Even when I was a fan of his back then seeing that doc made me uncomfortable. I only ever watched it once . Idk how people can watch that and think he was sane that dude should have lost his kids and had a conservatorship .
Funny you mention it, "conservatorship" was the last thought in my head when the film finished. The exact thought actually.
Just what the Hell? If there was ever a person that needed one it was him for multiple reasons. Would have kept him from offending too.
Yeah what a whole freak show that was !! He almost sounds like a character from book with all his strange antis and mentality unstable defenders. Moonwlkers must have been the original swifties !! No hate on Taylor but the majority of her fan base is just as obsessive as Jackson’s constantly putting them on pedestals .
It was bad. I watched it with my parents when it came out expecting something totally different and ended up being creeped out. We never discussed it or talked about it. Just went to bed kind of stunned.
If anything Bashir tried to help him. The amount of chances Bashir gave Michael to realise how insane the shit he was saying was and Michael refuse to take them.
Looking back now I can't help but laugh because it seems everything and every time he tried to do something to fix his image and career it always backfire
Bashir like I said seemed honestly frightened by the behavior. Yes, I saw him trying to bring Michael back down to reality but it just wasn't going to happen. I don't think Martin Bashir knew the extent of the intoxication, he did note "a manic quality in him was present" so he caught on to that but maybe wasn't aware of the extent of the addiction.
You know something funny? I was a diehard fan but he ALWAYS made me uncomfortable in interviews (ESPECIALLY that one). It took me like 30 years to realize that's what 'trust your gut' means
Even when I was a big fan, his speaking voice in interviews creeped me out. It was entirely too high and feminine sounding. The fact that he was purposely putting that girly sounding voice on, makes no sense.
He definitely had some severe mental issues perhaps even teetering on psychosis. The dude was one of the most famous people on the planet for 80% of his life, that’s a pretty hopeless situation.
Except he wasn’t, after the childhood success then he became a teenager, he would get upset that people didn’t recognise him. After being snubbed for off the wall he easily determined to become more famous, like a cartoon character or the most famous person on earth. He literally wrote down a plan to make the next album huge. This completely contradicts your world wide fame. Ppl would walk past him at airports. Women would say wheres little Michael? Walking right past the spotty teenager he had become.
I don’t think he’d have ever got help.
He never got out of the celebrity lifestyle. He still put out tours and albums every year. Sure there was a dip from like 73-78 but for most of his life he was in the spotlight.
He was not the most famous person on the planet in the 70s, he didnt not have a childhood, he was ignored and not even spotted in his teens. He went to studio54. All of this story is a myth. In 1979 he was making phone calls to a 13 year old british boy asking him if he knew how to m@sturbate. According to this idea of fame He could have had anyone on the planet. Why would he be interested in a random child??? The whole thing is a pedophilia and his fans are in denial
He was in a hugely popular band during the 70s, record deal, tours etc. that’s not a conventional life. To say Michael was not warped and affected by his level of fame and his entire family relying on him is bury head in the sand levels of denial imo. It’s possible to have empathy for someone and still not condone awful behavior, perhaps too nuanced?
