Transcript of How Should We Think About Michael Jackson? New

The new blockbuster biopic Michael presents a glamorous and triumphant portrait of the world's biggest pop star. The crowd pleaser has brought in massive box office revenues despite mixed reviews from critics who've called out its whitewashing of Michael's legacy, particularly claims of child sexual abuse that plagued the final decades of his life.

He told me if they ever found found out what we were doing, he and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives. In this episode, we sit down with the director of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland, which chronicles sexual abuse allegations against Jackson and was controversially pulled from the platform after a legal battle. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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Joining us now to discuss the controversial legacy of Michael Jackson is Dan Reed. He's the director of the documentary Leaving Neverland, which chronicles sexual abuse allegations against the pop star. Dan, thank you so much for joining us.

No worries, pleasure to be on the show.

So look, this new Michael Jackson movie is making big waves. It's a huge success at the box office. The critics' reviews great, but the audience loves it. Rotten Tomatoes, I think it's something like 96% approval. It's a real crowd pleaser. Did you see the film, and what do you think about the film if you did?

I went to see it at the weekend, actually, um, in the same theater we had the press premiere of Leaving Neverland, my 2019 documentary. So that's kind of weird. It's definitely a crowd pleaser. It's a kind of jukebox movie with, um, I mean, Jaffer Jackson is a great— he's a great dancer. He can move. His performance as Jackson is quite wooden otherwise. He's a bit of a waxwork. You don't get any insight into what made Jackson tick. And the issue of his relationship with kids kind of repeats all the tropes of like, "Well, he didn't have a childhood, and he really liked Peter Pan, and he was nice to kids, and he wanted to hang out with kids." And so, if you like, it just draws a veil over his relationship with children, and it suggests that it's benign, and he was just a strange man with this, you know, It doesn't show him as someone who had a sex life.

We've heard there were earlier drafts of the movie, I think the director talked about this, that would have addressed the abuse claims more directly. What do you know about that?

What changed here? Well, I read an early version of the script that was leaked to me. I believe it was genuine. So the movie was framed through the optic of the Jordan Chandler story. Now, Jordan Chandler was the 13-year-old boy who made the first claims of sexual abuse against Jackson. He got paid off, I think, to the tune of of like $25 million, a very large sum, in 1993, '94. So that story was central to the draft that I read. The boy and his parents were represented as frauds, as gold diggers trying to extort Jackson, and Jackson was represented as the innocent victim of these cruel people. And there was a legal issue in the settlement between, I believe, between the estate and Jordan Chandler and his parents, which said, "Okay, you know, the terms of the settlement mean that you cannot turn our story into a movie. So they had to ax all of that, reshoot the, the whole movie, practically the whole movie, I think, which the estate paid for. So big mess, big mess. They tried to make a film that was like the rebuttal of my documentary, and they failed.

So they couldn't even try to refute the claims because of their legal settlement. That's fascinating.

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

You know, in terms of the critical backlash, you're certainly not alone in saying this is a sanitized or sort of whitewashed portrayal of Jackson.

Yeah.

So what should his legacy be? He is a superstar, right? He's somebody that did rise to fame in a way that's really remarkable. How should we view Jackson?

I don't know. You know, I felt kind of sad because the story of Jackson's childhood and his becoming an incredible sensation against the odds, you know, you've got a cruel father who, like, you know, whoops him with his belt and that whole story. And actually, the child actor who plays Jackson when he's very little was good, I thought. So that very early part of the film, I kind of got into, and I was like, oh, that's amazing. And the kid is fantastic.

Is that pretty accurate? Is it an accurate portrayal of the father, do you think?

I don't know. So I've never— you know, my film essentially is about these two guys who were molested by Jackson, James Safechuck and Wade Robson. That's what my film's about. It's about these two guys. And I didn't concern myself Jackson's career. But I do believe from what I've read that that's sort of more or less accurate, that, you know, he— that Joe Jackson was a real martinet, you know, a tough taskmaster, and he gave the boys a hard time, and particularly on Michael, you know. So, and from that comes the whole myth of like, oh, well, Michael Jackson never had a childhood, and, you know, and therefore he had to spend lots of time with children, uh, you know. So what actually happened is he stole a lot of other kids' childhoods because he didn't have one, and he, you know, he ruined a lot of other children's children's, which is in a very spectacularly cruel way. And so I think, you know, look, we wouldn't make a film about Jeffrey Epstein's, you know, contribution to charitable— to philanthropy, or Harvey Weinstein's amazing movie career without mentioning the fact that there's a darker side to these characters.

But it seems to be possible for people to believe that Jackson is innocent, partly because he started constructing his own cover story while he was alive. "I'm just a big kid, and I like to spend time with kids because they're pure, and I'm pure." and, you know, he portrayed himself as this sort of asexual being. And I think, well, that's fine, but just play with the kids during the day, but why don't you give the children back to their parents at night? You don't have to go into your bedroom with a little boy at the age of 7 or 8 or 9 and lock the door and spend the night alone with this child while their parents are sort of distracted somewhere else. You know, I think there's so many holes in the Jackson story. What we do know is that he did spend the night alone with very, very young children. He didn't deny that. And so, that in itself, you couldn't put that in a movie, because it would creep people out. So, you know, this is definitely a movie that sidesteps, it swerves all these important biographical pictures. And as a result, the image you get of Jackson from the movie is really wooden.

Now the family says these allegations are smears. The estate, as you've highlighted, was heavily involved in the making of this film. So it has, you know, the family's complete approval. The lawyers say the accusers are, and I'm quoting here, the epitome of unreliable sources because they went from defending Jackson to accusing him. What's your response to that?

