0:00

Hey Prime members, you can binge all 10

0:02

episodes of Think Twice Michael Jackson

0:05

ad-free on Amazon Music Download

0:07

the app today

0:09

We was driving down the road and The

0:12

radio was on and somebody said

0:14

we have some sad news ladies and gentlemen the

0:17

king of pop Michael Jackson has

0:19

passed away This is Bill

0:21

Whitfield one of Michael Jackson's

0:23

private security guards When

0:25

he heard this report on the radio in the summer of 2007

0:27

he was startled and turned to the backseat And

0:31

I said, Mr. Jackson, did you hear that? He

0:33

said what they said is you

0:36

died? He said oh I get

0:38

that all the time

0:43

Michael Jackson was not dead But

0:46

in the years following his 2005 trial

0:49

his life seemed to shrink along every dimension

0:52

He had no permanent home he had almost

0:54

no contact with his family and Most

0:57

of the people he had relied on over the years

0:59

as trusted advisors were no longer at

1:01

his side To Whitfield

1:04

it looked like Michael had been abandoned Everybody

1:08

anybody that should have been

1:10

calling just to check on him

1:12

just to see how he's

1:13

doing Happy birthday to

1:15

him and her kids Those people were

1:17

not calling back

1:18

then Even though

1:20

Michael had been acquitted of all charges the

1:23

trial had turned him into a pariah in the

1:25

United States Unable to perform

1:27

even at venues that previously would have been beneath

1:30

him Several Las Vegas casinos have reportedly

1:32

turned down offers to book the Tarnished Star

1:34

who was acquitted of child molestation

1:37

So the 48 year old singer is heading to Japan

1:40

where he'll appear at to meet and greet

1:42

events with fans Jackson will also

1:44

perform two shows there in March

1:47

Japan was only one of the far-off

1:49

places Michael visited after the trial For

1:52

nearly a year and a half he and his three

1:54

children just kind of roamed the earth For

1:57

a while they lived on the island of Bahrain on

1:59

a the coast of Saudi Arabia. Then

2:02

they spent a few months in a tiny Irish village.

2:05

Finally, in December of 2006, the

2:08

family quietly made their return to America.

2:11

Michael Jackson is back in the

2:13

United States after living abroad in self-imposed

2:16

exile for more than a year. Michael

2:18

and his kids, Prince, Paris,

2:20

and Beegee, then known as Blanket, settled

2:23

in Las Vegas, where they rented a house with

2:25

plumbing problems and an unreliable heating

2:27

system. About a year later,

2:30

the family moved in to the Palms Hotel

2:32

near the Vegas Strip. One night,

2:34

Phil Whitfield suggested Michael might want to pay

2:36

a visit to the club and the hotel, just for

2:38

fun. He said there was a VIP area

2:41

where no one would bother them. He said,

2:43

are you sure? I said, sure.

2:45

He was worried about getting in and

2:48

out of somewhere where there was going

2:50

to be a bunch of people.

2:52

Usually, it was fans who approached Michael, but

2:54

since the trial, there had been incidents where people

2:56

would yell things at him about being a child molester.

3:00

Whitfield reassured Michael that they could get into

3:02

the club without anyone seeing, and Michael

3:04

agreed.

3:05

So we got him up in there, and it was

3:07

so far up where the lights

3:09

were, you know, pretty dark. If anyone

3:11

looked up, they couldn't tell who he was.

3:14

Whitfield says they were only at the club for

3:16

a few minutes when the DJ put on a remix

3:19

of Remember the Time, the second single

3:21

from Dangerous, an album Michael had

3:23

released 17 years earlier during

3:25

a very different time in his life. At

3:28

first, Michael didn't even seem to recognize

3:31

the song.

3:32

And he's like, is that my music?

3:36

Yeah. He said, oh, wow,

3:38

I didn't know they still played my music. I

3:41

suggested they never stopped playing their music. And

3:44

he was surprised at that. I

3:46

was surprised that he was surprised.

7:59

Angie app and answer a few questions.

8:02

With Angie, you can book instantly

8:04

at an upfront price or request and compare

8:06

clothes from multiple clothes so you

8:08

can find the best price for your project.

8:11

So

8:11

the next time you have a home project, just

8:14

Angie that and start getting the most out

8:16

of your home. Download the free Angie

8:18

mobile app today or visit Angie.com.

8:21

That's A-N-G-I.com. Have

8:24

you been hiding your smile this summer? If

8:26

you've been wanting a straighter smile, it's time

8:28

to give Bite a try. Bite offers clear

8:30

teeth aligners without the high cost of braces

8:33

or endless trips to the dentist. With Bite,

8:35

you'll be able to transform your smile

8:37

from the comfort of your home. Their clear aligners

8:40

are doctor directed and delivered straight

8:42

to your doorstep. All you need to do is take an

8:44

impression mold of your mouth, preview your

8:47

3D smile and order your all day

8:49

or at night aligners. It's truly

8:51

that simple. They even accept insurance

8:53

and HSA, FSA dollars. Sun's

8:56

out, smile's out. Get started on your

8:58

smile journey this summer by visiting Bite.com

9:01

and use code WONDERY at checkout to get your

9:03

at home impression kit for only $14.95. That's B-Y-T-E.com, code

9:08

WONDERY.

9:10

I was an 80s baby

9:13

growing up in Cincinnati

9:16

and, you know,

9:17

black neighborhood. There was

9:19

no

9:21

one more important. I mean, I just, I don't

9:24

have a memory that

9:25

did not include Michael

9:28

or Janet or, you know, their family

9:30

or the music that that family made just

9:33

was always in our house. This

9:36

is Garrett Kennedy.

9:38

Today, he's a music journalist and cultural

9:40

critic. But as a black kid growing up in

9:42

the 80s, he was a Michael Jackson fan

9:44

first. Watching the Jacksons

9:47

on screen and on stage made Kennedy

9:49

feel like anyone, including his own family,

9:52

could transcend whatever circumstances

9:54

they were dealt.

