The Resurrection of Michael Jackson

We changed articles, and so having read the same article,

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- Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription as a gift. At nytimes.com/gift. - Okay, we have got to talk about this Michael Jackson movie. (upbeat music) - From New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow.

This is the daily. - Oh my God, that was like the greatest (beep) movie I have ever seen. Oh my God, like I love this man. - The obsession I have right now

with Michael Jackson is just so unreal. - The record-shattering box office success of Michael. - The new biopic about Michael Jackson. - I have not stopped thinking about it, like every time I talk to my friends, I'm like,

“"Bang, I can't wait to get off the phone”

"which I'll stop and listen to some Michael Jackson." - He was so majestic and just like a beautiful human being, I'm genuinely appreciating Michael Jackson as a whole more than I thought I ever would. - And the outpouring of love for the late musician

that the movie has unleashed was no accident. Instead, it was the culmination of a painstaking years long effort to resurrect the reputation and profitability of the king of pop despite the multiple accusations of sexual abuse that have surrounded him for decades.

Today, Times magazine writer Mark Benelli takes us inside the new playbook for rewriting the past. - This is just not the thing about him. - It's Friday, night off.

- Yeah. - Mark, welcome to The Daily. - Thanks for having me. - You are not a movie critic. - No.

- And we're not really here to talk about the artistic merits of this movie about Michael Jackson, although just to say, critics have been pretty unkind to the movie overall, which has done nothing to dampen ticket sales.

Your reporting has been focused on how the movie came to be and how it fits into a much larger project of Michael Jackson image repair. Is that the way to think about it? - Definitely, yeah.

It's really a fairly remarkable business story and it was orchestrated by the people now writing his estate. And their project, as you said, has been to rehabilitate Michael Jackson, who'd become a fairly toxic asset.

And restore his life in music as exploitable intellectual property. And this biopic, Michael is the culmination of that years-long effort. And it's been an undeniable success, I would say.

- And where in your mind does the story, the project of imagery habitation, this business success story begin? So it really begins right after his death. Tonight came the word from LA, Michael Jackson,

the King of Pop, as he was called, has died. - In 2009.

- A child star at first, who, as an adult,

was a deeply troubled man, was meant to-- - It's just how massive a project the estate was facing at that point.

“You have to remember that Michael Jackson's reputation”

when he died really could not have been worse. - His life was tarnished by allegations of child abuse, by addictions to prescription drugs and plastic surgery, he had been accused multiple times over many years of child sexual abuse.

- Michael Jackson, the biggest superstar in the world, allegations that he sexually molested young boys in those accusations for very public. - Allegations of child abuse have prompted a Los Angeles police investigation of Popstar, Michael Jackson.

- The law of land was police department, initiated a criminal investigation. - The first instance was a child name, Jordi Chandler, this was in 1993. - The resolution of this case is in no way

an admission of guilt by Michael Jackson. - That case ended with a multimillion dollar settlement with Chandler and his family. - I am not guilty of these allegations, but if I am guilty of anything,

it is of giving all that I have, all that I have to give, to help children all over the world.

He very much denied any wrongdoing, always did.

- Then in 2005, - Michael Jackson came face to face with his accuser for the first time in court on Wednesday. - A second accuser of a boy named Gathen or Fizo, like Chandler accused him of sexual abuse,

- If convicted on all 10 counts,

“which range from child molesting to giving alcohol”

to a minor, he would face more than 20 years behind bars. - And Jackson was fully acquitted,

and he has always denied those allegations.

- But he had a habit of making everything worse for himself. - Is it really appropriate for a 44-year-old man? - Most infinitely, he sat down with Martin Bashir, a British journalist, to share a bedroom.

- With a child who is not related to him at all, that's a beautiful thing. Where he openly acknowledged sharing bedrooms with children. - That's not a worrying thing. - Why should it be worrying?

Who's the criminal? Who's Jack the Ripper in the room? This is a guy trying to help heal a child. - And defend it himself. - What can you share your bid?

But the most loving thing they do is to share your bid with someone. - At the same time, Jackson is in a huge financial hole, he's deeply in debt. For decades, he continued to spend,

as if he were the reigning pop star on the planet, even when his reputation got worse and worse, and he was no longer touring.

And when he dies, he's close to $500 million in debt.

