"Michael", a biopic about Michael Jackson, is officially happening.

[kelley]

Should we just ignore what Prince said? His opinion is as valid as Paris's, perhaps even more since he saw more of it, being much more involved.

Prince: "He (Graham) does all this information gathering and research to put together the most authentic story and the character of who my father was. [...] After I read the first draft of the script, I called him cause I was crying. I told him that he had the most authentic picture of my father."

Prince was asked to describe the biopic in three words and these are the words he chose: "Epic, authentic and filled with love / lovely"

https://twitter.com/x/status/1850607573311086914

You see when it comes to Michael, what ever is most negative is what people always chose to believe. It's a very strange phenomena and should be studied.

 

[Euan]

No, I'm making a joke about John Branca, cause we all expect him to give himself a more important role than he should.


I'm sure she's right about some things being inaccurate, but again we all already expected this. Biopics always need to change some facts in order to make someone's whole life fit into a 2 or 3-hour movie. Now will those changes distort important information about Michael and ruin the movie or simply make the story flow better? That's a question we will only be able to answer after seeing the movie. Hence why I will go and watch the movie and decide for myself whether I like it or not. Prince felt it was very authentic, Paris felt it was not accurate enough, I very well might agree with Paris, who knows? I'm not taking sides, I'm just not dismissing Prince's opinion.


Did you read her complaint? She gave important information about the movie in it, and it's all about Branca's role in it:

“It appears that Mr Branca used his position as an Executive Producer, a role he has never before performed in connection with any dramatic feature film, to cast the sole A-list actor in the production, Miles Teller, to play himself in the upcoming feature production Michael,” reads the filing.
The filing goes on to state that Branca “chose to use (or at least risk) Estate assets to fund rather than license the rights to a studio or production company. Undoubtedly, Mr Branca considers his story to be central to the Michael Jackson story. Nonetheless, it is unclear how this peculiar and presumably costly casting decision will result in commensurate box office receipts.”

You are pivoting hard, but no amount of reframing lets you escape the fact… you are prioritising a commercial product, made to profit from Michael's legacy, over the firsthand account of his own family.

You are narrowly focusing on Branca because it's a convenient, expected flaw. But Paris didn't say they ignored my notes about Branca. She said she gave notes on what was dishonest or didn't sit right with me in the script. Branca is just the one example that became public. Dismissing all her factual concerns as just the Branca stuff is short sighted and dishonest to her as person, which you clearly don’t have respect for.

The issue isn't potential inaccuracies. It's the proven process. She identified dishonest parts, and the producers chose to ignore her.
Paris testified about the decision to leave lies in during its creation. These aren't just conflicting opinions. They are judgments about of a manipulated process.

You would rather defend executives spending her father's money to make a movie that ignores her, than stand with his daughter asking for truth.

You can frame this as a debate about biopic tropes, but your stance reveals your priority. You care more about preserving your right to judge a product than you do about the ethical standard set by the person it claims to honour… This isn't about film criticism. It's about values. And you've made it clear that Michael Jackson's own legacy, which was about truth, family, and perfectionism.. isn't the one you're defending here.

As I say you aren’t a MJ fan, you are an estate fan.

 

[#applehead24]

Idk if you can go around deciding if someone is a true fan or not if you disagree with how they view something…..
I don’t wanna get caught in any crossfire here but that seems rather ungracious or loving to your fellow fans wouldn’t you think?
I’m not saying someone is right or wrong in this debate, but accusing someone of being a “fake fan” or just not a Michael fan seems…idk, pitiful really
Nobody gets to decide if their a fan except for the person themselves I feel like

 

[Euan]

Idk if you can go around deciding if someone is a true fan or not if you disagree with how they view something…..
I don’t wanna get caught in any crossfire here but that seems rather ungracious or loving to your fellow fans wouldn’t you think?
I’m not saying someone is right or wrong in this debate, but accusing someone of being a “fake fan” or just not a Michael fan seems…idk, pitiful really
Nobody gets to decide if their a fan except for the person themselves I feel like

You're focusing on my language to avoid the actual issue. This isn't about me deciding who's a fan. It's about observing what people choose to defend…

A person made a joke mocking Paris Jackson to dismiss her firsthand account.
When I called that out, the defense wasn't about respecting her.

