\n\tIt is, to this day, the only film screening I\u2019ve attended that was inspected by bomb-sniffing dogs.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe premiere of \u201cLeaving Neverland,\u201d<\/a> a documentary exploring Wade Robson and James Safechuck\u2019s child sexual-abuse allegations against pop legend Michael<\/a> Jackson, had received numerous terroristic threats from Jackson loyalists in the days leading up to its unveiling at Park City\u2019s Egyptian Theatre during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. In the film, Robson and Safechuck come forward to accuse Jackson of a cycle of abuse that began when they were young children \u2014 7 and 10 years old, respectively \u2014 in the late \u201880s and early \u201890s. They allege that Jackson convinced their younger selves that they were in love, plying them with expensive gifts, alienating them from their parents, and even throwing a mock wedding between Safechuck and Jackson replete with rings. Robson and Safechuck also recount, in graphic detail, how Jackson allegedly subjected them to various sex acts when they were kids. Jackson had paid millions to Jordan Chandler and Jason Francia, two boys who\u2019d accused the King of Pop of child sexual abuse, but he could not silence Robson and Safechuck. By the end of the four-hour-plus film, there wasn\u2019t a dry eye in the house.<\/p>\n \n\tBut you won\u2019t find any sign of Michael Jackson<\/a>\u2019s alleged abuse of children in \u201cMichael.\u201d The new biopic of Jackson from director Antoine Fuqua and the Jackson estate paints the gloved one as the one true victim \u2014 a harmless Peter Pan figure whose own childhood was snatched away by a domineering father. The film conveniently concludes in 1988, five years before Chandler\u2019s abuse allegations came to light. It\u2019s become a box-office smash, grossing $219 million in its opening weekend.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd it infuriated the award-winning director of \u201cLeaving Neverland<\/a>,\u201d Dan Reed<\/a>, who aired his grievances to Variety.<\/p>\n \t\tHave you seen Michael?\t<\/p>\n \n\tI went last weekend. I watched it. The first part of Michael as a child, I could kind of buy that. But as soon as we go to the adult Jackson, played by his nephew Jaafar, that burst my bubble. I thought, he\u2019s a great dancer, but his performance is very wooden, and one of the reasons for that is he didn\u2019t have much of a script to work with. He becomes this waxwork who performs these jukebox songs, but there\u2019s zero insight into what makes Jackson tick. He\u2019s this asexual plastic action doll of a figure in the film. And of course, the issue of his relationship with children is completely distorted by the fact that they portray him as an eccentric, overgrown child, which we know is not the full story.<\/p>\n \t\tMost of the scenes of Jackson with children in the film are him visiting sick kids in the cancer ward of a hospital.\t<\/p>\n \n\tThat made me feel really icky. It suggests that Jackson\u2019s engagement with children was entirely benign and motivated by nothing but philanthropy. Jeffrey Epstein was a great philanthropist, and Harvey Weinstein was a great filmmaker, but there\u2019s unfortunately another dimension to their stories. In Jackson\u2019s case, he\u2019s such a cultural phenomenon that there\u2019s nothing you can do to eclipse that. I want to clarify that I\u2019m not calling for Jackson to be \u201ccanceled\u201d and for nobody to listen to his music, but Wade and James\u2019 story needs to be respected as well, and what the movie does is creates a version of events that essentially portrays Wade, James, and others who\u2019ve accused Jackson of child sexual abuse as liars without actually articulating it. They\u2019re saying that the reason Jackson liked children is because he\u2019s an angel and just wanted to be nice to children, not that he wanted to have sex with them.<\/p>\n \t\tThe biopic casts his security guard, Bill Bray, as essentially the hero of the film \u2014 as Michael Jackson\u2019s knight in shining armor \u2014 but in the \u201cLeaving Neverland\u201d films, both Wade and James allege that Jackson\u2019s security guards were very complicit in his alleged abuse of them, at times waiting on the other side of the door while the abuse was allegedly occurring.\t<\/p>\n \n\tThe film just flips the truth on its head \u2014 black is white, white is black, and two and two make five \u2014 and none of the people who go and see the movie will ever question that, but it\u2019s a movie that\u2019s impossible to take seriously as a counter-narrative to \u201cLeaving Neverland.\u201d It was supposed to be the retort to \u201cLeaving Neverland,\u201d and they tried that in an early script and it fell apart, so they created this jukebox movie but haven\u2019t managed to create a plausible narrative that would explain Jackson\u2019s fondness for children.