Narrator/Host (1:55)

It's Friday, May 8th.

Mark Benelli (1:57)

Oh, I miss him so much.

Interviewer (2:02)

Mark, welcome to the Daily.

Mark Benelli (2:04)

Thanks for having me.

Interviewer (2:05)

You are not a movie critic.

Mark Benelli (2:07)

No.

Interviewer (2:08)

And we're not really here to talk about the artistic merits of this movie about Michael Jackson. Although, just to say, critics have been pretty unkind to the movie overall, which has done nothing to dampen the ticket sales. Your reporting has been focused on how the movie came to be and how it fits into a much larger project of Michael Jackson image repair. Is that the way to think about it?

Mark Benelli (2:37)

Definitely. Yeah. It's really a fairly remarkable business story. And it was orchestrated by the people now running his estate. And their project, as you said, has been to rehabilitate Michael Jackson, who'd become a fairly toxic asset and restore his life and music as exploitable intellectual property. And this biopic, Michael is the culmination of that years Long effort and it's been an undeniable success, I would say.

Interviewer (3:06)

And where in your mind does the story, the project of image rehabilitation, this business success story begin?

Mark Benelli (3:15)

So it really begins right after his death.

Conversation Starter (3:18)

Tonight came the word from la. Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, as

Mark Benelli (3:21)

he was called, has died in 2009.

Conversation Starter (3:25)

A child star at first, who as an adult was a deeply troubled man with mental.

Mark Benelli (3:30)

And to understand just how massive a project the state was facing at that point, you have to remember that Michael Jackson's reputation when he died really could not have been worse.

News Reporter (3:40)

Life was tarnished by allegations of child abuse by addictions to prescription drugs and plastic surgery.

Mark Benelli (3:48)

He had been accused multiple times over many years of child sexual abuse.

News Reporter (3:54)

Michael Jackson, the biggest superstar in the world, allegations that he sexually molested young boys.

Mark Benelli (4:01)

Those accusations were very public.

Conversation Starter (4:04)

Allegations of child abuse have prompted a Los Angeles police investigation of pop star Michael Jackson. The Los Angeles Police Department initiated a criminal investigation.

Mark Benelli (4:14)

The first instance was a child named Jordi Chandler. This was in 1993.

Michael Jackson Quote (4:19)

The resolution of this case is in

Mark Benelli (4:22)

no way an admission of guilt by Michael Jackson. That case ended with a multimillion dollar settlement with Chandler and his family.

Michael Jackson (4:32)

I am not guilty of these allegations, but if I am guilty of anything, it is of giving all that I have, all that I have to give to help children all over the world.

Mark Benelli (4:44)

He very much denied any wrongdoing, always did. Then in 2005, Michael Jackson came face to face with his accuser for the first time in court. On Wednesday, a second accuser, a boy named Gavin Arvizo Blake Chandler, accused him of sexual abuse. That case went to trial.

News Reporter (5:05)

If convicted on all 10 counts, which range from child molesting to giving alcohol to a minor, he would face more than 20 years behind bars and Jackson was fully acquitted.

Mark Benelli (5:16)

And he's always denied those allegations. But he had a habit of making everything worse for himself.

Narrator/Host (5:27)

Is it really appropriate for a 44

Mark Benelli (5:29)

year old man, Most infamously, he sat down with Martin Bashir, a British journalist,

Narrator/Host (5:34)

to share a bedroom with a child who is not related to him at all.

Michael Jackson (5:39)

That's a beautiful thing.

Mark Benelli (5:41)

Where he openly acknowledged sharing bedrooms with children.

Narrator/Host (5:46)

That's not a worrying thing.

Michael Jackson (5:47)

Why should he be worrying? Who's the criminal? Who's Jack the Ripper in the room? This is a guy trying to help

Mark Benelli (5:54)

heal a child and defended himself.

Michael Jackson (5:57)

Why can't you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone.

