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Will This is it be released in 4K/UHD at some point?

Also - a full version of MITM must exist - I would love to see that!

A full unedited version of MITM would be great - and it must be in the vault, so it is possible.
 
Extra footage could be used in a documentary of MJ life , (the estate should really produce one) - on a streaming service, for example.
 
Dangerous rehearsals wasn't ready yet at all, Michael Prince said that they were keeping changing the mix everyday (there was a June 25th mix that Michael never listened), and I'm wondering if June 23 and 24 had two different mix of the song (and i wouldn't be surprised) which it basically was only playback track played with the band playing over there. i hardly think they will ever use unedited or new footages at all, due the trial and the issues and bad Michael health situation behind the project.
 
The part with the giant globe for Heal the World shown in the extras looked interesting. I don't believe that was even been discussed in the movie.
 
Looking at it retrospectively, in the light of what happened to MJ, I don't think This Is It is a great look at all. The entire production was a mismanaged clusterf-ck, MJ himself was bullied by his collaborators, and in the end, the stress of all this led to his death. I did a total 180 on this over the years even though I had tickets to one of the gigs, and I loved the film when it first came out. But at the end of the day, the film was a heavily edited fabrication, and even a considerable portion of the vocals was replaced for the enjoyment of the public, let alone the entire underlying narrative. Despite not being a half bad experience as a fan, this film really is just a mirage. I hope one day we will see full, unedited material from the rehearsals, regardless of what it contains, as a matter of historical accuracy. Relaunching this, especially in the light of some recent work-related abuses and bullying scandals, would be in bad taste for sure.

And just for the record, I'm not saying that MJ was a frail drug addict who could barely walk, let alone perform. Quite the opposite, he most likely would have been fine if he hadn't found himself in this highly pressurised, toxic environment that was eating away at his mental and physical health.
 
Hess said:
What does this refer to? - Who bullied him, I think I've missed something.
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I believe its reported that the day of the announcement conference, Michael was drunk and refused to come out of the bathroom so some high up AEG executive showed up and slapped him.
 
I believe MJ was drunk, struggling with low confidence before the press conference believing no one would show up. Randy Phillips said he waited for him to sober up and slapped him on the rear as football players do as motivation.
 
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mjawb2009 said:
I believe MJ was drunk, struggling with low confidence before the press conference believing no one would show up. Randy Phillips said he waited for him to sober up and slapped him on the rear as football players do as motivation.
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That's how he explained it later, but it seemed much less friendly in his original e-mails - he said he screamed at him so hard that the walls were shaking and that he slapped him. He also said he threw him into a cold shower. Who knows whether that was just him exaggerating to his buddies to make himself seem like a tough guy or whether it really happened - but it does show (as did a lot of the e-mail traffic between the AEG execs) that they had no respect for MJ at all.

As for MJ being drunk, Paul Gongaware testified that MJ did not appear drunk but seemed to struggle to get up and going. Perhaps it was the pressure/anxiety. In any case, whatever the reason was, MJ did really appear 'off' during that press conference. So many of us at the time instantly noticed that.

rolerprod said:
i looooooove hearing that!
fans painted such a grim picture of how mj was at that time all from hearsay.
how could he look so there mentally and sharp on the last day of rehearsal when they said he didnt sleep properly by that point for weeks..always thought that was odd,he should have been hallucinating and out of it completely
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I would not call it hearsay. Firstly, many of the fans who followed MJ during that period rang the alarm before his death. They even tried to get in touch with Karen Faye and wrote MJ a letter on the 24th expressing their worries. Secondly, we have seen lots of e-mails between the key people involved which reflect that he really was not doing well. Think of Ortega's worried e-mail just a week before MJ died - they were worried all the concerts would have to be cancelled. As others have said, the reason he looked pretty good during the rehearsal on the 23rd (and to a lesser degree on the 24th) is because he was on stimulants. It was deemed miraculous by those involved in the production, because he really had not appeared well at all just a few days before that.

Two things can be true at once. I'm sure there is plenty of unused footage available on which MJ looked good, especially the earlier it was in the rehearsal process. Murray's lawyers did review the available raw footage and said there was nothing they could use to make MJ look particularly bad. At the same time, you cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that MJ was really deteriorating, at least from late May onwards. You have to remember that MJ was such a natural - even when not doing well he could do routines and make it look pretty good. That does not mean he was doing well.
 
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SoCav said:
That's how he explained it later, but it seemed much less friendly in his original e-mails - he said he screamed at him so hard that the walls were shaking and that he slapped him. He also said he threw him into a cold shower. Who knows whether that was just him exaggerating to his buddies to make himself seem like a tough guy or whether it really happened - but it does show (as did a lot of the e-mail traffic between the AEG execs) that they had no respect for MJ at all.

