Over the weekend, while most people were trying to find a place to watch the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight or the VMAs, I had the chance to check out the Whitney Houston documentary, Can I Be Me? on Showtime. To make it plain, it was honestly one of the saddest documentaries I’ve seen. It was also incredibly eye-opening.
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Viewers had the chance to see Whitney’s humble beginnings, footage of her many interviews and performances over the years — the usual. But what director Nick Broomfield was able to capture that no one else has been able to is the insight of those who spent so much time around Whitney. Not the usual suspects (Gary, Pat and Cicely — though two of the three were present in the doc), but rather, her stylist, her assistant, her friends, those who toured with her for years, security who kept her safe for a majority of her career. What they unveiled about her was quite a bit. Check out a few very intriguing things that I learned about Whitney’s life from Can I Be Me?
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The Houston Kids and Drugs
During the documentary, Houston’s brother Michael revealed that they did everything together growing up, and as he put it, “You get into drugs you do that together too.” Gary Houston took things a step further and shared that his own initial experience with drugs (he even mentioned heroin) was at 10. And according to Ellin Lavar, her longtime friend and stylist, when they met around 18, Whitney “was already doing drugs.”