9:57

We were black from the Midwest,

9:59

the same way. way that they were. So they

10:02

were this level of like hope and

10:04

promise for many of us where

10:08

it just was no

10:10

way that you didn't love

10:12

them all.

10:13

Every Christmas, Kennedy's family would

10:15

watch The Wiz and every Thanksgiving

10:18

they would put on the TV miniseries, The

10:20

Jacksons, An American Dream.

10:22

You had these moments where he was a part of your holidays.

10:25

You know, he was in your home in

10:28

such a way on a regular

10:30

basis that yeah, they all felt like family.

10:33

By the late 90s, early 2000s,

10:35

when Michael was no longer the biggest star

10:37

on the planet, the depths of Kennedy's

10:40

fandom started to make him feel out of step

10:42

with the broader culture. It got a little off

10:44

the rails a bit, but it started to get a little

10:47

strange, you know, and he became almost

10:50

just a quiet taste. Like being a Michael

10:52

fan meant you was ultimately like

10:54

defending him on a regular basis.

11:02

Fire paramedic 33, would you like to go to this emergency?

11:05

Yes, sir. I need to. I need an ambulance

11:07

as soon as possible, sir. He's not breathing? Yes, he's

11:10

not breathing, sir. Okay. And he's not conscious either.

11:12

No, he's not conscious, sir. Okay.

11:15

On June 25, 2009, at 12.21 p.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department received

11:18

a 911 call and sent an

11:23

ambulance to a mansion in the Holmby Hills

11:26

neighborhood of Los Angeles. Did

11:28

anybody witness what happened? No,

11:30

just the doctor, sir. The doctor's been the

11:32

only one here. Something, he's pumping his chest, but

11:35

he's not responding to anything, sir. Please. Okay.

11:37

Okay. We're on our way. We'll...

11:39

About two hours later, TMZ

11:42

broke the news that Michael Jackson

11:44

had died. Other news outlets

11:46

soon confirmed the report.

11:48

We're just getting this in right now, and

11:51

it's very, very sad news. Both

11:53

the Los Angeles Times and

11:56

CBS News are both now

11:58

reporting that Michael Jackson...

13:53

And

14:00

that intensity of it were,

14:02

I mean, rolling around sobbing.

14:05

I never saw him in concert. I

14:09

loved him so much.

14:12

There were fans clutching records in CDs,

14:15

leaving flowers, wearing Michael's

14:17

signature fedora and his jewel encrusted

14:19

glove. I grew up

14:22

with Michael Jackson. And that's

14:24

why it hurts, because it's like someone

14:27

all my life, the Jackson family,

14:29

the Jackson Five. And it

14:31

really hurts. It

14:34

was a pilgrimage of people that felt

14:36

like I need to be here. I

14:39

had never seen anything like it.

14:40

We wanted to see, we wanted to kind of be

14:42

here and share this moment with everybody. All

14:45

the other mourners of Michael.

14:54

I also felt some of that same yearning to share the moment with everybody else who was processing Michael's

14:56

death. So that evening

14:58

I went to the place in New York City that seemed the most fitting.

15:01

I'll

15:04

be down in my hands to you, on

15:16

that thing that is always new. On that thing

15:19

that is always new.

15:22

Tears for a fallen

15:24

pop idol. There's a big

15:26

send-off underway for Michael Jackson at

15:29

the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Hundreds

15:31

of other people had the same idea to gather

15:33

that day at the Apollo.

15:35

Michael had performed there with the Jackson Five

15:38

at an amateur night just before his ninth birthday. Now,

15:41

people were outside singing I'll Be There

15:43

in his honor. I didn't know it at the time,

15:45

but the comedian Dougie Doug from Cool

15:48

Runnings, whom you heard in our first episode,

15:50

was also in Harlem that night.

15:54

If you want to come and cry, it don't matter

15:56

what you look like, where you come from. People

15:59

will be like,

15:59

like, okay, you love Michael? I did too.

16:02

Come here, baby. You all right? Like,

16:05

I know, I see this is hard for you. So that's

16:07

a very beautiful thing

16:09

to be a part of.

16:11

Even though I had been sort of letting go of my

16:13

attachment to Michael for years at that

16:15

point, as I watched the intense outpouring

16:17

of love and mourning and heartbreak,

16:20

I felt something shift a little. I

16:22

started reconnecting with how many joyful

16:25

memories I have from a lifetime of

16:27

friends, family, community, gathering

16:29

together around Michael's music. And

16:32

I felt like I wanted to be in a place where that was

16:34

being manifested and just absorb

16:36

it and be a part of it. He

16:38

was the king of pop. I mean, there's nothing else

16:40

more that you can say about that. We have lost.

16:44

One of our kings have fallen. So there should

16:46

be nothing else said but that. He

16:49

homage to the king. And most of all, he wouldn't

16:51

want us to be here sad.

16:52

He would want us to celebrate. When

16:54

someone goes home, we're supposed to celebrate. And that's

16:57

why we're all here. We're not here crying. Michael!

17:02

Michael! Michael!

17:06

Michael!

17:09

It was something you couldn't just, even

17:12

his death, you couldn't keep to yourself. It had to

17:14

be a public event. It had to be

17:17

a broad sense of community,

17:20

you know?

17:21

And so that, then

17:24

it's evident. Oh,

17:27

he's definitely in the spirit of people.

17:29

He's definitely a part of us. You

17:31

know, I think there was a need for a collective

17:35

reckoning.

17:36

It's a reckoning that's still continuing.

17:43

Michael turned out to have been right when he

17:46

told Bill Whitfield, his security guard,

17:48

that he couldn't survive his London residency.

17:51

When he died, he was still in the middle of rehearsals,

17:53

which were taking place at the Staples Center in Los

17:56

Angeles. On July 7th, 2009, thousands

18:00

of people gathered at that very same location

18:02

to honor Michael with a memorial. The

18:14

event would be one more spectacle for

18:16

the King of Pop, simulcast

18:18

on eighteen networks and in theaters

18:20

across the country. We come together

18:22

in this space where only days ago Michael

18:24

sang and danced and

18:27

brought his joy as only he

18:29

could. The program included performances

18:32

from stars like Mariah Carey, Lionel

18:34

Richie and Stevie Wonder.

