Beiträge von Mikaela

Today we have learned that Geraldine Hughes, author of the book Redemption (a special will be available here soon), has been banned from the court room.

It seems that freedom of speech does not go for the preliminary hearing of Conrad Murray who is charged for the death of our Michael. This is what Geraldine published on her blog page:

riday, January 7, 2011
I Regret to Inform You…

It is my regret to inform the entire Jackson fan community that I will no longer be inside the court room! As many of you know, my intentions since releasing Redemption was to bring the truth to the fans that want to hear it. I have supported Michael Jackson’s innocence since 1993 and the Jackson family since 2003. When Michael settled the case and the information went nowhere, I decided in 1997 to write Redemption for the sole purpose of letting the fans and fanbase know the truth. I promote Redemption wherever the fans are because they tried to block the fans from getting Redemption when it first released. My quest now, in loving memory of Michael Jackson and for the sake of his children, is to protect Michael’s legacy, and to make sure the world knows the truth through whatever forum necessary.

I respect concerns to have no one speak to the press without permission, but feel it is my duty as a citizen of the United States of America to exercise my freedom of speech in this case. I also respect concerns that public speaking might jeopardize the case, but the law is not based on public statements. It is based on facts, evidence and proof. Public statements sway public opinion. When you let a negative statement go unchallenged without a rebuttal, then the public believes the negative. (That is what happened in 2003 when Michael was going to trial and no one was rebutting the negative press. Everyone was shocked to learned that Michael was acquitted on all charges, when he was actually winning the case from the very first prosecution witness — but no one was saying so).

Michael Jackson allowed me to speak publicly on his behalf in 2003/2004 because he knew that I had the ears and eyes of the fans and was fully persuaded that I believed in his innocence. Michael Jackson was the one that gave me permission to use his photo as a cover on Redemption without question and when I needed help promoting Redemption, while they were trying to block it, Michael sent word to me to seek the assistance of polititians and entertainers. Jesse Jackson was the first to break the news about Redemption to Chicago in 2003 when he flew me to do a press conference. Jermaine Jackson called me to do an interview with MSNBC’s Dan Abrams. ABC, NBC, Fox News, Rita Crosby, Jeraldo, Scarsborough Country, Access Hollywood, 20/20, and even Bill O’Rielly had no problem with me supporting Michael’s innocence publicly.

The Jackson Truth was designed to bring the truth because the press picks and chooses what it reports. We wanted a positive channel of getting the truth to the fanbase, using positive people, fans that wasn’t caught up in back biting and hurting other fans and who would keep Michael Jackson’s loving legacy alive.

As much as I respect these wishes, I cannot be silenced. I have invested too much of my life (since 1993) in getting the truth out about one of the most wonderful human beings that has ever lived, Michael Jackson. I feel that God has put me in place and no man can put me assunder. I don’t have to be inside the court house to know what really happened. I already know what Conrad Murray did and its not involuntary manslaughter; its murder! I just want to make sure that the truth is told and true justice is served.

I wish we could all work together, because together we stand and divided we fall. There has definitely been a lot of division in Michael Jackson’s fan base. When I look outside of the court house and see no fans, no supporters and that there is only a handfull of fans on the 9th floor fighting to get inside, it saddens my heart. True loving and supportive Michael Jackson fans have backed away because of the fueding amongst other fans. I never thought I would see the day when so-called MJ fans would fight and claw to keep other fans from supporting. I never though I would see the day when true supporters would be banned from the court house. That wasn’t the case in 2003, but this is 2011 and Michael Jackson is no longer here.

I regret to inform you that the tide has changed. Can we all work together to protect Michael Jackson’s loving legacy? God says in the Bible that, “you know my sheep by their love.” Michael Jackson loved God and lived according to His principles. If you love Michael Jackson we should see God (not the devil) in you too!

Geraldine Hughes

http://www.legendarymichaeljackson.nl/?p=3482
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Ola Ray also sued Jackson, on May 5, 2009, for nonpayment of royalties. “I got the fame” from “Thriller,” she says, “but I didn’t get the fortune.” (The suit is ongoing.) In 1998 she fled Los Angeles and the casting-couch syndrome she says plagued her during the years following “Thriller.” “There were so many big-name directors who told me that if I wanted to do films I had to sleep with them,” she says. She moved to Sacramento to be closer to her family, and is today a stay-at-home mom to her 15-year-old daughter. Ray enjoys hearing from Michael Jackson fans on Facebook and Twitter. “I can’t walk down the street without people recognizing me,” she says.

Ray thinks about Jackson every day, with considerable regret. “I just wish I would have had the opportunity to be a little bit more in his life. I bet he would have been happy with me. It would have taken someone like me who would not put pressure on him or play him for his money or anything other than that I wanted to be with him for who he was,” she says. “I had no other agenda than that.”

Ola Ray and I strongly agree on one thing: we both like to remember Michael Jackson the way he was on the night of October 13, 1983. I can’t forget the way he looked as I peered at him through the glass of the ticket booth at the Palace Theatre: elfin, radiant, ascendant. To me, Thriller seems like the last time that everyone on the planet got excited at the same time by the same thing: no matter where you went in the world, they were playing those songs, and you could dance to them. Since then, the fragmentation of pop culture has destroyed our sense of collective exhilaration, and I miss that.

For Ray, the scene with Jackson later that evening, as he scampered adoringly around her, was a defining experience. “That walk with Michael, when he was dancing around me and singing, I felt like I was the most, I don’t know, blessed girl in the world. Being able to do that and being able to play with Michael, and having him play around me. I felt so in love that night. You can see it in my eyes. You can see it for sure.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/holl…ller-201007?currentPage=5

Landis returned to see Jackson the next day and found him at Frank DiLeo’s house, a few blocks from the Encino estate, in a more cheerful state. He apologized for issuing the order to destroy “Thriller”: “I’m sorry, John. I’m embarrassed.” Landis then informed the star that his directive had been ignored. “I said, ‘Michael, I wouldn’t let it be destroyed.’ He went, ‘Really? Because I think it’s really good.’ I go, ‘Michael, it’s great and you’re great.’ ”

Still, Jackson was concerned about the video’s content. Branca, desperate to mollify his client, invented a ruse. “I said, ‘Mike, did you ever watch Bela Lugosi in Dracula?’ He goes, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Do you know that he was a devout Christian?’ I was just making it up. And I said, ‘Did you ever notice there were, like, disclaimers on those movies?’ He goes, ‘No.’ ‘So, Michael, before we destroy this film, let’s put a disclaimer on it saying that this does not reflect the personal convictions of Michael Jackson.’ ‘Oh!’ He liked it.” Problem solved. Says Landis, “You know, what’s wonderful about Michael—this is where genius comes in. No matter how wacky something was, it always had some amazing benefit. That disclaimer caused a lot of talk, and it generated a lot of interest.”

The A-list turned out for the premiere at the 500-seat historic Crest Theatre: Diana Ross, Warren Beatty, Prince, Eddie Murphy. “I’ve been to the Oscars, the BAFTAs, the Emmys, and the Golden Globes, and I had never seen anything like this,” remembers Landis. Ola Ray looked for Jackson before the lights went down and found him in the projection booth. He told her that she looked beautiful, but refused her entreaty to come sit in the audience. “This is your night,” he told her. “You go enjoy yourself.” Landis warmed up the audience with a new print of the Mickey Mouse cartoon “The Band Concert.” Then came “Thriller,” with its sound mix cranked up to top volume. Fourteen minutes later the crowd was on its feet, applauding and crying, “Encore! Encore!” Eddie Murphy shouted, “Show the goddamn thing again!” And they did.

As the December 2 MTV debut of “Thriller” approached, there was massive audience anticipation. Former MTV executive Les Garland says the network settled on a saturation strategy he describes as “ ‘Every time we play “Thriller,” let’s tell them when we are going to play it again.’ We played it three to five times a day. We were getting audience ratings 10 times the usual when we popped ‘Thriller.’ ”
Showtime aired Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller six times in February. Within months the Vestron release had sold a million copies, making it at the time the biggest-selling home-video release ever.