As for MJ being drunk, Paul Gongaware testified that MJ did not appear drunk but seemed to struggle to get up and going. Perhaps it was the pressure/anxiety. In any case, whatever the reason was, MJ did really appear 'off' during that press conference. So many of us at the time instantly noticed that.



I would not call it hearsay. Firstly, many of the fans who followed MJ during that period rang the alarm before his death. They even tried to get in touch with Karen Faye and wrote MJ a letter on the 24th expressing their worries. Secondly, we have seen lots of e-mails between the key people involved which reflect that he really was not doing well. Think of Ortega's worried e-mail just a week before MJ died - they were worried all the concerts would have to be cancelled. As others have said, the reason he looked pretty good during the rehearsal on the 23rd (and to a lesser degree on the 24th) is because he was on stimulants. It was deemed miraculous by those involved in the production, because he really had not appeared well at all just a few days before that.

Two things can be true at once. I'm sure there is plenty of unused footage available on which MJ looked good, especially the earlier it was in the rehearsal process. Murray's lawyers did review the available raw footage and said there was nothing they could use to make MJ look particularly bad. At the same time, you cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that MJ was really deteriorating, at least from late May onwards. You have to remember that MJ was such a natural - even when not doing well he could do routines and make it look pretty good. That does not mean he was doing well.
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I agree the emails were not flattering to AEG.
 
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SoCav said:
That's how he explained it later, but it seemed much less friendly in his original e-mails - he said he screamed at him so hard that the walls were shaking and that he slapped him. He also said he threw him into a cold shower. Who knows whether that was just him exaggerating to his buddies to make himself seem like a tough guy or whether it really happened - but it does show (as did a lot of the e-mail traffic between the AEG execs) that they had no respect for MJ at all.

As for MJ being drunk, Paul Gongaware testified that MJ did not appear drunk but seemed to struggle to get up and going. Perhaps it was the pressure/anxiety. In any case, whatever the reason was, MJ did really appear 'off' during that press conference. So many of us at the time instantly noticed that.



I would not call it hearsay. Firstly, many of the fans who followed MJ during that period rang the alarm before his death. They even tried to get in touch with Karen Faye and wrote MJ a letter on the 24th expressing their worries. Secondly, we have seen lots of e-mails between the key people involved which reflect that he really was not doing well. Think of Ortega's worried e-mail just a week before MJ died - they were worried all the concerts would have to be cancelled. As others have said, the reason he looked pretty good during the rehearsal on the 23rd (and to a lesser degree on the 24th) is because he was on stimulants. It was deemed miraculous by those involved in the production, because he really had not appeared well at all just a few days before that.

Two things can be true at once. I'm sure there is plenty of unused footage available on which MJ looked good, especially the earlier it was in the rehearsal process. Murray's lawyers did review the available raw footage and said there was nothing they could use to make MJ look particularly bad. At the same time, you cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that MJ was really deteriorating, at least from late May onwards. You have to remember that MJ was such a natural - even when not doing well he could do routines and make it look pretty good. That does not mean he was doing well.
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Thanks, that's a really balanced and well considered response. I've reached the same conclusions based on the bits and pieces of trial evidence which surfaced over the years. There were also those infamous texts that Karen Faye sent to her partner about MJ having been threatened by his collaborators sometime in mid June 2009 (this was corroborated by another person as per the court documents afaik).

If you pay attention, you can construct quite an incriminating image of what was going on behind the scenes. Randy Phillips (the CEO of AEG at the time) was abusive towards MJ and admitted to that on multiple occasions in court and in his work emails. He certainly was disrespectful towards Michael and saw him as a cash cow and a tool to realise his own ambitions. I looked him up, and he stepped down as CEO only 1 year after he had locked in his position for another 5, because he was too divisive a figure, and AEG preferred to dump him. Figures. Also, shortly before MJ's death, Ortega wrote an email referring to the "tough love" they'd had to give to Michael to get him to cooperate and attend rehearsals. He seemed to regret this "tough love" approach when Michael appeared traumatised and in a crisis. It's impossible that the people in charge did not to realise how much stress MJ was dealing with and how much he was struggling just to keep going; they simply chose to ignore it and soldier on at his expense. Then, AEG sold off the rehearsal footage like an insurance policy and made bank anyway. It's hard to view this film when there's so much evidence suggesting the entire project involved abusing and disrespecting the star of the show and letting him die like that.

This is only my observation, but I think Michael's issues during This Is It preparations largely had to do with his mental heath, namely anxiety issues. He probably felt overwhelmed by the number of concerts he had to do, and while he was determined to give people a great experience, he probably increasingly questioned whether he could. Having dealt with decades of media bullying that finally led to an attempt to put him in jail for crimes he did not commit, you can't blame him for feeling undermined and less confident. Then add onto that some financial woes, being surrounded by parasites, not having any friends who could understand, struggling with some non-threatening but annoying health issues like insomnia and chronic pain, you can see how it quickly becomes a mental health spiral. MJ was stronger than most, but in 2009 he found himself in a vulnerable spot surrounded by people who just kept pushing and pushing.
 
