America's darling

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for doing such an extraordinary job on such

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a significant song at such an important time.

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And that's what it was with Whitney.

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Whenever she opened her mouth
and sang, you were transfixed.

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Even if you had any prior reservations for

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stories you read in the press or whatever

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they tried to say about her or whatever

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negative, when she sang, it was over.

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You had nothing to say.

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You just had to just say, speechless.

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[Whitney Houston singing The Star Spangled Banner]

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[crowd roaring]

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[upbeat music]

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[music continues]

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Life growing up for Whitney
Houston was kind of normal.

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Her parents lived in a pretty middle-class

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area, very respectfully involved with the church.

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Her dad was an army serviceman.

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It was happy.

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And she was loved.

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And their life really was all about the church.

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Now, this means that they had a
huge extended family around them.

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And she was in no two minds what was important.

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And it was her mum, her dad, her family and religion.

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Whitney Houston, from a musical point of view,

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had the upbringing we can only dream about,

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surrounded by some of the
greatest talents of our time.

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Her mother, Sissy Houston, was a great vocalist

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with the group The Sweet Inspirations, who had

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a hit called Sweet Inspiration,
who backed Elvis Presley.

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And as a backing singer, she backed Aretha

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Franklin, most famously on a song called Ain't No Way.

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If you just take time out to listen to
that and hear those high notes, you

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will know where Whitney came from.

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♪ Oh, but how can I, how can I, how can I ♪

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♪ Give ya all I can ♪

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♪ If you’re tyin’ both of my hands ♪

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♪ Whoa-ho it ain’t no way ♪

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Several similarities, really,
between Bobby and Whitney was

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he, too, began singing in church.

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I mean, from a very, very small age.

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And he, like her, was recognized
for his extraordinarily beautiful voice.

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And he formed his first band called New

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Edition when he was only 12 years old.

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♪ Candy girl, you are my world ♪

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♪ You look so sweet, you’re my special treat ♪

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In 1983, New Edition released
their first album called Candy Girl.

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And the band became an overnight sensation.

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It seemed that Bobby's extraordinary talent and the

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way he'd been nurtured through church, right through

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into starting his band as a
teenager, was bearing fruit.

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Despite his success, Bobby
didn't feel he'd got the rewards.

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When he left New Edition in 1986, he

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famously said that all he'd made
out of the band was $500 in a VCR.

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He felt, and these are his words, that

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he'd been treated like a slave by the

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record company, that he'd simply been exploited.

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But, of course, he was used to success,

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and it must have come as an enormous

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shock and disappointment to him when his first

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solo album sold very modestly and was nowhere

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near as acclaimed as the first album
he'd done in 1983 with New Edition.

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After the failure of his first solo album,

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Bobby Brown went and worked with the R

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&B producers Teddy Riley, L.A. Reid and Babyface.

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And the result was an album which was

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released to extraordinary critical acclaim.

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It sold more than 7 million copies.

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And his determination to overcome the failure of

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his first album and his new beginnings with

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these three producers seemed to have borne fruit

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and he seemed to be on a trajectory of success.

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Brown's high-powered,
sexually charged music and live

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performances earned him
comparisons to his childhood hero

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and idol, Michael Jackson.

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This album spawned him five top ten hits

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on the Billboard Hot 100,
including the single, My Prerogative.

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♪ This fight, sing ♪

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♪ Everybody’s talking all this stuff about me ♪

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♪ Why don’t they just let me live? ♪

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♪ Tell me why ♪

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♪ I don’t need permission, make my own decisions ♪

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♪ That’s my prerogative ♪ ♪ It’s my prerogative ♪

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♪ It’s the way that I wanna
live ♪ ♪ It’s my prerogative ♪

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But Bobby had his demons.

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He was a hard drinker, and when he

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was touring, his partying became legendary.

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He began filling more new space for his

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lifestyle, for his excessive
lifestyle, than he did for his music.

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And of course, that was something that was

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to become ever more prominent as a relationship

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with Whitney Houston developed.

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When Whitney Houston first appeared on the scene,

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her voice captivated the world.

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You know, someone has said before the invention

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of auto-tune, there was Whitney Houston.

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And if you think about how many artists

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today are helped a bit in the studio
and go back to some of those clean,

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pure vocals of Whitney's five
octave voice, it is just astounding.

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Her gift was undeniable.

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Whitney Houston was a pop producer's dream.

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Now we're used to manufactured girls, boys coming

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out who look perfect, and we kind of
know that they won't be able to sing

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very well.

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Whitney Houston had the face, the body, the

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charm, that way where she was
so charismatic she filled the room.

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So she looked like a supermodel.

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She had the voice of an angel
that was massively versatile.

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She had it all going on.

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It was almost as if it was too good to be true.

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I would like to think that what I
have, what has been God given to me,

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would have gotten me into it anyway.

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It's one thing having your mom and your

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cousin being so successful in the business, but

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it's something that you have to do on your own.

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You have to establish your own abilities.

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It's great to have them as my
family and it got me a lot of places,

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but I'd like to think I could do it on my own.

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As well as being a young singer,
Whitney became a model too.

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In fact, she was the first black female

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to grace the cover of Seventeen magazine in America.

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This was huge.

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And yes, she's known as The Voice,
but my goodness, she had the face too.

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People forget just with how drugs and alcohol

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took the toll on her, just how
beautiful she was as a young singer.

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Back in, I believe it was 1983, she
was discovered, as much as you could be

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discovered when you have that many connections, it

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was the old-fashioned way.

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Arista Records sent out an A&R
to see her perform at a nightclub and a

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meeting was set up.

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Then it led to her releasing her first

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record and being on the Merv Griffin
show and it just took off from there.

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♪ Like yours, like, like mine ♪

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♪ Like home ♪

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♪ Home ♪

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[crowd cheering]

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Her voice was just more pop, but it didn't lose the soul.

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She still had soul in it, but it was a pop voice.

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And so she had this kind of ethereal,

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pure sound with her voice
and it was very, very different.

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It was very refreshing.

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Early on, MTV was, for the most part,

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playing specifically white rock bands.

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Michael Jackson famously was unable
to get on MTV for a very long time.

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How Will I Know, which was Whitney's third

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US single, went to number one and was

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really the first time that a young African

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American woman was all over MTV.

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That video was massively successful.

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It was on constantly and it really cemented

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Whitney's presence in mainstream America.

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♪ How will I know if he really loves me? ♪

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♪ I say a prayer with every heartbeat ♪

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♪ I fall in love whenever we meet ♪

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♪ I’m asking you ‘cause you know about these things ♪

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♪ How will I know? ♪ - How Will I Know was the voice

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of any teen, 20-something girl who

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was so enthusiastic about what was to come in life.

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How will I know if he really loves me?

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That's what we all want to know.

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And Whitney was asking the question herself, too,

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because she hadn't met her Mr. Right.

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And many of her songs are autobiographical.

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This one included the optimism of it.

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You can see her now in that pop video, dancing around.

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And I do think that it really captured

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the innocent Whitney that we know who was

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looking forward to life, finding Mr. Right and

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00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:23,840
all the successes she was about to enjoy.

250
00:14:25,800 --> 00:14:29,240
[music playing]

251
00:14:29,400 --> 00:14:31,920
I knew Bobby and we used to hang out in London.

252
00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:34,120
This is just before he met Whitney.

253
00:14:34,720 --> 00:14:36,600
You know, Bobby was sort of coming down

254
00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:39,120
from prerogative and New Edition and all of

255
00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:41,120
that was kind of going down a bit at that time.

256
00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:42,760
But he was still very, very popular.

