What Happened, Brittany Murphy? tries but fails to shed light on a troubled star
The new docuseries about the life and premature death of the Clueless actor has a lot of theories, though
TV Reviews Brittany Murphy
Coming fast on the heels of a series of documentaries examining the life of Britney Spears, the new two-part HBO Max docuseries What Happened, Brittany Murphy? touches on some similar themes: a troubled star, a controlling man, and of course, the absolutely unforgiving era of early 2000s gossip blogs.
But in the case of this documentary, there’s only so much new information to uncover: Murphy died at the age of 32 in 2009, and the surprising nature of her death inspired legions of both amateur and professional sleuths to try and figure out what, exactly, happened even then. The cause of death at the time was ruled to be pneumonia combined with anemia, alongside a potent combination of over-the-counter drugs found in Murphy’s bloodstream. But could there have been something more?
Murphy first burst into the public consciousness with a major role in the 1995 film Clueless, in which she played the guileless Tai, who Alicia Silverstone’s Cher aims to mentor into a popular kid. The role is meant to be a somewhat gawky underdog; it is a tremendous credit to the then-17-year-old Murphy that the performance was a star-making role in which the iconic and ridiculous line “You’re a virgin who can’t drive” is delivered with gravitas.
The reason Murphy was cast in the role in the first place was that she looked a little unpolished, at least by Hollywood standards, but in her subsequent acting projects, a thinner, blonder Murphy emerged. In some ways, she followed a very traditional path for starlets, dating a popular co-star (Ashton Kutcher) and pursuing the high-concept comedies available to young actresses at the time. But she was dogged by relentless tabloid attention, which fixated both on her physical transformation and the possibility that she had a drug problem. By the time she died, her star had largely waned, and a morbid fascination with what might have gone so awry was as inevitable as it was grotesque.
All of that, alongside the more nuanced view of the pressures of fame and the responsibilities of the tabloid media that have now taken hold in the culture, Murphy’s story is ripe for reexamination, and What Happened, Brittany Murphy? joins the fleet of prestige projects looking into our recent pop cultural past. But there isn’t a lot that’s new here, and what passes for insight comes largely from the tabloid press who haunted her while she was alive. If you remember that era and were curious enough to follow the various twists and turns of the investigation, you may remember that Murphy’s husband, a screenwriter named Simon Monjack, attracted quite a lot of suspicion in the early days after her death. When he also died from pneumonia just a few months later, the story only grew more baffling.
The first part, in particular, feels undeveloped, jumping back and forth between the days immediately following Murphy’s death and her rise in Hollywood. All the interviews are slowly revealed as back benchers in Murphy’s life: It’s predominantly a parade of hangers-on in the Hollywood ecosystem who opine about Murphy’s life without much firsthand knowledge of it, and a couple of directors who weigh in to say she was a lovely if troubled person. The second part fares better, delving into some of the unpleasant realities of her life, including her drug use and the specifics of Monjack’s controlling behavior.
In fact, the interviews go into overdrive to make a case that something unsavory was going on with Monjack, that he was a crook and a known liar who took over Murphy’s life and ruined it. But it’s hard not to come away from it thinking that in the entirety of the documentary, there are only two interviews from people who knew Murphy in her Hollywood years and aren’t trying to craft a narrative about her.
One of them is the actor Kathy Najimy, who starred with Murphy in the voice cast of King Of The Hill, and who expresses genuine grief at not having done more to help her. Her sharp refusal to talk about Murphy’s heavily documented split with Kutcher comes across as an indictment of the interviewer for asking about such tawdry subject matter at this late date—it was just a bad breakup.
The other is Harley Pasternak, a physical trainer who worked with the couple. While ample screentime is spent theorizing about the nature of Monjack and Murphy’s relationship—was he too controlling, were they deeply in love—it’s Pasternak who clears away a lot of the speculation. Did Murphy seem like she wanted to be with Monjack? “She seemed like she was high. So, I don’t know,” Pasternak responds. It’s deeply dispiriting, but also the sort of straightforward answer sorely lacking in a docuseries full of talking heads who want to prove themselves Murphy scholars.
What truly makes the documentary a disappointment is its profound incuriosity about the world that sent Murphy tumbling into the arms of Monjack to begin with. This is a film that features four different people who worked as celebrity reporters during her lifetime, as well as a man who admits to leaking a story about Murphy’s husband to the National Enquirer. So many of these people were active participants in a Hollywood system that ate her up and spat her out and then mocked her relentlessly. Sure, maybe Monjack encouraged her to get plastic surgery, but he was by no means the first person to suggest her looks needed to change.
