A new documentary on Michael Hutchence reveals the cause of the INXS singer’s downward spiral
An unseen private home video of Kylie Minogue filmed by Michael Hutchence has been publicly screened for the first time in a new documentary during which she talks frankly about her love for the rocker.
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An unseen private home video of Kylie Minogue filmed by Michael Hutchence has been publicly screened for the first time in a new documentary during which she talks frankly about her love for the rocker.
The rare footage, which was discovered by accident in the attic of Australian filmmaker Richard Lowenstein after 30 years, shows Minogue posing for Hutchence on a boat in Hong Kong at the beginning of their love affair in the 90s.
Lowenstein first met Hutchence in 1984, and directed several INXS music videos.
The footage includes a private holiday she took with Hutchence on the Orient Express, and some time they spent together in Italy, the South of France, and on tour.
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Lowenstein’s film, Mystify, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York last night, features Minogue, who told of how their relationship “opened up a whole new world” for her.
She recalled how their relationship started in Kyoto and continued during conflicting tour schedules by faxing love letters to each other’s hotels using pseudonyms (she was “Gabby Jones”, he was “Swordfish”).
She said it “felt loving, yet sad, but was probably doomed”.
The Princess of Pop said they broke up when he flew her from Japan to New York to end their two-year relationship in 1991.
He was “on the floor, on all fours, crying” Minogue said.
“Was it work, was it the drugs? I don’t know. He was like a broken man”.
Minogue was dating Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan when she met Hutchence in a bar.
His image as a bad boy? “Pretty much the truth,” she said.
He also gave her the book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind — about a serial killer driven obsessively by his sense of smell.
In a cruel twist, Hutchence later lost his sense of smell after being king-hit in an assault in Copenhagen a year later.
The documentary also includes interviews with his other girlfriends including supermodel Helena Christensen and traces his rise to international stardom until his death in Room 524 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Sydney in 1997.
Christensen reveals what really happened on the night of the Copenhagen attack in 1992, which left Hutchence with the permanent brain damage that triggered his downward spiral.
Christensen, who had a four-year relationship with him, said things got “heavy” after he was punched by a taxi driver in the Danish capital.
He fell on the footpath and fractured his skull.
Before the accident, she said he “seemed so joyful” but then “a dark, angry side came out”.
“Things got very heavy in his head,” she said.
“He didn’t seem himself.”
Mystify also looks at the instant chemistry he had with Paula Yates, who he started dating while she was married to Sir Bob Geldof.
“It was magical,” his personal manager Martha Troup said. “He was madly in love with her.”
But it was another addictive relationship and Hutchence may have introduced Yates, a “teetotaller”, to drugs.
The British press hounded them over her separation from Geldof. A drug bust where opium was found in Yates’ house later led to a custody battle over their daughter Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily was born in 1996 to Yates and Hutchence, and the thought she could be taken away from them “dehumanised” Hutchence, the film claimed.
Hutchence, 37, was dating Erin Hamilton at the time of his death, who said Yates tried to break up with him and attempted suicide.
“You could hear the discord,” Hamilton said. “I was a retreat from all the badness and sadness.”
Hamilton was worried Hutchence might try to take his own life, before he did commit suicide while on tour in Australia on November 22, 1997.
Former NSW State Coroner Derrick Hand determined the cause of death was by “hanging”.
In his official report, he was satisfied the rock star was in a severe depressed state on the morning of his death.
It has been suggested the death resulted from an act of “autoerotic asphyxiation.”
But Mr Hand said “there is no forensic or other evidence to substantiate this suggestion”.
Hutchence’s former lover Michele Bennett was the last person to speak to him.
“He sounded so exhausted and totally depleted in the most extreme way,” she said in the film.
Mr Lowenstein said his film stands apart from the “tabloid stuff” previously seen.
“No one knew [about the brain injury] because it had been kept secret”, he said.
“Enough time has passed to tell the real story”.
Originally published as A new documentary on Michael Hutchence reveals the cause of the INXS singer’s downward spiral
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