257
00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:44,840
And we used to hang out in London and he was great.

258
00:14:45,080 --> 00:14:46,160
And Bobby was the right character.

259
00:14:46,240 --> 00:14:47,240
He was a nutter.

260
00:14:47,320 --> 00:14:50,040
Contrary to all the stories you hear
about people, he's a really nice guy.

261
00:14:50,120 --> 00:14:51,560
We had fun and he was very grounded.

262
00:14:52,120 --> 00:14:54,000
And we took him around Brixton and stuff.

263
00:14:54,080 --> 00:14:56,640
We wanted to hang with the
homies and we had fun, you know.

264
00:14:56,920 --> 00:14:58,200
And then I remember when he came back

265
00:14:58,280 --> 00:15:01,080
to London again, he had just met
Whitney and he was going on and on about

266
00:15:01,160 --> 00:15:02,160
how amazing she is.

267
00:15:02,400 --> 00:15:03,760
You know, he's really in love with her.

268
00:15:03,840 --> 00:15:06,400
And he was really, really, he really fell for her hard.

269
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:09,760
When Whitney met Bobby
Brown, interestingly enough, they

270
00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:11,400
met at like the Soul Train Awards.

271
00:15:11,480 --> 00:15:14,920
This was a celebration of
blacks in the music industry.

272
00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:17,360
And Whitney, who was probably a little bit

273
00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:19,640
insecure about whether or not she was quote

274
00:15:19,720 --> 00:15:22,880
unquote black enough for her peers, I think

275
00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:24,880
she was a little insecure going into that.

276
00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:30,000
Now, Bobby Brown at the time was really
at the top of all the R&B charts.

277
00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:32,680
He was about as successful and popular as

278
00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:36,160
any young African-American
artist could be at that time.

279
00:15:36,240 --> 00:15:38,880
Everybody forgets that when Whitney met Bobby, he

280
00:15:38,960 --> 00:15:41,760
was just about as successful as she was.

281
00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:43,600
You know, he was very popular.

282
00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:46,560
And he had all this confidence and swagger.

283
00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:49,520
Whitney was almost immediately drawn to him.

284
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:51,920
She said, you know, men are intimidated by me.

285
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:52,800
Men are threatened by me.

286
00:15:52,880 --> 00:15:56,000
But Bobby understood all I really wanted was love.

287
00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:58,120
We had this dynamic where this very strong,

288
00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:02,400
powerful woman meets a man who is
not afraid to put her in her place and

289
00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:03,520
she finds it a turn on.

290
00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:08,960
In some ways also, Bobby validated
Whitney's African -American roots.

291
00:16:09,160 --> 00:16:12,240
You know, he made her more connected to

292
00:16:12,320 --> 00:16:13,760
that community because of the fact that he

293
00:16:13,840 --> 00:16:16,080
was so associated with the R&B charts.

294
00:16:16,280 --> 00:16:19,440
At the same time, Whitney elevated him to

295
00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:22,080
a huge degree, put him on an international

296
00:16:22,160 --> 00:16:25,840
scale of fame by being associated with him.

297
00:16:26,520 --> 00:16:29,880
One thing we all need as people is a witness.

298
00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:34,160
We just want someone to see us,
not as who we pretend to be or who

299
00:16:34,240 --> 00:16:37,240
they imagine us to be, but who we truly, really are.

300
00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:40,240
And for artists, for people who live in

301
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:42,160
the public eye, that is
especially difficult because

302
00:16:42,240 --> 00:16:43,520
everybody wants a piece of them.

303
00:16:43,920 --> 00:16:45,840
Everybody wants them to be whatever they need

304
00:16:45,920 --> 00:16:47,600
to be in order that they can feed

305
00:16:47,680 --> 00:16:50,920
off the artist's fame, their
celebrity, their money, whatever.

306
00:16:51,040 --> 00:16:53,840
But what Whitney saw in Bobby and I

307
00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:56,880
think the connection was she
just felt she could just be herself.

308
00:16:57,000 --> 00:16:58,280
She didn't have to pretend anymore.

309
00:16:58,360 --> 00:16:59,680
She had to be something she wasn't.

310
00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:03,880
She could simply be who she really
believed and knew herself to be.

311
00:17:04,360 --> 00:17:06,920
Although on paper it doesn't work, Bobby Brown

312
00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:13,320
and Whitney got on so well because
he treated her like a normal girl.

313
00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:18,440
And she said that many guys were
just so scared of her and wanted to be

314
00:17:18,520 --> 00:17:21,840
overly nice that she was massively attracted to

315
00:17:21,920 --> 00:17:25,120
this guy who was gentlemanly
but had nothing to prove.

316
00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:28,160
And she says that all he knew she needed was love.

317
00:17:28,240 --> 00:17:30,480
There was chemistry, full stop.

318
00:17:30,560 --> 00:17:32,480
Of course it shouldn't have worked, but how

319
00:17:32,560 --> 00:17:34,080
many girls know they shouldn't have gone out

320
00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:36,120
with a bad guy but can't help that

321
00:17:36,200 --> 00:17:39,160
feeling, that gut feeling, that you're just for

322
00:17:39,240 --> 00:17:42,680
some reason attracted to him,
that you want to be with him.

323
00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:44,680
She was magnetized to him.

324
00:17:44,760 --> 00:17:45,800
He was a total laughter.

325
00:17:45,880 --> 00:17:46,520
He was funny.

326
00:17:46,600 --> 00:17:47,320
He was really funny.

327
00:17:47,400 --> 00:17:50,960
I brought him back to my house
to meet my mum and stuff like that.

328
00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:52,720
My mum cooked him Jamaican food and the

329
00:17:52,800 --> 00:17:54,280
bodyguards and we had a right laugh.

330
00:17:54,360 --> 00:17:55,360
He was lovely.

331
00:17:55,440 --> 00:17:56,360
There was no two ways about it.

332
00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:58,040
They were good people and I thought it

333
00:17:58,120 --> 00:17:59,880
was great that he was starting to date her.

334
00:17:59,960 --> 00:18:03,520
I thought it was fine that you didn't
think it was a strange thing at all

335
00:18:03,600 --> 00:18:05,080
outside of the media I'm talking.

336
00:18:05,600 --> 00:18:07,920
To everyone else it was like, God, what's that about?

337
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:08,840
Why are they together?

338
00:18:08,920 --> 00:18:11,320
But he's funny.

339
00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:13,040
So I can imagine that Whitney, who's always

340
00:18:13,120 --> 00:18:15,560
been around the gowns and all of that

341
00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:18,920
life and stuff like that, he must
have been a right laugh for her.

342
00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:20,920
She was like, oh yeah, I'm going to have fun now.

343
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:22,000
This is great.

344
00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:25,680
Each of us has a deep need.

345
00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:27,520
Every human being has a deep need to

346
00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:30,200
live as authentically as we possibly can.

347
00:18:31,400 --> 00:18:34,160
We want to be affirmed as who we are.

348
00:18:34,240 --> 00:18:35,840
We want to be affirmed in the identity

349
00:18:35,920 --> 00:18:39,520
that we believe is ours, our right to choose.

350
00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:41,960
And we want to be seen for who we are.

351
00:18:42,040 --> 00:18:45,560
And there's nothing more
destructive psychologically than the

352
00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:48,720
cognitive dissonance that
comes when we are pretending

353
00:18:48,800 --> 00:18:51,560
to be one person when we are really another.