The documentary repeatedly passes over moments when it could have gone for a stronger indictment of those that made her who she was. Former gossip reporters talk opaquely about how bad gossip blogs were then. Perez Hilton admits to repulsive behavior but then says the era itself was “gross,” as though he weren’t one of the ringleaders who made it that way. A perhaps unintentionally revealing moment is when Clueless director Amy Heckerling, who cast Murphy when she was just 17 (and younger than all of her co-stars), is asked whether Murphy was still going to school at the time. Heckerling looks baffled and eventually musters up, “She might have been emancipated?”
But the documentary never offers any introspection about the pressures of being newly famous at 17. At one point, someone says friends of Murphy held an intervention to try and convince her and her mother that Monjack was bad news, but you won’t see any of those friends here.
Perhaps the most excruciating moment in the entire project is a brief glimpse of a “Weekend Update” segment in which Abby Elliott appears as Murphy, only weeks before she died, and after she’d been fired after two days on set of her latest project. Elliott impersonates Murphy as a pop culture joke: ditzy, addled, a starlet gone sordid. The scene is mercifully cut short, but it’s hard not to wish for a version of the documentary that let it play out longer, summoning up the era more fully to make the viewer squirm as they remember how Murphy was treated, how vicious the narrative was about a person for whom the great joke, somehow, was that she was anorexic and addicted to drugs. That is the documentary that would tell you something insightful about what happened to Brittany Murphy.
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blah this seems very exploitive and gross, Murphy died of substance issue complications as did her terrible partner. There is no need to sensationalize a story of Hollywood traumatizing a young woman day in and day out, when this should be a documentary holding us 2000’s audiences responsible for eating up the tabloids from that era and participating in the stigma around drugs.But she was also a real spark of unique charisma in everything she appeared in, and I think fortunately, that’s what a lot of people remember her for.
Murphy died of substance issue complications as did her terrible partner.
There’s long been talk that it was toxic mold in her home that killed her. The coroner ruled her death was caused by pneumonia, and then her partner, living in the same residence, also died of pneumonia, several months after she did.https://www.eonline.com/ca/news/985333/inside-the-endlessly-bizarre-aftermath-of-brittany-murphy-s-sudden-death
https://paradigmchange.me/murphy/
I’m sure they were compromised in combination with the mold(if it’s actually accurate, it seems like maybe it was just a contributing factor if so, that the family insists on more than anything). I know in the worst of my addiction on prescriptions mixed with illicit drugs I could barely breathe and had a lot of respiratory issues.
I’d definitely buy that. I had a pretty frightening episode at home about two years ago. I have normally pretty mild asthma, and started having serious difficulty breathing, needing to rest frequently when walking up steep hills. I was afraid I’d developed full-blown COPD or emphysema.
Turned out that a basement dehumidifier cleared up the problem in a couple weeks. The connection wasn’t obvious, as my problem persisted even when I spent a few days out of the house, and didn’t get noticeably worse depending on where I was in the house. It wasn’t even “black mold” down there — just the gray, fuzzy kind — but I guess I had an allergy that aggravated the problem. If I’d had drug issues, I could easily imagine it turning lethal.
The coroner ruled out mold. It’s easily detectable during autopsy. Her much older mother lived in the house with them and had no adverse effects as well. Yet the two of them both got pneumonia and, oddly, both had severe iron deficient anemia. The anemia would make them much more susceptible to any lung infection and explain why it reached full blown pneumonia. Neither had illegal drugs in their systems either. That doesn’t rule out prior drug use, as most are metabolized relatively quickly, but it wasn’t a direct factor.
Nobody else in my house was affected either, which is why I think it was an allergy that made the unfortunate difference in my case. Coincidental iron deficient anemia seems significant here. As you note above, there are prescription and OTC medications that can contribute to that.