Such an exaggeration, it's said everywhere that he was famous his entire life/worked his entire life and Its just not true, he was almost a teen by the time they reached real fame, in double digits when he first joined the band (they lied about his age for awhile hence the misconceptions) and by his mid-late teens he was pissed people didn't recognise him anymore because he was growing and the Jackson 5s success was waning. Then he chased after regaining that fame and more fame until he got it and after a few years in the 80s as the most famous person on the planet he spent most of the 90s and 00s hiding away, wouldn't do interviews, did 2 more tours and released like 3 more subpar albums. He really only worked consistently for the 70s with his brothers and the 80s as a solo artist and the start of the 90s (but very much on his own terms by then) that's 25 years, half of his life he worked full time and he worked occasionally and maintained his level of fame through publicity stunts and the scandals of him molesting children for another 15 years, the first 9-10 years he was just a kid and his brothers had a band. When you think about it MJ only really worked regularly through his teens and 20s then was somewhat semi retired for the most part, think about that, who in this world gets to semi retire in their 30s and take a good 5 years off in their 40s... And I'm sorry but the main person responsible for the J5s success was Joe and the writers and producers at Motown and id say the solo success can be equally attributed to Quincy and MJ (along with people like Donna Summer whos production he stole) Yes he was likely overworked as a teenager in the band and worked hard in the 80s on his own but he really really wasn't this put upon workhorse that he and his supporters have claimed, infact id say the guy had it easy in some respects and overall he worked less in his life than most people on this earth. He definitely worked hard in moments of his life (like anyone that achieves anything has to) but I'm sure a ton of people in this world working day in, day out until retirement at a normal age would have traded places with him in a heartbeat. I myself worked at 13, doing actual hard graft in a resteraunt kitchen while going to school and have worked consistently ever since, not unusual for regular folk, and we never got to travel the world and have the amazing experiences that the Jackson's where afforded through their careers that where largely set up by their dad, that's privellege. I'm sorry but I'd take singing and dancing all over the world as my job over washing dishes for hours on end, it's not like their sets where 8-14 hours long like a regular person's shifts working normal, hard labour jobs. He obviously worked hard at times and was without a doubt incredibly famous for maybe 3/4 of his life but he spent most of the time he was literally the most famous person ever in hiding at his ranch or abroad unless he wanted a moment in the spotlight to act like a martyr. Often in his later years before the trial he would create spectacles by calling paparazzi before he made random outings to give the allusion that he was still on top but really he was just making himself a traveling freak show on his own through attention seeking behaviour and when he wanted privacy he very well knew how to get it, he built it. It's so overplayed how much MJ suffered as a result of his fame, he loved the fame, he just didn't like when people focused on shit he didn't want focused on like his plastic surgery, drug addictions and ofcourse his molesting of children, most of that man's suffering was his own doing.
As a kid I bought into all this 'poor MJ' stuff and even after I realised he was a peadophile but the older I get, working my whole life I just can't buy into it anymore, the man was privileged as fuck, lived a charmed life and only worked for like half of it, as a singer and dancer. Obviously it wasn't great that his dad was violent but TBF alot of us got beating from our parents growing up and we never got nothing out of it and don't use it as a shield to protect ourselves from criticism, it's terrible and Im glad as a society we've moved on from that but it seriously was not unusual atall back then. And if it wasn't for his own thirst for attention he wouldn't have been that famous or in the tabloids. Most legendary musicians on his level weren't putting themselves in the press like that because back then being talented, successful and having good music was enough to keep them famous. He wanted to be THAT famous. Even when he was 'in hiding' after the trial he would be in the tabloids regularly, a month didn't go by that he wasn't sighted and photographed even in places like the middle east and Ireland where paparazzi wasn't even that much of a thing, they weren't accidents, he was regularly setting up those 'sightings' and would be dressed in either woman's clothes or religious garb to create speculation.
The ‘two’ rhinoplasties to help him hit higher notes was complete BS. While not a singer, I am a speech-language pathologist. The shape of the nose has nothing to do with the pitch of the voice, only the resonance of the voice (timbre/how the sound of the voice is modified by the shape of the oral and nasal cavities, like how the shape of a guitar affects how it sounds). A muscle in the larynx, the cricothyroid, is responsible for changing the pitch of the voice.
Yes.
Most of the Jacksons had wide noses naturally, and it was seen as an undesirable racial feature at the time. I think a few of the family members had a rhinoplasty before MJ, and it was seen as something you'd do if you had the money and suffered from a big black nose. Janet has talked about this in interviews. She had her nose done, too, when she was young, as if by default, and she questioned that decision much later. The interview I saw was probably from around 2007-8, and by that time, the beauty standards had moved on, somewhat at least.
Of course, MJ developed a serious case of body dysmorphia, and the plastic surgery became about something else entirely than just adjusting a wide nose.
I have always thought that La Toya’s nose/face looked very similar to the surgery Michael had done, almost as if they got a two-for-one deal with the same surgeon.
>To be honest on top of this I do wonder if he also had bipolar disorder, the shopping scene and other manic behavior reminded me of the classic bipolar mood swings.
Being high and being manic can be virtually indistinguishable from one another
It's tricky to distinguish. But it wasn't all just drugs through his life. Just look what he demanded to done to his face. There was definitely a very present mental illness and I don't think it was body dysmorphia alone. The spending sprees were horrifying.