SoCav said:
That's how he explained it later, but it seemed much less friendly in his original e-mails - he said he screamed at him so hard that the walls were shaking and that he slapped him. He also said he threw him into a cold shower. Who knows whether that was just him exaggerating to his buddies to make himself seem like a tough guy or whether it really happened - but it does show (as did a lot of the e-mail traffic between the AEG execs) that they had no respect for MJ at all.

As for MJ being drunk, Paul Gongaware testified that MJ did not appear drunk but seemed to struggle to get up and going. Perhaps it was the pressure/anxiety. In any case, whatever the reason was, MJ did really appear 'off' during that press conference. So many of us at the time instantly noticed that.



I would not call it hearsay. Firstly, many of the fans who followed MJ during that period rang the alarm before his death. They even tried to get in touch with Karen Faye and wrote MJ a letter on the 24th expressing their worries. Secondly, we have seen lots of e-mails between the key people involved which reflect that he really was not doing well. Think of Ortega's worried e-mail just a week before MJ died - they were worried all the concerts would have to be cancelled. As others have said, the reason he looked pretty good during the rehearsal on the 23rd (and to a lesser degree on the 24th) is because he was on stimulants. It was deemed miraculous by those involved in the production, because he really had not appeared well at all just a few days before that.

Two things can be true at once. I'm sure there is plenty of unused footage available on which MJ looked good, especially the earlier it was in the rehearsal process. Murray's lawyers did review the available raw footage and said there was nothing they could use to make MJ look particularly bad. At the same time, you cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that MJ was really deteriorating, at least from late May onwards. You have to remember that MJ was such a natural - even when not doing well he could do routines and make it look pretty good. That does not mean he was doing well.
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i think it wouldn't matter what he was on if he wasn't getting sleep for weeks at that point it would have shown on that day or the week leading up to his death,i dont think any doctor would disagree with that,something about that isn't adding up.

also heard about the fans and the letters that situation was more about the pressure he was facing rather than his mental state being disconnected from reality but i might be wrong on that.

it still doesn't reflect what is shown in the movie and i get that you're going to go for "the movie is highly edited" as if they cgi Michael on stage and interacting with the musicians but hearing that other people saw the 100 hours footage and saw what i saw in the movie is great for me to hear,he was 50 he wasn't in shape and he was battling addiction so yeah he would be off to fans who see him for 20 minutes going in and out of his car but people painted a whole other picture.

hearing someone saw the tapes and saw he was fine just makes me question the emails as a whole,which is pretty hard to believe in the first place with the slap and kenny and all the other outrageous things on there.

this whole aeg thing also seems off,no one got jail time there was no follow up just lots of claims and emails,i dont get that and i find it so hard to believe mj would get taken advantage of that way,this is a skilled business man who knows his options very well and had lots of rich friends who helped him at that time,the only way he could get taken advantage of this hard is if he was actually that disconnected from reality as they claimed but it dosent reflect in the movie and i guess it dosent reflect in those 100 hours that this guys watched
 
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^I have to say that I honestly think this is largely wishful thinking.

rolerprod said:
also heard about the fans and the letters that situation was more about the pressure he was facing rather than his mental state being disconnected from reality but i might be wrong on that.
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It was about what the pressure - which he told some of them about - was doing to him, for instance about how much weight he was losing and how ill he started to look.

rolerprod said:
i think it wouldn't matter what he was on if he wasn't getting sleep for weeks at that point it would have shown on that day or the week leading up to his death,i dont think any doctor would disagree with that,something about that isn't adding up.
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But that's the thing - it DID show. Sleep experts testified at the trial that the behavior MJ was exhibiting matched that of someone suffering from severe REM-sleep deprivation - signs of paranoia, confusion, talking to himself, repeating himself, etc. I agree that it was remarkable that he was able to get things together - probably due to both his natural talent and the use of stimulants - for that rehearsal on the 23rd, but that is one moment in a month that had people increasingly worried.

rolerprod said:
it still doesn't reflect what is shown in the movie and i get that you're going to go for "the movie is highly edited" as if they cgi Michael on stage and interacting with the musicians but hearing that other people saw the 100 hours footage and saw what i saw in the movie is great for me to hear,he was 50 he wasn't in shape and he was battling addiction so yeah he would be off to fans who see him for 20 minutes going in and out of his car but people painted a whole other picture.
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So you are more inclined to rely on a movie that is obviously heavily edited (many different takes spliced together, use of pre-recorded vocals and autotune) for commercial use over the actual e-mail evidence and court testimony from all the major players involved in this project?