Yes, I’m sure it was due to your asthma with possible complications from an allergy. Mold isn’t dangerous to anyone that doesn’t have some other underlying complication. There’s no such thing as Black Mold or Toxic Mold. There’s tons of species of mold that happen to be black, or near black, in color but they’re no different than any other mold. The whole Black Mold fad was basically made up and is perpetuated by home cleaning services. The average person inhales from 10,000 to 10 million mold spores a day depending on the circumstances and they are destroyed by the immune system just like any other microscopic organic body. What mold is though, is an indicator of a damp environment with limited to no air flow. Prolonged exposure to such an environment is bad for the lungs of even an otherwise healthy individual. Damp air makes it harder for your lungs to absorb oxygen and can cause, typically minor, fluid build up. Lack of ventilation actually decreases the amount of oxygen in the air over time. Both make it harder for the phagocytes in the lining of your lungs to do their job in removing microscopic foreign bodies so they can linger longer causing irritation and possibly infection.For someone with complications like asthma, allergies or is immunocompromised, it’s a recipe for disaster. Actual central fungal infections though, meaning spores actually germinate and form a fungal growth inside the lungs, only happen, except rare instances, in people who are substantially immunocompromised. The other rare instance is if there’s a cavity in the lung, such as after the surgical removal of a small tumor, that mostly encloses itself. If there’s limited or no blood flow to that area then spores can germinate in that cavity. And, wow, I typed a lot more about mold than I meant to. But, yeah, both people being that severely anemic, at the same time, is a bit odd. Both had some general general health factors that can contribute to anemia but they are completely different factors. It’s suggests the anemia was somewhat chronic, compromising their immune systems and leading to severe pneumonia.
Yep – I thought it was very firmly “Already weakened body, because drugs, couldn’t handle the addition of a ton of toxic mold.”
I think it was a confluence of factors. For example, my grandmother and one of my cousins share a home, which has mold and mildew and would be a teardown, but it is HER home and she loves it there, and so we all accept it and honor her wishes. The cousin has had recurring respiratory issues, which are likely aggravated by the mold, but he also has had substance abuse issues, is overweight, and doesn’t eat right. My grandmother, by comparison, is 99 and still in great health and seemingly unaffected. In the case of Murphy, she had a history of anemia stemming from very heavy menstrual cycles, which left her vulnerable to the kinds of respiratory problems that toxic mold can aggravate. The matter was further aggravated by a cocktail of medications of dubious origin used to help her cope and manage her symptoms, but without treating the underlying cause, until it was too late and her blood oxygen levels dropped and she quite literally collapsed. Likewise, Monjack was also using a cocktail of drugs, and had been sick frequently, on top of being a very large man who I believe also smoked. It’s a very odd coincidence they both died of similar causes in such a short time frame, but it’s just that, a coincidence, due to a confluence of similar circumstances, and I believe that if any one of them had been changed – if they had lived in a different home, if Murphy had not relied upon those medications, or if she had sought treatment for her anemia, the she could very well be alive today.
exactly, I know when my addiction was really bad I was also embarrassed to go to the doctor for a lot of ailments because I didn’t know how to explain the cocktail of other things in my system. the ailments got worse because of my substance use issues, and I was hospitalized for those issues and not the actual substances, even though it wouldn’t have gotten that bad had I not been using. It’s usually other things that kill you when you’re in active use, not the substance itself.
I think it’s a habit (at least in America, I’m not sure about elsewhere) to treat health as an all-or-nothing proposition. The idea that people can die from an accumulation of health problems, one (or a few) of which happened to be the most immediate, is surprisingly hard to grasp. That tendency gets amplified when there’s “substance” use involved, since the moral anxiety over “substances” tends to overshadow everything else, and all of that baggage is even heavier when the discussion involves a famous person. It’s all very sad, and it’s especially sad that this has to be part of her legacy.
yes, it always ends up being this obsession with the cause of death listed by the coroner, without understanding all the other factors at play here. it also sort of undermines the substance/mental health issues itself, and sidesteps the responsibility the industry itself had in causing such a health decline in an amazing actresses.
The coroner ruled out mold. Mold spores would’ve been in her pneumatic fluid (and his) and are instantly detectable on autopsy. They were both severely ID anemic which, as you mentioned, makes you more susceptible to infection. That they were both severely anemic is a bit strange though. The contributing factors in Murphy’s case are more clear. Very heavy menstrual cycles cause anemia, though not to the severity shown in the coroner’s report, without other contributing factors. A simple one being a diet nearly devoid of iron and B12 or just not eating enough at all. The level of acetaminophen in her definitely contributed through gastrointestinal bleeding, though that was acute as opposed a prior underlying factor. Monjack died months later, also with severe ID anemia and nowhere close to the level of potentially contributing drugs in his body. He was certainly overweight, and his mother said he had heart problems, but neither directly cause that level of anemia (short of a bleed of some kind but none was found during the autopsy). Drug use and/or severe alcohol use can cause severe anemia but toxicology showed no recreational drugs nor the expected liver damage from that level of alcohol abuse. That’s the bit that’s a little unusual. It suggests a very unhealthy overall lifestyle, particularly in diet, leading to the underlying anemia, usually suggestive of drug and alcohol abuse, but with no toxicological smoking gun. Murphy’s extreme weight loss can indicate anorexia, which leads to severe anemia by itself, but that doesn’t explain Monjack.