It was a detailed justification of why the commercial biopic process that ignored her is acceptable.

Now, you're defending that person's right to be a fan, rather than addressing the act of mocking his daughter or the defense of the corporate machine.

This is the pattern. Deflect from the cruelty, defend the system, and then attack the person who objects! Sounds familiar no?

Calling someone a fake fan isn't about a difference in opinion on a song. It's a judgment on whose side you're on when it matters.

Are you on the side of Michael's family and his values? Or are you on the side of the very machine that commodified him, that he fought against with Sony, and that contributed to his torment and ultimately killed him?

You can say I'm ungracious, but I'm holding a line that Michael himself tried to hold. His life and family are not commodities to be traded for entertainment or online debate points.

So no, I don't get to decide who's a fan. But I do get to say this.

If your fandom leads you to spend more energy defending people who mock his child and justify the corporate storytelling apparatus than it does upholding the values of family and truth that Michael lived by, then you are defending the wrong thing.

You're defending the cage, not the man who was trapped in it. And that is the only point I have been trying to make. Michael would’ve be extremely disappointed you learned nothing from his music and him as a person.

 

[etoile 37]

As I say you aren’t a MJ fan, you are an estate fan.

Posting Rules

The following posts, signatures, and/or behaviours are NOT allowed on MJJCommunity:

1. Derogatory name-calling, personal insults/attacks, the confrontational questioning of fanhood or integrity, or antagonizing or bullying remarks directed at staff, other members, or MJJCommunity as a whole

You are pivoting hard, but no amount of reframing lets you escape the fact… you are prioritising a commercial product, made to profit from Michael's legacy, over the firsthand account of his own family.

You are narrowly focusing on Branca because it's a convenient, expected flaw. But Paris didn't say they ignored my notes about Branca. She said she gave notes on what was dishonest or didn't sit right with me in the script. Branca is just the one example that became public. Dismissing all her factual concerns as just the Branca stuff is short sighted and dishonest to her as person, which you clearly don’t have respect for.

The issue isn't potential inaccuracies. It's the proven process. She identified dishonest parts, and the producers chose to ignore her.
Paris testified about the decision to leave lies in during its creation. These aren't just conflicting opinions. They are judgments about of a manipulated process.

You would rather defend executives spending her father's money to make a movie that ignores her, than stand with his daughter asking for truth.

You can frame this as a debate about biopic tropes, but your stance reveals your priority. You care more about preserving your right to judge a product than you do about the ethical standard set by the person it claims to honour… This isn't about film criticism. It's about values. And you've made it clear that Michael Jackson's own legacy, which was about truth, family, and perfectionism.. isn't the one you're defending here.

As I say you aren’t a MJ fan, you are an estate fan.

I'm sorry, but yes, I will wait to see the movie before I judge it. Would you rather have no biopic and just the one-sided lies spread by Leaving Neverland and the tabloids? Why?

Are you on the side of Michael's family and his values? Or are you on the side of the very machine that commodified him, that he fought against with Sony, and that contributed to his torment and ultimately killed him?

So far all of Michael's family is happy about the biopic except Paris.

 

[Euan]

Posting Rules

The following posts, signatures, and/or behaviours are NOT allowed on MJJCommunity:

1. Derogatory name-calling, personal insults/attacks, the confrontational questioning of fanhood or integrity, or antagonizing or bullying remarks directed at staff, other members, or MJJCommunity as a whole


I'm sorry, but yes, I will wait to see the movie before I judge it. Would you rather have no biopic and just the one-sided lies spread by Leaving Neverland and the tabloids? Why?


So far all of Michael's family is happy about the biopic except Paris.

The real choice is this do you listen to his family, or do you listen to the estate's lawyers and producers? You have made your choice abundantly clear. You have chosen the estate. You have chosen the machine that killed him over the daughter who loved him.

And claiming all of Michael's family is happy except Paris is a manipulative, dishonest distortion. It dismisses her as an outlier instead of engaging with her evidence. That tells me everything I need to know about this conversation.

We are done here. You have your movie. I have my principles. History will judge which was the right choice.

Edit: I see the discussion has moved to the chat where participants are now calling me names. This confirms the exact lack of respect and integrity I was criticising. You can have the last word in your echo chamber. Defend the estate all you want.. it just proves my point.