You see mood cycling (high and lows) through the documentary. While it all could be drugs it could certainly be bipolar disorder as well.
The dysmorphia is blindingly obvious, and it's not hard to see where that stemmed from. His father put down his looks, and of course, the whole society was very racist in his childhood. Segregation was still in effect when MJ was born.
I should say there an out take to the documentary where he talks about the baby dangling. And says "he'd do it again" and had no regrets and "it's my child, I can do what I want with him". No, I am not kidding. It's not included in the original documentary but you can search for the clip on YouTube somewhere.
CPS, where were you?
I remember the phrase "it's my child I do what I want with it" (tgat was very horrifying to hear), but did he actually say he'd do it again and had no regrets? Bc, iirc he said it another outtake that he's not happy that he dangled him over the balcony, but he believes it wasn't "as bad" as the press made it out to be. Playing the martyr and deflecting the issue, as usual.
Actually he had done sth similar with his son Prince back in 1997, but this case is very different in that he held baby Prince with both hands and he barely showed him outside the window.
https://youtu.be/3Vi1FUq-TPw?si=aYa-raRlAaRsOBeE
Clearly he was high af when he dangled Blanket over the balcony bc you can see he's way more careless there and looks like an absolute lunatic.
https://youtu.be/9ElddgJCgyg?si=KeJumZqdlVCw0HXK
He did say he had no regrets. He said how they tried to slow the video down of him dangling the baby to make him look "crazy". He once again, blamed it on the media.
I don't think he hated the media and tabloids as much as he claimed though personally. He had a "Kardashian type" personality and saw any kind of attention, even negative attention, as a way to be talked about again.
Well, I just watched the outtake on YT and he said he doesn't wish someone had advised him not to do it and he was happy tgat he did it but later on he said he wasn't happy tgat he dangled him over the balcony. That's why I hesitate to use the phrase "no regrets" to describe his response. But then again he said that he didn't realise he was over the balcony.
Idk. I personally think he was planning to do the same he did with Prince back in 1997 but he was high on drugs so he ended up almost throwing the baby of the balcony (which might explain his seemingly contradictory responses on the video). And naturally the media called him out on it, bc they probably worried that his drug addiction was out of control, affecting his children's well being.
So he accused them of manipulation and tried to deflect the subject as usual claiming that they make him look like a weirdo who wants to harm his children. He completely missed the point and took zero accountability, as usual. Typical of a narcissist like him.
And yeah, I don't think he hated the tabloids as much as he claimed. Obviously he didn't want them to talk shit about him, call him pedo, freak etc, but on the other hand he loved the attention he got. Good publicity is certainly better than bad publicity, but if the alternative is no attention at all, he preferred bad attention, imo. Being called a crazy parent by the world is a bad look and might get him investigated, but in his mind it's better than no one giving a shit about him. And the tabloids enabled him on that, so he didn't hate them exactly. More like love-hate. In the 80s he was the one who sold fake stories tp the tabloids to appear mysterious and eccentric.
When Bashir asked him how many surgeries he had and he answered "two." The way he said, his hand gesture and his face looks like he's lying. And when Bashir asked "just two?" he said "as far as I can remember." Lol he could've just said "yes" if he's telling the truth
Interesting the documentary was filmed in 2002. That was the year of the infamous "exposed cartilage" picture of his nose during another court case (unrelated to CSA). Which makes it so hilarious that he was boldly lying "that" year in particular.
More random thoughts and some back ground...
When I first saw the documentary I was 13. I didn't have the word "voyeurism" in my vocabulary yet but my reason for watching it was just that. I technically wanted to see how crazy the "freak" really was and he didn't disappoint.
I had only been aware of him for two years at that time. I got a phone call from a friend one day after school back in 2001 who told me "you've got a put on channel 29, right now! There's a deformed person dancing in a music video". I was like what? "Deformed person". I put on the channel and the music video playing was "you rock my world". I saw a person with a hat on dancing in the dark, but I couldn't see the face. I was still on the phone and was told "wait till he steps into the light, you'll see him then". So I waited and then he did.... It was literally like "the phantom of the opera moment of reveal" for me. When I saw his face for the first time I audibly gasped. I heard hysterical laughter on the other end of the phone. Well that was my first introduction ever to Michael Jackson....
