INTERVIEWS

Anthony McCarten Has The Moves in “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody”

share:

A good song is a good story,” Cissy Houston tells her daughter as she struggles to get the restless teenaged Whitney to focus on her majestic voice. “It comes from three places: the head, the heart, and the gut.

Screenwriter Anthony McCarten knows a lot about good stories, be it the subject matter of musical icons, religious leaders or historical figures. From Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything to Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour and Queen and Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, McCarten has delved into the histories of some of the most prominent and intriguing figures of the last century, bringing them to life with a passionate fervor for new generations.

And those are just the big screen examples. With a career that spans journalism, theatre, novels and, of course, film, McCarten has a wealth of experience in professional storytelling. His latest film, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a tribute to the life and artistry of one of the most iconic pop singers of all time. We recently spoke to him about this project and his career thus far in biopics.

Creative Screenwriting Magazine

Anthony McCarten. Photo by Jack English

Having worked in different methods of storytelling, is there one medium you are more drawn to over another?

I like to jump between them, really, so that I can have variety. I might be writing a novel and have a yearning to do a screenplay next. I like to mix it up. But when I’m in it, it’s all-encompassing. There isn’t one overriding preference over another

Do you approach projects differently when you’re adapting your own work (such as with The Darkest Hour) versus someone else’s (The Theory of Everything)?

Yes, I think I do. Although the process is the same, really, of taking the original work and rebuilding it for a new genre. You generally have to cling more tightly to a unifying theme. In the case of adapting a novel, for example, they can be extremely digressive and go off on interesting tangents. These are luxuries you can’t really allow yourself when you’re writing the screenplay.

And there’s an added difficulty when you’re adapting your own work because you’ve already done your imagining. Reimagining your own work is quite a mind bender, and it requires that a level of objectivity be applied to something which is entirely subjective. So you have to get yourself into that state, put yourself in that place, and then say, “OK, I’m going to take some liberties with this author. The author might not be pleased with this, but I think this might be necessary to make it work for this new format.”

How do you approach the research when you’re working on a new story? Do you have certain “go-to” methods that have proven to be successful?

I start with the Internet and then go into books and tapes and so forth. That’s the sort of “librarian,” scholarly aspect of it. The other part, which is incredibly important, is to make use of when it’s possible to talk to people. Get out there and talk to anyone who will talk to you. That way you can get a multidimensional, 360-degree perspective on your subject. You need to have lots of voices to understand and get closer to what epistemologists would call the truth…which can be a little tricky to track down.

But the facts won’t necessarily get you all the way there and you have to engage your artistry. And it’s the application of your artistry that will get you inside the house. It can bring you even closer into the felt experience, deeper into the emotions – and make someone perceive those, feel those, simultaneously with the protagonist.

How much did you know about your various subjects going into your films? Were there a lot of surprises in the course of your research?

Yes, there are always surprises. In fact, if you’re not being surprised by your subject, you really shouldn’t do it. That’s one of the boxes I have to tick before I take something on. “Do I have anything new to say about this person?” If you don’t, then you should really think twice about doing it because it’s an abuse of the form and of the resources.

Creative Screenwriting Magazine

Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams) and (Whitney Houston) Naomi Ackie. Photo courtesy of Tristar Pictures

Whatever the motivation for your project is, I would say that it’s a must that you uncover something, either factually or thematically, that unifies the story and reveals some sort of truth that has been hidden from the public. In the case of the Neil Diamond musical on Broadway (A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical), it’s really an exploration of an older man. It takes the form of a memory place that we flash back to in his life, but it’s the story of an older man who has an enormous challenge in his life, which is that he can no longer do the thing that defined him. The thing that allowed him to make his peace with life has been taken away from him. What do you do with the leftover life? The remains of the day? That aspect of this character has hitherto never been dramatized. And I thought that that theme was a useful one on a universal level. Which is another aspect of it – is there something new to say? About the character, but also about society. You are shining a light into some aspect of life that someone has revealed to us.

So yes, without going through all the subjects I’ve done, it’s essentially the same project, the same enterprise, which is to say something that is at least interesting to the writer that you feel has some social value.

How did you first become involved with telling Whitney Houston’s story?

I was having dinner with a friend in New York and Clive Davis joined us for dinner. To be honest with you, I didn’t know who Clive Davis was when he sat down. He’s 90 years old. And he had signed Whitney to Arista Records when she was 18.