Landis’s dream for “Thriller” to have an international theatrical run, like the short films from Hollywood’s golden age, would not be fulfilled. In a sense, he became a victim of his own success: Yetnikoff and DiLeo killed any chance of that when they realized that the video was a spectacular marketing tool. “Epic gave away the video free all over the world, to every television station that wanted it,” says Landis. “There was a month when you couldn’t turn the television on and not see ‘Thriller.’ ” Since Landis and Folsey together owned 50 percent of both “Thriller” and Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, they had the legal right to be consulted. “I don’t think it was very kosher,” says Landis, “but it was the right thing for CBS Records to do.”

Having transformed a fun but marginal song into a heroic and historic video, Michael Jackson rode “Thriller” to the mountaintop. The video sent the album’s sales back into the stratosphere, with Epic shipping a million copies a week; by the end of 1984, the album had sold 33 million copies in the U.S. Since then, Thriller has remained unchallenged as the No. 1 album of all time (current sales worldwide: an estimated 110 million).

Jackson grew accustomed to shattering records, collecting spoils and statuettes. On February 28, 1984, he dressed like American royalty in a spangled military jacket to escort Brooke Shields to the Grammy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium, where he picked up an unprecedented eight trophies for Thriller. By this time he was a fabulously wealthy man, thanks to the industry’s highest royalty rate, more than $2 per record, which Branca had negotiated for him.

Thriller had profound consequences on Jackson’s life and subsequent career: it was both a source of his greatest pride, and his curse. Like most entertainers, he was happiest during the heady days of the upward trajectory, and hated the downward journey; his story became uniquely tragic because he viewed everything that came afterward as a failure, and the satisfactions of his private life were not sufficient to compensate. “Michael didn’t see Thriller as a phenomenon,” says Brunman. “He saw it as a stepping-stone to even greater things. We were ecstatic when [his next album] Bad shot past the 20 million mark. Michael was disappointed.”

“To me what happened with Michael is he felt like he needed to top himself,” says Branca, who represented Jackson on and off for the rest of the star’s life and has been named a co-executor of his estate. “That was a lot of pressure. I remember we were in Hong Kong on vacation after Thriller, and I said to him, ‘Mike, you should think about doing an album of the songs that inspired you.’ He said, ‘Why would I do that?’ ‘Well, it would take the pressure off you. Nobody would expect you to have to top Thriller.’ And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, ‘Branca, the next album is going to sell 100 million.’ ”

In January 2009, six months before the star’s death, John Landis and George Folsey filed suit against Michael Jackson and his company Optimum Productions for breach of contract, alleging that they had not been paid their 50 percent of royalties in many years, and accusing Jackson of “fraudulent, malicious and oppressive conduct.” Landis says that over the years he had spoken with Jackson many times to complain that he, Landis, was not receiving the royalties due him, and that Jackson promised to correct the matter. But the entertainer’s financial affairs were chaotic for the last decade of his life as he continually shuffled his business managers. Branca and his own attorney Howard Weitzman report that the “Thriller” video’s accounting records are currently being audited as part of the executor’s obligation to settle the Jackson estate’s debts. “From our perspective Landis and Folsey are priorities,” says Weitzman. “They will definitely get paid what they are owed.”

Jackson also reveled in the company of children at Hayvenhurst, which was like a warm-up for Neverland, a kids’ paradise, which he loved sharing. He had struck up a friendship with the four-foot-three-inch television star Emmanuel Lewis, 12, with whom he would invent games and roll around on the grass, laughing. When George Folsey’s son, Ryan, 13, accompanied his father to meetings at the Jackson home, Michael behaved like a kid who was bored hanging out with the adults, jumping up to show Ryan around. They would feed the llamas, play the video game Frogger, and drive toy Model T’s around the grounds. “Michael was 25, but I’d say that he was 13,” says Ryan. “Mentally, he was 12 to 15 years behind. He could relate to me because he was my age.”

Ryan hung out with Michael in his bedroom, which had a mattress on the floor, toys everywhere, and illustrations of Peter Pan on the walls. They talked about music—“I was amazed that Michael didn’t know who U2 was”—and the girls they had crushes on. Jackson revealed how discombobulated he had been by Ola Ray’s sexual allure after a dance rehearsal with her. “He started getting all nervous and stuff,” says Ryan. “He said, ‘She’s adorable, she’s adorable. She’s so hot!’ It was just so funny seeing him that way.”

No one knew if Jackson, who told Landis he was a virgin, was practicing abstinence for religious reasons, or because he had gotten spooked about women by the obsessed fan who accused him of fathering her child (inspiring “Billie Jean,” according to some reports), or because he was simply too shy to date. Vince Paterson, who helped with the choreography in “Thriller,” says that Jackson would ask him startlingly ignorant questions about sex—“simple, biological, stupid 12-year-old questions.” He adds, “I never saw Michael as a sexual creature. He was always sort of asexual to me—some people are like that. I never had one vibe, as dynamic and electric and powerful as he was. He was like nobody I had ever met in my life. On the one hand he was so socially retarded, and on the other hand he was a creative genius.”

Paterson remembers Jackson asked him once after a dance rehearsal, “ ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m just going to a party with some friends. Do you want to come?’ ‘No, I’ve never been to a party. If I ever went to a party I would just want to go stand behind the curtain and be able to peek out and watch what people do.’ ”

“Friendship is a thing I am just beginning to learn about,” Jackson told Ebony magazine in 1982. “I was raised on the stage and that is where I am comfortable. And everything else is, like, foreign to me.” Jackson had high-profile showbiz buddies such as Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diana Ross, whom he could gossip with on the phone or invite to be his date for a public function. But when “Thriller” colleagues invited him for dinner and suggested that he bring a friend, he showed up alone. He frequently hung out at John and Deborah Landis’s house. “I liked Mike,” says John. “He used to come over to our house all the time and just stay there. I think he was so lonely. He and I got along fine, watching television until three or four in the morning, or looking at books. Deborah [called me into] the kitchen once, and she said to me, ‘John, the most famous human being on the planet is in the library, and I want you to get him the fuck out. Tell him he has to go home!’ ”

OCTOBER 23, 1983; 9:45 a.m.
Rick Baker’s studio, North Hollywood.

‘He’s completely unreliable,” sputters Landis, fuming and pacing as Baker, the makeup creator, arranges werewolf ears, paws, and teeth on his worktable. (Actually, given Jackson’s delicate features, Baker has created a look that is more along the lines of a werecat.) Jackson was scheduled to arrive 45 minutes ago to be made up for his grisly metamorphosis sequence. Finally the star’s black Rolls pulls up outside. Jackson trots in and plunks himself down in the chair. He is wearing a yellow T-shirt, black pants short enough to show his argyle socks, and black loafers with one sole flapping loose. He is carrying the book How to Be a Jewish Mother with a copy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses magazine, The Watchtower, inside.

As Baker hovers over him, working meticulously, Jackson sits silently with his hands folded in his lap. An assistant arrives carrying a yellow pillowcase with something lumpy inside and puts it down in the outer room. “Say Say Say” comes on the radio, the latest Jackson hit single, another duet with Paul McCartney, this one appearing on McCartney’s album Pipes of Peace. Jackson yawns. “I have to tinkle,” he says, and gets up for a bathroom break.

He returns carrying an eight-foot boa constrictor—retrieved from that yellow pillowcase—which he has named Muscles. He wraps the snake around my neck. “Don’t be afraid—Muscles won’t hurt you,” he says in a feathery voice.
hen shooting was finished, Landis and Folsey worked every night in an editing room on the Universal Studios lot; after the original editor departed for another project, Folsey took over cutting. Jackson liked to hang out with Landis and Folsey while they worked, driving himself and arriving in the editing room at about nine P.M. They’d bring in his preferred dinner of salad and brown rice and vegetables. “We’d look at cut footage and talk about things, and it was always fun,” says Folsey. “He was very appreciative and had good ideas.” All three were pleased with the way the short film was shaping up, and looked forward to the premiere at the Crest Theatre, in Westwood, on November 14. When Jackson departed at one or two in the morning, he’d find mash notes on the windshield of his Rolls.