Thanks for that clarification. It certainly is a puzzle indeed. I’m reminded of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan, two successful artists who together descended into a mutual psychosis that ended in their taking their own live within a week of one another. I wonder if there was a similar folie a deux with Monjack and Murphy, in terms of lifestyle and habits that led to their constitutions being similarly, and ultimately fatally, undermined.
I was thinking something like that could be a possibility. In Murphy’s later interviews there’s a noticeable… discordance of logic, attention, and some weird tangents. Now, that could be nothing more than a quixotic personality. It also could be a health issue. She was incredibly thin and drawn and didn’t look healthy. It could’ve been substance abuse. It could’ve been mental health issues. Because life is never as simple as one answer, the reality could be a confluence of any of those factors and others we don’t know. Her mother, who was living with them swears Murphy wasn’t doing drugs. Murphy denied any drug use in connection to her weight loss. The tox screens for both of them were clear of recreational drugs or alcohol. That certainly doesn’t mean there was no substance abuse prior to that but it wasn’t the direct cause of death. It certainly makes me lean towards underlying and unaddressed mental health issues exacerbated by a codependency. I mean, and I don’t know how to say this without sounding awful, but Monjack is… not an attractive man, nor successful. He’d already been embroiled in fraud, some extremely petty, and was, by the few accounts we have, an unpleasant man to be around as far as his personality. It’s a puzzle. They seemed to find something in each other and the result is what we’re left with. What you won’t find in this documentary though, is any attempt at insight. This review is generous, because it’s complete garbage. None of the interviews are from people who actually knew Murphy in any personal way. Most are tabloid reporters from the time whose recollections offer no insight at all. You learn nothing about Murphy herself. It hangs it’s hat on the ridiculously predatory nature and callousness of paparazzi of the time and how it chewed through young actresses, which is ripe for exploration, but is unable to get to why Murphy is the focus of this doc. It could’ve been What Happened, Bynes/Lohan/Hilton etc? You learn nothing that wasn’t already known about Murphy.
The coroner ruled out mold. It’s very easy to detect fungal infections of the lungs during autopsy. Not to mention her mothered lived with them and showed had no adverse outcomes. Both were suffering from severe iron deficient anemia though, which is… strange. They were both very unhealthy, for reasons unknown, which helps to explain such severe pneumonia in relatively young people. Tox screens for both showed only typical cold/lung infection meds, though they were at very high levels, and prescription only, in Murphy’s case. Over use of acetaminophen contributes to ID anemia, as it causes gastrointestinal bleeding, as does extreme menstrual flow, which Murphy was dealing with. Together those factors can explain some level of anemia but likely not that severe. That her husband also had severe ID anemia suggests some kind of shared lifestyle component. An extremely bad diet can cause severe anemia, particularly anorexia. Murphy’s precipitous weight loss is suggestive of anorexia but that doesn’t explain her husband. They simply both could’ve been partaking in a diet hugely deficient in iron and B12 for reasons unknown. It’s all rather confounding. Extreme alcoholism can cause anemia but neither had alcohol in their blood nor the associated liver damage. Drug abuse can cause it as well, but there was nothing in the toxicology. It’s a strange confluence of morbidities.
“Extreme alcoholism can cause anemia but neither had alcohol in their blood nor the associated liver damage. Drug abuse can cause it as well, but there was nothing in the toxicology.”my substance abuse hospitalization didn’t occur while I was using, but weeks after abstaining. so just because something isn’t someone’s system doesn’t indicate much.
Of course, I said as much in another reply. Liver damage from drinking is apparent though. Other long term substance abuse issues are as well, such as nasal scarring, heart wall scarring, thinning or thickening, lung scarring, vascular abnormalities, etc. For the most part coroners are concerned with the immediate cause of death though. It’s certainly possible, even probable, there were other indications of substance abuse that wouldn’t be part of their report.
Sounds like they could’ve been extreme popper users.
The medical examiner and coroner in the documentary both ruled out mold. They both said they didn’t see mold on her lungs, which would have been present if mold was a contributing factor.