You also have to remember that the 100 hours of footage might give the false impression that the camera was running non-stop. They clarified in court that this was often footage of the same moments from different cameras, so in reality they may have only captured 15 hours or so of unique footage. That's not a lot when you know how long these rehearsals would go on for daily. Moreover, you have to wonder whether they would have the cameras running while MJ was obviously not doing well.

rolerprod said:
hearing someone saw the tapes and saw he was fine just makes me question the emails as a whole,which is pretty hard to believe in the first place with the slap and kenny and all the other outrageous things on there.
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But do you realize what you are implying here? You are suggesting that all these people, from top level executives to choreographers, producers and hair stylists that MJ worked with for years, faked or massively exaggerated concern about his condition before he died? Why would they all do that? Why would Conrad Murray order massive amounts of propofol and incriminate himself by saying he used it for MJ? Think about it, it makes no sense.

rolerprod said:
this whole aeg thing also seems off,no one got jail time there was no follow up just lots of claims and emails,i dont get that and i find it so hard to believe mj would get taken advantage of that way,this is a skilled business man who knows his options very well and had lots of rich friends who helped him at that time,the only way he could get taken advantage of this hard is if he was actually that disconnected from reality as they claimed but it dosent reflect in the movie and i guess it dosent reflect in those 100 hours that this guys watched
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I don't deny that MJ had good business instincts in some ways, but how can you find it hard to believe that he would get taken advantage of when that was - sadly - basically the story of the second half of his life? He was naive and believed in the good in people, resulting in a tendency to tragically trust the wrong people as well.

Look, no one is saying that MJ did not have good moments during those rehearsals. He was pretty fit during the early rehearsal process and started deteriorating gradually. And this is a man who lived and breathed music - even at his lowest point the music could lift him and make him dance in a way that most could not do on their best day. But I really do not think that, with everything we know, you can make a case that he was doing well during his last few weeks. I wish it were different, but it's not.
 
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SoCav said:
^I have to say that I honestly think this is largely wishful thinking.


It was about what the pressure - which he told some of them about - was doing to him, for instance about how much weight he was losing and how ill he started to look.


But that's the thing - it DID show. Sleep experts testified at the trial that the behavior MJ was exhibiting matched that of someone suffering from severe REM-sleep deprivation - signs of paranoia, confusion, talking to himself, repeating himself, etc. I agree that it was remarkable that he was able to get things together - probably due to both his natural talent and the use of stimulants - for that rehearsal on the 23rd, but that is one moment in a month that had people increasingly worried.


So you are more inclined to rely on a movie that is obviously heavily edited (many different takes spliced together, use of pre-recorded vocals and autotune) for commercial use over the actual e-mail evidence and court testimony from all the major players involved in this project?

You also have to remember that the 100 hours of footage might give the false impression that the camera was running non-stop. They clarified in court that this was often footage of the same moments from different cameras, so in reality they may have only captured 15 hours or so of unique footage. That's not a lot when you know how long these rehearsals would go on for daily. Moreover, you have to wonder whether they would have the cameras running while MJ was obviously not doing well.


But do you realize what you are implying here? You are suggesting that all these people, from top level executives to choreographers, producers and hair stylists that MJ worked with for years, faked or massively exaggerated concern about his condition before he died? Why would they all do that? Why would Conrad Murray order massive amounts of propofol and incriminate himself by saying he used it for MJ? Think about it, it makes no sense.


I don't deny that MJ had good business instincts in some ways, but how can you find it hard to believe that he would get taken advantage of when that was - sadly - basically the story of the second half of his life? He was naive and believed in the good in people, resulting in a tendency to tragically trust the wrong people as well.

Look, no one is saying that MJ did not have good moments during those rehearsals. He was pretty fit during the early rehearsal process and started deteriorating gradually. And this is a man who lived and breathed music - even at his lowest point the music could lift him and make him dance in a way that most could not do on their best day. But I really do not think that, with everything we know, you can make a case that he was doing well during his last few weeks. I wish it were different, but it's not.
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Im not saying he was doing well im saying it wasnt as bad as people tried to make it look and maybe it is wishful thinking,was he exhibiting this behavior on any of the footage captured thats my question ,to ask what people around mj had to gain from lying is to open a pandora box i honestly don't trust anyone close to him everyone had motives to say anything and i wouldn't be surprised by anything so i really only can relay on people who are neutral like this person watching the footage whos an outsider or yeah...my own eyes watching that movie
 
Those ephedrine tablets were asking for trouble, you don’t give a man who’s stick thin and can’t sleep to save his life a tablet which causes insomnia and is a weight loss aid.

It’s a miracle he lasted as long as he did in the situation he was in
 

He looks fully enaged and happy on this night especially, - the camera doesn't lie - not just due to ephidrine. I do really think he wanted to make his comeback.
 
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