How Should We Think About Michael Jackson?

biggest pop star.

“The crowd pleaser has brought in massive box office revenues despite mixed reviews from critics,”

who've called out its whitewashing of Michael's legacy. Particularly claims a child's sexual abuse that plagued the final decades of his life. "Tell me, if they ever found out what we were doing, he and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives." In this episode, we sit down with the director of the HBO documentary "Leaving Neverland,"

which chronicles sexual abuse allegations against Jackson and was controversially pulled from the platform after a legal battle. "I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Health, this is a week-end edition of Morning Wire." "Spring is here, and your yard probably means some love after winter.

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Use wire to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time, turns and conditions may apply. The state of Colorado is added again, trying to silence free speech. A law in Colorado forces businesses to use customer's preferred pronouns, even if they're biologically inaccurate, and even if using those incorrect pronouns would violate a person's

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Joining us now to discuss the controversial legacy of Michael Jackson is Dan Reed. He's the director of the documentary, "Leaving Neverland," which chronicles sexual abuse allegations against the pop star. And thank you so much for joining us. No worries, pleasure to be on the show.

So look, this new Michael Jackson movie is making big waves. It's a huge success at the box office. The critics' reviews aren't great, but the audience loves it.

“Rotten Tomatoes, I think it's something like 96% approval.”

It's a real crowd, please, or did you see the film, and what do you think about the film if you did? I once said that we can actually, in the same theatre, we had the press premiere of "Leaving Neverland," by 2019 documentaries, so that's kind of weird. It's definitely a crowd, please, or it's a kind of jukebox movie with, I mean, Jaffa Jackson

is a great dancer. He can move. His performances, Jackson, is quite wooden, otherwise he's a bit of a wax work. You don't get any insight into what may Jackson take. And the issue of his relationship with kids is kind of repeats all the tropes of like,

"Well, he didn't have a childhood, and he really liked Peter Pan, and he was nice to kids, and he wanted to hang out with kids." And so, if you like it, it just draws a veil over his relationship with children, and it suggests that it's benign, and he was just a strange man with this, you know, it doesn't show him as someone who had a sex life.

“We've heard there were earlier drafts of the movie, I think, that director talked about”

this, that would have addressed the abuse claims more directly. What do you know about that? What changed here? Well, I read an early version of the script that was leaked to me, I believe it was genuine. So the movie was framed through the optic of the Jordan Chandler story.

Now, Jordan Chandler was the 13-year-old boy who made the first claims of sexual abuse against

Jackson, and he got paid off, I think, to the tune of like $25 million.

It's right, I've seen it in 1993 and '94.

The boy in his parents were represented as frauds, as gold diggers, trying to extort Jackson and Jackson was represented as the innocent victim of these cruel people.

“There was a legal issue in the settlement between, I believe, between the stake and Jordan”

Chandler and his parents, which said, okay, you know, the terms of the settlement mean that you cannot turn our story into a movie, so they had to axe all of that, re-shoot the whole movie, I think, which the estate paid for, so big mass, big mass, they tried to make a film that was like the re-bottle of my documentary, and they failed. So they couldn't even try to refute the claims because of their legal settlement that's fascinating.

Jordan Chandler was the first known accuser, but there were many more that came after, and they could have written the stories about them, but they didn't.

You know, in terms of the critical backlash, you're certainly not alone in saying,

this is a sanitized or sort of white-wash portrayal of Jackson, so what should his legacy be? He is a superstar, right? He's somebody that did rise to fame in a way that's really remarkable, how should we view Jackson? I don't know, you know, I felt kind of sad because the story of Jackson's childhood and his becoming an incredible sensation against the odds, you know, you've got a cruel father, like, you know, whoops him with his belt and that whole story,

and actually the child act to plays Jackson when he's very little with was good, I thought. So that very early part of the film, I kind of got into and I was like, oh, that's amazing. And the kid is fantastic. Is that pretty accurate? Is it an accurate portrayal of the father,

do you think? I don't know, so I've never, you know, my thought essentially is about these two

“guys who were molested by Jackson, James, Save Chuk, and Wade Robson. That's what my”

films about, so that these these two guys, and I didn't concern myself. Jackson's career, but I do believe from what I've read, that's sort of more or less accurate, that, you know, he, that Joe Jackson was a real martinette, you know, a tough taskmaster, and he gave the boys a hard time, and particularly on Michael, you know, so, and from that comes the whole myth of, like, oh, Michael Jackson never had a childhood, and, you know, and therefore you had to spend lots of

time with children, you know, so what actually happened is he stole a lot of other kids' childhood, because he didn't have one, and he, you know, he ruined a lot of other children's childhoods, which you know, in a very, you know, spectacularly cruel way. And so I think, you know, look, we, we wouldn't make a film about Jeffrey Epstein's, you know, contribution to charitable, to philanthropy, or or Harvey Harvey Weinstein's amazing movie career. Without mentioning the fact that there's a

darker side to these characters, but it seems to be possible for people to believe that Jackson is innocent, partly because he started constructing his own cover story while he was alive. I'm just a big care, and I like, and time with kids, because they're pure and I'm pure and, you know, you know, you portray themselves as this sort of ace actual being. And I think, well, that's fine, but just play with the kids during the day, but why don't you give the children

back to their parents at night? You don't have to go into your bedroom with a little boy, the age of seven or eight or nine, and lock the door and spend the night alone with this child, while their parents are sort of distracted somewhere else. You know, I think there's so many holes in the Jackson story. What we do know is that he did spend the night alone with very, very young children. He didn't deny that. And so, that in itself, you couldn't put that in a movie,

because it will quick people out. So, you know, this is definitely a movie that side steps. It swurves all these, these important biographical pictures. And as a result, the image you get of Jackson from the movie is really wooden. Now, the family says these allegations are smears the estate, as you've highlighted, was heavily involved in the making of this film. So, it has, you know, the families complete approval. The lawyers say the accusers are, and I'm

quoting here, the epitome of unreliable sources, because they went from defending Jackson to accusing him, what's your response to that? Well, that quote actually is about the Casio family. So, this is in you bunch of accusers. They came out of the woodwork, after when they watched leaving Neverland, this is in 2019. So, this is five kids who work kids at the time that they

“knew Jackson. They watched my documentary and they go, geez, that's why I'm to us.”

