PARTING SHOT
Illustration by BRITT SPENCER
FOR MUCH OF HER YOUNG LIFE, WHITNEY HOUSTON WAS FAMOUS FOR one thing: her voice, the most glorious in ’80s pop music, immortalized in massive hits like “I Wanna to Dance With Somebody” and “I Will Always Love You.” But with her marriage to Bobby Brown in 1992 came a steep decline. Now, she was better known for their train wreck of a relationship and an intractable drug addiction that eventually led to her death: At 48, she accidentally drowned in a hotel bathtub. Scottish director Kevin Macdonald hopes to restore Houston’s reputation with his new documentary, Whitney, “a serious film,” he says, “about somebody people don’t take seriously anymore.” Macdonald made one startling revelation, weeks before he finished the film: As a child, Houston was sexually abused by her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, the late sister of singer Dionne Warwick.