Larry Birkhead says Anna Nicole Smith documentary ‘isn’t precisely high-end journalism’ (unique)

Larry Birkhead was cautiously hopeful that Netflix’s Anna Nicole Smith documentary would do justice to the late star — like different latest popular culture explorations reconsidering well-known girls. To say he is dissatisfied by the top result’s an understatement.

The day it was launched, Birkhead — who didn’t take part within the undertaking— known as the movie about his 16-year-old daughter’s mom a “cesspool” and he elaborated in an unique interview with Yahoo Leisure. To him, it is one more factor exploiting the Guess and Playboy mannequin, who died from an unintended drug overdose in 2007, when it may have been an essential corrective to the file. In his eyes, it does not simply damage Anna Nicole, but additionally their daughter.

To be clear, Birkhead did not anticipate Anna Nicole’s life would in some way be rewritten like a Disney-esque fantasy — the place all of the sudden the tabloid star’s struggles and scandals had been erased. Nevertheless, a pitch despatched out by producers, which Yahoo has reviewed, promised the undertaking could be a “non-judgmental” story that may “restore dignity” to Smith, a sufferer of “society’s thirst for superstar” tradition, and he feels they fell very, very quick. Birkhead additionally takes concern with some commentators within the movie, together with individuals who he says “by no means met me” making “false and defamatory” statements about not simply him however his relationship, which he felt “go unchallenged” by filmmakers.

“Not one of the people who commented on my relationship with Anna Nicole performed a job in her life the complete 2.5 years I dated her,” he says.

Netflix did not reply to Yahoo Leisure’s request for remark.

These giving their takes embody Pol’ Atteu, a clothes designer for Anna Nicole, who has a longtime unfavourable historical past with Birkhead, opining about how Anna Nicole “could not stand” Larry. Mitchell Olson, a actuality TV star who appeared on an episode of The Anna Nicole Present, steered data that Anna Nicole’s relationship with Birkhead was transactional — like he was there to father her child and don’t have any half in elevating it. Olson additionally claimed he had first-hand data that the couple by no means shared a bed room. Lastly, Kevin Smith, a tabloid journalist, speculated {that a} “lightbulb went off” in Birkhead’s head when the photographer met Anna Nicole at a Kentucky Derby gala in Could 2004, pondering a relationship “may very well be fairly profitable.”

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“One made a costume or two,” he says of Atteu. “One by no means even was in Anna’s house in the complete time I dated her” of Olson. “One other, that by no means met me is giving hypothesis about what he thought went by way of my head once I met Anna Nicole. This isn’t precisely high-end journalism.”

Birkhead continues, “A few the people talking about me are retaliating as a result of the truth that we now have needed to police Anna Nicole’s stolen property over time from so-called ‘buddies.'” (Dannielynn inherited the whole lot of her mom’s property, which as her guardian he oversees.)

For his half, Birkhead did hearken to the undertaking pitch by director Ursula Macfarlane, who beforehand made movies about Brigitte Bardot and Yoko Ono, and her crew, hoping that the movie could be one narrative he’d be proud to point out Dannielynn sooner or later.

He says Macfarlane’s crew made “a number of makes an attempt to woo me by paying compliments to me about how ‘essential’ my relationship with Anna could be to this documentary and what a ‘nice father’ I’m.”

Yahoo obtained a duplicate of such pitch — not despatched to Birkhead, however another person — about showing within the movie. It stated, “With coronary heart and soul, this bold documentary will restore dignity and do justice to one of the crucial misunderstood American girls of our time. We goal to current a non-judgemental portrait of Anna Nicole, telling an even bigger story about our society’s thirst for superstar, and the way in which through which we love stunning younger girls, solely to mistreat them at any and each slight misstep.”

Nevertheless, evaluations of the movie level to its personal exploitation, because the movie claims Anna Nicole’s father tried to have intercourse together with her when she was an grownup in addition to particulars a purported same-sex romance she had with a pal. Selection’s overview famous, “This exploration and would-be exoneration of Anna Nicole Smith’s tragic life turns into the type of exploitation it seeks to sentence.” The New York Occasions’s stated, “The solemn excavation of Smith’s life and demise — she died at 39 of a drug overdose, in 2007 — in the end brings the film, regardless of Macfarlane’s well-meaning efforts, squarely into the territory of what it’s trying to sentence: lurid voyeurism.”

