Clive Davis, 87, reveals plans to make his own Whitney Houston biopic

Clive Davis was not at all eager to talk about the escalating fracas at the Recording Academy in an interview this week, just days before the music-industry organization presents the annual Grammy Awards ceremony Sunday evening at Staples Center. “But until we learn more, I can’t appraise the ramifications.” If he steered clear of the Dugan matter, though, the famously garrulous 87-year-old — well-known for discovering Whitney Houston, for turning Barry Manilow into a star and for orchestrating Aretha Franklin’s comeback in the 1980s — was happy to discuss a number of other topics, starting with the pre-Grammy gala he hosts every year in coordination with the Recording Academy. At the same time, Davis insisted that “the story of Whitney Houston has not been told yet.” He was “very disappointed,” he said, by two recent documentaries on the singer: “Whitney,” which came out in 2018 and was authorized by the Houston estate, and “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” which was released in 2017 without the cooperation of Houston’s family. He’d been optimistic about “Whitney,” which he said he’d hoped would “overcome” what he viewed as the earlier film’s “sensationalistic” treatment of Houston’s rocky marriage to Bobby Brown. But he said he “has no interest” in “whitewashing” her struggles with addiction or in denying her romantic relationship with Robyn Crawford, who wrote a memoir last year in which she referred to Houston as her “lover.” Davis, who himself came out as bisexual in his own 2013 bestselling autobiography, simply wants a treatment of Houston’s life that properly explains her musical contributions, he said — which is why he’s “looking forward to putting together” a biopic with a “great writer and a great director.” Clive Davis hugs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the Pre-Grammy Gala on Feb.11, 2017 in Beverly Hills.