- Wow, and I was able to get a very close look at how this happened in the state of his affairs by a ruling in a tax trial that took place after he died between the estate and the IRS, the government arguing that the state owed hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes

based on the value of his name and likeness at the time of his death. And the estate found itself in this sort of perverse position of arguing that no his name and likeness in future or any potential were close to no,

because her subreputation was so irredeemably degraded. - Literally, no, nothing. - Pretty much.

“I mean, you have to remember, the estate is arguing”

in this case specifically to get the tax burden as low as possible. So they're making a very extreme argument. And you read through the judges ruling, it's really a fascinating document.

I mean, the first six months of 2009, he died that summer. The judge found Jackson had only made $24. - Wow. - That's too far off of his name and likeness.

- At the time, he was preparing to return to live performance, he'd booked a series of dates in London at the O2 Arena 50 dates, in which it sold out nearly instantly, they couldn't find a sponsor, a corporate sponsor

for the show. The merch company that they contracted with to make t-shirts and the products, they refused to make any of the products until the show's actually started, because they were worried that Jackson wouldn't go through with it.

“A cue score is the measurement of a brand”

or a celebrity's consumer appeal, basically. - Right, they're kind of reputational value to the market. - Yeah, by the end of his life, Jackson had dropped zero. - So that tells you something.

- It's genuinely hard to fathom that there could ever be a moment when Michael Jackson, looming as large as he does. Could have a brand that was essentially worthless. - Yeah, when we're talking about his personal reputation,

the songs are something else,

there was always going to be a potential value there,

because they're just such a huge part of our culture. And so the ultimate project, moving beyond the songs would be to rehabilitate the man in some way and stop that, reputational bleeding into the rest of his IP

for lack of a better work. So legal documents describe this really remarkable scene in the hospital where Jackson is pronounced dead and his family is surrounding his bed, morning him. And meanwhile, a group of advisors have come

and deared a room nearby, and they've turned it into a warm room, essentially. Their immediate task at hand is to figure out how to deal with this mass of the Mount of Dead and basically stay off bankruptcy.

And so the guy who ends up leading this process is a man named John Brink. He was Jackson's lawyer for up most of the 80s through sort of Pete Jackson era. And he just come back on to the scene,

literally eight days before Jackson died. And it turned out that Jackson's will had named Brink and a long time family friend named John McClain is co-executors. So now, suddenly, Brink was running the estate, essentially.

- And what ends up being Brink's plan? - Well, what is his idea for how to take this reputation that's in tatters and this debt that is mounting and somehow turn it around?

to start generating any income,

“the London shows obviously had been part of that plan”

before he died. That's off the table with Jackson gone. But there was rehearsal footage of him preparing for the shows. And so they decided to cut it together into a concert home.

The film was caught, this is it. It premiered in theaters just a few months after his death. - This is the moment. This is it. - And then, if he was a huge hit,

grossing somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 million

making it one of the, if not the most successful concert films ever. - Wow. (upbeat music) - Come on, hold for a pause, fade out.

- And as Billbord magazine pointed out shortly after that, it became pretty clear that Jackson was worth more dad than alive. - Hmm. - Explain that.

- Well, you know the living Michael Jackson had this habit of doing things that reminded people of everything that made them feel somewhat queasy about him so. So with him gone, it's a morbid thing to say, but there was no one around anymore

to give problematic interviews or to handle babies over balconies or do anything that could get in the way of people just loving the songs in a simple and uncomplicated way. - Right, in death, Michael Jackson kind of savers himself and all the baggage around him from that beloved music.

- Exactly. - So now with this success of this concert film, the estate realizes they can control the story. And so, you know, they do a number of the normal things you would do after an artist dies,

they mine the vaults for unreleased material, they re-assue old records with bonus tracks, things like that. But then they start doing other things.

One of the first big successes after the concert film

is they make a deal with Cirque du Soleil. They build a whole show around his music. And as you would imagine, it's a Cirque du Soleil show. So it's, you know, it's about acrobats. It's about visuals.

It's about music. It's not about allegations of sexual abuse or anything controversial. And similar to the concert film, it really overperforms.

It's a draw for audiences. Actually, it's still running today. And from there, the estate goes on to develop a Broadway show, MJ The Musical. - And it's quite a bad show.