 

[Lady Annelies Applehead]

And because people will be expecting info about the trials, but the movie won't show any, all those people will go straight to Netflix and search out something like LN.

Because of the information vacuum, all those dodgy allegation interviews are gonna get massive viewership after this biopic!

Thats exactly what im worried about…. I want michael to come back ina positive note not in a fake one. Not as someone he never was… i want the world to understand who he truly was.

 

[Lady Annelies Applehead]

It might actually be easy for him to claim his father threatened him with violence even as an adult, given the fact that there are court documents where he says his father pepper-sprayed him, choked him and hit his head with a 12-pound weight.


I think from seeing all those graphic, disrespectful documentaries about his last days, we are imagining the scene worse than it would actually be. They wouldn't need to show needles and catheters, and they could easily hide the arm that has the IV by filming from the right angle. All they would have to show is Michael falling asleep while Murray is sitting next to an IV. That's it really, he just fell asleep. (And then Murray left the room instead of monitoring him as he should have...)

Same thing for the recording while he was drugged, they obviously would not make his voice as slurred as it was on the recording, because they need the viewers to be able to understand the words he's saying, so he would just sound a little bit groggy / sleepy, not to the point that it would be humiliating or dehumanizing. I don't think a scene showing Michael slowly drifting off to sleep while talking about how much he cares about children would be too graphic, at least not for me. I understand however that some fans find it hard to even think about his death, because it is so sad...

People keep saying that they don't want the biopic to be a whitewash or a paint-by-numbers biopic, but seeing here that some people are uncomfortable with seeing Michael drugged, I am wondering, which moments did you want to see included that would make the biopic more than a whitewash / paint-by-numbers? Like for example, is it just during his final days that you don't want to see him drugged? Or do you want the movie not to show him in a drugged state during his 1993 painkiller addiction too? What about him being given propofol during the History tour, do you want them to show that? One thing I would really want to see is the first doctor who suggested to give him propofol to sleep. Michael was not a doctor, he did not come up with that idea on his own. I want them to show that doctor who assured him it was safe when it was not and how he caused Michael's death as much as Murray did, because Michael would never have asked Murray to use propofol on him if he had never been told by that first doctor that it was okay to use it to sleep.

As for the 1993 painkiller addiction, I feel that the way it connects to the settlement is too often ignored. The media loves to mention the settlement and they love to call him a drug addict, but they never talk about the fact that the two happened in the same time period. We saw how the 2005 trial nearly killed him (he couldn't eat because he was throwing up, by the end Michael weighed only 94 pounds and he was so dehydrated that the doctor who treated him said that if he had waited 12 more hours, he would have been dead). But in 1993, he was in no better shape to survive a trial, and people often forget how bad he was before he agreed to the settlement. Showing how severely his health was deteriorating would certainly help people understand why he ended up agreeing to a settlement to put an end to it. His lawyers told him that if he didn't settle, it could go on for 7 years, and Michael would not have survived 7 years of that... But how would people here feel about the biopic showing what state Michael was in during that period of time? How would you feel about this kind of scenes being included (from Karen Faye's testimony in the AEG trial):

Q: There was a time on the tour you discovered Michael had been given too many drugs and couldn’t perform. What did you learn?

A: Yes. Michael came into the dressing room. He was stumbling. He had a hard time walking. He actually fell over a potted plant/tree. Dr. Forcast was there. I told him: Michael can’t go on. He has to enter on a toaster. Toasters are very small. You have to curl up and be shot out of it. He could lose an arm. I’m seeing Michael in this state and I said you can’t put him in this position. I feared for his safety. I feared for his life. I told Dr. Forcast: You can’t. You can’t make him go out there like this. I put my arms around Michael and said: You can’t take him. And he said: Yes I can. He put his hands around my neck, backed me against the wall and said: You don’t know what you're doing. I couldn’t breathe. I almost fainted. I fell to the floor. He grabbed Michael and took him off to the stage.

Q: Did that show eventually get cancelled?

A: Yes sir.

Q: Were there other shows in that tour that were cancelled because Michael Jackson was unable to perform?

A: Yes.

Q: Did there come a time in that tour when you felt Michael was getting worse?