Mark Benelli (6:07)

At the same time, Jackson is in a huge financial hole. He's deeply in debt for decades. He continued to spend as if he were the reigning pop star on the planet, even when his reputation got worse and worse and he was no longer touring. And when he dies, he's close to $500 million in debt. Wow. And I was able to get a very close look at how this happened in the state of his affairs by a ruling in a tax trial that took place after he died between the estate and the irs, the government arguing that the estate owed hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes based on the value of his name and likeness at the time of his death. And the estate found itself in this sort of perverse position of arguing that, no, his name and likeness and future earning potential were close to nil because his reputation was so irredeemably degraded.

Interviewer (7:03)

Literally nil.

Mark Benelli (7:04)

Nothing, Pretty much. I mean, you have to remember that the estate is arguing in this case specifically to get the tax burden as low as possible. So they're making a very extreme argument. And if you read through the judge's ruling, it's really a fascinating document. I mean, the first six months of 2009. He died that summer. The judge found Jackson had only made $24. Wow. That's two, four off of his name and likeness. At the time he was preparing to return to live performance. He'd booked a series of dates in London at the O2 Arena, 50 dates, which had sold out nearly instantly. They couldn't find a sponsor, a corporate sponsor for the shows. The merch company that they contracted with to make T shirts and the products. They refused to make any of the products until the shows actually started because they were worried that Jackson wouldn't go through with it. A Q score is a measurement of a brand or a celebrity's consumer appeal, basically.

Michael Jackson Fan (8:04)

Right.

Interviewer (8:05)

Their kind of reputational value to the market.

Mark Benelli (8:07)

Yeah. By the end of his life, Jackson's had dropped to zero. So that tells you something.

Michael Barbaro (8:14)

It's genuinely hard to fathom that there

Interviewer (8:16)

could ever be a moment when Michael Jackson, looming as large as he does, could have a brand that was essentially worthless.

Mark Benelli (8:27)

Yeah. When we're talking about his personal reputation, the songs are something else. You know, there was always going to be a potential value there because they're just such a huge part of our culture. And so the ultimate project moving beyond the songs would be to rehabilitate the man in some way and stop that reputational bleeding into the rest of his ip, for lack of a better word. So legal documents describe this really remarkable scene in the hospital where Jackson is pronounced dead and his family is Surrounding his bed, mourning him. And meanwhile, a group of advisors have commandeered a room nearby and they've turned it into a war room. Essentially their immediate task at hand is to figure out how to deal with this massive amount of debt and basically stave off bankruptcy. And so the guy who ends up leading this process is a man named John Branca. He was Jackson's lawyer throughout most of the 80s, through sort of peak Jackson era. And he just come back onto the scene literally eight days before Jackson died. And it turned out that Jackson's will had named Branka and a longtime family friend named John McClane as co executors. So now suddenly, Branka was running the estate, essentially.

Interviewer (9:48)

And what ends up being Ranka's plan? What is his idea for how to take this reputation that's in tatters and this debt that is mounting and somehow turn it around?

Mark Benelli (10:02)

Well, the first order of business is to start generating any income. The London shows obviously had been part of that plan before he died. That's off the table with Jackson gone. But there was rehearsal footage of him preparing for the shows, and so they decided to cut it together into a concert film. The film was called this Is, premiered in theaters just a few months after his death. This is the moment.

Michael Jackson (10:35)

This is it.

Mark Benelli (10:36)

And the movie was a huge hit, grossing somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 million, making it, you know, one of the, if not the most successful concert films ever.

Michael Jackson Fan (10:46)

Wow.

Mark Benelli (10:48)

A smooth grimace, call for applause, Fade out. And as Billboard magazine pointed out, shortly after that, it became pretty clear that Jackson was worth more dead than alive.

Interviewer (11:00)

Hmm, explain that.

Mark Benelli (11:01)

Well, you know, the living Michael Jackson had this habit of doing things that reminded people of everything that made them feel somewhat queasy about him. So with him gone, it's a morbid thing to say, but there was no one around anymore to give problematic interviews or to dangle babies over balconies or do anything that could get in the way of people just loving the songs in a simple and uncomplicated way.

Interviewer (11:30)

Right. In death, Michael Jackson kind of severs himself and all the baggage around him from that beloved music.

