Fin: Michael Jackson may very well have molested children and shouldn’t be the hero of a biopic

Against Oscar campaign oppo dumps, Justin vs. Blake, ‘Woke’ Little House on the Praire, and more in this week’s notes column.

When it comes to cases of whether to “separate the art from the artist,” there probably isn’t a harder one than that of Michael Jackson.

Yes, he was the King of Pop, and quite possibly the most talented pop star of all time. Also, he was credibly accused of child sexual abuse by multiple people over many years. Based on all of the evidence that’s accumulated over the years, I have a very hard time believing that none of it was true, and no, contrary to the beliefs of many of his fans, “how could he be guilty- his music was so great!” is not a credible defense.

How can the culture reconcile Jackson’s musical mastery with such horrific crimes? Not especially easily. Jackson’s music never got any type of R. Kelly-style erasure, and for a while after his 2009 death, there seemed to be a collective choice made to pretend that the last 15 years of his life — from the accusations to the physical grotesqueries to the baby dangling — didn’t happen.

I tend to think the most honest way to tell his story is to tell the WHOLE story, in the tradition of We Need to Talk About Cosby, although doing so isn’t exactly possible with full music rights. The endless series of streaming documentaries about Sean Combs this season have proceeded without Diddy’s music, but then again Diddy didn’t exactly put out the likes of Thriller or Bad.

Jackson was never convicted of a sex crime, and in life, he always maintained his innocence of any molestation charges. His estate, since his death, has maintained that position.

More recently, the Jackson accusations have been revisited and expanded upon, most notably in the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, while the market has also been flooded with lucrative projects approved by the singer’s estate, starting with This is It, the odious documentary featuring a days-from-death Jackson rehearsing the series of concerts that would never happen.

Then came a Broadway musical, a Cirque du Soleil show, and posthumous albums on which Jackson may or may not have actually sung. The Jackson 5 has even toured, leaving open the question of who among that group of men in their 60s and 70s would sing Michael’s old falsetto parts.

Also emerging in the last decade or so has been a somewhat horrifying online army of Jackson Stans, some of whom are likely so young they weren’t even around for Michael’s heyday. These fans refuse to brook any suggestion that Jackson ever touched kids; Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed likened them to “the Islamic State of fandom.”

The Financial Times reported last fall that the Jackson estate has raked in around $3 billion since the King of Pop died 16 years ago- and also that the estate, in 2020, agreed to pay $16.5 million to five men who were accusing Jackson of victimizing them; as part of the settlement, they “agreed instead to defend Jackson’s reputation.”

The capstone of posthumous Jackson projects was said to be Michael, a full-on Michael Jackson biopic, to be directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by John Logan. The film has the full run of Jackson’s music catalog, and the cooperation of Jackson’s family, including the casting of his nephew, Jaafar Jackson, in the title role. Everything about it screams that it’s less a movie than an exercise in burnishing the value of that estate, and making that $3 billion number get closer to 4 or 5.

As always I will reserve full judgment until the film is done and I can watch it. But I had my doubts about this project from the start because it sounded a lot like Bohemian Rhapsody, a major artist biopic that seemed almost definitionally compromised. The two films even have the same producer, Graham King; I fully expected Michael to take the same path as Rhapsody — hundreds of millions at the box office and multiple Oscars, despite in all likelihood not being very good, and not epsecially truthful, either.

And now, the Michael movie has hit a snag- the kind of snag that, by definition, can only happen when a movie is made in which the hero has been accused of child molestation.

Puck last Friday reported some shocking news about the Michael movie. Already delayed once, the film might not make it to screens for its scheduled October release date, because it turns out the movie’s entire plot structure exists in violation of an ironclad settlement agreement with one of Jackson’s accusers, from the 1990s.

Per Puck:

The script begins and ends during the 1993 investigation into statements about Jackson’s anatomy made by Jordan Chandler, the then-13-year-old boy whose molestation claim led to worldwide headlines and an eventual $20 million settlement. The script depicts Jackson as the naïve victim of the money-grubbing Chandlers, whose unfounded claims force Jackson to endure ridicule and persecution until he ultimately settles, his resolve and reputation forever in tatters.

However, this foolproof plan of building a major motion picture around the villainy of “money-grubbing” child sexual assault accusers has run up against a possibly insurmountable obstacle:

The problem? Years before signing off on the Michael movie with the Chandlers featured in the script, Jackson’s team agreed they would never include the family in any such movie. Yes, according to two sources, there’s a signed agreement with the Chandlers prohibiting any dramatization of them or their stories. Ouch. That deal, which was overlooked by the estate during the vetting of the script, has now rendered the planned storyline and several key scenes that were shot unusable.

My favorite detail in the Puck story: Previous projects like the MJ Broadway musical and the Cirque du Soleil show, “all but ignore the child accusers.” I think I can give Cirque du Soleil a pass for not finding a way to incorporate that in its show.

Quite a pickle for the producers to be in. And I can’t say I feel the slightest bit bad for them.

Against Oscar campaign opposition research dumps

Negative campaigning at Oscar time is nothing new; Harvey Weinstein, in his Miramax days, practically invented it, which was one of the bad things he was known for, before the really, really bad thing he was known for.