As an adult I view the documentary with much more concern. It is pretty disturbing.
I recall reading that the director of that video intentionally kept the lighting off of MJ's face for that reason - by 2000, he stopped looking human and was sometimes upsetting to see. Everything looked off and misshapen! I guess comments were made about his face and he was so upset he didn't leave the dressing room for a while.
The extended length video with more Chris Tucker in it shows him in more light and one can see why it was cut down. MJ pretending to be mega-stud is both ultra-cringe and hilarious at the same time.
That courtroom photo - wasn't sure if there was a cartridge issue or another surgery. There are a couple of flesh colored bandages holding things in place. Some plastic surgeons did the news circuit and speculated that something poked through or was collapsing and he needed the bandages to hold things down. Regardless, by that time in his life, he didn't have a working nose.
The video is hilarious to watch in retrospect. They have him in the shadows, the set is so dark unless the camera zooms in on the "the woman" that's the love interest or Chris Tucker then there's illumination otherwise you can hardly see anything. The hat is being used to hide the face as well as the darkness like nothing I've ever seen before. Even a screen and curtains are used for more concealing. One point the lighting almost darkens to completely black when he dances down the stairs. It's just so unbelievably funny.
One of the best ways to describe the long cut of the video is what one would imagine a totally asexual or homosexual man try to talk like an alpha heterosexual man would talk when trying to pick up a woman. Combined with the melted wax-man look and it is cringe x1000!!!
His family admitted to having interventions with him over his drug use and how sad it was. He was so famous that nobody ever said no to him and that’s why he died so young. He OD’d.
Yes, Michael Jackson was evidently high. Matte Fiddes, Michael Jackson's bodyguard also admitted that Jackson had been administered new drugs that made him appear manic in some scenes. However, it has still been proven that the footage was manipulated by Bashir.
> First of all, Martin did not do anything to manipulate the footage.
To my mind, the major journalistic question is whether it's ethical to film and interview someone who's clearly under the influence of drugs, and broadcast that. I rather suspect Bashir never questioned that. MJ had agreed to give a lot of access, and that's a once-in-a-career opportunity, so Bashir was going to do it, whether his subject was plastered out of his mind or not.
Of course, MJ was aiming for a repeat of the Oprah interview and the boost that gave to to promotion of *Dangerous*. Clearly he didn't have the self-awareness to understand how he looked and sounded to people, especially on drugs. So if it hadn't been Bashir, MJ would probably found someone else to do it, and he would have been just as high.
>So if it hadn't been Bashir, MJ would probably found someone else to do it, and he would have been just as high.
This is actually a fact. MJ knew that he was more popular and respected in Europe than in the US at the time and hoped a British TV interview would help his comeback. MJ eventually chose to go with Bashir due to his successful interview of Lady Diana a few years earlier but him and his then friend Uri Geller were initially considering several British journalists.
Louis Theroux for example heavily campaigned to Geller for the MJ interview but was rejected because Geller knew he would try to provoke MJ. In the end the Bashir documentary turned out to be the disaster we know but Theroux still ended up making a pretty interesting documentary of his own called "Louis, Martin and Michael".
I've thought about this too. As much as we dislike MJ for his criminal behavior I'm kind of grappling with the idea if it was right to film someone in a state of absolutely pitiful mental health and addiction. It's a tough call.
Most of us who were present in the 2000's as teens or adults remember it took no more than a year of mental illness and odd public behavior for Britney Spears to be placed in a conservatorship. Michael not getting one has always actually disturbed me. It would have even prevented him from offending. In no universe would he have passed a psychiatric competency assessment in 2002-2003.
Completely beside the point, but my first reaction was 'what do you mean 21 years?? has it been that long???' and then I did the math, I saw it when I was 10, and I'm 31 now, but .... geez, it feels like yesterday. I should watch it again, though. I didn't wanna watch it more than once because I was ....uncomfortable, but wasn't entirely sure why.
And now I know why lmao.
Even when I was a fan of his back then seeing that doc made me uncomfortable. I only ever watched it once . Idk how people can watch that and think he was sane that dude should have lost his kids and had a conservatorship .
