Amy Winehouse’s friends reveal what her time in NYC was really like

On May 17, a scripted movie about Amy Winehouse’s life, “Back to Black” — starring Marisa Abela as the doomed singer — opens in the US, after earning eyebrow-raising reviews in the UK. NY Post Senior News Features Writers Michael Kaplan shares this story. A critic for the Evening Standard called it “so bad it made me gasp in horror” and wrote that it “does not paint a nice or fair picture of [Winehouse] as a human.” Her friends and colleagues in New York City, like saxophonist Ian Hendrickson-Smith, remember her as “wonderful.” They knew a fun-loving, mischievous and incredibly talented woman prior to the tragedy that later played out before paparazzi cameras: the smeared mascara and ratty beehive and body visibly ravaged by drugs and drink and bulimia. Read more at #amywinehouse #backtoblack The New York Post is your source for breaking news, news about New York, sport