354
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:55,400
And not only was that the case with

355
00:18:55,480 --> 00:18:58,000
Whitney when it came to this angelic image

356
00:18:58,080 --> 00:19:01,440
of her as some innocent, pure Christian girl

357
00:19:02,120 --> 00:19:05,440
and that fed into her connection with Bobby,

358
00:19:05,520 --> 00:19:08,000
who she felt allowed her to be her authentic self.

359
00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:12,360
It also, perhaps at an even deeper level,

360
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:15,680
related to her relationship with her assistant, who

361
00:19:15,760 --> 00:19:18,320
she'd met when she was 16, called Robin Crawford.

362
00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:21,400
[camera clicking]

363
00:19:21,560 --> 00:19:25,240
And Whitney entered into a
gay relationship with Robin.

364
00:19:25,320 --> 00:19:30,880
And of course, the few things at
that time, it's only, what, 30 years ago?

365
00:19:31,520 --> 00:19:34,360
At that time, there were deeply homophobic times.

366
00:19:35,120 --> 00:19:39,400
And for a woman of Whitney's background to

367
00:19:39,480 --> 00:19:41,680
be in a gay relationship would have been

368
00:19:41,760 --> 00:19:45,080
deemed unacceptable by all those closest to her.

369
00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:52,120
It was widely known in show business
that Whitney and Robin were together.

370
00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:57,040
And this was not some kind of scandalous pickup.

371
00:19:57,120 --> 00:19:58,760
They'd known each other from high school.

372
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:00,560
They were best friends all the way through

373
00:20:00,640 --> 00:20:02,840
adolescence, and there were all kinds of rumors

374
00:20:02,920 --> 00:20:06,120
about a relationship between Whitney and Robin.

375
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:08,920
In fact, Robin was actually
working for Whitney for a time.

376
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:10,840
She was like an assistant, and they were together.

377
00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:14,320
Bobby alluded to this himself when he looked

378
00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:17,320
back on the marriage, kind of implying that

379
00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:19,120
one of the reasons Whitney married him was

380
00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:21,960
to combat these lesbian rumors, because it wouldn't

381
00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:25,840
do at that time for America's sweetheart to be gay.

382
00:20:25,920 --> 00:20:28,480
Most of the rumors in Whitney Houston's case

383
00:20:28,560 --> 00:20:31,240
have been confirmed by very close sources, such

384
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:33,760
as her bodyguard, family members.

385
00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:37,320
I mean, as hard as it was for Whitney
Houston to be a black woman, you

386
00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:40,560
know, taking American
mainstream by storm, imagine if

387
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:42,240
she was a black lesbian woman.

388
00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:44,880
It certainly, at that time particularly, would have

389
00:20:44,960 --> 00:20:47,680
been very difficult, if not impossible, to win

390
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:51,440
over, you know, the very reactionary Middle America.

391
00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:53,920
So if you were saying, like Whitney did,

392
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:58,920
that I am a good girl, I'm an
honest girl, I'm an all-American girl, I

393
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:00,640
am who I say I am, I'm a

394
00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:03,840
heterosexual girl, when
you're saying all those things

395
00:21:03,920 --> 00:21:05,280
to the world, and the truth might be

396
00:21:05,360 --> 00:21:09,080
slightly different, that
creates all kinds of problems,

397
00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:12,200
particularly when you have
a religious upbringing like

398
00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:14,080
she did, because what it means is she's

399
00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:16,120
not just being dishonest to other people and

400
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:19,960
dishonest to herself, she's
also being dishonest to God.

401
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:25,000
Anyone in a loving relationship wants to spend

402
00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:27,400
time with their partner,
and Whitney was no different.

403
00:21:27,480 --> 00:21:29,240
She spent more and more time with Robin,

404
00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:31,800
and friends and family grew more and more

405
00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:33,560
concerned about the impact this would have on

406
00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:36,480
her public image, and the tabloids began running

407
00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:38,440
stories on it, because they felt there was

408
00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:41,920
something in this, that the sweet, nice, natural,

409
00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:44,840
pure Whitney Houston was not as nice, natural

410
00:21:44,920 --> 00:21:48,400
and pure as people imagined, and the homophobia

411
00:21:48,480 --> 00:21:52,360
behind that type of reporting
was very prevalent at the time.

412
00:21:52,760 --> 00:21:54,920
And it became exacerbated when she flew into

413
00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:58,920
London for an AIDS awareness event, and people

414
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:00,560
were thinking, well, why would she do that?

415
00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:02,240
You know, why is Whitney getting involved, and

416
00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:03,720
what's that got to do with Whitney?

417
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:08,400
Sadly, there is a stigma associated
with those afflicted with AIDS.

418
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:11,760
Even as we speak, it is sweeping away

419
00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:16,120
our children, our families, our loved ones.

420
00:22:17,320 --> 00:22:21,960
Our world must, we must continue through research

421
00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:25,000
to work toward finding a cure.

422
00:22:25,360 --> 00:22:31,880
But of course, she was part of the
LGBT community, and she was in a gay

423
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:35,040
relationship, and she wanted to stand as best

424
00:22:35,120 --> 00:22:38,400
as she could in solidarity with those who

425
00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:41,160
affirmed their identity, and to give support to

426
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:43,400
those who affirmed their identity in the way

427
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:45,040
in which she was trying to affirm hers,

428
00:22:45,280 --> 00:22:47,360
and to provide support for them, really in

429
00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:49,600
times of trouble, disease and death.

430
00:22:49,800 --> 00:22:51,760
And you know, there have been theories about

431
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:54,480
Whitney's drug use, including some gay activists who

432
00:22:54,560 --> 00:22:56,240
have said that if Whitney had been allowed

433
00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:59,760
to live as a lesbian woman, she
wouldn't have had all these drug demons.

434
00:23:00,120 --> 00:23:03,800
This was probably the most
positive relationship in her life.

435
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:05,800
Robin was like the guardian angel.

436
00:23:06,360 --> 00:23:10,080
Whether she was gay or not is the secondary question.

437
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:12,200
Yes, I think they had a romantic life

438
00:23:12,280 --> 00:23:13,960
together, but you know, there was a kind

439
00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:16,280
of witch hunt, which is like, you know,

440
00:23:16,360 --> 00:23:19,640
who has the right to harass somebody in that way?

441
00:23:19,720 --> 00:23:21,520
And she had to put up with all that stuff.

442
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:23,840
I think it only makes what happened in

443
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,400
her death and her addiction and
her marriage that much more sad.

444
00:23:27,800 --> 00:23:30,240
You've just got a picture of the psychological

445
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:33,720
landscape that Whitney was living in.

446
00:23:34,320 --> 00:23:36,080
She knows who she really is.

447
00:23:37,120 --> 00:23:38,760
She knows who she really loves.

448
00:23:40,120 --> 00:23:42,400
And yet she can't be that person.

449
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:47,240
Crushed by rumors, isolated perhaps by family and

450
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:50,160
friends, berated by them for her lifestyle, her

451
00:23:50,240 --> 00:23:51,840
relationship with Robin Crawford.

452
00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:57,760
In 1992, she made the choice which perhaps

453
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:00,520
in some way she felt would give her

454
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:03,320
some social acceptability,
and she married Bobby Brown.

455
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:07,800
Whitney Houston and Bobby
Brown are officially married.

456
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:10,520
The pair wed last Saturday in front of

457
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:15,480
800 people at Houston's 5-acre,
$11 million New Jersey mansion.

458
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:19,160
Whitney and Bobby were married on July 18,

459
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,400
1992, and for her it must have felt

460
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:26,040
like gaining social acceptance or at least a

461
00:24:26,120 --> 00:24:29,800
degree of social acceptance again
after a relationship with Robin Crawford.