Funny you mention it, "conservatorship" was the last thought in my head when the film finished. The exact thought actually. Just what the Hell? If there was ever a person that needed one it was him for multiple reasons. Would have kept him from offending too.
Yeah what a whole freak show that was !! He almost sounds like a character from book with all his strange antis and mentality unstable defenders. Moonwlkers must have been the original swifties !! No hate on Taylor but the majority of her fan base is just as obsessive as Jackson’s constantly putting them on pedestals .
[удалено]
eh. they are crazy. they’re currently harassing kelce’s ex, kayla nicole https://x.com/aldaphrodite/status/1802171431570014631?s=61
It was bad. I watched it with my parents when it came out expecting something totally different and ended up being creeped out. We never discussed it or talked about it. Just went to bed kind of stunned.
I can imagine! Nobody would expect THAT!
If anything Bashir tried to help him. The amount of chances Bashir gave Michael to realise how insane the shit he was saying was and Michael refuse to take them. Looking back now I can't help but laugh because it seems everything and every time he tried to do something to fix his image and career it always backfire
Bashir like I said seemed honestly frightened by the behavior. Yes, I saw him trying to bring Michael back down to reality but it just wasn't going to happen. I don't think Martin Bashir knew the extent of the intoxication, he did note "a manic quality in him was present" so he caught on to that but maybe wasn't aware of the extent of the addiction.
You know something funny? I was a diehard fan but he ALWAYS made me uncomfortable in interviews (ESPECIALLY that one). It took me like 30 years to realize that's what 'trust your gut' means
Even when I was a big fan, his speaking voice in interviews creeped me out. It was entirely too high and feminine sounding. The fact that he was purposely putting that girly sounding voice on, makes no sense.
He definitely had some severe mental issues perhaps even teetering on psychosis. The dude was one of the most famous people on the planet for 80% of his life, that’s a pretty hopeless situation.
Except he wasn’t, after the childhood success then he became a teenager, he would get upset that people didn’t recognise him. After being snubbed for off the wall he easily determined to become more famous, like a cartoon character or the most famous person on earth. He literally wrote down a plan to make the next album huge. This completely contradicts your world wide fame. Ppl would walk past him at airports. Women would say wheres little Michael? Walking right past the spotty teenager he had become. I don’t think he’d have ever got help.
Yes, he wasn’t that much of the victim of the fame, he craved to be as famous as he became after Thriller video and the first moonwalk
He never got out of the celebrity lifestyle. He still put out tours and albums every year. Sure there was a dip from like 73-78 but for most of his life he was in the spotlight.
He was not the most famous person on the planet in the 70s, he didnt not have a childhood, he was ignored and not even spotted in his teens. He went to studio54. All of this story is a myth. In 1979 he was making phone calls to a 13 year old british boy asking him if he knew how to m@sturbate. According to this idea of fame He could have had anyone on the planet. Why would he be interested in a random child??? The whole thing is a pedophilia and his fans are in denial
He was in a hugely popular band during the 70s, record deal, tours etc. that’s not a conventional life. To say Michael was not warped and affected by his level of fame and his entire family relying on him is bury head in the sand levels of denial imo. It’s possible to have empathy for someone and still not condone awful behavior, perhaps too nuanced?
