Filmmaker Richard Lowenstein hopes his new Michael Hutchence documentary will make it clear his friend didn't accidentally hang himself while seeking sexual gratification.
The INXS star was found dead in his Sydney, Australia hotel room in 1997, aged 37, and the media jumped on speculation auto erotic asphyxiation was the main cause of death.
Lowenstein, who was a longtime friend of the Never Tear Us Apart singer, insists there was nothing seedy about the rock star's death - he was just depressed and suicidal, adding the press played down the New South Wales coroner's report, which concluded that Michael had been in a "severe depressed state on the morning of 22 November 1997, and due to a number of factors, that he intended and did take his own life..."
"Unfortunately, Michael dying from auto erotic asphyxiation was a rumour spread after he died for certain people wanting to hide that he wasn't depressed, that he was more than happy," the director says. "The press went berserk, but there was absolutely no evidence... The full autopsy report was 160 pages long and there was no evidence that any of that happened..."
"Most of us who knew him couldn't believe where that story came from," Lowenstein adds. "The girl, Erin, that he was seeing in the very end, three months before he died, I personally asked her if anything like that took place in their private times, and she said, 'Absolutely not, it was the most intimate, loving, normal sex and there was no hint of anything like auto asphyxiation'. It was a fiction the tabloid press in London just loved and now you can't stop people making jokes about Michael Hutchence and auto asphyxiation."
But the filmmaker hopes his new movie, Mystify, sets the record straight about his friend's death: "It's very clear in the coroner's report, no indication of anything auto erotic," he explains.
"I think that because Michael was found naked, a lot of people drew the conclusion... but for the 15 years that I knew him, right from the very start, you'd go and meet Michael in his hotel room and he'd open the door and he'd be stark naked. Part of him was this hippie bohemian who just liked hanging out without his clothes on.
"It (auto erotic asphyxiation story) just didn't add up. He's ringing his longtime girlfriend, Michele (Bennett), 20 minutes before (his death). You don't ring someone crying, balling your eyes out and then go off and have some auto eroticism 20 minutes later when she's banging on the door and you're not alive anymore. I don't think that's possible."
Mystify premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on Thursday night (25Apr19).