Clive had been with her every step of her professional journey, right up until she passed, and he also delivered the eulogy at her funeral. He told me that one of his deepest wishes was for someone to make a celebrational movie about Whitney Houston, “The Artist”. Not Whitney Houston the drug taker, not Whitney the wife stuck in an unfortunate marriage. But about the artist. The true celebration of the genius, removing the tarnish that has been applied to her image over the years. She’s been subsumed in the tabloid scandals and this magnificent career has been obscured by all this dirty laundry. So it was a process of excavation of that musical journey as an artist which is record-breaking and ground breaking. And that was a real joy to find how she created this body of work which is unparalleled in pop music.

What was unique about Whitney’s career?

She started very young and came storming out of the gates. Within the first two albums, she’d broken records by Elvis Presley and The Beatles. She’d beaten The Beatles for the most consecutive number one hits! And she was placed on this enormous pedestal as being the first all-American white friendly black girl. She was asked to live up to these princess-like expectations, and they were huge. If you become a sort of mascot for a country, which she became, it’s very constraining. And at the heart of it was a girl from New Jersey who wanted family life and a degree of normality. She wanted to sing. She loved singing. But she didn’t want to necessarily be a musical president of the United States. All of those pressures started to tell on her. And when she made some decisions that the media did not approve of, and which didn’t conform to the princess image and the role that had been foisted on her, they turned on her. And when they turn on you, they’re unrelenting and they don’t stop. They’re leaving no stone unturned. That unrelenting pressure is also an aspect of her journey, and it played a role in her untimely demise.

Which of Whitney’s relationships did you tap into while writing her story?

Well, the first order of business is to talk to as many people as you can. So I talked to the family. I talked to Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law and Gary, Whitney’s brother. They live in Atlanta and from them I was able to secure the permission to use the music. I’m the first person who’s ever had access to all music. Which is critical to this project, because you can’t tell Whitney Houston’s story without music.

People have tried, but I would argue that it’s a limited portrait without the music. Pat and Gary also told me about the early years. They had sung backing vocals during the tours, and Pat had been part of the tour management team, so they were a great resource on those details.

I spoke to Rickey Minor, who was the musical director of Whitney’s shows. He gave me insights into wonderful things like how did she come up with that version of the national anthem she sang at the Super Bowl? That fed directly into the script. He had also proposed this medley which I called “the ensemble medley”.

I also talked to her drug therapist who was with her in rehab to get interesting insights into that aspect of her life. Talking to as many people as possible was critical.

What are some of the more challenging aspects of writing a biopic?

Biopics are incredibly challenging. Often the subjects’ lives are very well known. And finding something new to say is terribly difficult. It’s just all very difficult, in fact.

People probably think biopics are easy to do because all the facts are there; they’re lying on the ground, so you just pick them up and string them together like you would a bunch of pearls and there it is.

Well, all I would say to someone who believes that is try to do one yourself. It’s very constraining to work within history. You don’t have the liberties you have with other projects, and yet you have to try and make a thread to the story within those restrictions. Finding a satisfying structure is incredibly difficult because human lives are messy. And they don’t conform to the normal shape of the story.

History, it turns out, is a lousy storyteller. It’s inconsistent. People contradict themselves. There’s generally not a unified satisfying moment where everything comes together and it’s happily ever after. So, it’s extremely challenging form and evidence of that is you don’t see too many of them that are really great.

Biopics are also a tricky genre in that they’re not documentaries, but many audiences feel the end product should be as close to historically accurate as possible. When you’re writing one, what are your guiding principles in terms of what needs to be complete truth and what can maybe be open to a bit more creative license?

That’s a big question that is almost deserving of a booklet length answer. Because it’s a highly contentious area of how we dramatize history.

My rule of thumb is that we must adhere to the facts, honor them but also explore the unknown areas between the facts. History is a road washed out at intervals and time has erased the trail. We don’t know what was said in a certain room between two different people; we may know what the consequences of that conversation are, but we don’t know the content. And it’s up to the artist to intelligently and responsibly speculate on what transpired in these little corners of history. That’s where the artist is most qualified to be the person to do that. If you’ve done your research, you feel you know the characters sufficiently well to honor them and do justice to them, and you must not do injury to them. That’s one of the rules – you cannot do injury to the facts.

It would be absurd to write a scene at the Battle of Waterloo where Napoleon wins, because you think it would make a better story. Of course I’m exaggerating, and no one would do that. But there are smaller versions of that kind of sin that are committed and it’s absurd. They would never have said that; they would never have done that. 

If you are inventing a scene that we have no evidence of having happened, yet it reveals something true that you’ve discerned about the person or the situation? Then you’re entirely within your rights to use invention. Because you’re in the service of the truth, and ultimately, that’s what you are serving.

share:

image

Movie aficionado, television devotee, music disciple, world traveller. Based in Toronto, Canada.

Improve Your Craft