And they all kind of look at each other in like you two, you two, you know, they realized for the first time, according to their current story. But yes, that family had enthusiastically supported and vindicated Jackson's innocence and taken quite a lot of money from the estate, apparently, as a sort of, you know, to buy their silence. Just to be clear, Wade Robeson and James Safechart

never took money from the estate. Never allowed themselves to be gagged. They came out,

and they've been steadfast and consistent. They haven't made a penny from my film or from any other endeavor connected with Michael Jackson. And to be clear, Wade and James did not defend Jackson

is sincerely, you know, what happens is, and this is one of the things I discovered while I was making a film is that when kids are abused by someone like Jackson, who is amazing, who they trust, who is a, you know, a sort of admired character personality, these kids end up defending their abuser and lying to their parents, lying to their friends, lying to the public in Wade's case. And

he stood up on the witness stand in the tribe in 2005 and said, Michael never touched me and he was

defense witness number one. And he was a very big part of why Jackson was acquitted. And now eight years later after Jackson's death, he has a child of his own and leaving never learned my documentary. It tells the story that he has his own child and he realizes as the child is growing up, the little boy, that the kind of things that Jackson was doing to him, he imagined his own son being involved. And he was just like, geez, that's wrong. That, you know, that's messed up.

And I have to, and so he found himself kind of falling apart around the issue of the sexual

“relationship he'd had with Jackson. And that's what eventually prompted him to come out, you know,”

which he did in 2013. And James Safechock had a similar trajectory also had a kid. Yeah, there are different groups of victims. They all have a different complexion. I don't know the nature's crop, the latest, the last five, this Cassia family. I don't know them. I hadn't spoken to them. I can't vouch for them. I, you know, I'm a journalist, I'm skeptical. It's just my default. I don't just go around believing, whoever, you know, it took quite a while for

me to, to be convinced that James and Wade were telling the truth. So as for your documentary, it was produced by HBO's released on their platform, then it was pulled after several years. Is it available still streaming any longer? It's available everywhere in the world, except the United States. And the reason for that is that the Jack in 1992, so we're going rewind back to 1992, HBO signed a contract with the Jackson company to record a Jackson concert in Budapest in Hungary.

“I believe it was somewhere in Europe. And that concert contract included what they call a non-disparagement”

clause. So disparagement and it's what's important. It's a legal term. And what's important to remember is that truth is no defense. So you say something bad about someone, even if it's true, then you are going to be falling foul of that non-disparagement clause. And so the estate argued the HBO, which signed a concert contract in 1992, was forever bound by this non-disparagement clause that relates specifically to the concert in 1992, which is bullsh*t, right? But somehow they made

it stick and they, you know, HBO felt that they had to reach an amicable settlement with the estate

and that involved taking after six years, taking my film down. But, you know, I always have to add

nothing, none of the content of the film with the claims it makes have been challenged in any way. All right. So only in the United States, can we not stream this?

“Yeah, I think, Jackson. North America. North America, Gacha. Maybe this is the final question.”

The success of the film, we started off talking about that, are you surprised that Jackson's legacy has continued to be so strong? Clearly, you're a film in the accusations that have come out publicly have done major damage to his brand. Every time I personally think of Michael Jackson, it is my first thought, but are you surprised that his music, that this film, continues to show a real success? Not really, you know, um, leaving that land is a four hour documentary,

it's the story basically four people, Wade James and their mothers, and it's a difficult watch.

For six years, it was available on HBO, which is by and a paywall, right? So, so not everyone has watched this film. I'm pretty sure that, you know, everyone who's watched, you took the time to sit down and watch my documentary, leaving Neverland, it's probably quite convinced that he was not a great guy, and that probably something really fishy was going on with these kids, but not everyone's watched it. A lot of people read online, it was debunked, or this, or, you

know, it's all lies, or whatever, you know, whatever, Jackson fanbase puts up on YouTube. And, you know, people who's easy people to give themselves permission to enjoy the music, and the music's stunning, you know, and that he's just stunning into Taina. There's no two ways about it. And, people have grown up listening to his music, it's part of, you know, it's it's been endlessly kind of quoted and sampled, and, you know, and so I'm not saying Jackson

wasn't a great entertainer. I'm not saying that, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't listen to his music. I'm not into cancelling people, cancelling art, because otherwise we, you know, there were so many artists with terrible personal lives that would be cancelling half of the European canon, right? But I'm not a book burner, so, you know, that belongs in the Middle Ages and, and so

have to bear the truth in mind that he was, as a person, as a human being, he was very,

“very cruel to children, and I think, you know, that's terrible, it hurts a lot of children,”

really badly. And somehow, you know, people I have to, like, hold those two things in their mind,

and it's very difficult, most people don't want to do that. So, you know, this is just the way

“life is. Somebody can be a great person, have great success, and be an evil, you know,”

personality. So, I'm afraid that's the way the world works. Success doesn't cancel out

the doing of evil deeds. Well, we will leave it there, Dan, thank you so much for talking with us.

“No worries, pleasure, John. That was Dan Reed, director of leaving Neverland, and this has been”

a weekend episode of Morning Wire.