About two weeks before the premiere, Jackson called Branca and, hyperventilating and speaking in a halting voice, ordered him to destroy the negative of “Thriller.” After much cajoling he revealed the reason for his decision. “He said the Jehovah’s Witnesses heard he was doing a werewolf video,” Branca recalls. “They told him that it promoted demonology and they were going to excommunicate him.” Branca conferred with Folsey and Landis, and all agreed that the “Thriller” negative had to be safeguarded. Landis immediately removed the film canisters from the lab and delivered them to Branca’s office, where they were locked up.

Next, according to Landis, he got a call from Jackson’s security chief, Bill Bray, who reported that the singer had been in his room with the door locked for three days, refusing to come out. Landis drove to the Encino estate. “Bill and I kicked in the door, knocked it down, and Michael was lying there. He said, ‘I feel so bad.’ I said, ‘Michael, have you eaten?’ He hadn’t eaten. It was weird. I just said, ‘Look, I want you to see a doctor right now.’ ”

If his spirit on the set seemed carefree, behind the scenes Jackson was emotionally stressed by long-simmering family and business pressures. As he grew to trust some of his “Thriller” collaborators, including Landis, Baker, and Stessel, he opened up about his loneliness, his perception that he had been robbed of his childhood, and his troubled relationship with his father.

Jackson faced a critical moment in his personal development: would his new mega-success and wealth spur him to grow, becoming more confident and independent, or to withdraw further into his gilded fantasy world? His “Thriller” friends marveled at his paradoxical qualities: simultaneously sophisticated as an artist, canny to the point of ruthlessness in business dealings, and breathtakingly immature about relationships. “I dealt with Michael as I would have a really gifted child,” says Landis, “because that’s what he was at that moment. He was emotionally damaged, but so sweet and so talented.”

More than once Landis found himself caught up in the twisted dynamics of the Jackson family. One night when Joseph and Katherine Jackson visited the set, the director recalls, “Michael asked me to have Joe removed. He said, ‘Would you please ask my father to leave?’ So I go over to Mr. Jackson. ‘Mr. Jackson, I’m sorry, but can you please … ?’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m John Landis. I’m directing this.’ ‘Well, I’m Joe Jackson. I do what I please.’ I said, ‘I’ll have to ask security to remove you if you don’t leave now.’ ” Landis says he had a policeman escort Joe Jackson off the set, which Jackson, through his lawyer, denies.

Distancing himself from his father was a theme in Michael Jackson’s life. He had to approve the reams of promotional materials that Epic generated to support “Thriller,” and one day he called the record label’s art department and asked an art director if she could retouch his nose on a famous photo of him as a child. “I want you to slim the wings of my nose,” Jackson told her. “O.K., but Why, Michael?” she asked, and tried to reassure him that his face looked fine just the way it was. “I don’t want to look like my father,” Jackson replied. “Every time I look at that photograph I think I look like my father.”

Although he was no longer Michael’s manager, Joe Jackson remained an intimidating and powerful presence in his life. In the summer of ’83, Jackson relied on his close adviser John Branca to communicate with his father about business matters, avoiding direct confrontation with Joe whenever possible. “Michael was scared to death of Joseph,” says Larry Stessel, who vividly recalls an evening when Joe walked into the room at the Encino house and Michael literally moved behind Stessel to hide, cowering. (Not until a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey would Michael publicly acknowledge how his father had brutalized him as a child.)

Michael was the Jackson family’s golden goose, and ever since he emancipated himself, at the age of 21, Joe had been hostile to his solo endeavors. Now, with millions of Thriller dollars flowing in Michael’s direction, Joe and Katherine and the brothers—all of whom needed money, thanks partly to extravagant spending habits—felt entitled to cash in. They set about organizing a Jacksons “Victory” reunion tour to take place the following summer, railroading Michael into serving as the star attraction. Joseph sent his secret weapon, Katherine, to implore her “special one” to do right by the family, knowing that Michael could not say no to his mother. “Michael did not want to tour,” says Stessel. “He said to them, ‘I will do this for you this once, but don’t come and ask me for money again. After this I have to do my own projects.’ ”

At Hayvenhurst, Jackson led a strange, cocooned existence. A round-the-clock security team kept the ever increasing swarms of fans outside from breaching the walls. Inside, the family’s interactions were gothic and tense. While Katherine had filed for divorce the previous year following revelations of her husband’s infidelity (he had fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter, Joh’Vonnie, whom he visited regularly), Joe had simply moved into a bedroom down the hall rather than move out. Michael tried to make his mother’s life more pleasant and avoid colliding with his father. “Michael would lock his bedroom door,” remembers Branca, “and Joe would threaten to bang it in.” (Joe Jackson, through his lawyer, denies this account.)

Michael transcended the oppressive atmosphere with bursts of musical creativity. He once described his songwriting process as “a gestation, almost like a pregnancy or something. It’s an explosion of something so beautiful, you go, Wow!” When a song was ready to be birthed, he drafted siblings to help him record demos in his home studio; Janet sang backup on the first version of “Billie Jean.” The night before his now legendary appearance on the Motown 25th-anniversary TV special on NBC, where he introduced the Moonwalk, he had choreographed and rehearsed his performance in the kitchen.

On Sundays, Jackson observed the Sabbath with fasting and hours of cathartic ritual dancing. “It was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me,” he later said. Sometimes he invited young street dancers to come show him the latest moves; that was how he learned the Moonwalk.

Jackson would ask startlingly ignorant questions about sex—“simple, biological, stupid 12-year-old questions.”

OCTOBER 13, 1983; 10:30 p.m.
Downtown Los Angeles.

On a desolate city street, Jackson lipsynchs to a playback of “Thriller” as he dances and skitters playfully around Ray. Landis has barely rehearsed the scene because he is hoping for some spontaneous sexual energy between his actors and has asked Jackson to improvise. Ray, who looks deliriously smitten, is supposed to keep the beat with each footstep. Landis puts his hand over his eyes and quietly shakes his head as she repeatedly messes up the tempo, necessitating many takes. Jackson remains charmingly frisky in every one, hugging her as he sings, “Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together … ”

Ray has made it clear to Jackson and everyone else that she wants the cuddling to continue after the “Cut!” “Michael is very special, not like any other guy I’ve met,” she says, kicking off her high heels and settling into her set chair after the scene wraps. “Since we’ve been working together we’ve been getting closer. He was a very shy person, but he’s opened up. I think he’s lived a sheltered life. He knows a lot of entertainers, but he needs friends that he can go out and relax and enjoy himself with, instead of talking to his mannequins in his room.”

The congenial atmosphere on “Thriller” seemed to have a salutary effect on Jackson. He delighted the crew by hanging out on the set between shots, and although he didn’t say much, he responded graciously to anyone who approached. Landis frequently got him giggling with horseplay, once lifting him up by the ankles and shaking him upside down while Jackson shrieked, “Put me down, you punk!”

He would also enjoy a secret interlude with Ola Ray. The actress had her makeup done each day at a studio where Jane Fonda happened to be shooting a workout video. Ray engaged in girl talk with Fonda, a friend of Jackson’s, and solicited tips on how to pique Jackson’s romantic interest. As Ray remembers, “Miss Fonda said, ‘Be yourself—just be sweet and talk to him about things he might be interested in or like to do. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness, so you should talk to him about religion. Maybe he will want you to go to church with him one day.’”

