‘Leaving Neverland’ will turn you off Michael Jackson for good
IT’S REMARKABLE what happens when you take Michael Jackson out of the latest Michael Jackson scandal. Remove the usual “King of Pop” soundtrack and all that glitters, and things get so much clearer.
The details are still appalling, but what we see and hear in Dan Reed’s riveting and sharply convincing fourhour documentary, “Leaving Neverland” (airing in two parts on Sunday and Monday on HBO), supplies the viewer with an unexpected measure of calm. Even the outrage feels at last like the real deal, instead of the manufactured byproduct of tabloids and TMZ.
Already the talk of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Leaving Neverland” is the story of two men — noted pop choreographer Wade Robson, 36, and James “Jimmy” Safechuck, 41 — who each tell us, with the resolute certainty that they lacked as younger witnesses deposed and questioned in other cases, that Jackson sexually molested them when they were boys, starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s and continuing into their teenage years.
What they are talking about is not just the creepy affection, playful roughhousing and tender hand-holding we were once told was the innocent expression of love between a man (Jackson), who sacrificed his own childhood to bring joy to millions, and the star-struck boys he was thus entitled to enjoy as special pals. What we get this time are disturbing, graphic and wholly consistent accounts of the predation, grooming and rape of two children by a man who wielded considerable psychological control over everyone in his environment — including the boys’ parents.
To a certain degree, “Leaving Neverland” is potentially more devastating than even “Surviving R. Kelly,” the Lifetime documentary that aired in January and seemed to do what a mountain of previous reporting and victim accounts could not, resulting in Kelly’s Feb 22 arrest and charges of 10 counts of alleged criminal sexual abuse of four victims — three of them minors — dating back to 1998.
A similar heap of past journalistic efforts, to say nothing of Jackson’s acquittal in a prolonged and hotly prosecuted 2005 molestation trial, accompanies the unsettling facts that “Leaving Neverland” presents so unflinchingly. To say that we’ve all been here before and that many of us suspected this all along is an understatement; we simply have not been told this story in quite this way, at this level of frank detail.
The biggest difference between then and now, of course, is that Jackson is dead, having succumbed to a lethal dose of tranquilisers at age 50.
It’s impossible, therefore, to not view “Leaving Neverland” in the context of the #MeToo movement, which emphasises extrajudicial respect for what victims tell us about past abuse and its lingering damages. (Indeed, to watch the entire film requires a steeled resolve from the viewer; there’s a warning at the beginning about the graphic descriptions and language.) It’s also impossible to watch “Leaving Neverland” and not think that Jackson’s goose — if it were available — is cooked. It’s no different from what we’ve already seen with such powerful boldface names as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Bill Cosby.
A goose of another sort is, of course, in jeopardy here — the golden one of royalties and publishing rights — which is perhaps why some of Jackson’s siblings and a nephew are giving interviews to defend his stature, noting that Robson already came out with his allegations in 2013 and then unsuccessfully sued Jackson’s estate for damages. The Jacksons object to “Leaving Neverland” as yet another opportunistic grab for Jackson’s considerable fortunes (which skyrocketed once the singer was gone and unable to squander his millions). The Jacksons have also claimed, in a lawsuit, that HBO has violated a non-disparagement clause in a deal it signed many years ago to air a Michael Jackson concert.
There’s a familiar echo in the Jackson family’s protest — a strategy Robson and Safechuck remember from being persuaded to defend Michael in court and depositions whenever he felt threatened: In Michael’s world, his enemies live to make up terrible lies so that they can steal his money and ruin his name. In that fragile falsetto that became his public speaking voice, Michael decried his haters long before it was cool to have haters, playing his charitable side to an advantage.
How could I harm a child, he complained, when I love them so much?
None of that self-pitying, saccharine logic stands up to the astonishing and empathetic discipline of “Leaving Neverland,” which remains focused all four hours on listening to Robson and Safechuck, along with their mothers, family members and spouses.