For some reason I thought it was black mold. Was that just a theory floated around back then? That’s what stuck in my mind.
I remember speculation about a CPAP machine as well – one that perhaps the couple shared, which is against any kind of good wellness plan. If mold had gotten inside the machine and it wasn’t cleaned properly or often, that could explain a lot.
The thing to bear in mind with black mould is that it was largely just a panic/fad/excuse for litigation, with little or no scientific basis. There have been no secure cases of ANY serious illness attributed to ANY house mould (other than direct fungal infections in the seriously immunocompromised); and black mould in particular is extremely rare (it requires extreme moisture, so while it can grow immediately after flooding it dies away very shortly after; unless you’re living in a swamp, it’s probably not black mould). Some toxins produced by mould can in theory be dangerous, in the lab, but it’s now thought that to actually harm a real person you’d need concentrations that it’s just not possible to find in any naturally-occurring situation, unless you’re actively collecting the stuff and snorting it by the bucketload. There have been a few cases where people have suggested it may have killed babies or small pets, but even those are highly debateable.Living in damp conditions, with or without mould, isn’t great for the chest, and mould, along with other microorganisms, can exacerbate asthma and other allergies, and may possibly be associated with other long-term, low-level complaints. And if you’re really seriously immuncompromised (AIDs, radiotherapy, etc) then all sorts of otherwise harmless things can suddenly become opportunistic infections. But, AIUI, you’re going to have to be in either a really bizarre situation or else be extremely ill before mould in your house becomes a risk to life…
There’s also no such thing as “black mold” as a particular thing. There are dozens of species of mold that are black or near black in color. None are more or less harmful, which is nil, than any other mold. Any mold spores are only directly harmful to the minute amount of people that may be allergic to that species or to the immunocompromised. As you note, mold is mainly an indicator of an overly damp environment lacking airflow. This isn’t good for anyone’s lungs, particularly people with asthma, but it’s an indicator of the environment as opposed to the direct contributor to acute complications. The “black mold” fad was a confluence of bad reporting perpetuated by companies that still to this day advertise services to remove it because it’s “deadly.”All of us, all day, are inhaling millions of mold spores (and myriad other fungi) but the only way a fungi can actually blossom in your lungs is if, as you mention, you are severely immunocompromised. There’s never been a recorded case of systematic fungal infection outside of that circumstance.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
This. I once knew some people whose business was mold remediation – all kinds of expensive equipment and such. If they got it – they taped a piece of plastic over it, and drowned it in bleach (plastic was to keep any wandering spores out of the air.)
The mold speculation is debunked fairly convincingly in the documentary.
Yeah, these vultures (showbiz reporters, paparazzi, hangers-on, gossip ‘journalists’, etc.), who were at least partly responsible for the toxic atmosphere which led to the circumstances surrounding her demise, apparently were all too happy to feature in this petty excuse for a documentary, and cash in on Murphy’s tragedy one last time. This absolutely reeks of opportunistic sleaze.
this should be a documentary holding us 2000’s audiences responsible for eating up the tabloids from that era and participating in the stigma around drugs.That would’ve made it a much more meaningful to watch and a more engaging question to raise. This documentary sounds sounds gross and intrusive and something to stay far away from.
I’m baffled by the implication that 2000’s audiences were WORSE than the horrific treatment people are subjected to today via social media. Now it’s tabloids and entertainment television plus a never-ending barrage of “kill yourself”-level insults from random anonymous assholes that celebs for some reason voluntarily permit to be posted to their feeds. I can’t imagine what social media would have done to Brittany Murphy.
I watched it. It was really bad. There were maybe two people interviewed that cared about either Brittany or her husband. The rest were just paparazzi. Oh and fuck off with Perez Hilton insincerely apologizing. What an asshat.
It’s not terribly surprising that a director might not remember over 15 years later whether or not an actor was going to school. I’m lucky if I can remember what I ate for dinner 3 days ago.
Was it soup?
For some reason I do remember those small things but have real trouble remembering names, directions or instructions. It was rotisserie chicken
i dont want to be spoiled so i didnt read the articlei hope things turn out okay for her
She’ll be fine, I’m sure. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?