Arriving at the set, Ray would sit outside her trailer and finish touching up her makeup. “Every day Michael came and sat and watched me,” she says. “He was in awe of me. He was always in my face trying to learn to do things with makeup like I did.” When he asked her to come give pointers to his own makeup person, saying, “I have a shine on my nose that I can’t get off,” she agreed. “So I’m seriously talking to his makeup artist, trying to explain what to do, and she looked at me and said, ‘Girl, don’t you know that no matter how much powder I put on his nose it’s going to shine? Do you know how many nose jobs he’s had?’ Then Michael started laughing, because I didn’t know he had had nose jobs! I guess the whole world knew.”

“I dealt with Michael as I would have a really gifted child,” says Landis. “He was emotionally damaged, but so sweet and so talented.”

The flirtation progressed. “I had some intimate moments with him in his trailer,” says Ray. How intimate? “Let me see how I can say this without, you know, being too …” She pauses. “I won’t say that I have seen him in his birthday suit but close enough,” she says, laughing. Because he was shy, she tried not to scare him by coming on too strong. “What we had was such like a little kindergarten thing going on. I thought it was important for him to be around someone who would make him feel comfortable, and that was my main objective.” Did they make out? “Kissing and puppy-love make-out sessions,” she confirms, “and a little more than that.” That is all she cares to divulge. “I’ve already told you more than I’ve ever told anyone!”

Ray watched Jackson switch seamlessly from silly to sober for business meetings. When Jacqueline Onassis’s white limousine pulled up, he greeted the Doubleday Books editor, who had flown out from New York to discuss publishing Jackson’s memoir (which eventually became Moonwalk), with courtly professionalism. Landis says that he barged unknowingly into Jackson’s trailer, and the star coolly said, “John, have you met Mrs. Onassis?”

An eclectic assortment of luminaries appeared on the set to see Jackson. Fred Astaire and Rock Hudson both dropped by. Quincy Jones, watching the filming of the zombie dance, mused about Jackson’s ability to maintain his child-like quality: “It takes a lot of maturity to control all that innocence.” Perhaps the most unlikely visitor to appear was Marlon Brando, who, Landis learned, was slipping acting advice to Jackson. One day when Landis admonished him for not knowing his lines, Jackson said, “Marlon told me to always go for the truth, not the words.” When MTV executive Les Garland arrived for a scheduled visit, he waited in the living room of Jackson’s trailer, chatting with a couple of female assistants. Then “a pair of socks came bouncing out from the bedroom and landed by me,” says Garland. “One of the ladies said, ‘That means Michael is up and ready to see you now.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s unique.’”

It was Folsey and John Branca, Jackson’s lawyer, who put their heads together to solve the budget shortfall. Although cable TV was a new phenomenon and the home-video market had yet to explode, they decided to film behind the scenes on 16-mm. for a nearly 45-minute documentary, Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which, bundled with the “Thriller” video, could be sold to cable. MTV agreed to pay $250,000 and Showtime $300,000 for the one-hour package; Jackson would cover some up-front production costs and be reimbursed. Then Vestron came in and offered to distribute Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a $29.95 “sell-through” video on VHS and Betamax, a pioneering deal of its kind. (Most videos were then sold for far higher prices to rental stores, rather than directly to consumers.) “You have to remember, back in those days none of us realized quite what home video was going to become,” says Folsey. “The studios treated it pretty much the way they treated television in the 50s and 60s, with total disdain. They had no idea that the home-video business was going to save Hollywood—it never crossed their minds.”

Landis had the opposite of “I won’t grow up” in mind: he wanted Jackson to satisfy his female fans by showing some virility.

With the financing in place and only six weeks before the first shooting day, October 11, the team moved swiftly into an accelerated pre-production. Landis hired his director of photography from Trading Places, Robert Paynter, and drafted his own wife, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, best known for putting Harrison Ford in a fedora and leather jacket for Raiders of the Lost Ark, as costume designer. “Beat It” choreographer Michael Peters was brought in and began auditioning dancers and developing street-hip dance phrases for the zombie choreography. Folsey crewed up, securing locations and equipment.

Jackson was driven by the pop star’s occupational affliction: the desire to be a movie star. He had met and befriended Steven Spielberg when he narrated the soundtrack album and audiobook for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. (Jackson cried when recording the part where E.T. dies.) He and Spielberg were in discussions about Jackson’s playing the lead in a filmed musical version of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

But Landis had precisely the opposite of “I won’t grow up” in mind: he wanted Jackson to satisfy his young female fans by showing some virility. He wrote a script that loosely spoofed I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Michael would go on a date with a sexy girl in two separate time periods, the 50s and 80s. There would be dialogue interspersed with music. As the 50s guy, Michael would ask his girl to go steady, tell her, “I’m not like other guys,” then transform into a werewolf and terrorize her. As the 80s guy, he would woo her with seductive dance moves before turning into a ghoul. “The big thing was to give him a girl,” says Landis, pointing out that Jackson hadn’t interacted with females in the videos for “Billie Jean” or “Beat It.” “That was the big breakthrough.”

After Jennifer Beals of Flashdance turned down an offer to co-star, Landis cast an unknown 23-year-old former Playboy Playmate named Ola Ray. “I auditioned a lot of girls and this girl Ola Ray—first of all, she was crazy for Michael,” Landis says. “She had such a great smile. I didn’t know she was a Playmate.” Jackson signed off on Ray, then reconsidered the seemliness of cavorting with an ex-Playmate and came close to derailing the casting. According to Landis, “I said, ‘Michael, she’s a Playmate, but so what? She’s not a Playmate in this.’ He went, ‘O.K., whatever you want.’ I have to tell you, I got along great with Michael.”

It was Deborah Landis’s job to play up Jackson’s masculinity while dressing him in hip, casual clothes that were comfortable for dancing. Since the video would be shot at night in a mostly somber palette, she says, “I felt that red would really pop in front of the ghouls.” She chose the same color for both his jacket and jeans to emphasize a vertical line, making his five-foot-seven-inch, 100-pound frame appear taller. “The socks and the shoes were his own,” she says. “He took that directly from Fred Astaire, who always wore soft leather loafers to dance in, and socks. And Michael was elegant. I worked with David Bowie, who was also that same body frame, again very, very slim. Fred Astaire was a 36 regular; Michael was a 36 regular. David and Michael and Fred Astaire—you could literally put them in anything, and they would carry themselves with a distinction and with confidence and with sexuality.”

Obsessive about tracking his sales figures, Jackson compared them constantly with those of Prince and Madonna.
As he grew older he pulled away from his family to venture into solo projects, notably the 1979 funk-disco smash Off the Wall, which he layered with lush grooves and falsetto vocals with the help of producing partner Quincy Jones. The pair teamed Up again three years later for Thriller. This time Jackson’s aim was nothing less than a Beatles-like domination of the charts that would lay waste to the divisions between rock, soul, and pop. The strategy was to compile a succession of hit singles that would offer something for everyone: the first release was the ballad “The Girl Is Mine,” a duet with Paul McCartney. Second up was the funky anthem “Billie Jean.” Third was the rocker “Beat It,” which featured a blistering Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. Executives at Epic pushed the LP tirelessly, pressuring a range of radio formats to play it and marketing it as a mainstream disc.

Most serendipitously, Jackson was the ideal video star. Not only did he radiate an epicene glamour that was at once innocent and intensely erotic, but he was also conceptually inventive, a great dancer, and a sartorial trendsetter. He judged the quality of what the fledgling rock network MTV was airing to be poor, and felt he could do better. He hired the best directors and choreographers and applied everything he had soaked up from watching Gene Kelly and Astaire movies. In a black jacket and pink shirt he slid and spun his way down a surreal city street in the “Billie Jean” video—an electrifying, transformative performance. Although the song’s thumping bass line and synthesizers excluded it from MTV’s definition of a rock song, the network knew a hit when it saw one and put the clip into heavy rotation. The “Beat It” video was grittier, an homage to West Side Story, with Jackson strutting and spinning in a red-orange leather jacket in the midst of 20 dancers and genuine recruited gang members.