Here, at last, is the Michael Jackson documentary that has little to no use for the routine adulation of Michael Jackson, particularly the dazzling songs, performances and other proprietary clips that would form the basis of a celebrity rockumentary. Robson and Safechuck talk at some length about their awe for the star, shared by children everywhere, and it is more effective than the brief clip of “Thriller” that survives the cut.
Instead, “Leaving Neverland” makes excellent use of scrapbooks, personal photographs, videos, recorded phone messages, faxes, letters and other assorted ephemera kept by the men and their families — particularly their moms, whom, by the film’s end must account for the blind trust that made the abuse possible.
For much of the documentary’s first two hours (Sunday’s episode), Robson and Safechuck recount the happy beginnings of their separate friendships with Michael.
In Brisbane, Australia, a fiveyear-old Robson won a shoppingmall dance contest in 1987 that included tickets to see Jackson in concert and meet him backstage. Two years later, on a repeat encounter, Robson — now seven and sporting a perm so his hair would look more his idol’s — got another chance to meet Jackson and impress him with his dance moves. Before they could process what was happening, the middleclass Robson family was whisked away to America and Jackson’s inner circle. It wasn’t long before Wade and Michael were sleeping together in hotel suites — increasingly distanced from the rest of the family.
Jimmy Safechuck’s story is similar: He was the son of a hairstylist and junk hauler in Simi Valley, California, working occasionally as a child model and actor in commercials. He was cast in a Pepsi commercial in which Michael discovers a handsome boy snooping around in his dressing room, and the two become instant friends. Jackson was so drawn to Jimmy that he invited the Safechuck family on the “Bad” tour, for which Jimmy was given a cameo role dancing onstage.
His mother, Stephanie Safechuck, recalls in the film her early insistence that her son could not stay overnight in Jackson’s bed; she drew a line that was somehow quickly erased. Staying with Michael in a Paris hotel suite, Jimmy recalls, “(Michael) introduced me to masturbation and that’s how it started . ... He set it up like, ‘I’m going to show you something everybody does, and you’ll really enjoy it.’ It was like he was teaching me something new.”
Wade also specifically remembers the first time Jackson molested him, which began with fondling: “And then him guiding me to do the same thing him, moving my hands to touch his penis,” Robson says. “Him talking to me (saying) ‘You and I were brought together by God. We were meant to be together . ... This is how we show love.’”
A compelling aspect of “Leaving Neverland” is the similarity of the boys’ accounts of these encounters — and how they mirror accounts that came later, in 1993 (from an alleged victim, Jordan Chandler, whose parents settled out of court for an undisclosed amount believed to be as high as US$25 million) and in 2005 (from an alleged victim, Gavin Arvizo, whose tentative and inconsistent testimony failed to sway a Santa Barbara County Superior Court jury). The Michael Jackson molestation stories all wind up being eerily the same — the disarming ability to charm, the showering of gifts for the whole family, the air of innocence and friendship that made it all seem OK.
Wade’s mother, Joy Robson, is a fascinating study in the gullibility that comes with being star-struck and treated to first-class service. By the time Jackson is routinely molesting her child, he has persuaded her to relocate with Wade and his sister to California, splitting up the Robson family, which possibly contributed to her husband Peter’s mental decline. (He killed himself in 2002.)
Even now, both men talk about Jackson with a measure of care that can be heartbreaking. They each felt like they were in a relationship with him, a special bond. Safechuck opens a small box full of expensive rings that Jackson gave him, including one that the two used in a private, mock wedding ceremony.
The breakups, too, came with a hurt that felt authentic. As Jimmy got older, the Safechucks had less access to Jackson’s largesse; a new boy became Michael’s constant companion, and the boy’s family, Stephanie recalls, “reminded me of us.”
Not long after Robson’s family arrived in California, they got a chillier reception from Jackson’s camp, discovering that another, much more famous boy — the actor Macaulay Culkin — had become Michael’s new best friend. (The film notes that Culkin denies any sexual abuse by Jackson.)
“Leaving Neverland” (four hours) airs in two parts Sunday and Monday at 8 pm on HBO.