So that's essentially a jukebox musical that very canily takes place during the rehearsals for the Dangerous Tour in 1992. So this is a year before that first accuser, Jordan Chandler comes forward.

So the audience is placed in this moment in time when completely uncomplicated Michael Jackson fandom is still possible. And they really pulled out all the stops for the show, Lynn Nadege, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

wrote the book. And every coily hits it certain dark secrets, Jackson might have. The show is built around this reporter from MTV who's there to interview him at the rehearsals.

“And this reporter character senses that he has a dark secret.”

And at secret is eventually revealed to be an addiction to pills, which is a completely acceptable rock star vice. - Right, rather than the deep dark secret that we all know to be the dominant story

at his death, which is his relationship with young boys. - Yes. And it works. It goes on to be a big hip. - So there's now a very clear playbook

that the estate is using in this rehabilitation project. And it's telling the story about Michael Jackson and Death that was not being told at the end of his life that celebrates the music and to a large degree in the form of that musical even the man

in an uncomplicated and pretty sanitized way. - Yes, and everything is basically going according to plan until a documentary premieres at Sundance in 2019 that threatens the entire project. (upbeat music)

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“So Mark, I think we've reached the leaving neverland moment”

in this story. That's the name of the documentary about Michael Jackson that comes out in 2019. And I remember it really well because we did a daily episode of that and it was kind of a cultural phenomenon,

but just remind us why that documentary was so important and why it imperils this project. - Right, well, this documentary came out really when me too was in full swing. - He was one of the kindest, most gentle, loving, caring people I knew.

And it gets picked up by HBO and so an enormous number of people see it. - And he also sexually abused me for seven years.

- And it was an incredibly powerful film.

- I grew up in a little town called Simee Valley. - I was pretty happy and pretty outgoing, kind of a performer, I guess. My father worked at a rubbish company. So we had a family rubbish.

- It's the story of two men, James Safechuk and Wade Rappsen, who both claimed Jackson sexually abused them, is boys. - So taking showers together and you know, funling and kissing. So him kissing me, I mean like full open mouth,

tongue in mouth, kissing. - Basically in the film just walk the audience through this horrific grooming process that they claim to place in stomach-churning detail. - Him talking to me, you and I, we were meant to be together.

And this is us showing each other that we love each other.

- And it's quite powerful and compelling.

- Yeah, then we get up in the morning like nothing had ever happened. And go have another day filled with childhood, magical games and adventures.

“- And the estate, I think, justifiably criticized the filmmaker”

for not including them in any way, including any sort of a bottle, but regardless. - After I saw leaving another land for the first time. - People like Oprah on abuse survivor herself endorsed the film.

- I tried and tried and tried to get the message across to people that sexual abuse was not just abuse. It was also sexual seduction. - Hosted as special with the two accusers. - And I know people all over the world are gonna be

in an uproar and debating whether or not Michael Jackson did these things or not whether these two men are lying or not lying. But for me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson. - It was a moment and it felt like it could be a moment

for some sort of reckoning. - Right, and in the face of these projects

“that the estate had blessed and promoted”

from a concert to Circus O'Leigh, and so on, it felt like a genuine cultural rebuttal to all of that that was breaking through. - Exactly. The financial times reported that his music essentially

stopped appearing in ads almost entirely after the documentary came out. And the film, it was kind of a sensation.

It was all over social media and it had basically

reset the conversation around Jackson in a way that was completely opposite everything the estate had been working to do, which was to keep the focus on the music and not the man and the controversies surrounding the man.

Now that's all that everybody could think about. - Right, and in a way that seemed kind of impossible perhaps to go back from, it would seem so, but the estate essentially had a two-pronged strategy. First, they went hard after the film itself,

leaving Neverland. And they did it in a pretty unusual way. They went back and found a contract that Michael Jackson signed with HBO in 1992 when they aired a concert film live from Bucharest.

And in the contract there was some fairly standard language non-despairagement language. And the lawyers for the estate argued that airing leaving Neverland 30 years later

a pretty unusual argument to be making. But eventually neither side will talk about what happened except to say that it was amicably settled, but they did reach a settlement. And you can't find leaving Neverland on HBO's platforms anymore.