More than any other artist, Jackson ushered in the heyday of the music video, demonstrating its promotional power, raising the bar creatively, and paving the way for greater acceptance of black musicians on MTV. But the Thriller campaign, concocted by the album’s brain trust—Jackson; his lawyer and closest adviser, John Branca; CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff; and Epic head of promotion Frank DiLeo—did not include plans for a third video, and certainly not a video of the title track, which wasn’t even going to be released as a single. “Who wants a single about monsters?” says Yetnikoff, summing up how the group felt at the time about the song’s potential.

But in June of 1983 the album, after four months as No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, was bumped from the top slot by the Flashdance soundtrack. It briefly regained the top position in July, then was toppled again, this time by Synchronicity, by the Police. The three remaining planned singles—“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” just released in May, “Human Nature,” scheduled for July, and “P.Y.T.” for September—were not expected to drive album sales as “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” had, nor were they suitable for videos.

Jackson was upset. Obsessive about tracking his sales figures, he compared them constantly with those of his competitors in the top echelon, including Prince and Madonna. “He enjoyed being on top,” says Larry Stessel, Epic’s West Coast marketing executive, who worked closely with the star. “He reveled in it. He didn’t like it when it ended.” With his own album making history, Jackson yearned to shatter records held by the Fab Four. “It was all about the Beatles,” says Stessel. “He knew in his heart of hearts that he would never be bigger than the Beatles, but he had such tremendous respect for them, and he certainly wanted to come as close as he could.”

In the summer of ’83, Yetnikoff and Stessel answered calls at all hours of the night from Jackson. “Walter, the record isn’t No. 1 anymore,” Yetnikoff remembers Jackson saying. “What are we going to do about it?” “We’re going to go to sleep and deal with it tomorrow,” Yetnikoff told him. It was DiLeo who first mentioned the idea of making a third video, and pressed Jackson to consider the album’s title track. “It’s simple—all you’ve got to do is dance, sing, and make it scary,” DiLeo recalls telling Jackson.

Jackson had known episodes of real-life terror. His father once put on a fright mask and crawled into Michael’s bedroom, screaming.

In some ways “Thriller,” written by Rod Temperton, is the album’s sore thumb, a semi-novelty song with sound effects of creaking doors and eerie footsteps and bwah-ha-ha narration by Vincent Price. Horror was a genre with which Jackson had an ambivalent relationship. As a child, he had known episodes of real-life terror. Michael’s biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli recounted that Joe Jackson had once put on a fright mask and crawled into Michael’s bedroom through a window at night, screaming; Joe Jackson said his purpose was to teach his son to keep the window closed when he slept. For years afterward Michael suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his room, and said that whenever he saw his father he felt nauseated.

Jackson had reason to be fascinated by scary disguises and things that go bump in the night, but he didn’t want them to seem too real. His tastes generally ran to benign Disney-esque fantasies where people were nice and children were safe. “I never was a horror fan,” he said. “I was too scared.” He would make sure that the tone of his “Thriller” film was creepy-comical, not genuinely terrifying.

In early August, John Landis, whose most successful films had been National Lampoon’s Animal House and Trading Places, picked up the phone and heard Jackson’s wee voice On the Line. The star told Landis how much he had enjoyed the director’s horror spoof An American Werewolf in London. Would he be willing to direct Jackson in a music video with a spooky story line that had him transform into a werewolf? At the time, making music videos was not something feature directors did. But Landis was intrigued enough by Jackson’s entreaty to take a meeting.

On the afternoon of August 20, Landis and his producing partner, George Folsey Jr., drove through the gates of Hayvenhurst, the high-walled mock-Tudor estate in Encino where the family had moved when Jackson was 13, and where he still lived with his parents and sisters LaToya and Janet. In 1981, Jackson had purchased the house from his parents and rebuilt it, installing such diversions as an exotic-animal farm stocked with llamas, a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs diorama, and a 32-seat screening room with a popcorn machine. In the corner of his second-story bedroom suite stood his “friends,” five life-size, fully dressed female mannequins.

At the time, Jackson was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness who obeyed his religion’s mandate to spread the faith by knocking on doors in his neighborhood, wearing a crude disguise of mustache and glasses. He attended services at the local Kingdom Hall and abstained from drinking, swearing, sex before marriage, and, supposedly, R-rated movies. The gregarious Landis teased Jackson about having watched the R-rated An American Werewolf in London. “I said, ‘Michael, what about the sex?’ He said, ‘I closed my eyes.’”

Landis told Jackson that he would not direct “Thriller” as a music video, proposing instead that they collaborate on a short narrative film that could be released in theaters—reviving that endangered species, the short subject—before it went to video. Landis would write a story line, inspired by the song, about a cute young guy on a date who turns into a monster. The short would be shot on 35-mm. film with feature-film production values, including great locations and an impressive dance number. Landis would call in a favor from Rick Baker, the Oscar-winning makeup wizard who had created the title creature for An American Werewolf in London, and get him to design Jackson’s transformation makeup. Jackson was enthusiastic about Landis’s vision and immediately said, “Let’s do it.”

Although CBS/Epic had ponied up $250,000 for the “Billie Jean” video, Yetnikoff had refused to underwrite “Beat It,” so Jackson had paid $150,000 out of his own pocket. When Folsey and Landis worked up the budget for “Thriller,” they put it at an estimated $900,000. Landis and Jackson placed a call to “Uncle Walter,” as Jackson referred to him, to explain the “Thriller” concept and what it would cost. Landis says that Yetnikoff screamed so loudly that the director had to hold the phone away from his ear. “I’ve only heard three or four people swear like that in my life,” he says. When Landis hung up the phone, Jackson said calmly, “It’s O.K. I’ll pay for it.” Eventually Yetnikoff agreed that the record company would contribute $100,000 to pay for the video, but that left a long way to go and Jackson’s collaborators didn’t want the star to be on the hook.

Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller” remains the most popular music video of all time: a 14-minute horror spoof that changed the business. Behind the scenes it gave its star a temporary home with director John Landis, sparked a near romance with actress Ola Ray, and revealed how damaged the young pop idol already was. Plus: Read more about the King of Pop in our Michael Jackson archive, and see more music coverage.
By Nancy Griffin
July 2010

OCTOBER 13, 1983; EIGHT p.m
Downtown Los Angeles.

On a chilly autumn night, gaffers rig motion-picture lights around the entrance to the Palace Theatre, which bears the title “Thriller” on its marquee. A cascade of shrieks—“Michael! Michael!”—drifts on the breeze from a few blocks away, where hundreds of fans strain against police barricades for a glimpse of their idol. Although everyone involved in the production has been sworn to secrecy, word of tonight’s shoot has leaked and been broadcast on local radio. Security guards patrol the set.

Michael Jackson, a shy pixie in a red leather jacket and jeans, stands in shadow in the theater’s entryway, talking with actress Ola Ray and director John Landis. The camera crew is making final preparations for a crane shot that will pan down from the marquee as Jackson and Ray, playing a couple on a date, emerge from the theater. Judging from the saucy looks she is sending his way, Ray is clearly besotted by her leading man, who responds by casually throwing an arm around her shoulders.

I am on set covering the shoot for Life magazine. Landis says that he needs a “ticket girl” in the background and orders me to sit in the booth—a prime spot from which to watch the performances.

Just before calling “Action,” Landis fortifies his actors with boisterous encouragement.

“How are you going to be in this shot?” he shouts.

“Wonderful,” Jackson chirps, barely audibly.

Seconds later Jackson steps into his nimbus of light, and it is as if he flips on an internal switch: he smiles, he glows, he mesmerizes. Landis executes the long crane shot, then moves in for close-ups and dialogue. “It’s only a movie,” Jackson reassures his date. “You were scared, weren’t you?”

Landis calls for another take and coaxes: “Make it sexy this time.”

“How?” asks Jackson.

“You know, as if you want to fuck her.”

The star flinches and licks his lips uncomfortably, then gazes earnestly into Ray’s eyes. Landis gets the shot he wants and calls for the next setup, satisfied. He whispers to me, “I bet it will be sexy.”