18:36

Stevie Wonder

18:38

was coming up to the stage. Michael

18:41

would love you and I've told you that many

18:43

times so I'm at

18:45

peace. Peace for that.

18:52

Figures from all different eras of Michael's

18:54

life were in attendance, including Barry

18:57

Gordy from Motown Records and Michael's

18:59

old friend and Grammy date, Brooke Shields.

19:02

Both of them gave eulogies honoring Michael's

19:04

legacy, but it was Reverend Al

19:07

Sharpton

19:07

who stole the show.

19:09

People may be wondering why there's

19:13

such an emotional outburst,

19:16

but you would have to understand the

19:18

journey of Michael, to

19:20

understand what he meant to all of us.

19:24

For these that sit

19:26

here as the Jackson family, a mother and

19:29

father with nine children that rose

19:34

from a working class family

19:37

in Gary, Indiana, they

19:39

had nothing but a dream. Sharpton's

19:42

eulogy portrayed Michael Jackson not

19:44

just as an artist, but as a historical force,

19:47

an individual who had shifted culture and

19:49

helped millions of people evolve in

19:51

how they related to one another. His

19:54

point was that Michael had changed the world.

19:57

He opened up the whole world.

20:00

In the music world, he put

20:02

on one glove, pulled

20:04

his pants in, and beat

20:06

down the color curtain. He

20:09

created a comfort level where

20:11

people that felt they were

20:13

separate became interconnected

20:17

with his music, got comfortable

20:19

enough with each other to later

20:22

it wasn't strange to us to

20:24

watch Oprah on television. It

20:27

wasn't strange to watch Tiger Woods

20:29

golf. Those young

20:31

kids grew up from being teenage,

20:35

comfortable

20:36

fans of Michael, to being 40

20:39

years old and being comfortable

20:41

to vote for a person of color to be

20:43

the president of the United States of America.

20:48

Sharpton painted a picture of Michael that

20:50

could not have been more different from the ghoulish misfit

20:53

who had been lampooned in tabloids, or

20:55

the flailing legacy builder who had commissioned colossal

20:57

statues of himself, or the damaged

21:00

outcast who had wandered the globe with his three

21:02

children in tow. On

21:04

this point, Sharpton had words specifically

21:07

for Paris, Prince, and Blanket.

21:10

I warned his three children to know, wasn't

21:13

nothing strange about your daddy. It

21:16

was strange what your daddy had to deal

21:18

with, but he dealt with it.

21:25

Larry Davis, the executive from Epic

21:27

Records you heard from earlier in the series,

21:29

hadn't seen Michael in over two decades.

21:32

Davis watched the Staples Center memorial

21:35

on TV. To this day,

21:37

he carries with him one particular memory

21:39

of the event. Seeing his mother

21:42

at the funeral and wondering

21:44

as a parent after everything

21:47

that they had gone through from going from

21:49

Gary, Indiana to

21:51

being prompted to do all this stuff

21:54

and the dad, you know, motivating

21:56

them and them getting signed and the label

21:59

fights and can't the Jackson 5 name

22:01

with you and no, Michael

22:03

doesn't want to perform with the brothers anymore

22:05

and all this stuff and

22:08

you wonder the mother sitting there

22:10

had to be thinking to herself at some point

22:13

was all this worth it?

22:21

That question, was it all worth

22:24

it? Came into sharper focus a

22:26

little over a week after the Staples Center Memorial

22:29

when TMZ broke yet another Michael

22:31

Jackson story.

22:32

TMZ reports this morning that the Los

22:34

Angeles Police Department is treating Michael

22:36

Jackson's death as a homicide.

22:38

For the next month a steady series

22:40

of reports by TMZ and other outlets

22:43

chronicled just how frail Michael had become.

22:46

In his last days he was thin and not

22:48

eating very much and his problem

22:50

with prescription medications first

22:53

brought up in the wake of the 1993 allegations

22:56

had been enabled by doctors like Conrad

22:58

Murray who had been hired to care for

23:00

Michael during the run-up to his farewell shows

23:02

at a cost of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars

23:05

a month.

23:06

Jackson's doctor Conrad Murray was

23:08

treating the pop star for insomnia. Murray

23:10

was concerned Jackson was addicted to propofol

23:13

and used other drugs to try to help Jackson

23:15

sleep.

23:16

Finally after weeks of speculation

23:18

unsealed court documents revealed that

23:20

the LAPD believed that Murray

23:22

had committed manslaughter. They

23:24

alleged Murray had given Michael a cocktail

23:27

of drugs that included a powerful anesthetic

23:29

called propofol.

23:31

The revelations led almost every nightly

23:33

newscast including the MSNBC

23:35

show Hardball. Conrad Murray allegedly

23:38

in this affidavit said that he gave

23:40

Michael Jackson a number of drugs beginning

23:42

at 1.30 in the morning Valium Ativan

23:44

verse it then Ativan again

23:46

and verse it again and then finally at 1040 the

23:49

morning that he died propofol

23:51

diluted with lidocaine. Somebody

23:53

killed Michael Jackson somebody

23:55

killed him. Two years later in 2011 Murray

23:57

was put on trial.

23:59

for Michael Jackson's death. There

24:02

prosecutors played the jury a recording

24:04

Murray had made of Michael as rehearsals

24:06

for his farewell shows were getting underway.

24:09

I heard a little folk.

24:12

Little folks.

24:15

That's the best they were in, Jimmy.

24:17

That's going to stay where I'm playing. The

24:21

recording is hard to listen to and

24:23

also literally hard to make out because

24:26

Michael's speech is slurred so badly. But

24:29

according to trial transcripts, Michael

24:31

is telling Murray he doesn't have any more

24:33

hope and that he wants to spend his millions

24:36

building a hospital for children. He

24:38

says he loves children because he didn't have

24:40

a childhood, which is also why

24:43

he feels their pain. I

24:45

love

24:46

them because I

24:49

didn't have a childhood. I

24:53

feel their pain.