462
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:32,960
But again, there were questions and criticisms of

463
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:35,200
Whitney for the choice she'd made because people

464
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:38,000
didn't see Bobby as an acceptable partner for

465
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:42,200
the innocent, lovely, you know, American sweetheart.

466
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:46,840
It's very hard to underestimate the scandal and

467
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,440
the shock that people had back in 1991

468
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:52,520
when you have this America's Darling singing the

469
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:55,360
Star-Spangled Banner
representing the best and brightest

470
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:58,720
of our country marrying somebody who was famous

471
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:01,680
for all these music videos with numerous nearly

472
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:04,520
naked women grinding up on him, had a

473
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,680
foul attitude, was intoxicated all over the place,

474
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:09,520
rumored to be doing drugs.

475
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:13,840
Really this kind of horrendous, it was like

476
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:18,080
two opposites attracting, and nobody liked the fact

477
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:20,040
that they felt Whitney was being brought down,

478
00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:24,000
including her family, by the way, by
this guy who was in no way her equal

479
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:25,080
or a good influence.

480
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,800
This has to be part of the quest

481
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:32,360
for some sort of emotional
and psychological authenticity

482
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:37,240
because she felt that with a man like
Bobby she'd be seen for who she was

483
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:38,920
rather than who she was supposed to be.

484
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:44,520
So she went ahead and they got married
and she felt that she'd made her own

485
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,120
choice, she felt it affirmed something about her

486
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:49,440
to marry Bobby, but there was another secret

487
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:53,720
that she was carrying which would obviously come

488
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:56,400
to not just dominate her life, but ultimately

489
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,960
take her life, and that was her addiction to drugs.

490
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:05,680
[dramatic music]

491
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:15,760
He’s a lot of fun, he’s a gentleman, professional.

492
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,160
I'm learning a lot, I'm taking tricks, you know?

493
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:23,720
Not long after Whitney and Bobby got married,

494
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,880
she was cast alongside as the lead, alongside

495
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:28,280
Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard.

496
00:26:28,360 --> 00:26:32,280
The Bodyguard cemented Whitney's
role really as an iconic legend.

497
00:26:32,360 --> 00:26:34,760
She'd already kind of been hailed as this

498
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:38,320
extraordinary voice in beauty, but
with The Bodyguard she was a movie star.

499
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:39,880
She was great in the movie.

500
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:41,960
She's not a natural actress, but she did

501
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,320
everything well enough,
she was intelligent enough to

502
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:46,160
read the lines in a believable way, she

503
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:50,600
had great chemistry with Kevin, who
really fought for Whitney in the role.

504
00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:54,320
He said, in fact he said at her
funeral, a lot of guys could have played

505
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:58,240
my part, but only one person
could have been Rachel Marin.

506
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:00,520
What's really interesting about this is that there

507
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:05,280
was the controversy over
her interracial relationship on

508
00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:09,040
screen with Kevin Costner, which in 1992 was

509
00:27:09,120 --> 00:27:11,960
not as socially acceptable as it would be today.

510
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:15,120
There had been industry rumors that Kevin Costner

511
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:17,640
had to fight to have a black female

512
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,080
lead opposite him in The Bodyguard, but we

513
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:25,120
didn't know if it was true until
he said it in his own words at her

514
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,600
funeral, and he said that there was an

515
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:31,520
underlying racism, nobody
came out and said, Whitney's

516
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:35,480
black, she can't be the lead, but
they were kind of like, do you want to

517
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:39,400
think about this girl, that
girl, who happened to be white?

518
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:42,200
He said no, and then they found out

519
00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:46,080
that Whitney was busy when they
were due to be filming The Bodyguard.

520
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,280
Kevin Costner said, no problem, we'll just wait

521
00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:52,520
for Whitney Houston, and the
producers were kind of like, what?

522
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:57,480
But I guess they respected Kevin
Costner, who was, is, but was huge then.

523
00:27:58,040 --> 00:27:59,680
Box office gold.

524
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,880
He wanted Whitney so badly, he got her,

525
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:04,360
and it paid off.

526
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:06,760
It's astonishing to think that even in some

527
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:10,240
of the marketing for The Bodyguard, it said

528
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:12,800
that Whitney's face was
slightly hidden because they

529
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:17,200
were trying to hide the fact there
was an interracial relationship.

530
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:19,720
My goodness, have we moved on since then?

531
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:22,280
It's not an issue, and thank God we've moved on.

532
00:28:22,360 --> 00:28:24,960
But it's astonishing to think it was such

533
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:28,320
a perceived problem for these men who were

534
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,880
only interested in the money and playing safe.

535
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:33,960
And this is the thing that we couldn't

536
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:39,320
understand, was that this shy, beautiful, pop, black

537
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:44,080
singer was also a really good...
I mean, she was really good in it.

538
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:46,240
She can't be gorgeous, have a great voice,

539
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:47,800
and be a good actress.

540
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:48,520
What's that about?

541
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:51,800
The soundtrack itself was
just Whitney Houston's biggest

542
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,280
hit of her entire career, which was saying

543
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:57,600
something, because her first
album sold 13 million copies.

544
00:28:57,720 --> 00:28:59,320
Now, I Will Always Love You is such

545
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:02,440
an interesting song because it was written by

546
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:06,200
Dolly Parton not as a love song,
as we know romantic or sexual love.

547
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:09,800
It was a farewell to her singing and

548
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:14,080
business partner, Porter Wagoner,
with whom she made her first hits.

549
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,560
Funnily enough, it nearly wasn't to be.

550
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:18,320
They had another song in mind which had

551
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:20,400
been released a few months earlier, so decided

552
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:22,280
to go with I Will Always Love You

553
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:23,800
because it hadn't been released for years.

554
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,920
It was number one for 20
consecutive weeks in America.

555
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:30,880
Dolly Parton says thank you, Whitney, for making

556
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:34,120
this a far more beautiful song
than I could ever have hoped to.

557
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,280
♪ Darling, I love you ♪

558
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:45,160
♪ Ooh, I’ll always, I’ll always love ♪

559
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:45,840
♪ You ♪

560
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,640
[singing]

561
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:01,720
[silence]

562
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:06,760
Having a baby, you know, I'm looking forward to that.

563
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:11,080
Raising a child, you know, hearing Mommy, you know.

564
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:13,800
That's what's foremost in my head right now, you know.

565
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:17,480
I can't... The movie's done, you know, the soundtrack's done.

566
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:21,000
Thinking about doing a gospel album, you know.

567
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:24,920
So, you know, I'm just kind of
like, you know, going with the flow.

568
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:28,520
A year into her marriage with Bobby, they

569
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:31,240
had a daughter, Bobby Christina, and to all

570
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:33,040
intents and purposes it seemed to have brought

571
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:35,720
them some, at least brought Whitney a degree

572
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:39,560
of contentment and gave her a different purpose,

573
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:47,280
direction in life, which she clearly
both needed and it seemed enjoyed.

574
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,480
For ordinary people, it's hard to imagine the

575
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:53,600
pressures that people who live in the public

576
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:58,680
eye, especially huge megastars like
Whitney Houston, have to go through.

577
00:30:59,280 --> 00:31:04,680
And here she was, having to be a
mother to cope with her addiction, to cope

578
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:08,000
with her relationship with Bobby, to cope with

579
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:12,080
the complexities of her life and who she really was.

580
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:14,400
And really, as human beings, we have to

581
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,440
have enormous empathy for
that because people always

582
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:21,480
imagine that money and wealth gives people a

583
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:23,160
degree of freedom, and of course it does.

