Amy Winehouse
TV Special
Daphne's much talked about TV special "Saving Amy".
COMING SOON!
Mitch and Janis Winehouse, Amy's parents, with Daphne.
Gloria - Croatia
Haberturk - Turkey
Gloria - Croatia
The Sunday Times May 10, 2009
Grown-up demons in little Amy
When Daphne Barak filmed Amy Winehouse for a documentary last month, she kept a diary. It reveals the singer as an affection-craving child who has switched from drugs to drink and who can turn nasty in a flash. No wonder her father says he can no longer cope. For the full article click here
OK May 14, 2009
Amy Winehouse's Dad Terrified
Amy Winehouse’s father says he’s terrified she will die from an addiction to alcohol. Mitch Winehouse, who has a close relationship with his troubled daughter, has already seen the singer hospitalized due to her drug habit and fears she has replaced illegal substances with drink, reports the UK sister magazine of OK! Click here for the article
marie claire Saturday 16 May
Winehouse on verge of death TWICE
In the Sky TV documentary called Saving Amy, to air in March, Mitch says: 'She was close to death twice. We have been working a lot to get her to where she is right now. She is better.' Interviewer Daphne Barak quizzed Mitch and his ex-wife, Amy's mum Janis, on her bleakest moments and her marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil. Click here for the article
'Our Amy Was Near To Death Twice'
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Troubled singer Amy Winehouse has been close to death twice, according to her parents. Click for the full story on SKY News
Amy Winehouse gets the documentary treatment
May 19, 2009, 05:20 PM By John Young
Singer Amy Winehouse will be the subject of a documentary film, according to People.
Celebrity interviewer Daphne Barak shot footage of the embattled 25-year-old star and her father, Mitch, while Winehouse recently vacationed on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
'Amy Winehouse Documentary Is a Go, Life Complete'
Amy and her family will be the subject of a new documentary later this year from respected Israeli-American interviewer Daphne Barak.
According to Winehouse's MySpace blog, the documentary will be
"a truthful and revealing look at her complicated life."
The documentary will be released later this year, although there's no word on whether it'll be shown theatrically.
"ITV NEWS EXCLUSIVE: AMY WINEHOUSE’S PARENTS SPEAK OUT ABOUT HER ADDICTION (17 June 2009). ITV News aired exclusive material about Amy Winehouse, her parents and their time in St Lucia. The material, taken from a forthcoming film by international interviewer Daphne Barak, will include revelations about the singer’s alcoholism, relationship with her parents, and footage of Amy in her private villa in St Lucia."
NBC "In an interview due to be broadcast by Britain's ITV News"
Telegraph "Amy Winehouse needs rescuing say parents "
The Sun "Amy parents: Booze is killing her"
AP "Amy Winehouse's mother says singer needs rescue"
Reactions to ITV News ExclusiveParents in despair at Winehouse's 'denial' Independent
Amy Winehouse "is in denial". MTV UK
Winehouse Is 'In Denial' About Alcoholism San Francisco Chronicle
Winehouse 'in denial' over drugs BBC News
'Do not let tattooed reptile Amy Winehouse become a citizen of St. Lucia,' says island's former adviser. Mail Online
Some of the media covering "Saving Amy" documentary
Celebrities, Music
Mitch Winehouse on the torment of Amy’s self-destruction
The Times December 19, 2009
- Ginny Dougary
What must it be like to watch your child’s life spiral into drug-addicted chaos, reported daily by a rapacious press? Mitch Winehouse on the torment of Amy’s self-destruction, its impact on the Winehouse clan, and why he believes she’s finally getting better
Photo – Phil Fisk
So, let’s get the great big elephant out of the room straightaway. Is there something a bit iffy about the way Mitch Winehouse appears to be making a career on the back of his daughter’s demons? What career, you might ask. Well, there are at least two documentaries in the pipeline in which he features large as day, as well as Mitch Winehouse’s Showbiz Rant, an online TV series that films him in his cab sounding off to various celebrity-lite passengers (David Hasselhoff; someone called Shaggy, who was told to take his feet off the seat) – “And don’t get me started on that Lady Gaga…” and so on – and now he’s even recording an album of his own, Rush of Love, due to be released in spring.
Isn’t it a bit weird, I ask him, since he would never have got an album out if… “Never. Not in a million years,” he jumps in. “Course not. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know that I got the album ’cos I’m Amy’s dad.”
You love the limelight? “That’s a very good question, and you wanna know the truth? I do. There’s no getting away from it, Ginny. But I didn’t ask to go before the Commons select committee [to talk about addiction in families], just like I didn’t ask to go on GMTV or This Morning or Ian Wright’s show. They invited me. What am I supposed to do? Not go? And if I said, ‘I didn’t enjoy it,’ I’d be lying because I do enjoy it. But I don’t want it to come across that I’m big-headed and I love the limelight for the sake of it.”
It was for Amy’s sake, initially – a self-confessed “Daddy’s girl” with those words tattooed on her arm – that her father came to the fore to protest about various untruths, as he sees it, being written about his daughter. And now that the media have got a taste of Mitch, we find him distinctly more-ish. Although it’s debatable how much of that has to do with him being a convenient conduit to channel Amy, whose talent – and, more so, the personal turmoil that threatens to destroy it – makes her such an object of fascination.
For her father, of course, this objectification of Amy is part of the problem. The more insatiable the public interest in the details of her downward spiral, the longer it will take her to recover – or, according to him, stay recovered: “My daughter is a recovering addict. She is not a drug addict now.” He says she has been clean of drugs for a year. A whole year? “Yes, a whole year.” But according to one of the documentary-makers, Daphne Barak, who spent time with father and daughter in St Lucia and later wrote about it, Mitch had said there had been relapses since Christmas and, “She [Amy] didn’t [give up drugs] all of a sudden; she was talking about it for two or three months.”
When he talks to me, however, Mitch’s version of events is rather different. He tells me his daughter declared in August last year, “‘Dad, that’s it. I’m not taking drugs any more. I’m done.’ It did take her a couple of months, but she actually came off them in about October.” Part of me thinks that as Amy’s father, he is entitled to offer whatever edit on his daughter’s progress he wishes. But there is also something Faustian about accepting the role of the singer’s public mouthpiece that makes me want him to be, at least, consistent in what he tells us. At one point, he says apropos of an anecdote about him commanding Mick Jagger to pipe down during one of her performances: “What’s good about it is that it’s a true story. Normally, I make these things up.” Later, I make him swear on his daughter’s love that he hasn’t made up anything in this interview, and he does. So since he seems to me to be a good, warm-hearted bloke, we’ll take him at his word.
Barak, who did not endear herself to either her rival documentary-makers (with their My Daughter Amy as opposed to her Saving Amy) or her subjects, painted a grim portrait of Amy as a tragic child-woman – needy and obnoxious, in turn – who has substituted her drug addiction for alcohol abuse. Is this true? “Well, you know, having spoken to many counsellors and therapists and experts in the field, normally one addiction can follow another. But this isn’t an addiction; it’s just that she drinks too much every now and again,” he says. “It’s not alcoholism. I would say that she doesn’t drink every day, but when she drinks, she drinks a lot.
“But there are also positive addictions, like her gym work. She’s got the physiology – if that’s the right word – of, like, an Olympic athlete. The doctor who saw me last week said: ‘She could go into the Olympics, she’s so fit.’”
Is she happy? “Well… it’s difficult to know really. I mean, she’s my daughter and we’re very close but she’s not gonna tell me her most intimate things.” But does she seem happy to you? “Most of the time.”