25:00

We'll never know exactly what mix of

25:02

demons Michael was trying to silence

25:04

with the drugs he was taking. His

25:06

childhood trauma, the demands of his

25:08

extreme celebrity, perhaps his

25:11

own guilt of having perpetuated a cycle

25:13

of abuse. But what we hear

25:15

on this recording is a man who has amassed

25:17

more fame and fortune, more worship

25:19

and adulation than anyone in our lifetime.

25:23

And yet here he is at the end of his life paying

25:26

a man six figures to obliterate his consciousness

25:29

with drugs just so we can live with himself

25:31

so he can sleep at night. It's

25:34

hard to listen to this tape without that question.

25:37

Was it all worth it? Looming over it.

25:49

Well before that haunting audio became

25:51

public, the cultural reckoning around

25:53

Michael's death that Dougie Doug had felt at

25:55

the Apollo was starting to look more like

25:58

a kind of shared willful amnesia. It

26:01

was something Garrett Kennedy noticed in October

26:03

of 2009, four months after he had rushed

26:06

to Michael's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

26:09

Kennedy, who by this point had been hired as a

26:11

reporter on the LA Times Culture Desk, was

26:14

sent to the premiere of a new documentary called

26:16

This Is It, about Michael's final

26:18

days rehearsing for his London residency.

26:21

The movie that was going to premiere in LA

26:24

hadn't even opened yet. They were opening

26:27

only for this night. It was like every

26:30

screen was going to show it. People were camped

26:32

out. So I was there, oh my

26:35

gosh, like six or seven hours

26:38

standing in line talking to fans, doing

26:40

the whole thing.

26:41

The film's initial two-week run broke

26:43

records for advance ticket sales. It

26:45

would go on to gross $261

26:48

million globally, making

26:50

it the most commercially successful concert film

26:52

of all time. It was also

26:54

Michael's biggest hit in years.

26:59

I get choked up thinking about it because I remember sitting

27:01

there and it actually

27:06

finally really hit me. Not only is he

27:08

gone, but this

27:12

way that we're seeing him, not

27:14

only is it not what he would have

27:17

wanted at all, but it was also

27:20

this thing of

27:22

me realizing this

27:24

is going to be the last time I see

27:27

anything new of this man ever.

27:30

And that sinking in, in that movie

27:33

theater seat, oh

27:35

it just,

27:36

I can feel my

27:38

heart breaking.

27:40

Not letting it simmer. You just bathe in the

27:42

moonlight. You have to let it simmer. You know? This

27:47

is it, captured Michael at the age of 50, singing

27:50

old Jackson Five songs he had been performing

27:52

since he was 11 years old and

27:54

global hits he had written in his early 20s.

27:58

He looked sluggish at times. in in

28:00

Brittle. But at least in the edit,

28:02

he also looks like he's having fun. But

28:05

it's an adventure.

28:07

It's a great adventure. It's nothing

28:09

to be nervous about. There were

28:11

some fans who wanted to boycott the film because

28:13

they thought it was a cash grab on the part of the producers.

28:16

But Kennedy, at least, felt lucky to see it. All

28:19

I could think of was, you know, we're watching

28:22

this show that could

28:24

have been, maybe would have never been, who

28:27

knows. But we at least was able

28:29

to see this vision coming together and

28:31

him wanting to try it. And

28:33

also him singing and him dancing

28:36

and him, like, enjoying being on stage.

28:39

And it just rips me inside.

28:41

And I mean, just like the way

28:43

that I cried and cried and cried and cried and

28:45

cried.

28:52

Looking back on that period immediately after

28:54

Michael's death, what Kennedy remembers

28:56

is feeling a little suspicious of how certain

28:59

people were publicly mourning Michael. For

29:02

him, it was almost like they were pretending that

29:04

the last 10 or 15 years hadn't

29:06

happened. As if the culture

29:08

hadn't started treating Michael as damaged goods

29:11

or as a morbid curiosity.

29:13

If we're being really honest, this

29:16

was the ending that we had kind of

29:18

prepared for in our mind a little bit.

29:20

I mean, you know, we had seen somebody

29:22

who had been in a

29:26

questionable state of a spiral in

29:28

some way for quite some time. And

29:30

that's just how we were talking about him then.

29:32

You know, I think now we've had so much distance

29:35

that people like to pretend that that's not

29:37

who we were as people, but that's who we were as people.

29:39

Kennedy is referring here not just to the

29:41

years after Michael's trial, but even

29:44

the years leading up to it. When Michael

29:46

was trying to follow up dangerous and was struggling

29:48

to make music that felt culturally relevant,

29:51

even the best and biggest single from 2001's invincible

29:54

album, You Rock My World had stalled out

29:57

at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and

29:59

unheard of. have fate for the old Michael Jackson.

30:02

Meanwhile, his trouble with the tabloid media

30:05

seemed to only get worse, as he provoked

30:07

outrage by dangling a baby out of a window

30:10

and received continued scrutiny for his plastic

30:12

surgery.

30:13

I guess I just thought about all those years

30:15

of unkindness, you know, and a lot

30:17

of it was Michael's doing his own paranoia and the way that

30:19

he just became a shell of himself at some point.

30:22

But I guess there was also that part of me that just

30:24

kind of felt like I

30:27

hadn't really been seeing all his love in the last

30:29

couple of years, which I'll stop caring years ago.

30:34

In the wake of Michael's death, the version

30:37

of him that everyone seemed intent on remembering

30:39

was the good Michael, the one

30:42

America fell in love with and had been dazzled

30:44

by. In the popular imagination,

30:46

it was like Michael had become frozen

30:48

in time before his reputation

30:51

as an eccentric genius gave way to

30:53

something darker. President

30:55

Barack Obama alluded in an interview

30:57

to Michael's tragic personal life, but emphasized

31:00

that he would go down in history as

31:02

one of our greatest entertainers.

