Amy Winehouse's father to release film in response to 'Amy'
Mitch Winehouse, who publicly has criticized Asif Kapadia's new documentary, 'Amy,'
will be releasing an alternative film to "tell the truth about Amy's life."
Amy Winehouse's father, Mitch, is still furious about Asif Kapadia's recent documentary on his late daughter, Amy, and has vowed to develop an alternative film of his own in response. Mitch made the announcement during an appearance on the talk show Loose Women, on which he also discussed his dissatisfaction with how he and others were portrayed in Amy.
"What I say is misrepresented. I say that Amy didn't need to go to rehab, right? What I actually said was — Amy didn't need to go to rehab at that point. Later on was a different story, which gives a totally, completely different meaning to what I said."
He also noted that Reg Traviss, Amy's boyfriend at the time of her death, had participated in seven interviews but was cut from the film. Similarly, Mitch had done "thousands of interviews," only to be edited out all but three times in the film.
"Anybody who was involved with Amy in the last three years are not in the film," he said. "This nonsense about Amy being left alone for the last three years of her life is incredibly insulting. She had a lovely boyfriend, she had wonderful friends."
There's so much I could say about this, but it's such a tricky situation.
Obviously, Mitch adored Amy and always wanted what was best for her. He certainly knew her and her situation better than any of us did.
However, there are certain things that I feel Mitch is in complete denial about and certain things that he's trying to convince himself weren't the wrong things to do when they clearly were.
He has always seemed to enjoy the limelight that being Amy Winehouse's father has given him, even when she was at her darkest moments. One example would be taking a television crew to St. Lucia where Amy was recovering in private from heroin addiction. In the footage she is clearly very uncomfortable and is hurt that her dad would invade her privacy in this way when the entire reason she came to St. Lucia was to get away from the media. One of the Loose Women actually confronted him about this during the interview and the only defence he had was that it 'wasn't a reality television show, it was a documentary he was making that had a serious subject matter'. He claimed it was a documentary about helping families who have a child struggling with addiction. However, I've seen it and the film is called 'My Daughter Amy' is it completely about Amy and her addiction. Amy's mother never uses her daughter for the spotlight, you very rarely see her do interviews or talk to the press. I do understand that Mitch is raising money for Amy's foundation by doing all of these things, but he's been doing this since Amy was still alive.
I really don't mean to be disrespectful to Mitch. He has lost his daughter and I know she meant everything to him. But it certainly did not surprise me that the filmmakers of the new documentary ended up portraying him negatively after interviewing people close to her. It's something that has been said for years.
Lastly, I visit that statue of Amy whenever I'm in Camden. It's so life-like and strange, even though it's made of stone.
I don't trust him. He has so much he still hasn't owned up to and keeps pushing blame on other people. Aside from abandoning his family, he should have had big warning signs going off when he first heard his young daughter writing a song called What Is It About Men that is clearly about him and his influence on her. I've always felt like he's never let anyone else be honest about Amy because he didn't want anyone else to be REALLY honest about him and his mistakes.
I don't trust him. He has so much he still hasn't owned up to and keeps pushing blame on other people. Aside from abandoning his family, he should have had big warning signs going off when he first heard his young daughter writing a song called What Is It About Men that is clearly about him and his influence on her. I've always felt like he's never let anyone else be honest about Amy because he didn't want anyone else to be REALLY honest about him and his mistakes.
Understand, once he was a family man
So surely I would never, ever go through it first hand
Emulate all the **** my mother hates
I can't help but demonstrate my Freudian fate
My alibi for taking your guy
History repeats itself, it fails to die
And animal aggression is my downfall
I don't care about what you got, I want it all
It's bricked up in my head, It's shoved under my bed
And I question myself again "What is it about men?"
My destructive side has grown a mile wide
And I question myself again "What is it about men?"
Yeah, okay. The documentary involved people who would know the true story, and he is just mad the film portrayed him as exactly what he was. There has always been something slimy about his angles/intentions, hidden behind his faux-positive actions. He is always about himself. The fact he was gone from Amy's life for a good period of time and then came back when she started making it big should speak volumes alone...
Look "Amy", like any depiction, isn't going to be perfect, but if you watch interviews of Asif Kapadia he clearly wanted to show Amy in the best possible light. He may not have known her personally but its clear from the incredibly compassionate portrayal that he cared about her and wanted people to understand her, not the people in her life but HER.
Of course as a film, he needs to build a narrative in the story, either by omitting certain details or focusing on others. Ultimately she was the focus of the story - how she grew as an artist, how her addiction started it roots, how she relapsed, and ultimately how she died.
Now I'm sure Mitch loved Amy a great deal. Of course he did - she was his daughter. But he is pressed as f*ck because the movie dares to portray him in an unflattering light. I'm talking of course about the St. Lucia scene. He says that its presenting a skewed version of the events when, if you watch the film, that scene has very little voiceover. It literally just presents the events as it occurred.
Mitch is upset because he's too much of coward to own up to his own role in his daughter's death. That footage doesn't lie. He's of course not the only person to blame but he played a role and this cry of slander just proves this even more to me.