Mark Benelli (11:39)

Exactly. So now with the success of this concert film, the estate realizes they can control the story. And so, you know, they do a number of the normal things you would do after an artist dies. They mine the vaults for unreleased material, they reissue old records with bonus tracks, things like that. But then they start doing other things. One of the first big successes after the concert film is they make a deal with Cirque du Soleil. They build a whole show around his music. And as you would imagine, it's a Cirque du Soleil show. So it's, you know, it's about acrobats, it's about visuals, it's about music. It's not about allegations of sexual abuse or anything controversial. And similar to the concert film, it really overperforms. It's a draw for audiences, actually. It's still running today. And from there, the estate goes on to develop a Broadway show, MJ the

Interviewer (12:34)

Musical, and describe that show.

Mark Benelli (12:36)

So that's essentially a jukebox musical that very cannily takes place during the rehearsals for the dangerous tour in 1992. So this is a year before that first accuser, Jordan Chandler, comes forward. So the audience is placed in this moment in time when completely uncomplicated Michael Jackson fandom is still possible. And they really pulled out all the stops for the show. Lynn Nottage, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, wrote the book and very coyly hints at certain dark secrets Jackson might have. The show is built around this reporter from MTV who's there to interview him at the rehearsals. And this reporter character senses that he has a dark secret. And its secret is eventually revealed to be an addiction to pills, which is a completely acceptable rockstar vice.

Michael Jackson Fan (13:26)

Right.

Interviewer (13:27)

Rather than the deep, dark secret that we all know to be the dominant story at his death, which is his relationship with young boys.

Mark Benelli (13:33)

Yes. And it works. It goes on to be a big hit.

Interviewer (13:38)

So there's now a very clear playbook that the estate is using in this rehabilitation project. And it's telling the story about Michael Jackson and death that was not being told at the end of his life that celebrates the music and to a large degree, in the form of that musical, Even the man. In an uncomplicated and pretty sanitized way.

Mark Benelli (14:05)

Yes. And everything is basically going according to plan until a documentary premieres at Sundance in 2019 that threatens the entire project.

Michael Barbaro (14:27)

We'll be right back.

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Ivan Penn (15:09)

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Interviewer (16:06)

So, Mark, I think we've reached the Leaving Neverland moment in this story. That's the name of the documentary about Michael Jackson that comes out in 2019. And I remember it really well because we did a daily episode about it and it was kind of a cultural phenomenon. But just remind us why that documentary was so important and why it imperils this project.

Mark Benelli (16:29)

Right. Well, this documentary came out really when MeToo was in full swing.

Leaving Neverland Accuser (16:35)

He was one of the kindest, most gentle, loving, caring people I knew and

Mark Benelli (16:46)

gets picked up by hbo. And so an enormous number of people see it.

Leaving Neverland Accuser (16:50)

And he also sexually abused me for seven years.

Mark Benelli (16:54)

And it was an incredibly powerful film.

Leaving Neverland Accuser (16:56)

I grew up in a little town called Simi Valley. I was pretty happy and pretty outgoing, kind of a performer, I guess. My father worked at a rubbish company, so we had a family. Rubbish.

Mark Benelli (17:12)

It's the story of two men, James Safechuck and Wade Rapson, who both claim Jackson sexually abused them as boys.

Leaving Neverland Accuser (17:22)

So taking showers together and, you know, fondling and kissing. So him kissing me. I mean, like full open mouth, tongue in mouth kissing, basically in the film,

Mark Benelli (17:35)

just walk the audience through this horrific grooming process that they claim took place in stomach churning detail.

Leaving Neverland Accuser (17:44)

Him talking to me. You and I, we were meant to be together, you know, and this is us showing each other that we love each other.

Mark Benelli (17:53)

And it's quite powerful and compelling.

Leaving Neverland Accuser (17:55)

Yeah. Then we get up in the morning like nothing had ever happened and go have another day filled with childhood magical games and adventures.

Mark Benelli (18:09)

And the estate, I think justifiably criticized the filmmaker for not including them in Any way, including any sort of rebuttal.

Oprah Winfrey (18:17)

But regardless, after I saw Leaving Netherland for the first time, people like Oprah,

Mark Benelli (18:24)

an abuse survivor herself, endorsed the film.