I think it’s a little odd that Heckerling didn’t know if she was emancipated when other accounts say her mother was ever present and kind of a momager. Some people thought the mother was complicit in the weird Bobby Brown-Whitney relationship she wound up in with that guy who looked like a walrus. As other people have pointed out, it appears she was a sweet person who was easily influenced and the system ground her into dust.I’m sure some of the people who appeared in this doc, the background hangers-on, saw being in this on HBOMax as a “big break” of sorts. Gross. It sounds like cooler heads should have prevailed and decided there was maybe not enough in this to show (particularly not as a two-parter)…but that’s the difference between HBO and HBOMax, HBOMax can be fun because it is less disciplined, but sometimes trashy and sordid fun (see: The Flight Attendant) turns into just trashy and sordid. Are they going to pick up those Nicole Brown Simpson and Sharon Tate murder movies next? Interviewing Perez Hilton for this is kind of ghoulish.
It’s funny because I remember one of the first things that happened when AT&T bought HBO is they purged all the late night reality shows from HBOGO because they were too lurid and not prestigious enough.
I’m sorry but – while there was definitely an exploitive edge – Taxicab Confessions sounds a million times more prestigious than this.
lol they did such a good job that I had totally forgotten about that! oh for the days of emmanuelle and zalman king and people sitting through that Nic Cage movie where he’s an artist for the nudity, that was more Showtime and Skinemax I think but yeah there were Real Sex, Taxicab Confessions, some stuff about the Bunny Ranch with that gross guy who ran it
Watching King of the Hill again, and I’m struck by how talented Murphy was as a voice-over actress, to say nothing of how great she was in her live movies. Not gonna comment on the documentary, just to praise Murphy one more time.
She’s one of my absolute favorite parts of Drop Dead Gorgeous, a movie with about 7 of my favorite parts.
Drop Dead Gorgeous is probably my all-time favorite black comedy. Just relentlessly funny with an unapologetic mean streak a mile wide. So, so good, and every cast member is 100% on-point.Murphy’s pageant talent being a dramatic reenactment from Soylent Green is so absurdly hysterical.
That movie is so fucking good.
She’s one of those actors whose careers and work really haunts me, because she clearly had incredible talent and on screen presence, and gave Oscar worthy performances (Don’t Say A Word). For a brief moment, she was a major star, and if things had been just a little different, if she had lived long enough to reach the era of Too Much TV, I’m convinced she would’ve had an amazing career in that space. One could easily imagine her with a role in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or House of Cards, or Mad Men, or any number of shows. It’s so sad how her career was written off as finished, and she as a has been, when in hindsight, her career had only just begun, and her potential barely tapped.
Hell, just imagine if Fox hadn’t cancelled King of the Hill to make way for… The Cleveland Show.
But I agree, she would have fit in with any of the prestige shows going on now.
King of the Hill was running on fumes at the end though and didn’t need to go on longer— though I’d definitely welcome a sequel series now. Not that Cleveland Show was anything that could replace it, let’s just pretend it ended to make room for Bob’s Burgers or something.
Bob’s Burgers is back by the way, so that pleases me.
I can somewhat begrudgingly admit that The Cleveland Show actually kinda grew on me over time, but I’ve recently been rewatching King of the Hill, and it’s just… worlds apart in quality. I’m just catching stray episodes here and there on TV and every time I do, it’s immediately “oh, hey, I love this one!”. Every single time. I forgot what a Gribble of a show it is.
Any show that could make you occasionally pull for Cotton (rip his shins) by definition has to be well-written.
True of so many actors – particularly women. (but also a lot of handsome young ‘leading men’, for instance). Even today there’s a serious dearth of roles for women between the ages of 30 and 60; back when culture was more youth-obsessed, and when the only serious vehicles were a small number of blockbuster films (or possibly a starring role in a sitcom if you were really desperate), without even a fraction of today’s prestige TV, it was a lot worse…
So true, so sad. Murphy was SO close. Yeah she was having to do crappy films that were beneath her toward the end of her life but she just needed to hang on a few more years, and I’m convinced her career would’ve been revived. Had she lived and chosen to keep working, I don’t think there is any way she wouldn’t have found a place in the burgeoning space for streaming programming.
I guess the obvious comparison here is Winona Ryder. Ryder’s slightly older, and was a bigger star, but had a similar trajectory to a lot of these ‘starlettes’: huge success at a very young age (Beetlejuice, her third film, when she was 17), followed immediately by a tabloid-fodder tempestuous relationship with a much older man (Johnny Depp – she was 17, he was 26), depression, anxiety, insomnia, multiple drug adictions (‘prescription’ in her case, but only thanks to a pet doctor who was eventually struck off for offering prescriptions to anyone who asked fo them), massive breakdown/scandal (in her case, multiple felony convictions). Four years of nothing, followed by a decade of occasional background appearances here and there. Still never really made a comeback in Hollywood (‘Homefront’ and ‘Destination Wedding’ aren’t quite up to her former standard of either quality or success)……but look what she’s doing on TV! One of the stars of one of the era’s biggest shows (Stranger Things)! And between starring for the Duffers (who presumably will go on to do other things) and apparently a strong relationship now with David Simon (Show Me a Hero, The Plot Against America), it kind of seems like the future’s bright for her, even if she never gets asked back to hollywood (or is asked but isn’t interested? Surely Marvel must have asked her by now?).