<\/p>\n \t\tHow do you feel about the ways the Jacksons have shielded his legacy by producing musicals and films that sidestep his alleged abuse of children? The biopic rather conveniently wraps up in the \u201880s before the abuse allegations came to light.\t<\/p>\n \n\tWhy are they dancing around this? It\u2019s well-known that Jackson spent a long time with small-boy companions, including taking them into his bed at night and locking the door, which is undisputed \u2014 and that alone, if someone made a claim, is probably enough to convict him in a court of child sexual abuse \u2014 but with Jackson, none of this stuff seems to matter. And neither the estate nor the writer of the film nor anyone else has provided an alternative narrative apart from, oh, he didn\u2019t have a childhood, so he needed to spend the night alone with kids, which makes no sense.<\/p>\n \t\tThat rationale from his ardent defenders has always baffled me \u2014 that it was OK for Jackson to sleep in bed alone with children because he was childlike himself since his father had robbed him of his own childhood.\t<\/p>\n \n\tLet\u2019s say he didn\u2019t have a childhood, in common with many other people who\u2019ve had difficult childhoods \u2014 he had immense power, immense influence, great charisma, and he compensated for not having a childhood but stealing the childhoods of his young companions. To claim that because he had a difficult childhood he therefore needed to spend the night alone with a 7-year-old boy in his bed just doesn\u2019t stack up, does it?<\/p>\n \t\tApparently, there\u2019s a clause in Jackson\u2019s settlement with one of his accusers, Jordan Chandler, that says he can\u2019t be depicted in any film, so that\u2019s one possible reason why we haven\u2019t seen that allegation explored on screen. And perhaps there are similar clauses in his settlements with other accusers.\t<\/p>\n \n\tThat doesn\u2019t stack up either because Wade and James never reached a settlement. If you want to create a retort to \u201cLeaving Neverland,\u201d why not make a direct retort to the story it tells, which is the story of Wade Robson and James Safechuck?<\/p>\n \t\tHow have you felt about the public reaction to Michael? Critics were not impressed, but the public went to the cinema in droves to see it to the tune of a $219 million opening weekend, and his streams have gone up 95%.\t<\/p>\n \n\tJackson is an American myth, in addition to being an actual person, so he\u2019s metastasized into something much bigger than who he actually was. When that happens, it doesn\u2019t actually matter what the person was, because the person has been transfigured into something that is owned by the culture. He\u2019s become part of the collective imagination, and the collective imagination can never include the fact that he\u2019s a pedophile. It\u2019s just not possible. You can\u2019t say, God, that guy liked to have sex with children, but isn\u2019t his music great? That\u2019s not a narrative people can hold in their minds.<\/p>\n \t\tThat would require Jackson\u2019s fans to come to the realization that their childhood was also a lie.\t<\/p>\n \n\tExactly. To the culture, Jackson is like a religion. So, what I\u2019ve done is essentially blaspheme, and this biopic reinstates the myth. As absurd as any religion, people have to believe in the miracle of Jackson being this asexual, pure being who only wished good for little children and helped them. They\u2019ve given him the attributes of a deity. But there was a human Jackson and he was what we know he was. As a documentary filmmaker, I was focused on telling Wade and James\u2019 story \u2014 not Jackson\u2019s story.<\/p>\n \t\tFor someone who\u2019s covered the Kosovo War, the Moscow theater crisis, and 9\/11, what drew you to Wade and James\u2019 story? It stands apart from your other work up to that point.\t<\/p>\n \n\tIt was literally the product of a conversation between me and a television executive, Daniel Pearl, who said, \u201cDan, all of your films have a high body count in them. Don\u2019t you want to make a film that doesn\u2019t feature violence?\u201d And I said, \u201cAbsolutely, I do. My kids have long wanted me to make something they could watch.\u201d And he asked me to look at the big, unsolved questions of our time, and then he said, \u201cWhat about Michael Jackson? Was he or wasn\u2019t he a pedophile? Why don\u2019t you explore that?