“Did Whitney Houston Deserve Better than a Lifetime Biopic”
By Glenn Peppers 1-19-2025
We live in such an exploitive and vicious world! For me saturday night was a night of relaxation and healing for me. In my quest for relaxation, I first thought to watch the Whitney Houston Biopic on Lifetime. Then I thought to myself. Why? I'd read all the literature about how Whitney's family did not sign off on this film! It was clear that the producers (including director, Angela Bassett) had no real technical guidance from anyone in the Houston family while making this film.
No one in Whitney Houston's camp granted or consented to re-create any life situation, or divulge any information played off as real and true, as portrayed in this film about Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown or anyone in their family! Cissy Houston replied to Entertainment Tonight with this reply below!...
"Lifetime has chosen to go ahead with the movie about Whitney in spite of my family's objections. No one connected with this movie knew Whitney or anything about her relationship with Bobby," she said in a statement to ET. "In the two years since Whitney's death, many people have stepped forward to speak about their close relationship with her. I find it difficult to believe people who knew and supposedly loved her would participate in a movie about her done by folks who didn't know her. We are exhausted by the continuing misinformation and comments offered by people who did not know her. Please please let her rest."
Cissy Houston
For this reason, and because I am just not ready to see any kind of film that shows this woman's downfall and apparent death so soon after her passing. Lifetime parading Whitney's end of life scenarios across my saturday night television screen was not entertainment for me. Aside from being a movie that I suspected would be badly done, as only Lifetime (seemingly here of late) can do them!
From there I decided to leave this exploitation of an icon (of whom I love) alone and stuck to watching old movies on DVD that I love, and took a well deserved nap in the process! It was when I saw this graphic hours later that I was inspired to write this blog!
After seeing the photo above, I'm glad I didn't watch another one of Lifetime's hastily and inaccurately pieced-together biopic's! One other biopic that was done some years ago that I saw, which also had so serious inaccuracies throughout. Some of which were quite embarrassing, was The Temptation Movie!
All I can tell you is this! Temptation member, Paul Williams did not die the way they depicted his death in the movie! And David Ruffin did "NOT" die in a crack house! Nor was Ruffin thrown from the back seat of a moving car onto the curb, in front of some hospital emergency room entrance!
Believe me, I know this certain family member of one of the Temptations (yet for privacy sake, I'll not say which one). This man knows how his father left this world! Don't believe all the foolishness you hear, see and read!
Yet I know why this movie is so popular. The movie clearly has its moments. The music was great, and the characterizations and likenesses were dead on. The movie does generally depict the Temptations pretty very close to how they were. But its those critical, and important historical inaccuracies that were and are enough for me to not fully support the Temptation movie storyline through and through!
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| Cissy and Whitney singing together |
The same goes for Whitney Houston's biopic. Had Cissy's Houston's name been all over this project! I'd have been glued to the TV screen, popcorn, cola and candy in hand! I'm sick of Lifetime, and other movie production companies telling the life-stories of people they really don't know anything about, except for the tabloid hype and the leading headlines!
If world history has proven one thing at all to me, it is this! I think it is oh so very important for people of color to always tell their own stories for posterity sake! For when other people tell our stories, for us, our lives and all of who we are suddenly get lost in the sauce!
The good gets clouded and muddy, and then all at once all the places and faces and the images are changed. We become minus'ed and lessoned out of the equation as we go along that long dark corridor, through the annals of history and time! And as a result, generations from now, the facts will have changed, and only the lies will remain!
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| Singer Songwriter Erykah Badu |
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| The Sphinx showing clearly that in the hands of others through history. "We get our noses shot off!" |
In the words of Voltaire — "History is the lie commonly agreed upon!" Yet in a far more personal platitude, I think the words of singer songwriter Erica Bydu are more fitting. For when we let others write our history, she said... "We get our Noses Shot Off!"
Glenn Peppers 1-19-2015
Well written as always my friend, I as with you did not watch, as i have seen as with you and others how things can be taken completely outta context. Why is it usually after one is gone the lies and things others know are not true comes out? You and i were just talking on my friend the other night, that i loved and admired .. what happened years after he died was accused of " RAPE" by a well known that to this day i refuse to listen to or watch I will shut her off in a Detroit moment!! For i know in my heart the man I loved for years would never do that..I did not know Whitney i was not given that blessing but as with Whitey The Temps my friend and others, We that know will always stand by our love and devotion of what we believe of the ones we admired and knew ...TY Glenn for sharing with us ... For us that loved Whitney it will never change ...
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