Photo: WENN
The makers of the new Amy Winehouse film, AMY, have responded to claims from her father Mitch that it is disrespectful to his daughter's memory.
"I felt sick when I watched it for the first time," said Mitch earlier this year. "Amy would have be furious. This is not what she would have wanted."
Now, as the film hits cinemas this week, the film's editor Chris King has spoken to Gigwise - defending their choices and saying that the film is ultimately a tribute to the singer.
"The biggest voices until now have been by the media, books by her dad and books by music journalists - all kind of claiming ownership of her," said King. "People who were living the story, day-by-day, people living with and around her, had never really said their side of things. We can never see completely what's going on, but I'm guessing that we've found a side of her that the majority of the public have never seen."
Responding to Mitch's damning view of the movie, King said: "We're not entirely surprised that he didn't like what he saw. Having conflated 10 years of someone's life into two hours, we had to miss a lot of stuff out. We had to make some hard editorial decisions - he felt that we missed out a lot of the bits that he'd have preferred to be in and replaced them with stuff that he hated. We spoke to everybody, and people aren't volunteering, you have to really convince them, then one by one they start talking and voluntarily and the same names, incidents, stories and situations come up again and again and again, you then footage that supports it independently, what are we going to do? Not include it in case it upsets somebody?
"Our duty is to Amy - every single thing in the film is there to help people understand her better."
King added: "I know it's upsetting for a lot of people, a lot of people in this film found out things that they weren't aware of. That can be very uncomfortable. Eventually I'd hope that Mitch would be able to watch the film again and think differently. I'm a father, Asif is a father, the producer is a father, we've all got kids, the thought of losing them is unthinkable. They did love each other and I have to be able to give him that level of sympathy and respect."
Watch the trailer for AMY below
Mitch also spoke out to criticise the film creators’ decision to involve Amy's former boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil in the film: “Blake is saying in the film that the reason Amy was like that was because of me — not because he gave her crack and heroin and because he completely manipulated and coerced her into Class A drugs."
He added: “If the real truth came out about Blake, he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street so how they can allow him to make that claim about me is so hurtful and beyond belief.”
When speaking about the family's involvement in her drug addiction, Mitch explained: "I was there for her. We were all there every day and Amy phone me up to seven times a day. From this film there's no impression of that whatsoever. Especially when she was sick I was there all the time."
“We can’t stop it but when the film does come out we can sue for libel or slander. Our lawyers will view the film and reserve the right to do that and see whether there are any grounds".
AMY premiered last night. Read our full review of the film here.