The world certainly thought so, and apparently still does. The campy horror-fest with dancing zombies that is “Michael Jackson’s Thriller,” originally conceived as a 14-minute short film, is the most popular and influential music video of all time. In January of this year it was designated a national treasure by the Library of Congress, the first music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry.

Unlike forgotten favorites from MTV’s heyday (Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” anyone?), “Thriller” is thriving on YouTube, where one can view, along with the original, scores of “Thriller” dance tutorials and re-enactments by Bollywood actors and Bar Mitzvah celebrants. The dance has become an annual tribal ritual in major cities around the world, with initiates in ghoul makeup aping Michael’s moves en masse; the current record for largest dance of the undead is 12,937, held by Mexico City. A YouTube 41-million-hit sensation features more than 1,500 inmates in a Philippines prison yard executing the funky footwork as part of a rehab program designed to “turn dregs into human beings”; the prison, in the city of Cebu, has become a T-shirt-selling tourist attraction.

None of this was imaginable back at the Palace Theatre 27 years ago. Jackson then was a naïve, preternaturally gifted 25-year-old “who wanted to be turned into a monster, just for fun,” as Landis recently told me—and had the money to make it happen. “Thriller” marked the most incandescent moment in Jackson’s life, his apex creatively as well as commercially. He would spend the rest of his career trying to surpass it. “In the Off the Wall/Thriller era, Michael was in a constant state of becoming,” says Glen Brunman, then Jackson’s publicist at his record company Epic. “It was all about the music, until it also became about the sales and the awards, and something changed forever.”

It was the “Thriller” video that pushed Jackson over the top, consolidating his position as the King of Pop, a royal title he encouraged and Elizabeth Taylor helped popularize. “Thriller” was the seventh and last single and third video (after “Billie Jean” and “Beat It”) to be released from the album of the same name, which had already been on the charts for almost a year since its release, in November 1982. The video’s frenzied reception, whipped up by round-the-clock showings on MTV, would more than double album sales, driving Thriller into the record books as the No. 1 LP of all time, a distinction it maintains today. But, for anyone paying close attention during the making of the “Thriller” video—and Jackson’s collaborators were—the outlines of subsequent tragedies were already painfully visible.

Jackson would dominate pop culture for the remainder of the decade, owning the 80s as Elvis had owned the 50s and the Beatles the 60s. To rule the entertainment universe had been his dream since he belted out “I Want You Back” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969 as the precocious lead singer of the Jackson 5. Under the strict, physically and psychologically abusive tutelage of his father, Joseph, he had sacrificed his childhood to make money for the family and Motown Records. He would later describe his boyhood as a blur of tour buses and tutors, and rehearsals that his father supervised with a belt in his hand, ready to whip any son who stepped out of line. Joe reserved especially harsh treatment for his most gifted and defiant son; although extremely sensitive by nature, Michael was also quietly stubborn and frequently clashed with his father. The brief moments Michael spent onstage were when he felt happiest. “I remember singing at the top of my voice and dancing with real joy and working too hard for a child,” he recalled in his autobiography, Moonwalk.

His mother, Katherine, whom he adored, called him “the special one.” A musical savant, young Michael hungrily devoured show-business knowledge and studied favorite entertainers from Fred Astaire to James Brown to the Beatles. Ron Weisner, hired by Joe Jackson in ’76 to co-manage the Jacksons, recalls that on tour Michael—exhibiting the insomnia that plagued him throughout his life (and would be a factor in the drug overdose that killed him)—stayed up late after each show. “We’d be on the bus and we had a little TV and VHS player. He would watch tapes of James Brown and Jackie Wilson over and over until his brothers were screaming and cursing him and throwing things at the TV. The next day they would hide the tape, and Michael would be crying. He would never, never, never stop.”

DITO
Habe den Thread auch gerade erst entdeckt..komme eh nicht mehr hinterher mit lesen

FOCUS Online hat ein Interview vom "Playboy" - Magazin online gestellt, in dem der legendäre Produzent Quincy Jones über sein Leben und auch über Michael Jackson spricht:

Playboy: Sie werden von vielen bewundert. Wen bewundern Sie?

Jones: Marvin Gaye. Ich habe mal eine Nacht lang mit ihm gespielt. Aber die Leute von Motown Records waren dagegen. Sie sagten, ich sei zu jazzig. Als ich zum ersten Mal mit Michael Jackson spielte, haben sie das auch gesagt. Michael war das egal. Ihm hat es einfach nur Spaß gemacht.

Playboy: Sie sahen Michael Jackson kommen und gehen. Was fühlt man da?

Jones: Es ist noch immer völlig irreal, dass er nicht mehr da ist. Ich kann es einfach noch nicht glauben. Wir haben so eng und so lange zusammengearbeitet. Ich kann auch keinen vernünftigen Grund für all das finden. Ich verstehe es einfach nicht.

Playboy: Wohl kaum jemand hat sich im Laufe seines Lebens so dramatisch verändert wie er. Was ist da passiert?

Jones: Mann, ich habe keine Ahnung. Ich konnte ihm ja nicht in den Kopf hineingucken. Alles, was ich tun kann, ist seine Musik analysieren. Er hat sich in eine Fantasiewelt gerettet, und die hat er für sich dann als Realität empfunden. Er hatte eine schwierige Kindheit. Nicht jeder wird mit fünf Jahren zum Star gemacht.

Hier steht das ganze Interview

http://www.focus.de/panorama/w…-im-leben_aid_586650.html

The following article is written by John M. Curtis and unedited by Legendary Michael Jackson. Opinions and statements made or published in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Legendary Michael Jackson.
Hinting at a possible defense in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Conrad Murray, Los Angeles County District Attorney believes the defense will blame Michael Jackson’s June 25, 2009 death on a self-administered lethal dose of the anesthetic Propofol. “I do think it’s clear that the defense is operating under the theory that the victim, Michael Jackson, killed himself,” said Deputy DA David Walgren. Ruling his cause of death Aug. 28, 2009 “acute Propofol intoxication,” the Los Angeles County Coroner pinpointed Dr. Murray’s role in Jackson’s death. After a successful rehearsal at Los Angeles’ Staples Center for his upcoming British tour, Jackson was found “not breathing” by Murray at 9:00 a.m. June 25. According to police reports, Murray, Jackson’s $100,000 a month personal physician, tried to administer CPR before calling paramedics at 11:00 a.m.

Murray set up a makeshift intravenous drip, administering Propofol, AKA Diprivan, to treat Jackson’s insomnia. Shorting acting anesthetics, like Propofol, are used for surgery, not treating various causes of insomnia. Murray lacked the training or certification in anesthesia, not to mention appropriate monitoring equipment to engage in such high-risk procedures. By the time paramedics arrived at Jackson’s rented Holmby Hills rented home, he was non-responsive, transferred via ambulance to the ER at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center. Two-and-a-half hours later, Jackson was pronounced dead by emergency medical personnel. No one knew then what the coroner would find Aug. 28 that Jackson died of “acute Propofol intoxication” not a rumored “heart attack.” Following Jackson’s death, Dr. Murray went missing before eventually found by the LAPD.
Murray denied doing anything improper that resulted in Jackson’s death. His Propofol insomnia machine defined gross negligence by a licensed physician, creating his own dangerous procedure for treating Jackson’s insomnia. Since the coroner’s finding with respect to Jackson’s cause of death, the defense has been angling for some plausible deniability. “They don’t want to say it but that’s the direction in which they are going,” said Walgren, referring to the defense’s tactic of blaming the overdose on Jackson. Coroner officials found 150 mg of Propofol in Jackson’s blood, over five-times the dose Murray admitted to administering. Accounting for the difference, prosecutors expect Murray’s defense attorney J. Michael Flannagan to argue that, unbeknownst to Murray, Jackson injected himself with the Propofol causing his own death. Flanagan points to two Propoful-filled syringes found the scene.