Oprah Winfrey (18:27)

I tried and tried and tried to get the message across to people that sexual abuse was not just abuse. It was also sexual seduction.

Mark Benelli (18:35)

Hosted a special with the two accusers.

Oprah Winfrey (18:38)

And I know people all over the world are gonna be in an uproar and debating whether or not Michael Jackson did these things or not, whether these two men are lying or not lying. But for me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson.

Mark Benelli (18:51)

It was a moment, and it felt like it could be a moment for some sort of reckoning.

Michael Jackson Fan (18:55)

Right.

Interviewer (18:56)

And in the face of these projects that the estate had blessed and promoted from the concert and to Cirque du Soleil and so on, it felt like a genuine cultural rebuttal to all of that that was breaking through.

Mark Benelli (19:09)

Exactly. The Financial Times reported that his music essentially stopped appearing in ads almost entirely after the documentary came out.

Interviewer (19:18)

Hmm.

Mark Benelli (19:19)

And the film, it was kind of a sensation. It was all over social media, and it had basically reset the conversation around Jackson in a way that was completely opposite everything the estate had been working to do, which was to keep the focus on the music and not the man, and the controversies surrounding the man. Now, that's all that everybody could think about.

Interviewer (19:47)

Right. And in a way that seemed kind of impossible perhaps, to go back from.

Mark Benelli (19:54)

It would seem so. But the estate essentially had a two pronged strategy. First, they went hard after the film itself, Leaving Neverland. And they did it in a pretty unusual way. They went back and found a contract that Michael Jackson had signed with HBO in 1992 when they aired a concert film Live from Bucharest. And in the contract, there was some fairly standard language, non disparagement language. And the lawyers for the estate argued that airing leaving Neverland 30 years later was a violation of that non disparagement clause. A pretty unusual argument to be making. But eventually neither side will talk about what happened, except to say that it was amicably settled. But they did reach a settlement. And you can't find leaving Neverland on HBO's platforms anymore.

Interviewer (20:58)

Wow. So the estate gets this documentary that has gripped the nation that Oprah is talking about on her show, taken off of HBO and basically removed from circulation.

Mark Benelli (21:12)

Yeah. There's no way to watch the film in the US Legally.

Interviewer (21:19)

Okay, well, what's the second prong of the strategy?

Mark Benelli (21:23)

They also thought about making their own documentary, and instead they decided to make a biopic, which could be the ultimate Brand reset. So they start putting together this a list team of talent. They get Antoine Fuqua, the director of Training Day and the Equalizer franchise. Jafar Jackson, his nephew plays Michael. They have Graham King producing. He made the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody a few years earlier, which had been a huge massive hit, grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide. And music biopics, if they work properly, they bind the music to a feel good story, a triumphant story where the audience can enjoy these songs they love at sort of maximum volume with fantastic visuals, but they can also feel connected to the artist as a person, as a sort of character in a movie. Think of every recent biopic you can think of, from Ray to a complete unknown, the Dylan biopic to Elvis to Bohemian Rhapsody. And when those work, they really work.

Michael Barbaro (22:28)

And so what is the estate's plan?

Interviewer (22:30)

To make this biopic do the work that you just described and be the ultimate reset of the Michael Jackson brand.

Mark Benelli (22:39)

The wild thing about this strategy, I got hold of copy of the original script for the biopic. And it wasn't just Jackson denying the accusations. It went much, much further than that into, you know, what I found to be morally questionable territory. It presented the accuser's father as an extortionist and a grifter. It fully exonerated Jackson by presenting very contested evidence as if it was fact. And you can see some of the script, the past script in the current film, which goes out of its way to present Jackson as this very innocent man child with no friends. And his love of children is completely innocent. And a beautiful thing in the telling of this version of the movie, he's visiting them in hospitals and things like that. In that script, I saw the Brank, a character seeing all these kids visiting Neverland says something like, you know, I'm not worried about them, I'm worried about the parents. There are lots of greedy people out there.

Apple Card Advertiser (23:37)

Hmm.