31:04

I'm glad to see that he

31:06

is being remembered primarily

31:09

for the great

31:11

joy that he brought to a lot

31:13

of people through his extraordinary gifts

31:16

as an entertainer.

31:17

Madonna called Michael a hero who

31:19

had stood up to a lynch mob and said

31:21

she still watched old clips of him dancing

31:24

and singing.

31:24

He was so unique, so original,

31:26

so rare, and

31:28

there will never be anyone like him

31:31

again. He was a king. The

31:34

Grammys honored him with a rendition of Earth

31:37

Song and a Lifetime Achievement Award

31:39

that was accepted on his behalf by his children,

31:41

Prince and Paris. We are proud

31:44

to be here to accept this award on behalf of our father,

31:46

Michael Jackson. We

31:48

will continue to spread his message and

31:50

help the world. Thank you. We

31:53

love you, baby. Thank you.

31:57

him

32:00

the best-selling artist of 2009. In

32:03

the year after his death, his estate made $275

32:06

million. It was more than

32:08

Michael was making when he was alive.

32:15

But something else happened in the years after

32:17

Michael's death. The new headline tonight

32:19

involving one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood,

32:21

several allegations of sexual harassment against

32:24

movie producer Harvey Weinstein. A growing

32:26

protest movement online is called Mute

32:28

R. Kelly.

32:29

The woman says Cosby drugged and sexually

32:31

assaulted her at his home in Philadelphia.

32:34

In 2017, the Me Too

32:37

movement went viral as a torrent

32:39

of sexual assault allegations against Harvey

32:41

Weinstein emboldened women around the

32:43

world to speak out against abusive men.

32:46

As a culture, we found new language

32:48

with which to talk about allegations of abuse.

32:51

The cultural shift is palpable.

32:54

In just the past year, several states have

32:56

introduced legislation to deal with sexual

32:58

harassment in the workplace. And of course,

33:00

some of the most powerful and notable men

33:03

in Hollywood and media have been forced

33:04

out of their jobs.

33:06

What emerged over the next two years seemed

33:09

to be a new shared clarity about

33:11

how common abuse was, how wide-ranging

33:14

it could be, and how destructive it

33:16

was. The movement

33:18

also made clear that across industries,

33:21

the infrastructure to protect abusers was

33:23

sturdy and in need of dismantling.

33:26

It was amid all that upheaval, all

33:28

that spirited looking back at the past,

33:30

that in early 2019, HBO

33:33

announced a new documentary about Michael

33:35

Jackson called Leaving Neverland

33:37

that immediately generated media attention.

33:40

Despite controversy, HBO says its documentary,

33:43

Leaving Neverland, will air this weekend.

33:45

The two-part series details the stories of two men,

33:48

now 41 and 37 years old, who say they

33:51

were molested by Michael Jackson when they were children.

33:56

Garrett Kennedy was still writing for the LA

33:59

Times when he heard...

33:59

leaving Neverland was coming. I

34:02

had been told two

34:05

months before the

34:08

film came out that

34:11

I

34:11

should prepare myself for the film.

34:14

In a way, Kennedy was the film's exact

34:16

target audience. For as long

34:18

as he'd been a Michael Jackson fan, he had

34:20

been steadfastly rejecting the notion

34:23

that his favorite artist might be a child

34:25

molester. And while his work

34:27

as a reporter had made him more curious

34:29

and more skeptical, he had spent most

34:32

of his life simply not believing

34:34

that Michael had sexually abused anyone.

34:36

You know, he's Peter Pan. You know, he

34:38

didn't have this childhood. And like, this is what

34:40

he connects to. He can't like talk

34:43

to adults because his

34:45

emotional intelligence is that

34:48

of a child and everything about him is so childlike.

34:51

And he lives in this fantasy world. And

34:53

it made sense

34:56

until it didn't.

35:00

Leaving Neverland was set to premiere at the

35:02

Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019,

35:07

just under 10 years since Michael Jackson's

35:09

death. A friend warned Kennedy

35:11

that he should brace himself before watching

35:13

it.

35:14

I kept just being like, why? And she's

35:16

like, I don't think you should watch this by

35:19

yourself and without support.

35:21

Okay. Just kind

35:23

of being like, what could

35:26

be in this movie?

35:27

The warning had come from Kennedy's friend, Tarana

35:30

Burke, the activist credited with

35:32

starting the Me Too movement. She

35:34

kept her promise and went with Kennedy to the premiere.

35:37

And, you know, we get there

35:40

and I'm sitting in my seat

35:42

and a grief counselor

35:45

starts talking and is like,

35:47

we will be in the lobby for services. And I'm like,

35:51

okay, this might be, this

35:54

might be something that maybe I'm not

35:56

ready for.

35:57

Kennedy started to get the sense that something big

36:00

was happening. Looking around,

36:02

he saw some people who worked for the Jackson estate,

36:05

whom he'd met in the course of reporting on it. He

36:08

says they approached him and showed him a video

36:10

on a phone that featured Wade Robson,

36:13

Michael's friend who testified on his

36:15

behalf in the 2005 trial. Kennedy

36:18

said the video felt like counter-programming,

36:20

something the estate wanted people to see

36:22

before they went into the screening.

36:25

It was like, here's this

36:27

video of all the times

36:29

Wade lied. And

36:31

I'm like watching this like fan edited clip

36:34

of like Wade, like talking

36:36

about Britney or talking about Justin or talking about Cirque du Soleil.

36:38

And I was like, okay.

36:40

As the movie started, it became disturbingly

36:43

clear why Kennedy had been shown the

36:45

video and why Tarana Burke

36:47

had told them to brace himself. He

36:49

was one of the kindest,

36:52

most gentle, loving,

36:55

caring people

36:57

I knew. And

37:00

he also sexually abused me.

37:02

I could hear

37:04

people just sobbing in the theater

37:08

or, you know, the gasping or the, oh

37:10

my God, or the groans, you know,

37:13

when some of the details were coming out. I

37:15

was numb. I sat

37:18

there and I just was numb. And every now and then

37:20

I would get like, I would feel a hand on my

37:22

knee and it's like, are you okay? And I was just like,

37:25

no.

