I suppose this could be a Weekend Listening post, too, because guess who got back together and released a new album last week?

Filter!

Why, yes, I am excited about it!

Filter’s first album, Short Bus, was one of the first CDs I owned, and their 2000 hit “Take a Picture” off Title of Record was a pretty regular jam during my freshman year of college.

Just in time for the band’s sixth and latest studio release, The Sun Comes Out Tonight, Filter frontman Richard Patrick talked exclusively with The Fix about how both his past drug and alcohol abuse and his current sobriety have played a role in the band’s failures and successes.

Even though Filter had all this success, eventually I’m 33 and bent over a coffee table, addicted to cocaine as well. My dreams were being put on hold just to handle this addiction and minimize my insecurities.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is out of rehab and back on the sobriety wagon, folks!

What, you didn’t know he’d fallen off?

Neither did I, but apparently Hoffman had been abusing prescription drugs for the past year. Also, he started using heroin just one week before entering the east coast detox program.

Hoffman, who is well known for his roles in Capote and Moneyball (and, if you’re me, as Lester Bangs in the most ridiculously best movie of all time, Almost Famous), saw his backslide after an impressive 23-year sober stretch.

Here’s a sweet Weekend Watching for you comedy fans:

Showtime airs a new Richard Pryor documentary, Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic, tonight at 9 p.m. EST.

You might be wondering why we’ve added yet another Richard Pryor documentary to the shelf, and Pryor’s fourth and seventh wife (the man married five women over seven marriages), Jennifer Lee Pryor, tells Rolling Stone she wanted to make sure at least one of them didn’t portray him as “the guy that said m***** f***** all the time.”

Here’s an upcoming Weekend Watching for you, sweet readers.

The 2013 Cannes Film Festival ends in a couple of days, and something else was going on amid all those glamorous red carpet appearances, hopeful debut filmmakers, and all those directors vying for the coveted Palme d’Or.

Focus Features International reportedly spent some time shopping a new Amy Winehouse documentary.

Winehouse’s wildly successful career was cut short in 2011 when, after publicly battling substance abuse, she died of alcohol poisoning at 27. Her legacy certainly has lived on, though, with the Amy Winehouse Foundation and her father’s book Amy, My Daughter.

Amy Winehouse Foundation Offers New Scholarship Program

Award-winning director Asif Kapadia (Senna) and producer James Gay-Rees (Exit Through the Gift Shop) are set to work on the still-untitled film and have released a joint statement about the project:

Amy was a once-in-a-generation talent who captured everyone’s attention. She wrote and sung from the heart and everyone fell under her spell. But tragically, Amy seemed to fall apart under the relentless media attention, her troubled relationships, her global success and precarious lifestyle. As a society, we celebrated her huge success, but then we were quick to judge her failings when it suited us.

The film will feature previously unseen footage of Winehouse and, according to Kapadia and Gay-Rees, will “look at Amy’s story sensitively, honestly and without sensationalizing her.”

Are you an Amy Winehouse fan looking forward to the new documentary? What do you hope to see (and not see) in the film?

[Rolling Stone; New York Times]

Image Credit

Earlier this month, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske presented former Friends star Matthew Perry with the Champion of Recovery Award for “giving a voice to millions of Americans in recovery.”

How has the 43-year-old actor done that, you ask?

By being so vocal about his own addiction and recovery and supporting President Obama’s efforts to fight alcohol and drug abuse in America, to the White House’s way of thinking.

Specifically, his staunch support of America’s drug courts.

R&B star Mario recently talked with The Fix about the Mario Do Right Foundation, an organization he established in 2007 to help kids who deal with alcoholism and drug abuse in their families and communities.

Through the Mario Do Right Foundation, the 26-year-old also created the “Live Right Do Right” program, a 16-week after-school program that both educates children about substance abuse and helps them cope with drug addiction and alcoholism in their families.

(Initially, I had another post planned for today’s “Weekend Reading,” but in light of today’s passing of country legend George Jones, I thought it appropriate to switch gears. )

It’s a sad day for country music fans, dear readers.

George Jones died earlier today (Friday, April 26, 2013), after checking into Vanderbilt University Hospital April 18, 2013 for a fever and blood pressure issues.

Speaking of recovering addicts and sobriety…

Before he hit it big, rapper Macklemore struggled with substance abuse.

The “Thrift Shop” mastermind went to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse and has been sober since 2008.

However, he opens up in the latest Rolling Stone (March 29) about how, in the wake of his massive success, his sobriety has been hard to hang onto.

Jane Velez-Mitchell is one of the few nighttime HLN hosts I can stand (note that I said “few” – they don’t all make me want to pluck out my eardrums).

It’s Jane’s mix of no-nonsense and understanding that makes me like her, and I’m sure that comes from her own life experiences.

(Jane is a recovering addict who has a personal stake in LGBT issues and works with humane and environmental causes, too).

Even if they weren’t in the audience, Green Day fans no doubt remember when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong lost control on stage at the iHeart Radio event in Las Vegas back in September 2012.

(Would a “Wake Me Up When September Ends” pun be too soon? Sorry, sorry. It just pushed it’s way in there.)

Armstrong lashed out, upset that the band only had one minute left and insisting they play some new songs before apparently giving up, destroying his guitar on stage, and storming off.