I Don’t Care About The Trial. I Just Want To Enjoy MJ

The Michael movie is out and everyone wants to make it about the trial and the controversies surrounding his legacy.  I’m not doing that.  In this episode, I talk about the legacy, why I’m an unapologetic fan, and why you don’t need anyone’s permission to enjoy great art.

I also reflect on what Michael Jackson meant to a generation, why people are protective of Michael, and why the bigger issue may not be the movie itself but how people engage with entertainment now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

The Michael Jackson movie comes out in two days, and people are pissed. People are pissed off. They're talking about everything but the movie. Oh man. So yesterday, the Michael Jackson movie, Michael, got a 27% rotten tomato score. I don't know what it's sitting on right now. Let's check. Let me see. Where we at? 36% rotten tomato score. So it's up nine from yesterday. I like to think I had a huge part in that with my uh my viral Michael Jackson video, my Instagram and TikTok that's been going crazy. You're welcome. But people have just been saying it's soft, it's no depth, it doesn't dip into the controversy, it doesn't deal with the trials, and you know, because now I don't know if you heard, but they passed this law. I ain't even, I just found out about it today as I sit this year, but I'm like, damn. But apparently, you know, when you make a movie now, when you when you talk about somebody doing something good, contractually, you have to talk about the things that that weren't so good. Right? Because you got to start with their rise, but you can't end it like where their peak is. You got to bring it to like their demise. And like you have to finish it when they're like miserable and dead. And then and then when you do that, then you send it to the film festivals and then it gets nominated for an Oscar. Because you can't, apparently, Hollywood said, you know, post-COVID movies have got to be sad. They gotta be miserable. So people were upset that Michael didn't follow protocol and they made a movie that was feel good. Shame on them. Shame. Shame on them, dog. They made a movie that was fun. They made a movie that I haven't seen it yet. Uh I go on uh month on Friday. I got tickets for Friday. So in two days, today is Wednesday. And, you know, I'm gonna sit there just miserable that I'm gonna have a good time. Because the movie covers, I guess, from his childhood up to the bad tour, which I've heard stories about because my parents went in 1988 because bad was released in 1987. I believe it was the end of August, August 31st. I was born April 17th. So I was four months old when that album came out. And I'm gonna pull it up. By the way, is there anybody like Michael Jackson's album covers, bro, are like the bad album cover, I would argue is the greatest album cover of all time. It it's so simple, but it's saying so much. He just looks so dope, bro. He just looks so dope. But so I wasn't old enough to really know what was going on with Michael Jackson at that point. I got introduced to Michael Jackson during the Dangerous album, which was a fire album. But that was my introduction. That came out like in '93. So I was like six. But my parents went to the Bad Tour, and they tell the story in, you know, we're in Detroit, and I think he was at the Palace of Auburn Hills, which at the time was the biggest arena, biggest basketball arena in the United States was the Palace of Auburn Hills. And uh they said that they were sitting in their seats and it was raining that day. They said it was a big thunderstorm. And they said, you know, everyone's there, everyone's waiting and waiting and waiting, and then all of a sudden the lights went down. And someone on the PA system said, uh attention, please. We know that you guys are excited for the Michael Jackson show, but Michael wanted to let you know that he is running a little behind because he is stuck in traffic in this thunderstorm. So please, please be patient. And my parents like, everyone's going, ah, Michael, going crazy, going crazy. People are fainting and dying already. He ain't even there yet. Then they said, out of nowhere, you just hear this engine start ripping up like and this Ferrari just pulls up right on stage and turns to the side. And people just are going nuts, losing their mind. Next thing you know, the door opens and you see a, you see a foot just come out. And then they they dropped a screen. And I don't know if you remember, like back then, he would do the thing where it was like little cartoon things, was like walking across the screen and it'll come up on the toes, like do a little spin joint. And then it did that. Next thing you know, Michael's just on stage and he performed for two hours nonstop. They said that fool, when he would change, he would walk. They said he will walk. It was like a tent, and he will walk into the tent and then come back on the other side already fully changed. Crazy. But people don't want that, right? They they want they want the trial, Michael Jackson. They they want the hanging the baby off the balcony, Michael Jackson. They want, is he an addict, Michael Jackson? They want mugshot Michael Jackson, they want complicated Michael Jackson, they want trial, they want, did he do it, Michael Jackson? They want overdose Michael Jackson, did he overdose? Did he not? Was he killed? Was he? They want that, Michael Jackson. I don't want that. I don't care about the trial. I don't care about how complicated his life. We all know that. We're talking about the most famous person that ever lived, bro, besides Jesus Christ. But you can argue, depending on the day, just saying. Shout out to Jesus. People don't want that. And so when I'm reading these reviews, I'm just like, are people upset that they got two hours of the king of pop being the king of pop, and they're upset that they didn't talk about Macaulay Coke in the trial. That's what they're upset about. Now, I don't know if the movie's good or not, but I'll tell you this: the the music's not. Let's get this straight. I pulled my back yesterday, so like I'm, if you see me moving around a lot, I'm trying to readjust his pillows behind the chair. I'm in pain right now, but this is making me feel a little better. So, Michael Jackson, the Michael movie, is on track right now. I think I saw that it's going to debut anywhere between 150 to 200 million worldwide box office. I want to I want to put this in perspective right here. The highest gross in biopic, biopic, biopic of all time is Oppenheimer. Great movie. But it's a Christopher Nolan movie. It's basically a sci-fi. It's a great movie, but it's explosions, special effects, all that stuff. And it's Nolan, right? Number two is Bohemian Rhapsody, which came out in 2018. I think it did $910 million. I saw Bohemian Rhapsody. Movie was okay. It's okay. It's not my favorite movie. It's not a great movie. It definitely uh, I didn't think that year I thought Bradley Cooper should have won Best Actor for Star Worn. I thought that him and Rami Malik both played the same kind of character, a troubled singer, but Bradley Cooper actually sang. And he actually directed the movie, and the movie was better, and I thought his performance was better. Whereas Rami Malik is basically portraying a character, and Bradley Cooper is creating a character, even though the movie's been done a few times before, he's creating his version of this character. And it was phenomenal, and he's actually singing. But people felt otherwise. So anyway, I saw Elvis came out in 2023. That movie did like between $200 to $300 million. Straight out of Compton did like $200 million. So, Michael, if if projections happen the way that they project, it's gonna come in at $150 million. What's going on with my mouse? $150 million, highest grossing biopics of all time. $150 million. So just off the strength of it debuting that this weekend, it's gonna be the seventh highest biopic, biopic, biopic of all time.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Number seven. Right behind. Wait, what is this?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Oh, so number seven biopic of all time, but it's going to be number, yeah, right ahead of Ray, right behind Bob Marley and One Love, which is at 181 million. Here's my point. Bohemian Rhapsody, when it came out, it debuted at 140 million worldwide. So Michael's already on track to go beyond that by 10 million. I thought the movie was okay, Bohemian Rhapsody. I thought Elvis was just okay. I thought the performances of both movies were great. I thought Austin Butler was going to win the Oscar that year, but he didn't. But I don't remember anybody talking about the movies were too surface, they didn't go deep enough, there was no depth. We didn't talk about the controversy. Now, Freddie Mercury's character in Bohemian Rhapsody was very complicated and he had a lot of issues, but they didn't dive to the depths of the darkness of everything. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Sasha Barrett Cohen wanted to play that part. And he wanted to really play it. I want to get to the darkest part of Freddie Mercury. They was like, nah, we want to make a musical, make a lot of money. And that's what they did. And Elvis, I thought the movie was very mid. I thought Tom Hanks was completely miscast. That's not the point. But it was very surface level. It didn't go to any of the controversies about Elvis. What controversies do you ask? Google it. You'll see it. Here's my point. Why is it whenever it comes to Michael Jackson, everything has to be justified? I have to acknowledge all the things that allegedly that have been proven not true time and time again. In order for me to be an actual Michael Jackson fan, I have to go through the shoots and ladders, hoops and ladders of acknowledging all that other stuff. And I'm not going to do that. I don't care about any of that. This is the king of freaking pop. This is Michael Jackson. And here's the thing: if you want a legitimate biopic of Michael Jackson, the most complicated, famous, powerful figure ever in entertainment, like ever in pop culture, ever, not even close. It's not even close. Taylor Swift, get out of here. Beyonce, get out. Rihanna, get out. Usher, get out. The Beatles, get out, get out. Elvis, get out, get out, get out now. It's not even close, bro. If you want a true biopic movie, biopic of Michael Jackson, you will be in the movie theater for a month straight.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