A: Yes. Michael was under a lot of stress at that time because that’s when the first child allegations were made public. (becoming emotional) And Michael had to go on stage every night, literally with the whole world thinking he was a pedophile. He had to stand up through all of that slander and all of those things. The visible pain this had — He had to perform and be up there. To this day, I don’t know how he did that.

I never knew this…

 

[#applehead24]

The real choice is this do you listen to his family, or do you listen to the estate's lawyers and producers? You have made your choice abundantly clear. You have chosen the estate. You have chosen the machine that killed him over the daughter who loved him.
And claiming all of Michael's family is happy except Paris is a manipulative, dishonest distortion. It dismisses her as an outlier instead of engaging with her evidence. That tells me everything I need to know about this conversation.

We are done here. You have your movie. I have my principles. History will judge which was the right choice.

Edit: I see the discussion has moved to the chat where participants are now calling me names. This confirms the exact lack of respect and integrity I was criticising. You can have the last word in your echo chamber. Defend the estate all you want.. it just proves my point.

I just said we shouldn’t be name calling
I said absolutely nothing on either of yalls opinions and nor do I care for what they are, in all respects
As for me I won’t judge anything on the film until I watch it for myself purely for entertainment
This is why I stopped following this thread, too many useless arguments, I really shouldn’t have said anything
And I don’t believe there was any name calling to you in the chat, all I said was you fighting me on the fact that I suggested maybe not calling ppl fake fans, it the one lacking a respect towards others darling, not us

 

[Zizzistar]

Since when was it considered acceptable to be taking propofol at home each night to sleep? How are so many fans ok with this situation?

Murray deservedly got jailed for manslaughter due to stupidity and neglect. I wished he served more time in jail but if it wasn’t Murray, Michael would have sought out another Doctor who was willing to give him what he wanted.

Michael knew the risks, he knew it was wrong but wanted it anyway due to desperation and the fact he’d had it previously.

I quote Robin Williams joke once more and comparing it to doing chemotherapy because you were tired of shaving your head. Utter madness that he was ever in this position in the first place.

you are making it sound like Michael pursued propofol because he had nothing else better to do, and not because he became resistent to most sleep drugs and opioids - and fans are quoting Robin Williams lines about MJ now, one of the main comedians that mocked him and his struggles?

 

[Zizzistar]

also, Klein and Rowe got him hooked on that shit. it's not like he woke one day and decided to try out propofol. Little reminder that Michael had already developed a resistance to it because of his third degree burns treatment

 

[SmoothCriminal1984]

I haven't seen this mentioned in a long time - I had completely forgotten about it.

I did t know Jordan filed against mj again

 

[Zizzistar]

it's not about anyone here specifically but i can't stand when people (and yes fans too) almost dismiss Michael gambling with propofol as a wealthy man's caprice. it shows the depths of ignorance about how addiction works, especially when it isn't about recreative abuse substance but literal pain and sleep management like in MJ case. sure, the average middle class addicted wouldn't be able to access propofol but that doesn't mean his desperation won't take him somwhere else, or to death.

 

[SmoothCriminal1984]

I don't think I have ever seen a fan who was ok with that...?


Yes, he would have. But hopefully, that other doctor would have been monitoring him instead of talking on the phone with his mistress in another room. He would then have been able to tilt Michael's head as soon as his airways got blocked, as the expert testified in the trial, and Michael would have started breathing again, as the expert testified. Anesthesia is dangerous and can't provide true sleep, so no doctor should have ever given Michael propofol to sleep, but Murray did so much worse than that...

And I still want that first doctor who gave propofol to Michael on the History tour to be called out for setting Michael on that path and assuring him it was okay.


Exactly this. It's hard to take good decisions when you are sleep-deprived. There's a reason why it's a doctor's responsibility to prescribe the appropriate medication, and there's a reason why doctors are not allowed to prescribe medication for themselves. Michael tried the other, safer medication that were suggested to him, but none of it worked and he was exhausted and desperate to sleep at that point. No doctor should ever take advantage of the desperation of their patient by giving them whatever inappropriate medication they want just for money.


I feel this is a bad comparison. Michael didn't choose to use propofol because he was tired of sleeping the normal way, he used propofol because his insomnia was so bad that no other medication worked on him and he was desperate for sleep, as anyone would be. Try not to sleep for 4 days and see how you feel afterwards, and whether you're still capable to think clearly.