- Wow, so the estate gets this documentary that has gripped the nation that Oprah is talking about on her show taken off of HBO and basically removed from circulation. - Yeah, there's no way to watch the film in the US legally.

“- Okay, well what's the second prong of the strategy?”

- Yeah, so thought about making their own documentary. And instead they decided to make a biopic which could be the ultimate brand reset. So they start putting together this A-list team of talent that they get Antoine Fuqua, the director of training day

and the Equalizer franchise, Jafar Jackson, his nephew, plays Michael, they have Graham King producing. He made the queen biopic, but he made rap city a few years earlier, which had been a huge mass of hit,

gross nearly a billion dollars worldwide.

And music biopics, if they work properly, they bind the music to a feel good story, a triumphant story, where the audience can enjoy these songs, they love it, sort of maximum volume with fantastic visuals. But they can also feel connected

to the artist as a person, as a sort of character in a movie. Think of every recent biopic, you can think of from Ray to a complete unknown, the Dylan Biopic, to Elvis, to Bohemian Rap City. And when those work, they really work.

- And so what is the estate's plan to make this biopic, do the work that you just described,

“and be the ultimate reset of the Michael Jackson brand?”

- The wild thing about this strategy, I got a hold of copy of the original script for the biopic. And it wasn't just Jackson denying the accusations, it went much, much further than that, into what I found to be the morally questionable territory.

It presented the accuser's father as an extortionist, and a grifter, it fully exonerated Jackson by presenting very contested evidence, as if it was fact. And you can see some of the script, the past script in the current film,

which goes out of its way to present Jackson, is this very innocent man child with no friends, and his love of children is completely innocent in a beautiful thing in the telling of this version of the movie, he's visiting them in hospitals

and things like that. And that script, I saw the brink of character

seeing all these kids visiting, never land, says something like,

you know, I'm not worried about them, I'm worried about the parents.

“There are lots of greedy people out there.”

- So this original script, very much, portrays Michael Jackson as the victim of greedy, opportunistic parents, very much so. And specifically naming the Chandler family, the family of this 1993 accuser.

- But that was not the movie that ultimately lands in theaters. - No, because in a fairly unprecedented event, they completed principal photography. The movie was done, and only at that point, somehow did they realize the settlement

with Chandler and his family, signed way back in 1993, had a clause prohibiting either side from ever depicting or discussing anything about the settlement or their relationship. - Somehow this had been completely overlooked,

and they didn't realize the success didn't until after the film was completed. - Wow, old legal clauses. - Big theme of this conversation. - Yes, yes.

- So they had to reconvene, bring the cast and everyone back together and shoot new material and completely cut out the final act of the film, which covered the accusation and Michaels in the telling of the film, exoneration.

That's all gone now. - So what does the final version of this biopic have to say about these accusations and about this enormous chapter of Michael Jackson's life? - It says nothing about it.

Very much like the musical, it stops well before any of those accusations took place in the case of the movie. They stop at the very beginning of the bad tour in 1988. So there's plenty of distance between them

and the first inkling of something more sinister.

- It's very much a hero's journey. It's Michael rising up and trying to think over his father is really the villain of the film,

- Have you seen the movie, Mark? - I have seen it. I had not seen it. My story came up before the movie was released. I wasn't invited to a screening,

but I saw it yesterday. The name when your producer told me I needed to see the movie before taping this, I was telling it. I was feeling a bit resentful. I did not want to see this movie.

And I was very surprised to say that I didn't hate it. And I left the theater, you know, humming his songs. The reviews have been negative across the board. Critics really hate this film. I'm not defending it, I didn't love it.

I understand why people enjoy this movie. - And what did you like about it? And what did you feel when you watched it?

“- You know, I think I share some of the hardwired nostalgia”

for Jackson before the fall. I still have a vinyl copy of Thriller that I won is a kid and a radio calling. So I'm the exact right age to have grown up loving his music. And it's hard to resist those songs

and to resist that version of Michael Jackson that was so predominant before everything else happened. I benefited from seeing the movie after having read this early version of the script, which I thought was terrible.

And after having read all of these reviews, which, you know, lowered my expectation considerably. So I was coming into this movie expecting really, really hated. And I liked it more than that. - But to stay the obvious, Mark,

and I say this with no malice, you reported on the rehabilitation project of Michael Jackson. And you understand it better than anyone. And then it still kind of worked on me.