Diverting attention away from Murray’s gross negligence, Flannagan hopes to eventually create reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds. Propofol keeps patients unconscious as long as it’s maintained at a certain bloodstream level. Flannagan hopes that jurors believe that Jackson awakened on his own, groped for a syringe and injected himself out of desperation. On Jan. 4, Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor will decide whether there’s sufficient evidence to bind Murray over for trial on charges of “involuntary manslaughter.” Given that a Propofol drip falls out the usual and customary treatment for insomnia and given that Murray lacked the training or certification to administer short-acting anesthesia, his treatment defines gross negligence needed for “voluntary manslaughter.” Pastor should find plenty of cause to try Murray for “involuntary manslaughter.”

When the coroner revealed a 150 mg lethal dose of Propofol, the defense could no longer claim trace amounts of benzodiazapines found in Jackson’s blood contributed to the 50-year-old pop singer’s death. Because the 150 mg of Propofol was all that was needed for death, the defense now had to blame to lethal dose on someone other that Dr. Murray. Flannagan must convince a jury that Jackson administered the lethal dose to himself. While Murray admitted to police he administered only 25 mg, he believes it’s credible to blame Jackson for the additional product. Whatever Propofol-filled syringes were found at the scene, it doesn’t mean that Jackson took his treatment into his own hands. While the defense can’t make any outrageous allegation, it’s incredulous that Jackson would overdose himself. Jurors will have to decide what sounds more plausible: Overdose by the doctor or Jackson himself.

Whatever happened in the early morning of June 25, 2009, it’s a known fact that Dr. Conrad Murray, without proper training or certification, engaged in gross negligence administering a risky form of anesthesia to treat Jackson’s insomnia. Quibbling over who administered the lethal injection, jurors must ferret out first Murray’s credibility after administering a highly suspect insomnia treatment. While experiments do go awry, the California Medical Board hasn’t taken lightly Murray’s dangerous and negligent insomnia treatment. Arguing after the fact that he only injected Jackson with 25 mg can’t hide his gross negligence in devising such a high-risk procedure. Focusing on the milligram dosage that killed Jackson diverts attention away from Murray’s gross negligence. What killed Jackson was an arrogant physician playing with anesthesia without proper training, experience or certification.
written by: John M. Curtis
source: examiner.com

Falls schon vorhanden bitte loeschen danke...habe gerade keine Zeit nachzuschauen

Falls nicht vorhanden bitte kann das dann einer Uebersetzen ??

Falls es hier falsch ist ..bitte verschieben

The anger, the smashing of windows, the sparks and fire of the neon signs are references to the Chicago riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King. The deaths and damage from fires set, and shootings, was extensive. The African American rage at the injustices in employment, housing, police brutality, mistreatment by whites, and the rampant lack of humanity and respect accorded them because of skin pigment. Michael has taken much heat over the years for the violence demonstrated in "Black or White," but that violence is an illustration of a factual part of history.

"Black or White" is a video that is filled with symbolic imagery that I am working on for Inner Michael, in an essay about the hidden messages in the film. The "Ghosts" film has a startling reference to the Klan with its burning torches and marching mobs. That illustrates the facts of being black in America—you were a target for violence at the hands of those who wanted you to “know your place” in the social hierarchy. As a black, you understood that you were considered a bottom-feeder. Michael Jackson’s aesthetic and work helped to change the minds and hearts of a generation, but not without conflict. He was both loved and hated; he received both affectionate accolades and death threats. And Michael absolutely understood that in order to keep his pulpit for social change, he needed to stay bold and controversial to sustain his relevance. His courage in music as a message, is unparalleled.

The times Michael grew up in were ripe for his arrival on the youthful scene. It was time for change. From the 1940s until the protests of the 1960s, entertainment had featured characters like: Little Black Sambo, Bosko, and Inki, which solidified the stereotypes of blacks in the minds of audiences. Hollywood prescribed and perpetuated the stereotype of black people as being non-human, by featuring African American performers in cartoon caricature. People like Cab Calloway, “Fats” Waller, Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, Bill “Bo Jangles” Robinson, served as archetypes for a host of animals (yes animals) and people in animated features. This slanted depiction of blacks served to reinforce the animalistic and primitive (because of the natural affinity for dance and rhythms) nature of black folk.

Until the 1960s, blacks being subjected to ridicule and stereotype was the cultural norm. The Black Panther Party was a political revolutionary movement that began in 1966 and lasted until 1975. It expanded to a social and cultural revolution with contemporary symbols like the closed fist. The “Afro” hairstyle became a symbol of the African American pride initiative begun by the Black Panthers, and punctuated by James Brown in “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” released in 1968. Michael publicly declared his allegiance to James Brown as the artist who influenced him most.

In a progression of television programs, the ingrained stereotype was diffused over time. The cutting edge programs included Josie and the Pussycats, the Harlem Globetrotters, and the Kid Power series, which featured a cultural diverse group of eleven children. Kid Power’s theme and premise was that multiracial and multicultural kids who worked together collectively, had the power to change the world socially and politically. The idea of 'Kid Power,' reflected concepts of participatory democracy and bottom-up social movements of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized ideals like: Black Power, Brown Power, Red Power, Woman Power, and Power to the People. The series theme song, “Kid Power… Red, Yellow, Black, and White…White, Yellow, Black, and Red… in other words, It’s up to Kid Power …”

Michael truly did believe that the power to change the world lies silent and untapped within children; he grew up within the ‘kid power’ cultural message, and it explains his loyalty, affection and attention to children. He believed in youth. And it was in a unique time that Michael Jackson wove his magic into the social tapestry of his life and our history. Who Michael was, and what he contributed to civil rights in the social and cultural fabric, was relevant then and deserves to be celebrated today. While Dr. King said it in words and actions, Michael Jackson said it in music, lyrics and the images of film. Michael Jackson, like Martin Luther King before him, was a prolific and vocal freedom fighter.

© B. Kaufmann 2010

By Rev. Barbara Kaufmann

Rev. Barbara Kaufmann

Reverend Barbara Kaufmann is an award winning writer, poet and author. She is a member of the Wisconsin Society of Sciences, Arts and Letters; Wisconsin Regional Writers; and Fellowship of Poets. A minister, shaman and nurse, Barbara is active in the healing arts and is a longtime human activist and peacemaker. She has written for: anthologies, magazines, newspapers, journals, poetry collections, specialty books and programs, grants, businesses and corporations.

For the Words and Violence education packet , Barbara initiated the project, acted as executive chief writer and editor, and wrote the following: Dedication; Introduction; Preface: "Weapons of Mass Destruction: New Violence and WMD;" "Sensationalism, Inflammatory Words and the History of Tabloid Journalism;" and "The Princess and the Toads: A Fairy Tale," a case study.

http://mjtpmagazine.presspubli…black-and-white-and-proud

You may recall hearing that MTV refused to play Michael Jackson’s music video short films, simply because he was African American. Michael single-handedly broke that barrier, and I have to wonder if it is behind the question he asked when he won his second Grammy: “Can you hear me now?” That may have been meant for the blacks in the audience as much as the music industry itself. And Michael’s work was bold. After “Thriller,” Michael made “Bad” to be relevant, and to give African Americans the message that they could and should go to college, and that being bad as in educated, was good and relevant to them too. And in "Black or White," Michael not only takes on prejudice in America, but in the whole world.

He shows us the prejudice and racial rage in America by demonstrating it boldly in his "Black or White" artistry. The symbols are unmistakable. The black cat, which is a black leopard or “Panther” as it is commonly called, is a reference to the Black Panthers and black pride (as is Michael’s frequently closed fist) first showcased by James Brown with his, “I’m Black and I’m Proud” lyrics. Brown changed a whole nation’s youth with that song. He made it cool to be black; something until then uncommon. In "Black or White," Michael dances with all ethnicities: African, Asian, Native Americans, and with the United States’ greatest political enemy—Russians. He is saying, “this is the dance of life and it encircles all humans.”