He didnt take propfol cuz he was tried of "sleeping normal way"

He took it cuz that was the only thing that worked to help him sleep . I mean I know it was a dangerous and stupid thimg of michael to do but he felt there was no other option and belive me I understand way Michael did it cuz I deal with insomnia as well

 

[Mariab]

Wait he filed against Mike in 1998????...never knew this why has this came out now?!

This is the context:

In 1994, at the age of 14, Jordan Chandler was legally emancipated from his parents
. While the initial 1993 sexual abuse allegations were settled in January 1994, subsequent legal complaints were filed against Michael Jackson in the late 1990s specifically regarding breaches of the settlement's confidentiality agreement.

• 1994 Emancipation: Jordan sought and received legal emancipation following the $23 million settlement of the original civil case. This legal separation gave him independence from his father, Evan Chandler, who had initiated the initial allegations.
• 1996 Lawsuit: Evan Chandler filed a $60 million lawsuit against Jackson and his then-wife Lisa Marie Presley, alleging they breached the 1994 confidentiality agreement during a televised interview with Diane Sawyer and through lyrics on Jackson's HIStory album.
• 1998 Complaint: In 1998, upon reaching age 18, Jordan Chandler filed his own independent complaint against Jackson for the same breach of confidentiality.
• Consolidation and Dismissal: The legal actions from both Jordan and Evan were consolidated into one arbitration process. In 1999, a court ruled in Jackson's favor and dismissed the lawsuits, concluding no breach had occurred.

These 1998 actions were focused on contractual violations related to the settlement rather than new claims of sexual abuse.

 

[Mariab]

It might actually be easy for him to claim his father threatened him with violence even as an adult, given the fact that there are court documents where he says his father pepper-sprayed him, choked him and hit his head with a 12-pound weight.


I think from seeing all those graphic, disrespectful documentaries about his last days, we are imagining the scene worse than it would actually be. They wouldn't need to show needles and catheters, and they could easily hide the arm that has the IV by filming from the right angle. All they would have to show is Michael falling asleep while Murray is sitting next to an IV. That's it really, he just fell asleep. (And then Murray left the room instead of monitoring him as he should have...)

Same thing for the recording while he was drugged, they obviously would not make his voice as slurred as it was on the recording, because they need the viewers to be able to understand the words he's saying, so he would just sound a little bit groggy / sleepy, not to the point that it would be humiliating or dehumanizing. I don't think a scene showing Michael slowly drifting off to sleep while talking about how much he cares about children would be too graphic, at least not for me. I understand however that some fans find it hard to even think about his death, because it is so sad...

People keep saying that they don't want the biopic to be a whitewash or a paint-by-numbers biopic, but seeing here that some people are uncomfortable with seeing Michael drugged, I am wondering, which moments did you want to see included that would make the biopic more than a whitewash / paint-by-numbers? Like for example, is it just during his final days that you don't want to see him drugged? Or do you want the movie not to show him in a drugged state during his 1993 painkiller addiction too? What about him being given propofol during the History tour, do you want them to show that? One thing I would really want to see is the first doctor who suggested to give him propofol to sleep. Michael was not a doctor, he did not come up with that idea on his own. I want them to show that doctor who assured him it was safe when it was not and how he caused Michael's death as much as Murray did, because Michael would never have asked Murray to use propofol on him if he had never been told by that first doctor that it was okay to use it to sleep.

As for the 1993 painkiller addiction, I feel that the way it connects to the settlement is too often ignored. The media loves to mention the settlement and they love to call him a drug addict, but they never talk about the fact that the two happened in the same time period. We saw how the 2005 trial nearly killed him (he couldn't eat because he was throwing up, by the end Michael weighed only 94 pounds and he was so dehydrated that the doctor who treated him said that if he had waited 12 more hours, he would have been dead). But in 1993, he was in no better shape to survive a trial, and people often forget how bad he was before he agreed to the settlement. Showing how severely his health was deteriorating would certainly help people understand why he ended up agreeing to a settlement to put an end to it. His lawyers told him that if he didn't settle, it could go on for 7 years, and Michael would not have survived 7 years of that... But how would people here feel about the biopic showing what state Michael was in during that period of time? How would you feel about this kind of scenes being included (from Karen Faye's testimony in the AEG trial):

Q: There was a time on the tour you discovered Michael had been given too many drugs and couldn’t perform. What did you learn?