“Yeah, you became a happy customer in the theater.”

- Yeah, no, to my complete surprise.

I mean, it's powerful stuff.

And again, it's a piece of propaganda. I understand what the film is doing and I'm not arguing that it's a good film, but it works in its way. The average person who's going to see this movie,

who has made this movie such a massive hit, probably isn't carrying that baggage, probably isn't even aware of the reshutes or these other versions of the film that existed or could have been made.

And if you just watch it for what it is, it's a sort of celebration of the specific period of his life. And just to say, you know, the movie made $200 million, it's opening weekend, which is, you made it the most successful opening for a music biopic ever.

And it could make a billion dollars worldwide.

- Mark, I want to talk about how we should think about this movie's success. Because at the end of the day, I'm not breaking any news here. It is about a sanitized version of the Michael Jackson story

as one could possibly fathom. And audiences are eating it up. And that makes me think back to a conversation I had back in 2019 with our colleague Wesley Morris when leaving Neverland came out.

And that movie asked all of us to reckon with the artist and the art and the scandal, and something that Wesley said back then is still ringing in my ears right now. He concluded that it was on all of us

to live with the messiness of what Michael Jackson represents. And he said, literally, the work is on us and it's really hard work. We don't want to do that work. And is that the not so huge revelation of this movie

that when presented with the opportunity to not do that work and celebrate this man to think about the allegations and the people who suffered and the lies that were derailed,

the use that will never be reclaimable.

We choose not to do it. - I think that's exactly right. And I think the fiasco of having to remake the movie, all of that bad press they got in the lead up,

“I think that ended up being the best thing”

that could have happened to the filmmakers in the estate because had that original version of the film come out, I think it would have situated the audience right in the middle of that messiness that you're describing. And even though they were doing their best

to proclaim his innocence, I don't know how that would have sat with audiences. I don't know, it's maybe people would have just bought it. But I think that would have been a much more uncomfortable position to put audiences in.

It would have made it much more difficult to just enjoy the music.

completely elides that.

And I think it's been to their benefit

and it's certainly what a lot of audience members want to see. - Right. And perhaps somewhere out there, there are people who want to do this hard work of reckoning with the fullness of Michael Jackson.

But for the moment, there's a clear playbook that the estate has established for reaching that much larger audience that does not want to do that work. - Yeah, and I think that largely rests

on the sewage-generous nature of Michael Jackson himself in his music.

“And I mean, I think you have to give credit”

to John Branca in the estate. He's a very shrewd operator. And they've made a number of incredibly savvy moves since Jackson died. But ultimately, without Jackson's music,

without songs like Billy Jean, P-Y-T, you rock my world thriller. Man in the mirror will you be there.

Without his singularity as one of the most important artists

of his era, you don't get people coming out to this movie. And these numbers, you don't get this kind of world-wide show of love. It all comes back to what he did as a musician. - Right.

- Without him, there's no brand to reinvent. - Yeah. - Well, Mark, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. - Thank you for having me.

(upbeat music) - We'll be right back.

“- Here's what else you need to know today.”

The United States and Iran traded attacks on Thursday, even as both countries negotiated a long-term peace deal that could end the stand-off in the street of Hormuz. The United States said that Iran had tried what failed to attack three U.S. military ships.

In response, the U.S. struck a variety of Iranian military sites were responsible for those attacks. Speaking to reporters, President Trump said that despite the attacks, a week's old ceasefire remained in place.

- They tried to do it yesterday. We blew them away. They tried. I call that a trifle.

“I'll let you know when there's no cease.”

You won't have to know. - And the Times reports that the United States has reached a bleak milestone. The size of its debt, 31.3 trillion dollars. Now surpasses the nation's total economic output.

The source of the problem is well known.

The United States is spending far more money than its earning through taxes. Over time, that mismatch could trigger a fiscal crisis in which America can no longer afford to pay the interest on its own debt.

Today's episode was produced by Olivia Nath, Mujzadi and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg with help from Michael Benoit. Countines music by Dan Powell,

Rowlingy Mr. and Iann Waw. And Sound Design by Alicia Beetu. Our theme music is by Wonderley. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the Daily.

I'm Michael O'Barrer. See you on Sunday.