584
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:24,280
You know, they can pay their bills, they

585
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:26,920
can do what they want, they can
travel where they want to travel.

586
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:31,040
But as psychologists have known for decades, you

587
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:33,840
know, that once people's basic life needs are

588
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,360
fulfilled, particularly the
need for love and belonging,

589
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:38,120
money only adds complexity.

590
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:43,000
And certainly, money combined
with fame is extraordinarily

591
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:44,960
difficult to deal with.

592
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:47,840
So here was Whitney with her beloved child

593
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:52,520
Bobby and having to cope with what
she'd had to cope with up to that point,

594
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:54,440
now amplified, because she not only had to

595
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:58,520
protect herself, she also
had to protect her daughter.

596
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:04,600
But despite the film's success, Whitney didn't gain

597
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:05,680
the approval from everyone.

598
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:09,040
The issue with her new husband was the

599
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:11,400
fact that he was really beside himself with

600
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:15,000
jealousy and didn't approve at all of the

601
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:19,480
on-screen intimacy between
Whitney and Kevin Costner.

602
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,600
And that really gave her an idea, really,

603
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,080
of what was to come in their relationship

604
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:31,480
as her career would soar and Bobby's would decline.

605
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:34,120
But then I think it started to spiral out of control.

606
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,840
What started to happen was there started to

607
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:40,480
be too many stories about the marriage being wrong.

608
00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:42,200
Now, remember, everyone had already thought that it

609
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:44,200
was a bad choice of partner for her

610
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:47,560
anyway, because they can't understand what she would

611
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:48,920
be doing with a guy like Bobby.

612
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:50,720
They could never understand that, because he was

613
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:53,120
the bad boy and she was the diva.

614
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:54,360
They couldn't understand it.

615
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,360
But the reason why I'm talking about that

616
00:32:56,440 --> 00:33:01,280
is because the synergy of that would be... That's work.

617
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:02,760
Diva is work.

618
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,840
Outside of that, you're at home
and you want to be a home girl.

619
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,600
Because Bobby couldn't
handle the on-screen intimacy

620
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:16,560
between his wife and Kevin Costner,
he stormed out of the screening.

621
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:20,960
He didn't simply sit there and accept it

622
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:23,520
or sit there and think, well, it's just acting.

623
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:27,840
He took it as a personal affront
and stormed out of the screening.

624
00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:31,840
And, of course, that was complicated by the

625
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:34,920
fact that their relationship
was already volatile and

626
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:36,160
she'd had a miscarriage.

627
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,400
During the filming of the
bodyguard, Whitney miscarried.

628
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,200
And so there's this combustible series
of events that really come together.

629
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:47,280
The extraordinary success of the film, the on

630
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:50,000
- screen intimacy with Kevin
Costner, the volatility of

631
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:52,160
the relationship, the miscarriage.

632
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:57,880
All this combined, really, to create great conflict,

633
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,560
really, between Whitney and Bobby.

634
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,760
All of it driven by Bobby's jealousy and

635
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:06,480
Bobby's inability to deal with his wife's success.

636
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:08,640
Why are you trying to take pictures of me?

637
00:34:08,720 --> 00:34:10,240
You're a famous star, man.

638
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:11,320
That's enough.

639
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:13,960
- Okay. - Thanks.

640
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:15,880
Thanks.

641
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:16,760
You're filming me.

642
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:18,280
I don't like that. Can I have that?

643
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:19,920
Hey, whoa, hey, let go, man.

644
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:21,040
Let go!

645
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:23,400
Let go of the fucking camera.

646
00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:27,240
The marriage started to take
up way too much of the headlines.

647
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:29,400
Every time you saw the two of them,

648
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,160
they looked smashed and, you know, the media

649
00:34:32,240 --> 00:34:33,760
really went on a field day with it.

650
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:36,040
And then you had this going on for 14 years.

651
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,360
It got to the point where you were

652
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,760
actually used to hearing of disaster stories with

653
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:45,200
Bobby and Whitney and it exasperated the public.

654
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:47,400
People started to get tired of it, started

655
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:50,920
to go, for goodness sake, Whitney, Bobby, not again.

656
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:54,840
The bodyguard also exacerbated
the cognitive dissonance that

657
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,680
really was a... Perhaps all her life had been a feature

658
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:00,120
of Whitney's life, that she had to pretend

659
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,360
to be someone that she knew she was not.

660
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:07,960
And the bodyguard catapulted
her, stratospherically, really, into

661
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:09,800
a level of fame and a level of

662
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:12,920
celebrity which was beyond
what she'd achieved before

663
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:14,800
and that was in itself considerable.

664
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:16,360
But she had to hide herself.

665
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:20,920
When she was this innocent, you know, Miss

666
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:23,560
America, she had to hide her true nature.

667
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:24,920
When she was in a relationship, a gay

668
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,240
relationship with Robin Crawford,
she had to hide her true nature.

669
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,520
And now she had to hide something else.

670
00:35:30,720 --> 00:35:32,800
And it became ever more difficult to hide

671
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:34,480
it and that was her drug addiction.

672
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:40,040
Behind all that success, tragedy was looming and

673
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,120
it was driven by a combination of the

674
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:47,520
psychological complexity of
Whitney's life, what was turning

675
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:50,400
into an abusive and
difficult relationship with her

676
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:56,840
husband, Bobby, and her inability, really, and the

677
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,000
complexity of having to deal with leading life

678
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:00,880
where she had to pretend to be someone

679
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:04,120
she wasn't, which made it increasingly difficult, as

680
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:09,520
time went on, for her to get the
love support that she needed to get to

681
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:10,880
a place where she could recover.

682
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:16,920
[somber music]

683
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,520
There are many reasons why
people can become addicted.

684
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:29,040
It can be to fill a void that
they feel they've got in their lives.

685
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:34,000
It can be to cover over a
psychological isolation that they feel.

686
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:38,760
There's many different
reasons why people spiral into

687
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:43,760
these self-destructive
lifestyles and as her relationship

688
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:47,200
with Bobby developed, her drug addiction grew more

689
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:50,400
intense and her inability to cover it up

690
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:56,560
had an increasingly devastating
psychological toll on Whitney,

691
00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:59,200
and what's interesting was that Bobby is often

692
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,680
portrayed as rightly as the bad boy, and

693
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:06,120
there was no doubt that he mistreated Whitney.

694
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:09,280
What's interesting, though, is that his drug of

695
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:14,720
choice was alcohol and it was
Whitney who introduced him to cocaine.

696
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:19,440
So we have here, really, what could only

697
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:21,880
be described, I guess, on one aspect of

698
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,400
their relationship as a classic
co-dependent relationship,

699
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,240
where the boundaries between
them were getting blurred,

700
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,280
their dependency on each other became more intense,

701
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:35,480
and they fueled, each one fueled the most

702
00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:37,560
destructive and helpless side of the other.

703
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:43,000
Of course, when that happens,
escape becomes extraordinarily difficult.

704
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:46,960
What was astonishing and
heartbreaking was to listen

705
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:49,160
to her voice because it had gone, in

706
00:37:49,240 --> 00:37:51,120
part she sounded like she was really struggling

707
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:55,240
to speak, it was sore, and of course
we know now that it was because she

708
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:56,840
smoked crack cocaine.

709
00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:00,760
Of all the drugs she could have taken,
of all the ways she could have taken

710
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:04,080
them, injecting, taking orally, she decided to do

711
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:07,880
the thing that would take away her voice, her gift.

712
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:09,880
The voice was the mechanism which put her

713
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:11,160
in front of the world and put this

714
00:38:11,240 --> 00:38:13,720
person before the world who wasn't really the

715
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,240
person that the world thought they were looking at.