Interviewer (23:38)

So this original script very much portrays Michael Jackson as the victim of greedy, opportunistic parents.

Mark Benelli (23:47)

Very much so. And specifically naming the Chandler family, the family of this 1993 accuser.

Interviewer (23:54)

But that was not the movie that ultimately lands in.

Michael Barbaro (24:00)

No.

Mark Benelli (24:00)

Because in a fairly unprecedented event, they completed principal photography, the movie was done, and only at that point, somehow did they realize the settlement with Chandler and his family, signed way back in 1993, had a clause prohibiting either side from ever depicting or discussing anything about the settlement or their relationship. Somehow this had been completely overlooked, and they didn't realize this existed until after the film was completed.

Interviewer (24:35)

Wow. Old legal clauses. Big theme of this conversation.

Mark Benelli (24:39)

Yes. Yes. So they had to reconvene, bring the cast and everyone back together and shoot new material and completely cut out the final act of the film, which covered the accusation and Michael's. In the telling of the film, exoneration. That's all gone now.

Interviewer (25:00)

So what does the final version of this biopic have to say about these accusations and about this enormous chapter of Michael Jackson's life?

Mark Benelli (25:11)

It says nothing about it very much like the musical, it stops well before any of those accusations took place. In the case of the movie, they stop at the very beginning of the bad tour in 1988. So there's plenty of distance between then and the first inklings of something more sinister. It's very much a hero's journey. It's Michael rising up and triumphing over, you know, his father is really the villain of the film. Joseph Jackson.

Interviewer (25:40)

Have you seen the movie, Mark?

Mark Benelli (25:43)

I have seen it. I had not seen it. My story came out before the movie was released. I wasn't invited to a screening, but I saw it yesterday. I mean, when your producer told me I needed to see the movie before taping this, I was. I'll admit, I was feeling a bit resentful. I did not want to see this movie. And I was very surprised to say that I didn't hate it. And I left the theater, you know, humming his songs. The reviews have been negative across the board. Critics really hate this film. I'm not defending it. I don't. I didn't love it. I understand why people enjoy this movie.

Interviewer (26:23)

What did you like about it, and what did you feel when you watched it?

Mark Benelli (26:28)

You know, I think I share some of the hardwired nostalgia for Jackson before the fall. I still have a vinyl copy of Thriller that I won as a kid and a radio call in. So I'm the exact right age to have grown up loving his music. And it's hard to resist those songs and to resist that version of Michael Jackson that was so predominant before everything else happened. I benefited from seeing the movie after having read this early version of the script, which I thought was terrible, and after having read all of these reviews, which, you know, lowered my expectation considerably. So I was coming into this movie expecting to really, really hate it.

Michael Barbaro (27:18)

Right.

Mark Benelli (27:19)

And I liked it more than that.

Interviewer (27:20)

But to state the obvious, Mark, and I say this with no malice, you reported on the rehabilitation project of Michael

Michael Barbaro (27:28)

Jackson, and you understand it better than anyone.

Mark Benelli (27:31)

And then it still kind of worked on me. Yeah.

Interviewer (27:34)

You became its happy customer in the theater.

Mark Benelli (27:37)

Yeah. No, to my complete surprise, I Mean, it's. It's powerful stuff, and again, it's a piece of propaganda. I understand what the film is doing, and I'm not arguing that it's a good film, but it works in its way. The average person who's going to see this movie, who has made this movie such a massive hit, probably isn't carrying that baggage, probably isn't even aware of the reshoots or these other versions of the film that existed or could have been made. And if you just watch it for what it is, it's a sort of celebration of this specific period of his life. And just to say, you know, the movie made $200 million its opening weekend, which has made it the most successful opening for a music biopic ever, and it could make a billion dollars worldwide.

