The lessons learnt from Neverland
It started as a standard documentary but turned into a fourhour investigation into two lives destroyed by singer Michael Jackson, writes James Croot.
Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed believes the reaction to his documentary would have been very different had it been released two years ago.
Since its debut at January’s Sundance Film Festival, the British film-maker’s two-part, four-hour investigation into how Michael Jackson destroyed the lives of two boys and their families has generated plenty of headlines, outrage and fallout.
Focusing on claims by Wade Robson and James Safechuck that the singer molested them for years, it will make its New Zealand debut on TVNZ1 tomorrow.
Speaking to Stuff, Reed said he had been overwhelmed by the response.
‘‘We always knew that because the story involves this iconic figure who has produced the soundtrack to so many people’s lives and important moments, we could get a reaction.
‘‘But we didn’t realise how big it would be, both in terms of the hostility it has generated from the fans and the Jackson organisation, but also the overwhelming positive response from the press and many other ordinary people.
‘‘It has been tremendously encouraging and fantastic for James and Wade, who are used to being vilified and not believed. The whole thing has been transformational for them.’’
He was convinced that would not have been the case had the documentary aired before the rise of the #MeToo movement.
‘‘#MeToo started up while we were in production and I think it has influenced people to take a moment and listen to – and be more likely to believe – a person about a story of sexual abuse.
‘‘Most people don’t enjoy putting something like that out there – it’s not routinely something that people would lie about.’’
Equally, Reed doesn’t believe a celebrity would have been able to keep Jackson’s alleged pattern of behaviour during the late 1980s and 1990s under wraps in today’s world.
‘‘There’s more scrutiny of them and the rise of social media means people are better able to rally around a cause and find a place where they can meet others who have gone through the same thing. I think that would have made it harder for Jackson to get away with stuff.
‘‘Looking back at the time now, though, it’s difficult to realise quite how dazzlingly famous he was. Also, people were more innocent then, I think. They didn’t think of paedophilia first when a child and an adult were in a bed together.
‘‘To us in 2019, it seems crazy how quickly the mums allowed
‘‘#MeToo started up while we were in production and I think it has influenced people to take a moment and listen to – and be more likely to believe – a person about a story of sexual abuse.’’ Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed
Jackson to share a bed with their little boys. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t sort of put their palm to their face and gone ‘what the hell were they thinking?’ But it was a different time.’’
Reed believed that it was just as brave of Robson’s mother, Joy, and Safechuck’s mum, Stephanie, to share their stories as part of the documentary.
‘‘It takes guts to sit down in front of the camera with an audience of potentially hundreds of millions of people and say ‘I delivered my boy into the hands of paedophile’. ‘I thought he was my best friend and I washed his clothes and I cooked for him and I received him into our home as if he were one of our family’ – that’s a hell of an admission to have to make.’’
Working with just a small team, Reed said they tried to make their interviewees as comfortable as possible.
‘‘We are very focused, we create a cocoon-like environment where we set up the lights, check the cameras. I think it feels very, lowkey safe. Plus, I’ve been doing this for 30 years – I’m a good listener.’’
When he and his crew first started out, Leaving Neverland was only commissioned as a 48-minute documentary.
‘‘But that was at a stage before I’d interviewed James or Wade [in February 2017]. We really didn’t know what we’d got. Also I didn’t realise whether they were likely to be telling the truth or not.
‘‘I had to keep an open mind. Like any experienced journalist, I always approach people with some degree of skepticism to begin with. If it had smelled wrong, [or] I thought Wade’s account was inconsistent, or even had a gut feeling he wasn’t telling the truth, then we would have canned the project.
‘‘As it happened, after the five days of interviews with them, I found them sincere and able to effortlessly navigate around their memories – which is always a good sign. Nothing in their accounts led me to think they were lying.’’
After what Reed described as ‘‘extensive, detailed, exhaustive’’ interviews, he then went away for several months digging out information, speaking to investigators and reading through ‘‘piles and piles of documents’’ to try and find ‘‘something that would undermine or challenge’’ Robson and Safechuck’s accounts.
‘‘If anyone was going to find the piece of evidence to undermine their account, I wanted it to be me.
‘‘I also wanted it to happen before this was broadcast, so we did a very thorough, deep dive with a team of researchers into all the material from 1993 and 2003 investigations and found nothing.
‘‘At that point we thought, ‘well this is probably going to be a bigger film’.’’
But while Reed initially proposed a single, two-hour documentary, in the editing room it became clear that it needed a bigger canvas to tell the story.
‘‘The film’s not really about the sexual abuse, or their paths crossing with Michael, it’s about – and this is where the emotional heart of it is in the last half-hour – what happens when the mums learn about what really happened to their little boys.’’
Leaving Neverland screens on TVNZ1 tomorrow at 8.30pm, followed by Part 2 at the same time on Monday. It will also be available on TVNZ OnDemand.