The Troubled Artist

Having just seen and been very moved by Asif Kapadia’s documentary about Amy Winehouse, it set me to reflecting on the troubled artist and their often short and tragic lives. Cinema, has had its fair share of actors who died young; James Dean immediately springs to mind. Watching Amy, such a wonderful song writer and singer who bared her soul in her music and died aged just 27 having spent less than a decade as a professional singer, I thought too of Marilyn Monroe who died aged 36 in similar circumstances, although in her case it was from an overdose of barbiturates rather than alcohol.
Marilyn’s life was played out as a fictional heroine and sexual icon with her private life glimpsed and managed but never so rawly exposed as Amy’s who, as her life unravelled, was hounded by the media. One thing that the film brought to light was how impossible it is for anyone to prepare for fame. Amy was an artist who was only really interested in writing and performing in intimate spaces suited to her genre of soul and jazz.  Super-stardom and the giant stage were dangerous places. For Monroe, who had a great singing voice too – the opposite was true. A movie-star is only that by definition because she appeals to a mainstream audience and is part of a commercial environment that sees her as a commodity. In Winehouse’s case, her raw, searingly personal, honest and vulnerable music became hugely popular as she joined the pantheon of other great singers like Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan and others who were able to reach a mass audience.
So, film stars rarely, if ever, come from a niche, small-scale background. They live often through a manufactured persona. The film about Winehouse relies almost entirely on archive film and stills sourced from family, friends and colleagues. Most of it is shot on consumer handy-cams and mobile phones and interspersed with news footage which portrays Whinehouse as a two-dimensional junkie whose turbulent life was ours to gloat at. Some jokes made by TV talk-show hosts at her expense are truly shocking. In 2001 BBC2 made a documentary about Monroe which can still be seen here on YouTube. It is very interesting to compare this television programme which relies on ‘formerly unseen footage’ about Monroe – essentially a series of magazine interviews she made just weeks before she died.with the finely authored film about Winehouse.  Although there is a lot of ‘home movie’ footage of Monroe it lacks the uninhibited candour of the material in Amy. I wonder if this is because half a century ago when Monroe was being filmed, usually without sound at home and at play, so called ‘home movies’ were generally only made by people who could afford the not inconsiderable expense of the cameras, standard 8 and super 8 film formats that amateurs used. Material was simply not ubiquitous as it is today thanks to digital technology and a mobile phone that is a stills camera, a movie camera and a sound recorder all in one.
Adam.
Image Credits
Featured [no title], Andy Warhol, 1967, Screenprint on paper