Birkhead says it turned obvious to him as manufacturing progressed — and he turned conscious of who had signed on, figuring out all of the gamers within the circus that was his ex-girlfriend’s life, and different components — that he would not take part or share supplies from the property or his private archives for it. He says he then felt a shift within the narrative.

“It is apparent that since we did not take part, the producer/director’s tone modified by then deciding to permit individuals to say false and defamatory issues about me and my relationship with Anna and let these statements go unchallenged,” he says.

Additional, he provides, “Not one of the producers reached out to me for remark, as promised, previous to the airing of those statements. These are the identical people who put in writing that this undertaking could be ‘one thing Dannielynn could be happy with.’ Dannielynn won’t ever see this undertaking, nonetheless our legal professional will.”

When Yahoo beforehand spoke with Macfarlane concerning the documentary and requested if Birkhead had been requested to seem, she stated “after all,” however whereas they “had many conversations” which had been “very amicable … ultimately, we could not comply with the circumstances that he had.”

Of those circumstances, Birkhead says, “My primary concern was with the credibility of the members and ensuring after a number of guarantees from earlier productions that a few of these people would not be included.”

Whereas Birkhead declines to delve into these or additional points with the movie, leaving that to his lawyer, he says he could not enable the narrative that he was just a few sperm donor go unchecked. He says he is by no means tried to painting his relationship with Anna Nicole as a fairytale, however it wasn’t in any respect what’s proven on-screen.

, it may have been this nice love story,” Birkhead says. “However to be sincere, I used to be in opposition to the percentages, as a result of I had entourages and hangers-on and other people throughout Anna. So it was a tough kind factor. However it wasn’t like we had been Ike and Tina Turner. We weren’t Prince Charming and Cinderella both. It was one in all these items the place it was in-between. We had our moments, We had a two-and-a half-year-relationship. To see individuals attempt to cut back that down for a revenue or a acquire is simply ridiculous. One thing that you just actually would not anticipate from a so-called high-end manufacturing on Netflix.”

He is lengthy thought of doing his personal undertaking, after so many unfavourable narratives. That wasn’t a secret to the filmmakers for this doc both, as each he individually as a photographer and the property possess tons of footage and pictures and memorabilia of the long-lasting blonde bombshell.

“I sit up for, in a undertaking, having the ability to lay out the entire archives,” Birkhead says. “An enormous quantity of the stuff has to do with my relationship with Anna that folks have by no means heard and seen. So it is going to be fascinating when individuals really see that and go, ‘Oh, my God, we had been suckered.'”

Nevertheless, “At the beginning, it is extra essential for my daughter to see a few of these movies than it’s anyone else” as a result of her mom has lengthy been a punching bag, he says. “She was principally trashed and vilified [including in a documentary] that sought out to humanize her and to point out a optimistic portrayal of a girl that was alleged to be misunderstood, in response to the director.”

He continues, “I believe they’ve failed their very own mission. Someplace alongside the road, somebody aborted the precise mission and that is unlucky for Anna, her followers and my daughter.”

As for him seeing greenback indicators when he met Anna Nicole — whereas working taking pictures on the Derby 19 years in the past — Birkhead says she really pursued him after they met. Footage from the Derby gala confirmed her apparent curiosity, however he says he was stunned to get an invitation to {photograph} her at Camp Kindle, which helped kids that had been impacted by HIV, shortly after they met. He was touched by her charitable facet, one thing not showcased within the Netflix documentary.

“So if something, Anna chased me and supplied me a chance regardless of the [film’s] claims that I used to be on the lookout for alternative” to money in, he says.

As for the way he protects Dannielynn from all of this, he says, “Effectively, actually, she’s identified since she was little that folks make up tales and lies about mother. We have walked previous magazines and so they’ve stated simply probably the most outlandish issues. So I’ve instructed her early on that persons are incentivized by making up tales for various causes and that there are quite a lot of dangerous individuals on the market that may say dangerous issues about her mother.

“But additionally … it is probably not a part of her on a regular basis life,” says Birkhead, who has sheltered his daughter, taking her away from the limelight to develop up and making usually simply annual appearances on the derby gala. “She did not know her mom. She is aware of what individuals say about her mom. She additionally is aware of that folks say dangerous issues about her.”