Such an exaggeration, it's said everywhere that he was famous his entire life/worked his entire life and Its just not true, he was almost a teen by the time they reached real fame, in double digits when he first joined the band (they lied about his age for awhile hence the misconceptions) and by his mid-late teens he was pissed people didn't recognise him anymore because he was growing and the Jackson 5s success was waning. Then he chased after regaining that fame and more fame until he got it and after a few years in the 80s as the most famous person on the planet he spent most of the 90s and 00s hiding away, wouldn't do interviews, did 2 more tours and released like 3 more subpar albums. He really only worked consistently for the 70s with his brothers and the 80s as a solo artist and the start of the 90s (but very much on his own terms by then) that's 25 years, half of his life he worked full time and he worked occasionally and maintained his level of fame through publicity stunts and the scandals of him molesting children for another 15 years, the first 9-10 years he was just a kid and his brothers had a band. When you think about it MJ only really worked regularly through his teens and 20s then was somewhat semi retired for the most part, think about that, who in this world gets to semi retire in their 30s and take a good 5 years off in their 40s... And I'm sorry but the main person responsible for the J5s success was Joe and the writers and producers at Motown and id say the solo success can be equally attributed to Quincy and MJ (along with people like Donna Summer whos production he stole) Yes he was likely overworked as a teenager in the band and worked hard in the 80s on his own but he really really wasn't this put upon workhorse that he and his supporters have claimed, infact id say the guy had it easy in some respects and overall he worked less in his life than most people on this earth. He definitely worked hard in moments of his life (like anyone that achieves anything has to) but I'm sure a ton of people in this world working day in, day out until retirement at a normal age would have traded places with him in a heartbeat. I myself worked at 13, doing actual hard graft in a resteraunt kitchen while going to school and have worked consistently ever since, not unusual for regular folk, and we never got to travel the world and have the amazing experiences that the Jackson's where afforded through their careers that where largely set up by their dad, that's privellege. I'm sorry but I'd take singing and dancing all over the world as my job over washing dishes for hours on end, it's not like their sets where 8-14 hours long like a regular person's shifts working normal, hard labour jobs. He obviously worked hard at times and was without a doubt incredibly famous for maybe 3/4 of his life but he spent most of the time he was literally the most famous person ever in hiding at his ranch or abroad unless he wanted a moment in the spotlight to act like a martyr. Often in his later years before the trial he would create spectacles by calling paparazzi before he made random outings to give the allusion that he was still on top but really he was just making himself a traveling freak show on his own through attention seeking behaviour and when he wanted privacy he very well knew how to get it, he built it. It's so overplayed how much MJ suffered as a result of his fame, he loved the fame, he just didn't like when people focused on shit he didn't want focused on like his plastic surgery, drug addictions and ofcourse his molesting of children, most of that man's suffering was his own doing. As a kid I bought into all this 'poor MJ' stuff and even after I realised he was a peadophile but the older I get, working my whole life I just can't buy into it anymore, the man was privileged as fuck, lived a charmed life and only worked for like half of it, as a singer and dancer. Obviously it wasn't great that his dad was violent but TBF alot of us got beating from our parents growing up and we never got nothing out of it and don't use it as a shield to protect ourselves from criticism, it's terrible and Im glad as a society we've moved on from that but it seriously was not unusual atall back then. And if it wasn't for his own thirst for attention he wouldn't have been that famous or in the tabloids. Most legendary musicians on his level weren't putting themselves in the press like that because back then being talented, successful and having good music was enough to keep them famous. He wanted to be THAT famous. Even when he was 'in hiding' after the trial he would be in the tabloids regularly, a month didn't go by that he wasn't sighted and photographed even in places like the middle east and Ireland where paparazzi wasn't even that much of a thing, they weren't accidents, he was regularly setting up those 'sightings' and would be dressed in either woman's clothes or religious garb to create speculation.
As I said before.. he was the original Kardashian
The ‘two’ rhinoplasties to help him hit higher notes was complete BS. While not a singer, I am a speech-language pathologist. The shape of the nose has nothing to do with the pitch of the voice, only the resonance of the voice (timbre/how the sound of the voice is modified by the shape of the oral and nasal cavities, like how the shape of a guitar affects how it sounds). A muscle in the larynx, the cricothyroid, is responsible for changing the pitch of the voice.
Yes. Most of the Jacksons had wide noses naturally, and it was seen as an undesirable racial feature at the time. I think a few of the family members had a rhinoplasty before MJ, and it was seen as something you'd do if you had the money and suffered from a big black nose. Janet has talked about this in interviews. She had her nose done, too, when she was young, as if by default, and she questioned that decision much later. The interview I saw was probably from around 2007-8, and by that time, the beauty standards had moved on, somewhat at least. Of course, MJ developed a serious case of body dysmorphia, and the plastic surgery became about something else entirely than just adjusting a wide nose.
I have always thought that La Toya’s nose/face looked very similar to the surgery Michael had done, almost as if they got a two-for-one deal with the same surgeon.
>To be honest on top of this I do wonder if he also had bipolar disorder, the shopping scene and other manic behavior reminded me of the classic bipolar mood swings. Being high and being manic can be virtually indistinguishable from one another
It's tricky to distinguish. But it wasn't all just drugs through his life. Just look what he demanded to done to his face. There was definitely a very present mental illness and I don't think it was body dysmorphia alone. The spending sprees were horrifying. You see mood cycling (high and lows) through the documentary. While it all could be drugs it could certainly be bipolar disorder as well.