Don’t forget about her role in Black Swan. She was really good in that crazy, twisted fairy tale.
Ryder had early troubles, but she worked them out and made it back. For every Murphy, there are a few who do overcome things, like Ryder, Robert Downy Jr and Drew Barrymore.
I agree 100% about her sort of out-of-time presence. Maisel or Mad Men would have been perfect for her. I think about her performance in Girl, Interrupted as a preview of how well she would have fit into those types of period pieces.
Manger Babies made me laugh so much.
On rewatch, it’s interesting to see how Luanne has by far the most character development; from crashing in the Hill’s den in the pilot episode through to her wedding (the originally planned finale of the show) and into the early years of having a child. I think a lot of that attention was crafted around Murphy’s voice-acting talent.
I feel like we’re well full-circle where the navel-gazing about “were tabloids terrible to people in the 2000s” has turned into another way of satisfying the same markets that harmed these celebrities in the 2000s, just with a thin veneer of “those guys were bad” to try and pretend like they’re not profiting the same way.In short it feels less like people feel bad about Britney, or Brittany, and more just like they have more parasocial investment in them.
it is definitely that, especially in this case.But at least Spears, Simpson and Fox for example get to have some sort resolution and agency over their narrative now compared to the 2000s. And hopefully Lohan gets some sort of control over her narrative again too. It’s just sort of sad Murphy doesn’t get that.
And of course a lot of the “X is a slut!”/ “Y is a frump!” coverage has just been translated to “Z is a racist! The ball she went to as a child didn’t allow black people until a generation before she was there!” stories. The morality being enforced has changed, mostly for the better, but depressingly little has changed about HOW it’s enforced…
In the pre-Twitter era, my intake of tabloid trash was pretty limited. I don’t remember much coverage of Brittany Murphy, although I do remember plenty of equally exploitative coverage of Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, and Lindsay Lohan. It seems the cycle of “what the fuck happened” biopicsploitation never ends. They’re already making the Amy Winehouse one right now. No troubled young woman is safe from these cockroaches.
3,2,1 Amanda Bynes
I do remember the coverage, because of the shocks involving her and then her husband, as well as the usual vultures of these years (from Perez to Larry King). The main difference between now and then is the gawking and sneering has been papered over by “times are different” posturing designed to make the viewer feel noble, when it’s just the same old cashing in that has been around for well over a century. Even the title feels like something grimy from a comedy sketch – I can hear Chris Parnell wringing every ounce of exploitation and faux-empathy from that awful word salad.
As a non-fiction filmmaker, I’m not opposed to these kinds of stories. My last doc was a true crime film, and if I can get the participants to agree to speak with me, my next film will be also. But what frustrates me to no end, is how everyone is hell bent on rushing these films out. There is absolutely a good, emotionally resonant and insightful film that could be made about Brittany Murphy’s life, and her tragedy. But it is one that requires time to research and accrue material and to gain the trust of those who knew her to the point that they will speak. And every indication I get is that this film was a fucking rush job from start to finish. IIRC it was just announced last spring. I spent five years on my last project, and the bulk of that was in the research/interview stage, before I even began any proper film. To do all that in six months? Forget about it. What a waste. Murphy deserves better.
A point reinforced by the fact that there was no compelling reason this had to be released TODAY, like a statute of limitations was about to run out or something.
Were early ‘aughts tabloids really any worse than any other era? Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but are they really any better today?
they were the worst then and intentionally antagonistic and aggressive towards these young women battling addiction/mental health. literal swarming just at a gas station. social media at least gives the celebrity some sense of control over access.
Media was probably worse, but at least none of the targets had to deal with fucking social media, which I am now convinced is the worst invention of the tech era.
They were probably worse than now? Even lip service to mental health is better than no consideration whatsoever. I suppose another way to look at it is that norms that the tabloids enforce/exploit have changed, but the tabloids themselves are the same.
