This week’s Entertainment Weekly has the inside story on Michael Jackson’s final performances and the film that captures his last days. His tragic death last June shook the world, and now Jackson is returning to the stage – and the screen – thanks to some revealing raw footage, a director he trusted, and the resurrecting power of his adoring fans.
With a 50-show engagement set for London’s 02 arena, Jackson wanted to give his fans the ultimate Michael Jackson concert experience, a career-capping spectacle to end all spectacles. It was right there in the name: “This Is It.” But at age 50, Jackson hadn’t performed on stage in more than a decade, and as he rehearsed the show at L.A.’s Staples Center, his collaborators sometimes worried that he was pushing himself too hard: not eating enough, not getting enough rest.
“Don’t worry,”
Jackson told director Kenny Ortega.
“Just put the people all crushed up against the stage. They’re my fuel. They’re my food. Their love will get me to the end.”
On June 25 the pieces were nearly all in place when Jackson’s sudden death brought the production to a stunned halt. It seemed Jackson’s ambitions for This Is It – to reinvigorate his career, rejuvenate his fan base, replenish his finances, and spread messages of peace, love, and ecological responsibility – would never be realized. But cameras had been rolling during those four months of rehearsals, recording the singer as he and his team developed the show. Though some of it was considered potential backstage material for a later concert movie, it was never meant to be seen by the public. Suddenly it became the last existing documentation of one of history’s greatest entertainers at work. Now, after months of anticipation, the world will finally get a chance to see that footage when This Is It opens around the globe on Oct. 28.
Kenny Ortega, the director of both the concert and now the film This is It was one of Jackson’s closest collaborators.
“Over the last few years, Michael would say, ‘Let’s find something to do,’”
Ortega says.
“But he turned down a lot. He turned down an invitation to do a Vegas production. He said, ‘It has to be important. We can’t do something just because we can.’ I’d never heard him talk like that before. This time around, he wanted to do it for deeper reasons, more mature reasons.”
The announcement of Jackson’s London concerts was greeted with both excitement and skepticism. Many speculated that Jackson simply needed the money, but Randy Phillips, president of the concert promotion firm AEG Live, says there was more to it.
“After the press conference, I asked him, ‘Why now?’ He said, ‘Because I’ve spent 12-and-a-half years bringing my kids up, and now they’re old enough to appreciate what I do – and I’m still young enough to do it.’ Yes, he had to clean up his finances. But money was not the primary motivating factor.”
As the production got under way, it quickly became clear that Jackson’s creative ambitions for the concert were beyond anything he’d ever attempted. With the budget already past $24 million, Jackson told his team he wanted to recreate one of the world’s largest waterfalls on the stage.
“I was ready to jump off the balcony of my office,”
Phillips says.
“We went and met with Michael, and Kenny said, ‘Michael, you’ve got to stop. We’ve got an incredible show, we don’t need any more vignettes.’ Michael said, ‘But Kenny, God channels this through me at night. I can’t sleep because I’m so super-charged.’ Kenny said, ‘But Michael, we have to finish. Can’t God take a vacation?’ Without missing a beat, Michael said, ‘You don’t understand – if I’m not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince.’”
Many outsiders wondered whether Jackson could pull off the physically grueling task of mounting 50 concerts. His collaborators were reassured as they watched some of the world’s best young dancers struggle to match his moves. Still, Jackson did look awfully thin.
“I was always handing him Boost drinks and meal-replacement things,”
says choreographer Travis Payne.
“We all encouraged him to eat as much as he could. But at the same time, I understand: When you eat a lot and then you dance, it hurts. It was all for his art, I think.” There was only so much anyone could do to influence Jackson, says Ortega: “He was loved and considered. I told him I worried about him. But we weren’t there as his nurses. We were his creative team. He was in charge of his life. He was his own man.”
Jackson had insisted on retaining a full-time private physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, who was paid through the show’s budget to oversee his medical needs. Dr. Murray is now the focus of a manslaughter investigation.
“Michael was very confident in the doctor,”
Phillips says.
“I actually tried to talk him out of hiring him. I didn’t want to spend $150,000 a month on a doctor, since we were playing in London, which has phenomenal medical resources. It was the first time Michael and I had cross words with each other. He admonished me that he needed a doctor 24/7, the same way Barack Obama did, because his body is what fuels this whole business. Michael prevailed on that. And I guess, looking back, we know why.”
After a team of editors distilled the footage to three-and-a-half hours, and Phillips – in conjunction with the executors of Jackson’s estate – agreed to go ahead with a movie. Ortega was asked to direct. The heads of four major studios were able to see fifteen minutes of footage, and after that a bidding war erupted that lasted more than a week. Ultimately, Sony won the auction, paying $60 million for the right to release the film. And after that point, the task of crafting a movie began, and no one wanted to waste a moment.
“At first they wanted to get the film out by Michael’s birthday, August 29,”
Ortega says.
“I said, ‘No way.’ They came back to me the next day and said, ‘We’ll give you Halloween’ – which was actually okay. Halloween was Michael’s favorite holiday.”
Some wonder if the fiercely private Jackson would be comfortable with audiences getting such an intimate look inside his creative process. Ortega is confident Jackson would give This Is It his blessing:
“I know Michael, and I know why he wanted to do This Is It. As long as the film is based on those reasons – letting his children see what he loved in his life, giving something back to the fans who were so loyal to him through thick and thin, sharing his concern about the health of our planet – why wouldn’t Michael be happy? He didn’t intend not to finish this project. It was an accident.”
Jackson’s last rehearsal wrapped just ten hours before his death. Those who were there that day say that, with less than three weeks left to go until opening night in London, Jackson left that night feeling confident and strong.
“We were walking to our cars at about 12:30,”
Phillips says.
“He put his arms around me, and, in that little, lilting voice of his, he said, ‘Thank you for getting me this far. Now I can take it from here. I know I can do this.’ I think it was the first time that, in his heart and soul, he accepted that he could come back, and that he could be great again.”
Source: mjfanclub.net
22nd October 2009
'This Is It' O2 Concerts (UK), General News, Tributes on Death | 
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