716
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:19,280
And so by destroying the voice,
she actually breaks that illusion.

717
00:38:19,720 --> 00:38:22,440
That's, you know, well documented with people who

718
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:24,480
find themselves in the public eye as someone

719
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,560
or something, they can't actually reconcile with who

720
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,440
they really are, they want to sabotage
that and they want it all to end.

721
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:34,120
I think she was uncomfortable with having such

722
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:39,720
a huge gift that eclipsed him, and
this was her way of messing it all up,

723
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:41,800
taking it all away, so she could kind

724
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:45,080
of say to Bobby, to please his insecurities,

725
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:46,720
look, I'm just like you now.

726
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:50,520
I love the children.

727
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:52,280
They will do much for their kids.

728
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:54,000
Whitney loves and believes in children.

729
00:38:54,240 --> 00:38:55,240
They do.

730
00:38:57,000 --> 00:38:58,640
Hello, hello, hello.

731
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:02,440
In around 2009, any time Whitney Houston was

732
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:08,520
seen in public, it was unfortunately
a field day for the tabloids.

733
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:13,040
She would often look
disheveled, unnaturally thin, often

734
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:16,880
saying things that made
little sense, basically doing

735
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:19,440
nothing that didn't counter the idea of her

736
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:21,560
being too far gone into her addictions.

737
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:25,920
When she performed that particular song in 2009

738
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,560
American Music Awards, any time she was seen

739
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:31,600
in public, it was more often than not

740
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:36,160
fueled to the rumors of her demise being

741
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:38,400
not too far in the future.

742
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:41,440
♪ If you can’t feed your baby ♪

743
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:43,400
♪ Then don’t have a baby ♪

744
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:45,320
♪ And don’t think maybe ♪

745
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:47,480
♪ If you can’t feed your baby ♪

746
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,280
♪ You’ll be always tryin’ to
stop that child from cryin’ ♪

747
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:53,160
♪ Hustlin’, stealin’ and lyin’ ♪

748
00:39:53,240 --> 00:39:55,040
♪ You’ve got to be tryin’ ♪

749
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,600
♪ So you wanna be startin’ somethin’,
you got to be startin’ somethin’ ♪

750
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:00,560
♪ Gotta be ♪ ♪ So you wanna be startin’ somethin’ ♪

751
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:02,640
♪ Startin’ ♪ ♪ You got to be startin’ somethin’

752
00:40:02,720 --> 00:40:05,280
And people were shocked by her appearance, you know.

753
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:06,480
Absolutely shocked.

754
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:10,280
She was frail, gaunt, voice wasn't what it was.

755
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:15,480
People have a fascination, and a morbid fascination

756
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,280
really, with people who are self-destructive, and

757
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:23,840
the more that Whitney was destroying herself, the

758
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:25,280
more the media reported it.

759
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:28,240
It was no longer a secret now
that Whitney had problems.

760
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:31,040
Her friends knew, her colleagues
knew, the press knew, her fans knew.

761
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:31,840
Everybody knew.

762
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:35,160
And this is the thing about addiction, because

763
00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:40,440
people who go into this spiral of self

764
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:42,560
destruction, they don't feel good about themselves.

765
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:45,760
They don't think, great, I'm just having a

766
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:47,400
drink, I'm just having some cocaine.

767
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:54,240
They feel ashamed, deeply,
profoundly ashamed, right to their bones.

768
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:58,440
And Whitney felt she had let her mother

769
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:02,400
down, she'd let her family down, she'd let

770
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,480
her daughter down, she'd let herself down.

771
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:08,080
But how do you cope?

772
00:41:08,240 --> 00:41:09,920
How do people cope without support?

773
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:14,800
How do people cope with that
level of psychological pressure?

774
00:41:15,240 --> 00:41:17,280
And the answer that she and many others

775
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:20,040
find is they take more drugs, because that

776
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:23,120
kills the pain, because drugs are perhaps initially

777
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:25,040
for people a means of gaining pleasure.

778
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:27,440
By the time addiction really takes a grip

779
00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:31,320
of anyone, drugs are nothing more
than a way to ease the pain, to block it

780
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:33,520
out, to pretend it's not there.

781
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:37,120
And that's where she ended up.

782
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:40,160
This goes back to the same thing again of people...

783
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,160
Some people are saying that, you
know, was she trying to sabotage herself?

784
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:46,720
Was she trying to slowly kill herself?

785
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:49,960
And all of this... Look, let's just keep it real.

786
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:51,920
Bottom line is this.

787
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:53,200
She's a human being.

788
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:56,160
And what happens is she came from a

789
00:41:56,240 --> 00:42:00,600
very normal upbringing,
middle-class family, as normal

790
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:02,640
as it could possibly imagine.

791
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:05,560
You know, Sissy was working with big stars

792
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:07,280
and was associated with stars and stuff like

793
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:09,160
that, but she had a very normal life.

794
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,880
And her mum's little thing was like, I

795
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,840
guess, was like, ooh, that's my
little view of what stardom is.

796
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:17,280
And it was exciting, but she was a normal kid.

797
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:18,360
She had a normal life.

798
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:19,760
You thrust that...

799
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:28,000
You go from that and thrust a
little 16, 17-year-old into this big, big

800
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:32,400
arena, fame, fortune and all of the above

801
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:37,840
that goes with being the biggest-selling
female of all time in your teens.

802
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:41,440
This will cause a psychosis.

803
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:44,640
One of the key things that happens when

804
00:42:44,720 --> 00:42:46,640
people get into a spiral of addictive behaviour

805
00:42:46,720 --> 00:42:48,320
is it becomes more and more destructive.

806
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,840
It doesn't lessen, it gets more and more extreme.

807
00:42:52,240 --> 00:42:54,920
And, of course, when people's lives spiral out

808
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:57,320
of control and when they're
in codependent relationships,

809
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:01,400
as Bobby and Whitney were, then tragedy and

810
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:03,640
catastrophe is really inevitable.

811
00:43:04,280 --> 00:43:07,640
And as their lives spiraled out of control,

812
00:43:07,720 --> 00:43:11,480
as the addictions grew more and more
intense, they withdrew from the world.

813
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:15,360
They would disappear, really, for months at a

814
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:20,080
time, you know, living in isolation,
just Whitney, Bobby and crack cocaine.

815
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:23,720
After Bobby moved on to heroin, he almost

816
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,280
died from an overdose and he was permanently

817
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:30,440
disfigured with a crooked mouth as a result of that.

818
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:33,560
Apparently, he didn't take heroin
again, but the damage had been done.

819
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:35,920
And, of course, the damage with any drug,

820
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:39,840
with any addiction, is
never principally physical, it's

821
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:40,960
principally psychological.

822
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:45,400
And the damage wasn't just to
him, it was also to their relationship.

823
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:50,040
And, of course, because Whitney was so famous,

824
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:52,120
they were rich, they had money, they had

825
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:55,680
power, there's plenty of people who enable that.

826
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:58,200
Plenty of doctors, plenty of friends, plenty of

827
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:02,640
colleagues, plenty of people
who will enable it for a price.

828
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:06,360
And I think at a certain point, she
just wanted to stop, but her family and

829
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:09,160
this entourage who were living off her, you

830
00:44:09,240 --> 00:44:11,440
know, apparently she was supporting over 50 people,

831
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:15,200
buying their cars, their houses, sending their kids

832
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:18,640
to school, paying their medical
bills, which in America is something.

833
00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:20,600
So there was a massive pressure on her.