37:26

In the film, Wade Robson describes

37:28

meeting Michael after he won a Michael Jackson

37:30

dance contest in Brisbane, Australia

37:32

at the age of five. He then

37:35

went on a family trip to Los Angeles and

37:37

visited Neverland Ranch at Michael's encouragement.

37:40

It was there, Robson alleges, that Michael

37:42

Jackson started abusing him. A

37:44

warning. What you're about to hear contains

37:47

a graphic description of child abuse. Right

37:50

in front of me,

37:51

there was this big

37:53

kind of elaborate

37:55

Peter Pan cardboard cutout.

38:00

So it's like I was either

38:02

looking back at him,

38:05

masturbating, or

38:07

looking forward

38:09

at Peter Pan.

38:13

The reference to Peter Pan was especially

38:15

jarring in light of how frequently Michael

38:17

had invoked him publicly in order to justify

38:19

his relationships with kids. But

38:22

as we noted in our previous episode, Robson

38:24

had testified in the 2005 trial that nothing inappropriate

38:28

had taken place between him and Michael. In

38:31

the film, he says he was scared because

38:33

of what Michael said would happen to him should

38:35

he ever tell anyone about what he hesitatingly

38:37

calls the sexual stuff.

38:40

He started talking about how much he loves me,

38:43

if they ever found out what we were doing,

38:46

about the sexual stuff, that

38:49

he had to be pulled apart, that we'd never

38:51

be able to see each other again,

38:53

and that

38:54

he and I would go to

38:56

jail for the rest of our lives.

38:59

But it wasn't just Robson in leaving

39:01

Neverland. James Safechuck

39:04

said he met Michael when he was hired to work

39:06

on a Pepsi commercial when he was 10. Michael

39:09

then invited Safechuck along on the bad

39:11

tour and they shared a hotel room while

39:13

his parents slept down the hall. Safechuck

39:16

says he and Michael soon entered into a private

39:19

relationship that was as intimate as

39:21

it was transactional. I

39:24

was really into jewelry

39:26

and he would reward me with

39:29

jewelry for doing sexual acts for

39:31

him. He would say that

39:34

I need to sell him some so

39:37

that I can earn the gift.

39:44

These details shook Kennedy to

39:46

his core. I stood up because

39:50

the theater was letting out and I took two

39:52

steps and I could barely walk. Just

39:55

this avalanche of grief

39:58

and shame, So much shame.

40:01

I was so ashamed in that moment.

40:04

It hit me like a ton of bricks. And

40:06

I literally needed to be carried out of the theater. And

40:09

you know, I collapsed in Serana's arms in the lobby

40:11

and I am, I mean, just

40:14

completely, completely

40:17

losing it. The grief counselor

40:19

is now coming over to me and is like, do you need

40:22

assistance? And it's like, no,

40:24

we just need to get him out of here because people

40:26

are, well, people are having reactions

40:28

too. But I was having such a visceral

40:30

reaction and I was feeling

40:33

myself actually getting physically sick.

40:36

Afterwards, Kennedy wrote a piece in the

40:38

LA Times in which he grappled with what he'd

40:40

seen and why, as a Michael Jackson

40:42

fan, he had resisted it for so many years.

40:46

Kennedy's conclusion after seeing the film was

40:49

that Michael Jackson was guilty and in

40:51

his piece, he owned up to the shame he felt

40:54

for looking the other way for so long. We

40:57

saw Jackson and his pain as

40:59

he assured us that he could never hurt a child,

41:01

Kennedy wrote. But did we ever

41:04

truly see these young boys?

41:13

After watching Leaving Neverland, something

41:15

I couldn't stop thinking about was all the jokes

41:17

people used to make about Michael Jackson being

41:19

a child molester. Those jokes

41:22

are some of my earliest memories of Michael. There

41:24

was the sketch we played earlier in the series that aired

41:26

on In Living Color in 1991, in which

41:29

Michael is portrayed as chasing after Macaulay

41:31

Culkin. Let me in. I've

41:34

got to make a picture of my sister.

41:35

Daddy, why don't you

41:37

just

41:37

beat it, Michael? Okay,

41:40

that sounds like a great idea, Macaulay. That

41:43

was one of the only clips like that we found from

41:45

before the 1993 allegations. Afterwards,

41:49

the joke became a lot more common, like

41:51

this one from Mad TV in 2004. What's

42:08

fascinating to me about these old skits is

42:10

that they're not just making fun of Michael Jackson.

42:14

They're making fun of us and pointing out

42:16

the extent to which a lot of people had already decided

42:18

while Michael was still alive that he was guilty

42:22

and that we were basically okay with it. For

42:24

me at least, speaking as someone who never knew

42:26

a Michael Jackson who wasn't shrouded in scandal,

42:29

leaving Neverland still felt like a revelation.

42:33

And I walked away believing, not knowing

42:35

but absolutely believing, that

42:37

Wade Robson and James Safechuck were telling

42:40

the truth. I say that

42:42

knowing that both Robson and Safechuck

42:44

sued the Jackson estate unsuccessfully

42:46

in hopes of getting settlements and

42:48

that believing Robson at age 36 means

42:51

believing he was a liar at age 22. I

42:54

also know that leaving Neverland is not a

42:56

traditional work of journalism and that

42:58

as the Jackson estate pointed out in a statement

43:00

about the film, it's based almost entirely

43:03

on interviews with the alleged victims and their

43:05

family members.

43:07

And in a way, I think that focus is what

43:09

made the documentary so compelling. Before

43:12

leaving Neverland, we had only ever known Michael's

43:14

accusers as abstractions, as

43:17

plot developments that appeared off screen.

43:19

So seeing Robson and Safechuck placed

43:21

center stage, laying out in

43:23

such vivid human detail along with

43:25

their families how Michael's abuse reverberated

43:28

through their lives, it was devastating.