Interviewer (28:31)

Mark, I want to talk about how we should think about this movie's success, because at the end of the day, I'm not breaking any news here. It is about as sanitized a version of the Michael Jackson story as one could possibly fathom, and audiences are eating it up. And that makes me think back to a conversation I had back in 2019 with our colleague Wesley Morris when Leaving Neverland came out. And that movie asked all of us to reckon with the artist and the art and the scandal. And something that Wesley said back then is still ringing in my ears right now. He concluded that it was on all of us to live with the messiness of what Michael Jackson represents. And he said, literally, the work is on us, and it's really hard work. We don't want to do that work. And is that the not so huge revelation of this movie that when presented with the opportunity to not do that work and celebrate this man, to think about the allegations and the people who suffered and the lives that were derailed, the youth that will never be reclaimable,

Mark Benelli (29:57)

we choose not to do it. I think that's exactly right. And I think the fiasco of having to remake the movie, all of that bad press they got in the lead up, I think that ended up being the best thing that could have happened to the filmmakers in the estate, because had that original version of the film come out, I think it would have situated the audience right in the middle of that messiness that you're describing. Even though they were doing their best to proclaim his innocence, I don't know how that would have sat with audiences. Who knows, Maybe people would have just bought it, but I think that would have been a much more uncomfortable position to put audiences in. It would have made it Much more difficult to just enjoy the music. The version of the movie that they ended up having to make completely elides that. And I think it's been to their benefit. And it's certainly what a lot of audience members want to see.

Interviewer (30:51)

Right. And perhaps somewhere out there there are people who want to do this hard work of reckoning with the fullness of Michael Jackson. But for the moment, there's a clear playbook that the estate has established for reaching that much larger audience that does not want to do that work.

Mark Benelli (31:11)

Yeah. And I think that largely rests on, you know, the sui generis nature of Michael Jackson himself and his music. And I mean, I think you have to give credit to John Branca and the estate. He's a very shrewd operator and they've made a number of incredibly savvy moves since Jackson died. But ultimately without Jackson's music, without songs like Billie Jean Pyt, you rock my world, Thriller, man in the Mirror, will you be there? Without his singularity as one of the most important artists of his era, you don't get people coming out to this movie in these numbers. You don't get this kind of worldwide show of love. It all comes back to what he did as a musician.

Narrator/Host (32:05)

Right.

Interviewer (32:06)

Without him, there's no brand to reinvent.

Mark Benelli (32:08)

Yeah.

Interviewer (32:09)

Well, Mark, thank you very much.

Michael Barbaro (32:13)

We really appreciate it.

Mark Benelli (32:14)

Thank you for having me.

Narrator/Host (32:21)

We'll be right back.

Mark Benelli (32:24)

I gave my brother a New York Times subscription.

Couple Discussing NYT (32:28)

We exchange articles and so having read the same article, we can discuss it.

Ivan Penn (32:32)

She sent me a year long subscription so I have access to all the games.

Couple Discussing NYT (32:36)

The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. It enriches our relationship.

Mark Benelli (32:41)

It was such a cool and thoughtful gift.

Couple Discussing NYT (32:44)

We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food, we're on the same page.

Michael Barbaro (32:49)

Learn more about giving a New York

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Narrator/Host (32:58)

here's what else you need to know today. The United States and Iran traded a tax on Thursday even as both countries negotiated a long term peace deal that could end the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States said that Iran had tried but failed to attack three US Military ships. In response, the US struck a variety of Iranian military sites responsible for those attacks. Speaking to reporters, President Trump said that despite the attacks, a weeks old ceasefire remained in place.

Donald Trump (33:38)

They trifled with us today. We blew them away. They trifled. I call that a trifle. I'll let you know when there's no seizure. You won't have to know.

Michael Barbaro (33:47)

And the Times reports that the United States has reached a bleak milestone. The size of its debt, $31.3 trillion, now surpasses the nation's total economic output.

Interviewer (34:03)

The source of the problem is well known.

Michael Barbaro (34:05)

The United States is spending far more money than it's earning through taxes. Over time, that mismatch could trigger a fiscal crisis in which America can no longer afford to pay the interest on its own debt.

Narrator/Host (34:26)

Today's episode was produced by Olivia Nad, Mouj Zaidy and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg with help from Michael Benoit. Contains music by Dan Powell, Rowan Misto and Diane Wong, and sound design by Alisha Ba? Itube. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for the Daily I'm Michael Bavarro. See you on Sunday.

Michael Jackson Quote (35:04)

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