Michael then begins the “Panther Dance” with a routine of tap dancing that is a direct reference to racism and especially slavery. Tap dance began as a mockery of slaves with “blackface comedy,” in which white men painted their faces black and mimicked slave farmhands working in the fields; depicted them as clumsy, as buffoons, and attempting to run away in tap dance movements. In the sixties, Sammy Davis Jr. featured tap dancing on stage and TV, but for some African Americans it was too Uncle Tom and controversial. 'Uncle Tom’ refers to the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, where the lead character is Negro, pacifist, and subservient to whites.

Michael makes a bold statement in code by incorporating tap and eroticism in "Black or White." The message about prejudice continues as he visibly touches himself and re-zips his fly. Those gestures are an unmistakable statement of contempt that only blacks would recognize. Whites wanted blacks to be quiet and not propagate while they used many methods of population control, and employed forced racial mixing by impregnating black women to lighten skin color. The white community was aghast at Michael Jackson’s “antics.” They completely missed the message because it wasn’t intended for them. That may have been deliberate, for knowing Michael’s famous sense of humor, he must have chuckled all the way to infamy.

Themes that emerge in the smoky cloud he punches through, are also iconic racial and cultural images—the burning cross which refers to the Klu Klux Klan, the original (American) terrorists who strike fear in hearts and homes with burning crosses. The nuclear cloud is an indictment of governments and an arms race out of control. The lyric “I ain’t afraid of no sheets” is a direct reference to the Klu Klux Klan who wore white sheets and cone-shaped hoods with cutout eyes. The Klan was known for its vigilante justice, and many accused n’s (n-word) were victims of lynching- impromptu death by hanging. The sheets covered them, and kept the criminals anonymous while white law enforcement looked the other way.

Something important prompted this column—a gaping hole in knowledge. A friend and I were having a conversation about Michael Jackson and his life’s work, and the song, lyrics, and the short film "Black or White," came up in discussion. Both of us grew up in the sixties, and our dialogue covered most of the relevant issues and the discussion went on for hours. I brought up Stevie Wonder’s equivalent, “Ebony and Ivory.” She remembered. We spoke of The Black Panthers, Abbey Hoffman, Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and Michael’s childhood during the turbulent civil rights movement. We talked about John Lennon and the Beatles, Yoko Ono, Julian and Sean Lennon because it was the anniversary of John’s death. We spoke of the riots in Chicago, Viet Nam, and the Peace Movement and flower children. I recall those days with a wistfulness that I am not able to explain in words. It’s a feeling. I wish I could share it with you; it’s not possible.

At some point the phone heated up on my end as I realized that my friend had just gone through some fresh, and still stinging criticism, for speaking about the history within Michael Jackson’s work. It had raised the ugly issues of racism and white guilt. And though she could speak with me about it, she was just too weary to address it in ways I had previously suggested—like writing it, teaching classes or a podcast of our “black-white” conversation. But when I brought up the subject again, all she could say was: “I can’t. I’ve paid my dues. I can’t pay them again.” There was such a complete and utter resignation in her voice, such morbid weariness! I completely understand. But part of me got really angry as the tears in my throat stung silent and sad. My friend holds a rich piece of history that may never be shared.

You see, she is black. African American. Negro. And she’s been a lot of those other things that people say to differentiate a shade of skin color, some of them not so polite. She can’t tell you the stories because when she brings up the subject, some say she is rehashing a past that is irrelevant now or that she has a secret agenda.

Well, I lived that same past and my stories too, could make your hair stand at attention, but I never had to worry about “being… while black” or trying to make myself harmless or invisible or to keep pushing down my justifiable DNA-cellular rage, like a beach ball underwater. I didn’t have to keep my radar on high alert or scan my environment in perpetual motion to feel the vibe for safety, and test if I was too presuming in just my presence alone. I can tell you stories of racism from both sides—back and white. And red. My partial Native American heritage is testament to my ancestors similarly turned into non-humans and called savages, which is every bit as hurtful as the N-word.

My friend and I have an intimacy that not many share because it is safe talking about where we come from with someone who understands where you came from, and what perils littered the path that you took to get here. What you have overcome, how hard it was to work your way here, and what it means to land in the place called now. And just how weary and spent is your soul now that you have arrived.

I confided to her that I loved not just music, but dance. I remember that while Dick Clark’s American Bandstand was exciting, Soul Train was the happenin’ place. (For the younger crowd- Bandstand was a kind of virtual music and dance club for white kids on after school TV, but Soul Train was the rockin’ black version.) So the natural progression for me—a blues, soul, and funk music and dance addict, was to find my way to the reality version of Soul Train, which meant the clubs on the north side of Milwaukee and the south side of Chicago. Many times I was the only white girl in the place.

So I understand my friend’s transverse fatigue. I lived it too, but not in the same way. It’s hard to understand prejudice unless you have walked in those shoes, or in my case, the white girl with moccasins. The intolerance shown my friend for her grandmotherly, archetypal wisdom, is an affront that just simply cannot stand. We need to acknowledge and honor all those who came before. Remember Michael’s tribute to Sammy Davis Junior? It was homage to his paving the way so Michael might follow.

The past and Michael Jackson’s part in it; his contribution to the present and impact on the future, is not to be understated or dismissed. Not by me—and now not by you. Nor will it be made irrelevant on my watch by the ignorance in that glaring vacuum of knowledge crushing the spirit of my friend. Michael Jackson’s life and how he lived it, how he and his life were shaped by the times in which he and we lived, and how that influence helped him shape the future, is very relevant to understanding Michael, The Man. It is also an essential piece of how Michael’s aesthetic informs his work.
Those younger fans or the newcomers to the MJ party, cannot fully appreciate Michael Jackson’s work until his courage, his boldness, and the depth of his love for humanity is fully comprehended. It was his stealth that saved him much because to out overt racism was politically incorrect; it was his boldness and the silent screams that made him a target for those who awoke to what he was doing.

To put some perspective on the times: The Vietnam War was ongoing and Kent State was fresh in the collective memory. (At Kent State, protesting university students had been shot and killed by the National Guard, an incident which pitted a generation of idealistic youth against their own government. John Lennon was on the FBI “watch” list for being a ‘peacenik” and “troublemaker.” There was an attempt to deport him and ban him from the United States. Michael Jackson was on lists that we may never hear about and never know. So forgive me the history lesson, indulge me and permit the white girl to tell you…

Michael Jackson was a civil rights activist. Michael, the Jackson Five and the Jackson family, grew up in troubled and racially charged times. Prejudice was prominent and permanent, and the black man (meaning the collective race) was a second class citizen. Much of the south was still segregated when Michael was born— black people had to stick to their own kind in schools, neighborhoods, public places, and even rest rooms. The doors of restrooms invited “colored” to separate and frequent sub-standard facilities. Black entertainers like Sammy Davis Junior, Little Richard, Louis Armstrong and others, were tolerated and a bit more acceptable because of their talent, but often had to come in through the kitchens and garages of fine hotels and public venues because the front door was off limits to “coloreds.”

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The King of Pop’s new album, Michael is #3, and the Number Ones album is #121 on the Billboard 200 chart. Everything that Michael Jackson was ever associated with was a success. The fact that to this day, his albums remain on the Billboard chart shows the profound impact that he has had on all of his millions of fans around the world.

As the new Billboard chart shows, the Number Ones album has been on the chart for 88 weeks.

sources: Examiner.com; Billboard

Online auction website eBay sold a handwritten note by Michael Jackson from June 2009. The note, which was sold for £ 2.050 (more than $ 3,000) was allegedly found in June 2009 by staff working at Michael’s home in Holmby Hills. It seems to reference to the then upcoming This is it concerts in London: “One year in London 3? International # 1 2 3 4 5 albums and single”.

The note was written on Dr. Arnie Klein’s stationary, continues: “Talk to digital people, Universal, Warner … make huge $ ..” followed by “Who’s doing sculpture for Halloween special.”

The red stains on the note are from a drink.
source: eBay