43:31

And it permanently changed how I understood his

43:33

accusers and how I looked at Michael

43:36

from then on.

43:40

In the aftermath of leaving Neverland, a

43:42

lot of institutions started divesting themselves

43:45

from Michael Jackson's legacy. A

43:47

Broadway musical about his life was put on hold,

43:50

though producers said the delay was caused by

43:52

a labor dispute. The Staples

43:54

Center stopped playing Beat It! during Lakers games.

43:57

Drake, who had used an old Michael track as

43:59

a sample. on his recent album stopped

44:01

playing that song at his concerts. The

44:04

Children's Museum of Indianapolis removed

44:06

some of Michael's personal effects from their display

44:08

cases. A

44:09

representative says they removed the objects

44:12

in an excess of caution over

44:14

allegations of child molestation raised

44:16

in leaving Neverland.

44:18

Meanwhile, programming directors

44:20

at radio stations around the world started

44:22

making the decision that playing Michael's music

44:25

on their airwaves was no longer tenable.

44:27

Several New Zealand radio stations announced

44:29

they will no longer play Michael Jackson's

44:32

music. One station in the UK

44:34

plus three Montreal-based

44:34

radio stations have also

44:37

stopped their rotations.

44:41

All told, it looked like a pattern. Like

44:44

something had shifted. The culture,

44:46

quote unquote, seemed to be making a decision

44:49

that the people accusing Michael Jackson of molesting

44:51

them deserved to be believed. And

44:53

that meant we could no longer celebrate him

44:56

or his music. That's how

44:58

it appeared for my apartment in Brooklyn, at least. In

45:01

my world, it seemed like everyone had seen Leaving

45:03

Neverland or at least read a bunch of articles

45:05

about it. I was aware that there

45:07

was a very large fan community who totally

45:09

rejected the documentary. But I

45:12

thought at the time that Michael Jackson would

45:14

never have the same balance in the broader

45:16

culture again. But,

45:19

as I am often reminded, my world

45:21

is very small. In my sense, what's

45:23

going to move the needle is often totally

45:26

off.

45:28

It turned out that instead of everyone deciding

45:30

they couldn't listen to Michael Jackson's music anymore,

45:33

more people than ever started listening to it. According

45:36

to data from Nielsen, streaming numbers

45:38

from Michael's catalog went up by 41% after

45:42

the release of Leaving Neverland compared to the

45:44

same period a year earlier. And

45:47

before long, some of those same programming directors

45:49

who had decided to stop playing Michael's songs

45:51

on the radio decided to put him back on their

45:54

playlists. These days,

45:56

once you start looking for Michael, you see

45:58

and hear him everywhere. at the supermarket,

46:01

on the jukebox at the bar, at the gym.

46:04

One morning recently I heard the halal truck here

46:06

outside the studio playing Billy Jean. Thinking

46:10

back to that story Bill Whitfield told us

46:12

at the beginning of the episode about Michael

46:14

being surprised to hear Remember the Time

46:16

at the club in Vegas, I feel

46:18

like even Michael himself would have been shocked

46:21

by how much of his legacy remains intact.

46:30

Last year, the musical about Michael's

46:32

life finally premiered on Broadway.

46:34

After nearly two years of shutdowns and

46:37

delays due to the pandemic, MJ

46:39

the Musical finally raising the curtain

46:41

to celebrate the life of the King of Pop.

46:44

The red carpet for MJ the Musical

46:46

was almost like a reprise of the Staples

46:48

Center memorial. Michael's children,

46:51

Prince and Paris, were there, as was

46:53

Al Sharpton, who made a point of drawing

46:55

a line between the allegations against Michael

46:57

and the music he left behind. It

46:59

was acquitted. What about the music?

47:02

The music is what we're celebrating tonight. It

47:04

was a sentiment that seems to have been shared by

47:06

a lot of people. The musical

47:09

ended up being nominated for ten Tony's and

47:11

winning four of them. It earned

47:13

over $78 million in its first

47:15

year, making it one of the highest

47:17

grossing shows on Broadway.

47:21

We're going to see the

47:23

music in the more

47:24

coats out and ready, please. We'll

47:27

take it. One more coat out and ready.

47:29

Jay and I went to see the MJ musical together

47:31

last fall. And knowing that

47:33

it was billed as a celebration of Michael's life,

47:36

and that the Jackson estate was involved in the production,

47:39

we were both curious about how

47:41

they were going to handle some of the ground we've covered

47:43

on this podcast. And

47:45

the answer was, they mostly sidestepped it. The

47:48

way the musical is structured, the main storyline

47:50

is set in 1992, the year before Michael

47:53

first faced allegations of sexual abuse.

47:56

And as Al Sharpton said on the red carpet, the show very

47:58

much focused on the

47:59

American

47:59

focuses on the music.

48:01

And it's not hard to see why. People

48:04

are going to see this show because they want to hear the hits

48:07

and be reminded of everything they love about Michael.

48:10

But the truth is that Michael himself understood

48:12

that the allegations against him were an integral

48:15

part of his story. And if the question

48:17

looming over this podcast has been, can

48:19

you or should you separate the art from the

48:21

artist? It feels important as

48:24

we come to the end of the series to say

48:26

that Michael Jackson at least didn't really

48:28

think so. That from everything

48:30

we know, he viewed the allegations against

48:33

him as a defining fact of his life and

48:35

something that he felt compelled to address and

48:38

process in his art.

48:44

In 1996, about three

48:46

years after the Chandler allegations first

48:48

broke, Michael went into production on

48:51

a 40-minute short film called Ghosts.

48:54

In the opening scenes of the film, a group

48:56

of torch-wielding citizens of the fictional

48:58

town Normal Valley have

49:00

gathered at the front gates of a spooky castle.

49:04

They're there to drive out the shadowy figure who

49:06

lives inside because they suspect

49:08

him of scaring their kids.

49:17

If

49:23

all of that sounds familiar, that's because the

49:25

opening scene of Ghosts is almost a shot-for-shot

49:28

remake of Is This Scary, the

49:30

short film Michael co-wrote with Stephen

49:32

King.