834
00:44:20,720 --> 00:44:23,320
And so they were, on the one level,

835
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,240
had complete power over those around them, and

836
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:29,320
yet on another level were
completely powerless because

837
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:33,040
they were psychologically
powerless over the addiction that

838
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:34,200
got a hold of them.

839
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:41,600
[soft music] [indistinct chatter]

840
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:45,400
If you look at the dynamic between Whitney

841
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:50,400
and Bobby over the years again and
again, you see a woman who is trying to

842
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:52,960
bring herself down to the level of someone

843
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:56,320
else so that he doesn't feel
threatened and he feels comfortable.

844
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,440
The best example of this is being Bobby Brown.

845
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:02,320
The reality show that Whitney
and Bobby starred in together.

846
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:04,520
Rather than ask what went wrong with the

847
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:07,520
marriage, when you saw them on TV and

848
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:10,320
the documentary following
Bobby Brown but Whitney's very

849
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,480
much involved, the question really
was, what's right with that marriage?

850
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:15,840
The executives at the channel would not even

851
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:18,880
consider the show unless Whitney agreed to appear.

852
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:23,920
Bobby was desperate to get some fame
on his own, apart from his wife, so he

853
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:26,680
persuaded her to be on the show.

854
00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:29,960
When Whitney agreed to be
filmed, the show got the green light.

855
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:34,080
But it was one of the worst decisions she ever made.

856
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,640
For the rest of film history, we can

857
00:45:37,720 --> 00:45:40,880
watch these scenes of a
deteriorating Whitney talking

858
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:45,280
about bowel movements,
talking about being drunk, clearly

859
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:48,080
under the influence of all kinds of drugs.

860
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:51,320
If I don't have it, I'm not the man.

861
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:52,720
You're frigging hallucinating.

862
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:54,240
I want things.

863
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:55,320
I like things.

864
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:56,760
I am things.

865
00:45:57,040 --> 00:45:58,520
I don't want nothing.

866
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:01,880
I don't need money.

867
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:04,200
I don't need cars.

868
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:06,440
I have love.

869
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:09,520
You could see him trying to
drag his power back from Whitney.

870
00:46:10,240 --> 00:46:11,880
Like when he said one day when she came

871
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:13,800
into the room, you know, Jack, be nimble.

872
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:14,800
Jack, be quick.

873
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,800
Bring that ass in here quick and I'm
going to show you what I'm going to

874
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:18,720
do with it.

875
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:20,120
And that's a man who's trying to sit

876
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:22,960
down and say, don't think she's the boss. I am.

877
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:24,880
It is train wreck television.

878
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:27,560
You would see Bobby Brown just, you know,

879
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:31,160
delusions of grandeur, ego out of control, drinking

880
00:46:31,240 --> 00:46:34,040
during the day, and Whitney Houston during the same.

881
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:35,680
It broke me in two because I know

882
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:38,600
that something must have just gone wrong there

883
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,600
cos they weren't like that in the early 90s, OK?

884
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:44,600
When you saw the two of them
together and they were out, it was fun.

885
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:47,920
A man like Bobby Brown doesn't want to be Mr Houston.

886
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:50,160
He wants his wife to be Mrs Brown.

887
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:53,040
And because that could
never happen, the implications

888
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:55,720
for their marriage were severe and damaging.

889
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:59,960
So sometimes two energies come
together and they can destroy each other.

890
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:01,160
It's not about blame.

891
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:03,240
You can't blame anyone.

892
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:05,680
Sometimes two people are toxic together.

893
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:06,920
Sometimes that can happen.

894
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,440
And I think that's what happened there, and it's sad.

895
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:13,760
She did it for her husband, she
did it to help him, and it was very

896
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:16,440
typical of their relationship
that everything she did

897
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:18,880
to help him just brought her down.

898
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:26,880
And then in 2002, perhaps as a desperate

899
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:29,680
attempt really to rehabilitate
her image, Whitney did

900
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:33,480
a famous crack-his-whack
interview with Diane Sawyer.

901
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:36,920
The Diane Sawyer interview
was absolutely astonishing.

902
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:40,240
You had Whitney come in, sit down very

903
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:42,640
regally, as you'd expect, trying to keep herself

904
00:47:42,720 --> 00:47:45,880
together, and you thought,
OK, maybe she's all right here.

905
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:47,760
When Diane Sawyer went for the jugular and

906
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:49,800
asked her the tricky questions, as a good

907
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:53,120
journalist should, did you take crack, she was,

908
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:57,320
you could tell, very angry
and trying to suppress that.

909
00:47:57,400 --> 00:47:58,400
It's not just thin.

910
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:00,720
Don't listen.

911
00:48:01,720 --> 00:48:02,760
Diane, tell me.

912
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:04,360
Do you know?

913
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:05,680
It's scary thin.

914
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:09,320
Whitney dying.

915
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:11,280
Crack rehab fails.

916
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:13,520
First of all, let's get one thing straight.

917
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:15,360
Crack is cheap.

918
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:18,560
I'd make too much money to ever smoke crack.

919
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:20,240
Let's get that straight, OK?

920
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:22,000
We don't do crack.

921
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:23,640
We don't do that.

922
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:25,280
Crack is whack.

923
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:28,760
And she came across as very disjointed, jumpy.

924
00:48:29,560 --> 00:48:32,240
If she hadn't taken anything, any drugs then,

925
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:36,600
then she certainly had quite recently before, as

926
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,000
later came to be the truth.

927
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,400
But she was very emotional and fragile, and

928
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:45,440
it's hard to watch, because now we
know just how much of a lie she was

929
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:46,520
living.

930
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:53,200
[silence]

931
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:58,800
[somber music]

932
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:05,320
For the most part, Whitney stayed
away from L.A. She spent a lot of time

933
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:07,560
in Atlanta, where she lived in a big house.

934
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:10,240
Didn't really do much, didn't
really work, just kind of hung around.

935
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,120
Coming out to L.A. for the Grammys was a big deal for her.

936
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:16,400
The last song that Whitney
publicly sang was Jesus Loves Me.

937
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,320
It was an impromptu performance for her friend,

938
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:21,400
the singer Kelly Price, who the next day

939
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:23,240
was going to be receiving a Grammy Award.

940
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:28,320
And it was heartbreaking, because
that was going to be the final song.

941
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,680
Then how poignant that she's talking to Jesus,

942
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:35,160
that religion means so much to her, and

943
00:49:35,240 --> 00:49:38,680
she wasn't to know that the next day she'd be gone.

944
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:41,840
♪ So ♪

945
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:43,560
I love you so much.

946
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:45,560
♪ And whether I’m wrong ♪

947
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:51,160
♪ Lord tells me, good ♪

948
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:52,360
♪ So ♪

949
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:59,480
[crowd cheering]

950
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:02,160
On the last day of her life, February 11th,

951
00:50:02,240 --> 00:50:04,960
2012, Whitney Houston didn't leave her hotel room.

952
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:08,280
She spoke on the phone to her cousin, Dionne Warwick.

953
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:13,480
She tried to call her pastor, but he didn't pick up.

954
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:15,800
And perhaps that was symptomatic maybe of what

955
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:18,800
she was going through, this constant pull between

956
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:23,360
light and dark, between
addiction and sobriety, between

957
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:26,560
life and death, this half-life that so

958
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,600
many people who get deeply addicted live, where

959
00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:32,280
on the one hand they're spiraling downwards, even

960
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:34,320
as they stretch maybe a hand or finger

961
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:38,160
just upwards to try to grip onto
something solid to give them hope.

962
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:42,160
And that was the battle she was
fighting on the last day of her life.