A: Yes. Michael came into the dressing room. He was stumbling. He had a hard time walking. He actually fell over a potted plant/tree. Dr. Forcast was there. I told him: Michael can’t go on. He has to enter on a toaster. Toasters are very small. You have to curl up and be shot out of it. He could lose an arm. I’m seeing Michael in this state and I said you can’t put him in this position. I feared for his safety. I feared for his life. I told Dr. Forcast: You can’t. You can’t make him go out there like this. I put my arms around Michael and said: You can’t take him. And he said: Yes I can. He put his hands around my neck, backed me against the wall and said: You don’t know what you're doing. I couldn’t breathe. I almost fainted. I fell to the floor. He grabbed Michael and took him off to the stage.

Q: Did that show eventually get cancelled?

A: Yes sir.

Q: Were there other shows in that tour that were cancelled because Michael Jackson was unable to perform?

A: Yes.

Q: Did there come a time in that tour when you felt Michael was getting worse?

A: Yes. Michael was under a lot of stress at that time because that’s when the first child allegations were made public. (becoming emotional) And Michael had to go on stage every night, literally with the whole world thinking he was a pedophile. He had to stand up through all of that slander and all of those things. The visible pain this had — He had to perform and be up there. To this day, I don’t know how he did that.

This comment made me so emotional, mostly because you voiced my thoughts so accurately!

Though it will pain me greatly, I do want all these things shown. The public needs to know and understand the abuse MJ faced throughout his life. Too many people out there perceive Michael’s life as very linear and somewhat stereotypical: boy has talent boy becomes famous boy turns into a man with money man performs tours and puts out albums and leads a secluded life where he probably did questionable things man gets accused of improper acts but justice is not served (according to them) man finds solace in drugs and becomes an addict man dies because he valued drugs more than life and family. Sadly, this is how many people, not just MJ detractors, perceive Michael’s life.

I do hope Michael’s struggles are shown, that we get to see how the different timelines of major events in his life intertwined, how the higher-ups only cared for money and performance, not Michael’s well-being. It’s important to show the tragic events because that’s what the general population remains oblivious to. Everyone knows he was a successful artist, not everyone knows the struggles, the abuse, the neglect, the cruelty, the betrayals that happened to him. I do wonder if Paris alluded to this type of sugarcoating when she criticised the initial drafts.

 

[alexbism]

Matt already said that the movie takes a good amount of creative liberties

Matt Forger ?

 

[SmoothGangsta]

You are pivoting hard, but no amount of reframing lets you escape the fact… you are prioritising a commercial product, made to profit from Michael's legacy, over the firsthand account of his own family.

You are narrowly focusing on Branca because it's a convenient, expected flaw. But Paris didn't say they ignored my notes about Branca. She said she gave notes on what was dishonest or didn't sit right with me in the script. Branca is just the one example that became public. Dismissing all her factual concerns as just the Branca stuff is short sighted and dishonest to her as person, which you clearly don’t have respect for.

The issue isn't potential inaccuracies. It's the proven process. She identified dishonest parts, and the producers chose to ignore her.
Paris testified about the decision to leave lies in during its creation. These aren't just conflicting opinions. They are judgments about of a manipulated process.

You would rather defend executives spending her father's money to make a movie that ignores her, than stand with his daughter asking for truth.

You can frame this as a debate about biopic tropes, but your stance reveals your priority. You care more about preserving your right to judge a product than you do about the ethical standard set by the person it claims to honour… This isn't about film criticism. It's about values. And you've made it clear that Michael Jackson's own legacy, which was about truth, family, and perfectionism.. isn't the one you're defending here.

As I say you aren’t a MJ fan, you are an estate fan.

Please refrain from questioning other people on their fandom over a difference of opinion. It helps nothing. We can disagree without this.

 

[Euan]

Please refrain from questioning other people on their fandom over a difference of opinion. It helps nothing. We can disagree without this.

Understood regarding the phrasing. For clarity, my concern wasn't a simple 'difference of opinion.' It was a response to a user mocking Michael Jackson's daughter to dismiss her firsthand account.

My comments were about the behavior of attacking a family member to defend a corporate product, which I believe violates the spirit of a community about him. I will keep the feedback about phrasing in mind.