When Back to Black screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh was first approached about making an Amy Winehouse biopic, he knew a movie about the late icon would be a magnet for critics and controversy. But Greenhalgh had previously written films about other ill-fated English musicians—Joy Division front man Ian Curtis (2007’s Control) and John Lennon (2009’s Nowhere Boy)—and felt he could find his way into her headspace.
“With Amy, I just thought, ‘I can do that,’” Greenhalgh says. “It’s great to have that kind of confidence going into something so massive about someone so iconic…something that’s probably going to piss a few people off. You need to be confident.”
Back to Black director Sam Taylor-Johnson, who worked with Greenhalgh on Nowhere Boy, felt similarly. Two years ago in LA, they hashed out a storyline for their two-hour film in about three days, liberated by the understanding that they would be greeted by “harsh” sentiment regardless of what they made. “I think that momentum just kicked us into, ‘What do we want to see? How do we want to feel?’”
Made with the full support of the Winehouse estate, their finished product is a gauzy retelling of Winehouse’s tumultuous romance with Blake Fielder-Civil, which inspired the Grammy-winning album the movie is named after. “We wanted to stay pretty much faithful to a celebratory film about her,” says the screenwriter, who met Winehouse’s father, Mitch, the administrator of the singer’s estate, for dinner before writing the script.
“Rightly he wanted to meet this guy that was going to put words into everyone’s mouths in a movie,” says the screenwriter.
Mitch had previously signed off on a film made about his daughter: the 2015 Oscar-winning documentary Amy from filmmaker Asif Kapadia. But that critically acclaimed film depicted Mitch as being one of many opportunists (including us, the sensation-starved public) who accelerated Amy’s self-destruction. Mitch has previously been villainized for decisions such as showing up in St. Lucia where his daughter was recovering with a film crew in tow, and promoting his own album in an interview that ran in The New York Times less than two weeks before Amy’s death.
“We made many mistakes,” Mitch has admitted, “but not loving our daughter was not one of them.” Ultimately, he regretted his participation in Amy: “I told [the filmmakers] that they were a disgrace,” he said to The Guardian in 2015. “I said: ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves. You had the opportunity to make a wonderful film and you’ve made this.’”
During the dinner with Greenhalgh, Mitch brought up being burned by Amy. “He told me a story where he went to New York and everyone was watching the documentary on a flight, and he basically had a panic attack,” says the screenwriter.
Though the Back to Black filmmakers say Winehouse’s estate had no artistic control over the film, Greenhalgh felt sympathy for Mitch. “I didn’t want to compound any problem on a father that had lost his daughter,” he says, explaining that he had no interest in “repeat[ing] what the documentary had insinuated…The toxicity that surrounded Amy was something that we were very much aware of, but we didn’t want to replicate. Going down the dark path just wasn’t for us.”
As such, viewers of the biopic aren’t as subjected to the ugly indignities of addiction or the toxic influences around Winehouse as they are in Amy. Instead, Back to Black focuses on happier memories of Winehouse—like her relationship with her beloved paternal grandmother Cynthia (Lesley Manville), her triumphant performances, her quick wit, and her searing honesty. The film also features stylized montages set to the artist’s hits—like a PG “Back to Black” sequence showing Winehouse exploring New York City and adjusting to the isolation of fame.
There is no mention of several salacious storylines that accompanied the singer’s spirals, like a disastrous concert in Belgrade where Winehouse elicited audience boos by refusing to perform, or images of Winehouse smoking crack that was sold to tabloids. “We had 10 years of Amy making wonderful music, and the effect that she’s had globally, and the honesty that she brought to young people” to focus on, says Greenhalgh.