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- [crowd cheering, applauding]
- [piano playing]
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We love you, Whitney!
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{\an8}Well, I was very moved by
and inspired by Whitney personally.
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And so for me, it was very important
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that the audience feel like
they had tickets to the best concerts.
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{\an8}Because it is a biopic,
we are dealing with reality.
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There are certain things
that are super iconic.
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{\an8}It's a massive responsibility
to be as authentic as possible.
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{\an8}Doing the performances
were, like, a lovely respite.
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It was a time where I could rely on
Whitney to do a lot of the work for me.
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Some of the performances are
as close to identical as we can get them.
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So, I'm gonna sing for you
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for all the love you've given me.
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And the great, great joy I've had
in trying to repay that love.
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{\an8}The three-song medley
for the American Music Awards show
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{\an8}is definitely the mountain to climb
for everyone.
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{\an8}For someone as gifted as Whitney,
you always want to challenge them.
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{\an8}So we put together this medley.
It was ten minutes long.
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Those three songs together,
they're almost unsingable on their own.
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That's like climbing Mount Everest
without oxygen.
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You're the only singer on the planet
that could pull this off.
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That's why I'm suggesting it.
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This could be very special.
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And she listened to me.
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She said, "What goes on in your head
when you bring me this stuff?
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Like, I'm not doing it.
Why should I do it?"
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And I said,
"You're the only one that can do it."
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[Lemmons]
So she's gonna do "I Love You, Porgy,"
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follow that up
with "And I Am Telling You,"
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and then end with "I Have Nothing."
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[Minor] At that time, everyone only had
three and a half minutes. That's it.
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She said, "Either give Rickey
what he needs, or I'm not doing it."
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Next thing I know, I got a call and said,
"Okay, so you got the time." [laughs]
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And, uh, the rest is history.
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I mean, her performance is probably
one of the big treasures
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- of her live performance career.
- [chiming]
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We've been working with some new software
to extract Whitney's vocal from the mix
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and then rebuild the instruments around it
with the help of Rickey Minor,
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who originally put that medley together.
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We're hearing Whitney's voice,
but Naomi had to sing,
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or we wouldn't have believed it.
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So you see her. She's fully singing.
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So she knows every beat of the song,
you know.
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{\an8}What I love about that sequence,
even more than the performance,
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is I was able to add moments
of personal connection for Whitney.
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She glances over at Robyn.
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She checks back in with Rickey
right before she hits the big note.
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It's like a dance, really.
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Like once you figure out Whitney's moves,
we would, like, name them.
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[laughing] Genuinely name them
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and be like, "Okay, she does this here
and she does a that there."
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And it got easier and easier
to dissect each performance.
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{\an8}As a finishing touch, I watched
the footage, and I noticed on her sleeves,
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{\an8}she had these beautiful Swarovski,
like, giant beads.
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So I had my team source those beads
in New York.
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{\an8}The American Music Award medley
was just a tour de force.
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And you could tell she was so
emotionally connected and involved in it.
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[band playing, ends]
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[audience applauding, cheering]
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[band begins playing]
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[Lemmons]
The South Africa concert was amazing.
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This was a newly abolished apartheid,
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and Whitney,
at the pinnacle of her career,
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was the first artist to perform
in a free South Africa for Nelson Mandela.
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[audience applauding]
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[Minor]
It was very emotional to do that concert
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and see a sea of Black and white people
in one concert
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all together for the first time.
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I think we had
something like 300 extras in that.
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We actually shot that in a large hangar.
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Behind us is-- We're setting up
for our Africa performance.
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So there's a lot of decking,
a lot of staging.
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And integrated with that is lighting,
which is actually part of the set.
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It was a huge concert where you kind of
have the audience singing along with her.
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What Naomi needed to do
to be able to re-create that performance
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is to be able to match
that performance exactly.
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[Ackie] There was something else about it
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where I could kind of forget I was Nay
trying to do this thing,
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and it was just Whitney's spirit,
and just allowing that kind of vibe.
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[laughing] It was kind of cool
to feel like a pop star for a second.
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[Lemmons] Such a beautiful job was done
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with the art direction
and the production design
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and being able to capture that performance
in all of its, you know, hugeness
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that also gives you the intimacy of
the audience and how they related to her.
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♪ And I ♪
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♪ Will always love you ♪
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♪ I will always ♪
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♪ Love you ♪
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[cheering loudly]
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[announcer]
Almost ready then for Super Bowl XXV,
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where the Giants get ready
to take on the Buffalo Bills
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for the ultimate prize in football.
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Whitney's performance at the Super Bowl
doing our national anthem was so iconic
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for a bunch of different reasons.
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So, the first Gulf War,
and it was a stressful time.
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And she's talking to the troops,
and she's talking to America.
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It was important, actually,
for the country
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for somebody to come out
and really deliver.
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It's the national anthem.
I think the NFL's gonna want it fast.
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I want it slow.
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She wanted to do it slower,
like Marvin Gaye.
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"So let's come up with something that
I can hold on these notes a little longer
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and love on these notes."
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[Lemmons] She wanted to be herself.
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She wanted to give the embodiment
of the Super Bowl.
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"This is the quintessential American event
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that has a certain vibe
and certain feeling,
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and I want to be of that.
I don't want to be above it."
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- No dresses.
- Okay.
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Girl, this is the Super Bowl.
Can't I just be me for once?
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{\an8}Singing the national anthem wasn't about
glamour. It was delivering a message.
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You did that
how it was supposed to be done.
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She refused to wear a gown.
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She's in a Lakota sporty sweat suit.
Really simple.
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The tracksuit Whitney wore
at the Super Bowl was re-created,
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re-created the headband that she wears,
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found the Nike Cortezes
that matched the ones that she wore,
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jewelry, different touches like that
to complete the look.
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♪ O'er the ramparts we watch'd... ♪
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[Offner] We shot at Gillette Stadium,
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which is funny
because it originally took place in Tampa.
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We also filmed this, I believe,
in November, so it was quite cold.
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Tampa in 1991,
I believe, was, like, 71 degrees.
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I think we were in the forties.
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[Lemmons] Ask any music historian,
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they're going to say the quintessential
performances of the national anthem
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are Marvin Gaye, right?
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And Whitney Houston.
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And from 1991 to today,
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it's the most powerful
Super Bowl performance--
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national anthem performance ever.
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And I think it's because of her reason.
She was here just for that.
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♪ O'er the land of the free... ♪
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Yeah, hit that! Hit that. Yeah!
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♪ And the home ♪
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♪ Of the ♪
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♪ Brave! ♪
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I wanted to give the audience a chance
to know her in a deeper way
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and to feel her
and experience her music again.
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It's a tribute to her because I loved her.
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When you have a voice like Whitney's,
everyone just feels moved.
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There may be different musical styles,
but I think the songs still resonate.
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To bring justice to her life
and be as honest as we can,
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it's probably
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
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And to just bring some honesty
in the design to that,
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I think it's amazing.
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[audience applauding, cheering]
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