49:33

As you may remember from our first episode,

49:35

the production of Is This Scary was halted

49:37

after the Chandler allegations became public

49:40

in 1993. But once

49:42

the dust settled, Michael returned to the idea

49:45

and brought it back to life. Against

49:47

the backdrop of the cataclysmic scandal

49:50

he had just gone through, Ghosts reads

49:52

like Michael's version of events, a

49:54

defiant parable in which he is misunderstood,

49:57

dehumanized, and betrayed.

50:00

You're right, I do like scaring people, yes.

50:03

But it's just fun. Don't

50:06

you kids enjoy when I do

50:08

my little...

50:10

At one point, you see one of the children

50:13

accused the other of having told the adults

50:15

about their secret friendship with Michael's

50:17

character.

50:19

He hasn't hurt anybody. Can't we just

50:21

go? Your fault, Jer. Just couldn't

50:23

keep your mouth shut. He did the

50:25

right thing. You're weird, huh?

50:28

There's no posting this talent.

50:31

Ghosts departed from Is This Scary

50:33

in a few ways. The most notable

50:36

change was that instead of having another actor

50:38

playing the leader of the mob, the mayor of Normal

50:40

Valley, in Ghosts, Michael

50:42

played the mayor himself, wearing heavy

50:44

prosthetics and speaking in an accent.

50:48

Are you gonna leave? Or am

50:51

I gonna have to hurt you? I don't think I can

50:53

hurt you. I don't think I can hurt

50:55

anybody.

50:58

You are trying to scare me.

51:01

I guess I have no choice. I guess

51:04

I have to scare you. Watching

51:07

Ghosts when you know that Michael is playing

51:09

both roles is a bit like watching someone

51:11

have a conversation with an adversary they've made

51:13

up in their head. About halfway

51:16

through the film, the man in the castle disappears

51:18

into thin air, and his vengeful spirit

51:20

possesses the mayor's body. Using

51:23

his magic powers, Michael changes

51:25

the mayor's face into that of a grotesque monster

51:28

and forces him to look at himself in the mirror.

51:31

Who's scary now? Who's

51:33

a sick now? Scary

51:36

boy. Freak sentence freak.

51:39

Who's scary?

51:43

Thinking back to the filming of Is This Scary,

51:45

when members of the cast were asked over

51:47

and over again to yell insults at Michael,

51:50

I can only interpret this scene from Ghosts

51:52

one way, with Michael seemingly

51:55

turning the tables on his accusers, but

51:57

in effect screaming insults at himself.

52:00

There's

52:00

a moment at the end of Ghosts when

52:03

Michael Jackson, playing the mayor of Normal

52:05

Valley, jumps through a window in

52:07

an attempt to escape from the man in the mansion.

52:10

But the window doesn't shatter. Instead,

52:13

all you see is a big Michael Jackson-shaped

52:15

hole.

52:20

All that's left is his absence,

52:23

and I think that's kind of what this podcast has been

52:25

about. Not Michael's absence,

52:27

exactly, but the shape of the hole that

52:29

he left in the world. I feel

52:31

like there's a collective desire people have to either

52:34

sand down the edges or else shatter

52:36

the window entirely by excising Michael

52:39

from their lives, so they don't have

52:41

to see the shape at

52:42

all.

52:50

Jay, that night we saw the musical. After

52:53

the show ended and we were walking outside, greeted

52:55

by a bunch of bike taxis blasting Michael's

52:57

music to lure tourists, I kept

52:59

looking around at all the people streaming out of the

53:01

lobby and asking myself, are

53:04

they thinking about it? Did they think

53:06

about it when they bought the tickets? Did

53:08

they think about it during the show? Are they

53:10

gonna talk about it on their way home?

53:12

Yeah, I was super curious to pick people's

53:14

brains in there, but it felt like it would

53:16

be weirdly intrusive, like I was an atheist

53:19

who went to a church and tried to debate

53:21

everybody after the service. It felt

53:23

very much like I was in a space carved out

53:25

for people who remain invested in a particular

53:28

version of Michael, and I was sort of a

53:30

guest in this ritual they've built around

53:32

that investment. And there, in

53:34

the moment, it just didn't feel like the time

53:36

or place for me to question that.

53:39

I remember I was thinking on the way home from

53:41

Times Square, maybe that's what makes

53:44

Michael Jackson quote-unquote uncancellable.

53:47

Even if he haunts you, you don't want to talk about

53:49

it, because then you're the crazy

53:52

person who sees ghosts.

54:04

Thank you for listening to Think Twice, Michael

54:07

Jackson.

54:07

For a list of books, articles, and documentaries

54:10

we used in our research, follow the link in

54:12

our show notes. If you liked what you heard,

54:15

please tell your friends about the show and leave us

54:17

a rating. Think Twice, Michael

54:19

Jackson has been a production of Audible Originals,

54:22

Wondery, and Prologue Projects in

54:24

partnership with Jigsaw Productions. The

54:27

show is produced by Dustin DeSoto, Benjamin

54:29

Frisch, Daniel Hewitt, and Sam

54:31

Lee. It's produced and hosted

54:34

by Leon Nayfach and me, Jay

54:36

Smooth. Our executive producer

54:38

is Andrew Parsons. Our senior producer

54:40

is Sam Lee. Our editor is Diane

54:43

Hotson. Our director of editorial

54:45

and strategy is Kim Gittelson.

54:47

Our production manager is Persea Verlin.

54:50

The lead producers on this episode were Daniel

54:52

Hewitt and Leon Nayfach. Production

54:55

assistants by Arlene Arevalo and Lauren

54:57

Vespoli. Fact checking

54:59

by Catherine Sullivan and Lauren Vespoli.

55:02

Audio mix by Michael Rayfield of

55:04

Hair Salon Studio.

55:06

Our theme song was composed by Casa Overall

55:09

and our score was composed by Noah Hecht and

55:11

Dan English. Our intern was

55:13

Noah John. Production

55:15

coordination by Nick Sotomayor.