Well, that, that quote actually is, is about the Casio family. So this is a new bunch of accusers that came out of the woodwork after when they watched Leaving Neverland. This is in 2019, so that This is 5 kids, who were kids at the time that they knew Jackson. They watched my documentary and they go, "Jeez, that's what happened to us." And they all kind of look at each other and like, "You too? You too?" You know, they realize for the first time, according to their current story. But yes, that family had enthusiastically supported and vindicated Jackson's innocence, and taken quite a lot of money from the estate, apparently, as a sort of, you know, to buy their silence. Just to be clear, Wade Robson and James Safechuck never, took money from the estate never allowed themselves to be gagged. They came out and they've been steadfast and consistent. They haven't made a penny from my film or from any other endeavor connected with Michael Jackson.

And to be clear, Wade and James did not defend Jackson and then reverse.

Wade did. So there's two parts to this. One is like taking money to shut up, and the other is sincerely that You know, what happens is, and this is one of the things I discovered while I was making the film, is that when kids are abused by someone like Jackson, who is amazing, who they trust, who's a, you know, a sort of admired character, personality, these kids end up defending their abuser and lying to their parents, lying to their friends, lying to the public, in Wade's case. And he stood up on the witness stand in the trial in 2005 and said, "Michael never touched me." And he was defense witness number one. And he was a very big part of why Jackson was acquitted. And now, 8 years later, after Jackson's death, he has a child of his own. And Leaving Neverland, my documentary, tells this story that he has his own child, and he realizes as the child is growing up, the little boy, that the kind of things that Jackson was doing to him— he imagined his own son being involved, and he was just like, "Jeez, that's wrong. That's messed up, and I have to—" And so, he found himself kind of falling apart around the issue of the sexual relationship he'd had with Jackson, and that's what eventually prompted him to come out, which he did in 2013.

And James Safechuck had a kind of similar trajectory, also had a kid. Yeah, there are different groups of victims. They all have a kind of different complexion. I don't know the latest crop, the latest— the last 5, this Cassio family. I don't know them. I haven't spoken to them. I can't vouch for them. I, you know, I'm a journalist. I'm skeptical. That's my default. I don't just go around believing whoever. You know, it took quite a while for me to be convinced that James and Wade were telling the truth.

So, as for your documentary, it was produced by HBO. It was released on their platform. Then it was pulled after several years. Is it available still streaming any longer?

It's available everywhere in the world except the United States. And the reason for that is that the Jack— in 1992, so we're going rewind back to 1992, HBO signed a contract with the Jackson Company to record a Jackson concert in Budapest, in Hungary, I believe it was, somewhere in Europe. And that concert contract included what they call a non-disparagement clause. So disparagement, and it's— what's important, it's a legal term, and what's important to remember is that truth is no defense. So you say something bad about someone, even if it's true, then you are going to be falling foul of that non-disparagement clause. And so the estate argued that HBO, which signed a concert contract in 1992, was forever bound by this non-disparagement clause. That related specifically to the concert in 1992, which is bullshit, right? But somehow they made it stick and they, you know, HBO felt that they had to reach an amicable settlement with the estate. And that involved taking, after 6 years, taking my film down. But I mean, you know, I always have to add nothing, none of the content of the film or the claims it makes have been challenged in any way.

All right. So only in the United States can we not stream this?

Yeah, I think— North America. North America.

Gotcha. Maybe this is the final question. The success of the film. We started off talking about that. Are you surprised that Jackson's legacy has continued to be so strong? Clearly, your film and the accusations that have come out publicly have done major damage to his brand. Every time I personally think of Michael Jackson, it is my first thought. But are you surprised that his music, that this film continues to show real success?

Not really. You know, Leaving Neverland is a 4-hour documentary It's the story of basically 4 people, Wade, James, and their mothers. And it's a difficult watch. For 6 years it was available on HBO, which is behind a paywall, right? So, so not everyone has watched this film. I'm pretty sure that, you know, everyone who's watched, who took the time to sit down and watch my documentary Leaving Neverland, is probably quite convinced that he was not a great guy and that probably something really fishy was going on with these kids. But not everyone's watched it. A lot of people read online, oh, it was debunked, or this, or, you know, it's all lies, or whatever, you know, whatever the Jackson fan base puts up on YouTube. And yeah, so people— it's easy for people to give themselves permission to enjoy the music. And the music's stunning, you know, and he's a stunning entertainer. There's no two ways about it. And people have grown up listening to his music. It's part of, you know, it's, it's been endlessly kind of quoted and sampled. And, you know, and so I'm not saying Jackson wasn't a great entertainer. I'm not saying that.

And I'm not saying that people shouldn't listen to his music. I'm not into canceling people canceling art, because otherwise we'd— you know, there are so many artists with terrible personal lives that we'd be canceling half of the European canon, right? But I'm not a book burner, so, um, you know, that belongs in the Middle Ages. And, and, and so God bless, people can listen to Jackson's music, go and see the movie. I just think that we also have to bear the truth in mind that he was, as a person, as a human being, he was very, very cruel to children. And I think, you know, that's terrible. It hurts a lot of children really badly. Um, and somehow, you know, people have to, like, hold those two things in their mind, and it's very difficult. Most people don't want to do that. So, you know, this is just the way life is. Uh, somebody can be a great person, have great success, and be an evil, you know, personality. So I'm afraid that's the way the world works. Uh, success doesn't cancel out the doing of evil deeds. Well, we will leave it there.

Dan, thank you so much for talking with us. No worries, pleasure, John.

That was Dan Reed, director of Leaving Neverland, and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire.