Go ahead, tell me I'm evil

I'd heard the name Amy Winehouse before; even if you don't watch the gossip shows it can be difficult to avoid some of the celebrity gossip because it gets mentioned on the more mainstream news shows, and because people on other blogs bring up such things from time to time. When I heard yesterday that she had died of an apparent drug overdose, I couldn't help but think of the movie Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman. It's a horrible thing to do, but at least I'm admitting to my horribleness.

That having been said, Smash-Up isn't really the right movie to point out, largely because Susan Hayward's character has that epiphany at the end that makes her come across as a woman who will overcome her problems. Perhaps a more accurate movie might be Jeanne Eagles, a biopic about the temperamental Broadway actress who made a few movies such as the 1929 version of The Letter, before dying of an overdose of something (three autopsies were performed on Eagels; each returned a different result as to what she had overdosed on).

But Winehouse wasn't an actress, so perhaps we need a movie about a singer who died from drugs. As if there aren't enough of those. For the ladies, I'd pick The Rose, in which Bette Midler plays the strung out singer.