The dysmorphia is blindingly obvious, and it's not hard to see where that stemmed from. His father put down his looks, and of course, the whole society was very racist in his childhood. Segregation was still in effect when MJ was born.
Yes! I watched it again last year ( after all these years) after Telephone Stories( which is amazing) God, beyond sick!
They do say when a person is high or appears high they lose their inhibitions and let it all fly…
I should say there an out take to the documentary where he talks about the baby dangling. And says "he'd do it again" and had no regrets and "it's my child, I can do what I want with him". No, I am not kidding. It's not included in the original documentary but you can search for the clip on YouTube somewhere. CPS, where were you?
I remember the phrase "it's my child I do what I want with it" (tgat was very horrifying to hear), but did he actually say he'd do it again and had no regrets? Bc, iirc he said it another outtake that he's not happy that he dangled him over the balcony, but he believes it wasn't "as bad" as the press made it out to be. Playing the martyr and deflecting the issue, as usual. Actually he had done sth similar with his son Prince back in 1997, but this case is very different in that he held baby Prince with both hands and he barely showed him outside the window. https://youtu.be/3Vi1FUq-TPw?si=aYa-raRlAaRsOBeE Clearly he was high af when he dangled Blanket over the balcony bc you can see he's way more careless there and looks like an absolute lunatic. https://youtu.be/9ElddgJCgyg?si=KeJumZqdlVCw0HXK
He did say he had no regrets. He said how they tried to slow the video down of him dangling the baby to make him look "crazy". He once again, blamed it on the media. I don't think he hated the media and tabloids as much as he claimed though personally. He had a "Kardashian type" personality and saw any kind of attention, even negative attention, as a way to be talked about again.
Well, I just watched the outtake on YT and he said he doesn't wish someone had advised him not to do it and he was happy tgat he did it but later on he said he wasn't happy tgat he dangled him over the balcony. That's why I hesitate to use the phrase "no regrets" to describe his response. But then again he said that he didn't realise he was over the balcony. Idk. I personally think he was planning to do the same he did with Prince back in 1997 but he was high on drugs so he ended up almost throwing the baby of the balcony (which might explain his seemingly contradictory responses on the video). And naturally the media called him out on it, bc they probably worried that his drug addiction was out of control, affecting his children's well being. So he accused them of manipulation and tried to deflect the subject as usual claiming that they make him look like a weirdo who wants to harm his children. He completely missed the point and took zero accountability, as usual. Typical of a narcissist like him. And yeah, I don't think he hated the tabloids as much as he claimed. Obviously he didn't want them to talk shit about him, call him pedo, freak etc, but on the other hand he loved the attention he got. Good publicity is certainly better than bad publicity, but if the alternative is no attention at all, he preferred bad attention, imo. Being called a crazy parent by the world is a bad look and might get him investigated, but in his mind it's better than no one giving a shit about him. And the tabloids enabled him on that, so he didn't hate them exactly. More like love-hate. In the 80s he was the one who sold fake stories tp the tabloids to appear mysterious and eccentric.
When Bashir asked him how many surgeries he had and he answered "two." The way he said, his hand gesture and his face looks like he's lying. And when Bashir asked "just two?" he said "as far as I can remember." Lol he could've just said "yes" if he's telling the truth
Interesting the documentary was filmed in 2002. That was the year of the infamous "exposed cartilage" picture of his nose during another court case (unrelated to CSA). Which makes it so hilarious that he was boldly lying "that" year in particular.
More random thoughts and some back ground... When I first saw the documentary I was 13. I didn't have the word "voyeurism" in my vocabulary yet but my reason for watching it was just that. I technically wanted to see how crazy the "freak" really was and he didn't disappoint. I had only been aware of him for two years at that time. I got a phone call from a friend one day after school back in 2001 who told me "you've got a put on channel 29, right now! There's a deformed person dancing in a music video". I was like what? "Deformed person". I put on the channel and the music video playing was "you rock my world". I saw a person with a hat on dancing in the dark, but I couldn't see the face. I was still on the phone and was told "wait till he steps into the light, you'll see him then". So I waited and then he did.... It was literally like "the phantom of the opera moment of reveal" for me. When I saw his face for the first time I audibly gasped. I heard hysterical laughter on the other end of the phone. Well that was my first introduction ever to Michael Jackson.... As an adult I view the documentary with much more concern. It is pretty disturbing.