963
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:44,640
At 3.45 in the afternoon, one of

964
00:50:44,720 --> 00:50:46,760
Whitney Houston's assistants turned up in her hotel

965
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:48,640
room and found her unresponsive in the bath.

966
00:50:48,720 --> 00:50:49,720
She was dead.

967
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:52,840
There was champagne, bottles of beer, and of

968
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:58,760
course, rather than to try and memorialize Whitney

969
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:01,040
Houston at this point, of course, plenty of

970
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,520
people did, but much of the press
simply sensationalized her death.

971
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:10,760
Here was the voice which Oprah
Winfrey had described as the voice of God.

972
00:51:11,720 --> 00:51:17,800
The voice had gone, now the life had
gone, and what took her life was her

973
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:18,720
addiction.

974
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:23,280
I had literally just got off stage,
and I got a text message from the BBC,

975
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:24,800
please urgent call.

976
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:25,920
So I rang back.

977
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:28,000
He said, Misha, this is Stan from the BBC.

978
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,320
Whitney Houston has just, we've
just found out that she's died.

979
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:34,520
And I was like, I mean, I let out this scream.

980
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:36,280
I just couldn't believe it.

981
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:37,800
I was like, what are you talking about?

982
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:39,800
It's just, no, it's a mistake.

983
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:41,480
It can't be right.

984
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:44,920
But then I thought, well, for him
to be calling me at 12 o'clock at

985
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,800
night, you know, it must be real.

986
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:52,640
How she died, well, it was the combination

987
00:51:52,720 --> 00:51:58,600
of the drugs in her system,
alcohol, the steam from the bath.

988
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:01,840
She'd lost consciousness, and she drowned.

989
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:08,760
It's fitting that Whitney's funeral was held at

990
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:10,560
the New World Baptist Church in New Jersey,

991
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:15,360
which is the very place where she
began singing when she was a child.

992
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:20,200
And this time, you know, she was being laid to rest.

993
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:22,240
The most iconic artists of the era, Elton

994
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:27,440
John, Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, Beyoncé,
they all turned up to her funeral.

995
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:30,840
It's really to bear witness
to her extraordinary talent.

996
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:32,120
And, of course, Bobby turned up.

997
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:36,640
Bobby Brown turned up and left very suddenly.

998
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:41,760
[dramatic music]

999
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,200
Bobby Brown's behavior at the funeral was nothing

1000
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:50,080
short of odd and disrespectful in many ways.

1001
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:53,800
Many would say that they wouldn't
have expected him even to be invited.

1002
00:52:54,040 --> 00:52:56,840
It is no secret that Whitney's family despises

1003
00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:58,880
him and to a great degree blame a

1004
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,960
lot of Whitney's problems with substance abuse on

1005
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:04,240
her marriage and her relationship to Bobby.

1006
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:06,560
However, Whitney's family went on the record and

1007
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:08,360
said, no, he is invited to the funeral,

1008
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:11,920
and Bobby was invited to
bring two guests along with him.

1009
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:13,600
Now, on the day of the funeral, here

1010
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:16,760
comes Bobby Brown with an entourage of nine

1011
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:19,240
because they'd been asked to move, not Bobby,

1012
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:20,760
but some of the people he'd brought.

1013
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:21,840
He became irate.

1014
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:23,040
He became very angry.

1015
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:24,960
Al Sharpton, who was at the funeral, actually

1016
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,320
tweeted, I'm trying to calm down Bobby Brown.

1017
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:28,520
Today is not about him.

1018
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:29,720
Today is about Whitney.

1019
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:34,120
No matter how he was feeling,
that day was not about him.

1020
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:35,680
That whole thing was just like a media

1021
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:37,720
circus, you know, trying to interpret what it

1022
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:39,920
might have meant that Bobby Brown left early.

1023
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:41,640
Is it because he cared too much?

1024
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:43,680
Is it because he doesn't care enough?

1025
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:46,440
Whitney Houston died in 2012.

1026
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:49,600
Just three years later, in July 2015, her

1027
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:53,440
daughter, Bobby Christina, died in
remarkably similar circumstances.

1028
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:55,840
Died of a drug overdose and drowning.

1029
00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:03,920
And one can only speculate
because it's psychologically

1030
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:11,160
true that patterns in dysfunctional
families can sometimes

1031
00:54:11,240 --> 00:54:12,240
repeat themselves.

1032
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:17,120
An addicted mother or an addicted father can

1033
00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:21,360
find that their children
will have similar behavioral

1034
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:26,520
issues and will suffer similar
consequences for those behaviors.

1035
00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:30,760
And tragically, Bobby
Christina died in a remarkably

1036
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:35,400
similar way to Whitney Houston, and
in this case, at the tender age of 22.

1037
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:41,560
[music fades]

1038
00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:47,080
There'll never be another Whitney.

1039
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:49,120
There's only one Whitney Houston, you know, and

1040
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:50,400
there'll never be another one.

1041
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:53,600
I think she was a real, kind of a real survivor.

1042
00:54:53,960 --> 00:55:01,440
And I think when you see the number
of movies and albums and tours that she

1043
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:04,040
did over such a short space of time,

1044
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:08,840
I just don't know how she, she must
have had no time to herself at all.

1045
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:11,720
And I think at a certain point, she just wanted to stop.

1046
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:14,280
For me, it's sad because she didn't get

1047
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:17,760
that personal fulfillment, it
seems, in her personal life.

1048
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:21,120
Whitney Houston's death really
did reverberate around the world.

1049
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:23,280
You know, sometimes I think you don't realize

1050
00:55:23,360 --> 00:55:26,560
what an iconic figure someone is until they're gone.

1051
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:29,560
Well, I think one of the really fascinating

1052
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:32,360
but infuriating things about Whitney is that I

1053
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:33,960
don't think she ever knew who she was.

1054
00:55:34,360 --> 00:55:37,120
She was always struggling to find herself.

1055
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:39,600
There's two great lines from Whitney.

1056
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:41,920
One, she said, I am my own worst enemy.

1057
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:43,680
And in one of her most famous and

1058
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:45,280
moving songs, really, which is I Have Nothing,

1059
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:46,800
she said, I can't hide from myself.

1060
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,240
I can't run from myself.

1061
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:52,000
The only time I feel that she ever

1062
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:53,920
felt comfortable, the only time she ever felt

1063
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:57,880
sure of who she was was when she
was on stage and she was singing.

1064
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:02,280
And those moments are, you know, the real her.

1065
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:05,720
We'll just remember the genius
that took her to the top of the world.

1066
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:09,800
And in posterity, we'll make sure she stays there.

1067
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:13,520
I think the thing with Bobby, the
sense I get of him from the footage of

1068
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:17,000
him over the years is that he's
someone who's always putting on a front.

1069
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,280
You know, he had this tough guy image,

1070
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:21,400
but actually, I think he was not ever a tough guy.

1071
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:22,800
He was kind of a bit pathetic.

1072
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:26,000
He's a kind of closed person in some ways.

1073
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:28,000
You know, I don't think he's reached the

1074
00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:29,880
stage of his life where he's ready to

1075
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:32,240
open up and to talk openly about this.

1076
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:33,960
Maybe he never will reach that stage.

1077
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:36,240
Sometimes people not answering and seeing how they

1078
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:38,720
don't answer a question is almost more revealing

1079
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:40,360
than actually having them say something.

1080
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:42,440
And I think this is one of those cases.

1081
00:56:47,240 --> 00:56:51,240
[somber music]

1082
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:10,880
[music continues]

1083
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:20,400
[music fades]