\u201d I initially wasn\u2019t interested because I didn\u2019t care much about Jackson, but they gave me a small amount of development money, I hired someone, and I took a look. I noticed among all the research that there were two people that had filed a lawsuit, and I thought, well, we\u2019ve never heard or seen any Jackson accuser on camera, and if these two guys who I\u2019d never heard of just filed a lawsuit, it just might be possible that they\u2019d be willing to go on the record. That\u2019s where the journey began, and eight or nine months later I was interviewing Wade. My jaw hit the floor after a couple of hours of him explaining his relationship with Jackson as a 7-year-old child. Slowly, I started to understand the nature of the grooming process that predators employ to gain access to their prey, and I felt like I was doing something useful that was in line with the rest of my work: trying to convey what these devastating conflicts felt like on the inside.<\/p>\n \t\tWhat made you believe Wade and James? And what sort of reporting and research backed up that belief?\t<\/p>\n \n\tApart from interviewing them for a total of many days, being skeptical at the outset, and analyzing their stories for any internal contradictions or inconsistencies, I then delved into all the files of the investigations into Jackson in 1993, around the Jordan Chandler accusations, and in 2005, around the criminal trial. I read tens of thousands of pages of documents, interviewed detectives, prosecutors, members of the judiciary who had direct knowledge of contents of the investigation, and came away with the distinct feeling that these two guys were telling the truth. I\u2019ve never come across anything that made me doubt what they were saying, and I\u2019ve come across a huge amount of corroborative evidence.<\/p>\n \t\tJackson\u2019s defenders tend to point out that both Wade and James initially defended Jackson before reversing course, as well as the large amount in damages \u2014 $400 million \u2014 they\u2019re seeking from his estate.\t<\/p>\n \n\tBut both of those points are completely hollow. On the one hand, yes, Wade Robson was defense witness no. 1 and vouched for him at the trial, but that\u2019s the whole point of \u201cLeaving Neverland.\u201d It\u2019s about how this kid went from a 5-year-old performer at a competition in Brisbane, Australia, to defending his abuser in the dark, to realizing when he had a child of his own that the relationship he had had with Jackson was unhealthy and abusive, and turning himself around. That\u2019s the whole point! It\u2019s not a bug; it\u2019s a feature. And as far as the money goes, [director] Antoine Fuqua reportedly earned $25 million for making \u201cMichael.\u201d Obviously, the estate is going to make a huge amount of money. Everyone\u2019s going to make money except \u2014 guess who? \u2014 Wade and James. They\u2019ve never made a penny. They didn\u2019t make a penny from my film, and they haven\u2019t made a penny from anything else associated with Jackson. The money\u2019s all being made by people close to Jackson who want to tell a distorted narrative that really dishonors them. Someone that was that abusive to children in plain sight doesn\u2019t deserve to be celebrated as a human being. You can celebrate their music, fine, but he was not a human being worth celebrating.<\/p>\n \t\tAnd Fuqua remarked of the abuse allegations against Jackson, \u201csometimes people do nasty things for money.\u201d\t<\/p>\n \n\tSomeone who\u2019s made tens of millions pushing a false narrative around a man who\u2019s a pedophile, that\u2019s a nasty thing. Mr. Fuqua has described his own actions while attempting to smear the protagonists of my documentary, and that makes me laugh.<\/p>\n \t\tYou\u2019ve said that Michael Jackson was \u201cworse than Epstein\u201d in a recent interview, and I just wanted you to clarify what you meant by that.\t<\/p>\n \n\tWell, look, it\u2019s kind of apples and oranges, isn\u2019t it? Epstein has contaminated the reputations of a great many powerful and influential people, so he\u2019s had an outsized influence in the world of politics.<\/p>\n \t\tAnd abused many minors.\t<\/p>\n \n\tAnd abused many minors. The distinction I was making was simply that the sexual abuse of very young children from the age of 7, 8, 9 years old is in a slightly different category to the abuse of teenagers or pre-teenagers. In our culture, very little children are especially vulnerable and especially loved, and to brutalize and rape a child who\u2019s so young makes you a special kind of evildoer. That\u2019s what I meant.<\/p>\n \t\tWhat about the complicity of the parents in these situations? Who would let their child sleep alone at night with a stranger?\t<\/p>\n \n\tThey are groomed similar to the way the kids are groomed. They were seduced. And Jackson didn\u2019t pick strong, well-adjusted families to prey on. He picked ones that were weak and easily to manipulate. You look at Wade and James\u2019 story, like, how the hell did their moms let them spend the night with Michael Jackson? I do fault the mothers, but I don\u2019t blame them. They were drawn into this web of deceit by Jackson, and he was very skilled at deception. This is a powerful man with God-like status within the entertainment world, and these were ordinary, suburban women. He was too much.<\/p>\n