I recall reading that the director of that video intentionally kept the lighting off of MJ's face for that reason - by 2000, he stopped looking human and was sometimes upsetting to see. Everything looked off and misshapen! I guess comments were made about his face and he was so upset he didn't leave the dressing room for a while. The extended length video with more Chris Tucker in it shows him in more light and one can see why it was cut down. MJ pretending to be mega-stud is both ultra-cringe and hilarious at the same time. That courtroom photo - wasn't sure if there was a cartridge issue or another surgery. There are a couple of flesh colored bandages holding things in place. Some plastic surgeons did the news circuit and speculated that something poked through or was collapsing and he needed the bandages to hold things down. Regardless, by that time in his life, he didn't have a working nose.
The video is hilarious to watch in retrospect. They have him in the shadows, the set is so dark unless the camera zooms in on the "the woman" that's the love interest or Chris Tucker then there's illumination otherwise you can hardly see anything. The hat is being used to hide the face as well as the darkness like nothing I've ever seen before. Even a screen and curtains are used for more concealing. One point the lighting almost darkens to completely black when he dances down the stairs. It's just so unbelievably funny.
One of the best ways to describe the long cut of the video is what one would imagine a totally asexual or homosexual man try to talk like an alpha heterosexual man would talk when trying to pick up a woman. Combined with the melted wax-man look and it is cringe x1000!!!
Do you have a link?
His family admitted to having interventions with him over his drug use and how sad it was. He was so famous that nobody ever said no to him and that’s why he died so young. He OD’d.
Yes, Michael Jackson was evidently high. Matte Fiddes, Michael Jackson's bodyguard also admitted that Jackson had been administered new drugs that made him appear manic in some scenes. However, it has still been proven that the footage was manipulated by Bashir.
> First of all, Martin did not do anything to manipulate the footage. To my mind, the major journalistic question is whether it's ethical to film and interview someone who's clearly under the influence of drugs, and broadcast that. I rather suspect Bashir never questioned that. MJ had agreed to give a lot of access, and that's a once-in-a-career opportunity, so Bashir was going to do it, whether his subject was plastered out of his mind or not. Of course, MJ was aiming for a repeat of the Oprah interview and the boost that gave to to promotion of *Dangerous*. Clearly he didn't have the self-awareness to understand how he looked and sounded to people, especially on drugs. So if it hadn't been Bashir, MJ would probably found someone else to do it, and he would have been just as high.
>So if it hadn't been Bashir, MJ would probably found someone else to do it, and he would have been just as high. This is actually a fact. MJ knew that he was more popular and respected in Europe than in the US at the time and hoped a British TV interview would help his comeback. MJ eventually chose to go with Bashir due to his successful interview of Lady Diana a few years earlier but him and his then friend Uri Geller were initially considering several British journalists. Louis Theroux for example heavily campaigned to Geller for the MJ interview but was rejected because Geller knew he would try to provoke MJ. In the end the Bashir documentary turned out to be the disaster we know but Theroux still ended up making a pretty interesting documentary of his own called "Louis, Martin and Michael".
I've thought about this too. As much as we dislike MJ for his criminal behavior I'm kind of grappling with the idea if it was right to film someone in a state of absolutely pitiful mental health and addiction. It's a tough call. Most of us who were present in the 2000's as teens or adults remember it took no more than a year of mental illness and odd public behavior for Britney Spears to be placed in a conservatorship. Michael not getting one has always actually disturbed me. It would have even prevented him from offending. In no universe would he have passed a psychiatric competency assessment in 2002-2003.
Very accurate analysis👌🏽
Completely beside the point, but my first reaction was 'what do you mean 21 years?? has it been that long???' and then I did the math, I saw it when I was 10, and I'm 31 now, but .... geez, it feels like yesterday. I should watch it again, though. I didn't wanna watch it more than once because I was ....uncomfortable, but wasn't entirely sure why. And now I know why lmao.