Whitney Houston and the Tragedy of Getting That Big Break

When I returned last Saturday from a speaking gig at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Albuquerque, the big news was the death of Whitney Houston. Houston, alas, was a prime example of someone who had everything – talent, looks, worldly success to go with that otherworldly voice – but couldn’t make a go of it. I wonder: would she have been better off if she had never become famous at all?

As a Southern California kid with an interest in drama, I of course used to fantasize about getting my big break. Particularly during my high school years, I dreamed that I would suddenly be catapulted into celebrity. When visiting relatives finagled a behind-the-scenes tour of the Twentieth Century-Fox lot, I had a secret hope that someone would take one look at me and say, “Wait a minute, young lady. Yes, you in shocking pink – you’d be perfect for a featured role in our next film.” And then I would be on my way to stardom.

I bring this up because at the conference in Albuquerque I met two filmmakers, director Tony Zierra and producer Elizabeth Yoffe, with a remarkable story to tell. In the late 1990s, Zierra was living in a grungy rental house on L.A.’s Masselin Avenue with four aspiring young actors. Short on money and opportunities, he decided to shoot a documentary chronicling his housemates’ pursuit of their showbiz dreams. Then something unexpected happened: three of the four began to make it big. In short order, Brad Rowe was being groomed as a sex symbol in the Brad Pitt mold and Chad Lindberg started getting meaty character parts, though he yearned to be accepted as a leading man. Soon afterward, Wes Bentley won a star-making role in 1999’s most talked-about film, the Oscar-winning American Beauty. Overnight the guy who’d been sleeping on the couch on Masselin Avenue became a hot Hollywood commodity. All the while, Tony was on the scene, watching his buddies evolve into young men who were haunted by their own success. He saw how quickly their enthusiasm for their new lives turned to anxiety, paranoia, and even drug abuse.

Carving Out Our Name, the film assembled by Tony out of thousands of feet of footage, struggled for years to make it to the big screen. When his friends were on the fast track, their agents, managers, and attorneys tried hard to take control of the finished product. Finally the doc nabbed a slot at the Toronto Film Festival. The date was September 10, 2001, and the success of the screening was totally eclipsed by what occurred in Lower Manhattan on the following morning. Seemed like Carving couldn’t catch a break, but it was finally revised and released in 2011 as My Big Break.

At the conference, producer Elizabeth Yoffe hammered home the point of how Hollywood eats its own. If a promising young actor starts messing with drugs, they will be amply supplied to him, no questions asked. If he happens to O.D., those in the know will shake their heads sadly, and then use his death to help sell the public on his final film. Such was the case with another of Tony’s Hollywood pals, the late Heath Ledger, whose senseless demise turned The Dark Knight into a box-office bonanza.

It’s not so different from what just happened to Whitney Houston. A day after her death, the Grammy awards broadcast was a ratings smash. And expect more great ratings for her televised funeral tomorrow. For CBS, CNN, and everyone in TV-land, the death of a diva is surely the ultimate big break.