Yeah, I think Perez Hilton and TMZ and, ahem, Gawker were particularly awful in the 2000s. The newsstand tabloids were easily disregarded (talking about in the USA of course, I know the UK tabloids are something else) and magazine tv-shows of the 90s were pretty tame all things considered but the big name gossip sites that emerged were ruthless and relentless. That stuff is still around but it’s not as pervasive and mainstream as it used to be, or we’re just collectively a lot more numb.
Late-90s/early-00s American celebrity tabloids and gossip blogs were so bad that the Daily Mail and the UK tabloids expressed disgust and disdain for them…[the difference to me is that UK tabloids saw celebrities as a resource to be exploited and processed – ideally with their consent (it made it easier) but if necessary then without it. The US scene seemed to see celebrities as meat to be butchered, and the more hurtful and outrageous they were the better… I always got the sense that if Hilton (for instance) had a choice between making a woman suffer and making money, he’d happily forego a few bucks for some juicy suffering, whereas the News of the World would stick to the bottom line every time…]
I mean Perez Hilton would regularly draw cocks and jizz on women he considered whores. Gawker and Perez regularly outed people (Gawker, for better or worse, claimed it was outing hypocrites but Perez would anyone he did it to NPH.) Perez Hilton sold shirts that said Why Couldn’t It Be Britney when Heath Ledger died. TMZ will still follow your corpse with cameras while it’s still in the ambulance though.
They aren’t great now. And it’s dressed up with concern for their welfare while exploiting people for clicks (which is infuriating) but not nearly as bad as it was then.
To add to what others have said, there was a big difference in the early 2000s to the present media landscape: publishing media still had a lot of money. So they could pay paparazzi huge figures, and they had massive incentives to find the most exploitative angle on every story. Now, there’s very little money left in gossip publishing, the industry is dominated by skeleton-staff blogs, and most celebrities essentially run their own tabloid stories via social media.
Now the Tabloid’s power has diminished and they don’t need to pay people to write this stuff. It’s all out there, for free, on social media.
Exactly. Instead of 20 to 30 critics… you have 350 million. Going underground is the right way to live until we fix social media.
I thought that was Lili Reinhart in the photo…
Huh. Well, I can’t unsee it now.
I watched some of the Drew Barrymore show this morning, just to see if it was as nutty as I’d heard. It was pretty enjoyably dippy until they brought somebody in to do Brittany Murphy’s astrology chart. Gross.
It’s been a while since I saw a daytime television talk show, but they used to be full of that weird New Agey pseudoscience promotion, and I guess that hasn’t changed….
Surprised they didn’t try to contact her.
Well I watched this last night and yup, a total piece of shit. Brittany Murphy deserves so much better, like a biopic with an Oscar-winning performance in the lead role. That is what she deserves to honor her legacy. The people who made this doc should be ashamed.
It was a very good piece, and this is still a Dateline episode on steroids. A sad, sordid tale. But they really gave Sharon a pass. While I think it is quite evident Monjack was the main force behind her demise, the issue still is she had her mother. A lot of abusers get their victims isolated, but Sharon lived with them. Why didn’t she get her own daughter to the doctor? I think part of the implication is that she was bamboozled or complicit as well. I think the clips of YTers asking those questions is so the filmmaker doesn’t incur that liability. Not only was the mother the oldest one of the three, I believe she is a cancer survivor. So how did she live in that house and yet she is still here? And why wouldn’t she want to set the record straight?
The story of what the man witnessed who was around the two of them after that Larry king live interview is beyond chilling. The inference makes your blood run cold. It seems most unlikely that the mother could have been in a sober condition throughout but yet allow what was happening to her child. Regardless, it is beyond jaw-dropping how a man who looked like that and who never had a dime it seems managed to leave a path of destruction in his wake. I think the interview with his mother covering for him and whitewashing everything at every turn answers a lot of that. A sad story with many questions.
Lily Reinhardt should play Murphy in any biopic
Considering it’s a doc by horror specialists Blumhouse, it’s not surprising what transpires. It’s hard to ignore (in a car-crash kind of way) and it hits all the right beats dramatically. But it’s pretty shallow and the gauzy dramatic recreations jettison credibility for “Unsolved Mysteries” style titillation.
Yes, the old black mold theory instead of the most logical.
I mean, it’s a real thing in SoCal. My FIL had to tear his house down to the studs to remediate it.
exactly.
I was not sure who she was until the KotH reference, and now I am sad. She was a talented voice actress. I had no idea of her tragic back story.