It'll be a 30 straight day film.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

30 straight days. Now I'll be there. I'll spend the night at the AMC as an A plus rewards member for 30 days and eating popcorn and nachos with double cheese. I'll go there and get the, you know, the calorie-free ginger ale. I'll take a break and go play pop shot for a little bit. But unless you're willing to do that, bro, just don't go see the movie. But don't knock it because it's not giving you what you think, because it's not following the guidelines of New Hollywood, which is every movie has to be sad and miserable in order for it to be considered a film. Now, of course, I'm exaggerating, but I guarantee you that I'm gonna go see this movie on Friday and I'm gonna have a fantastic time. And not once am I gonna be like, can we? I wish I would have seen the trial, and I wish I would have left this movie feeling sad and felt sorry for Michael. It's like, dude, I've never seen Michael Jackson perform live. Never. Never got the chance. And you know what? A lot of people, there's a gnat here, a gnat. And a lot of people haven't either. This is the closest we are ever going to experience seeing Michael Jackson. And I hope the theater that I go to is packed and is filled with different colors of people, different kinds of people. And guess what? We all know the lyrics. And when them songs come on, we are gonna stand, we're gonna dance, we're gonna moo, we're gonna have a great time because that's what Michael did. He brought us together through sound, through music. Why is that a bad thing to celebrate? Why do I have to go to see a movie about that and then be like, well, you know, get out of here. I made this video on Instagram yesterday basically talking about what I'm talking about now, but just in 60 seconds. But I said, hey, if you if you want a courtroom drama, if you want the people versus Michael Jackson show, go make one. How about you go make a movie? How about you go make a show, bruh, and I'll give it a 27% Rot Tomato? How about that? The controversy conversation is just exhausting me. It's exhausting. And my thing is like I was telling my friends and my family, and it's like I'm telling you, the week or so before that movie comes out, that movie's gonna get trashed and people are going to start bringing all that stuff up. They didn't do it for Elvis, they didn't do it for Queen, they didn't do it for any of that. But it's with Michael Jackson, we got to talk about all that other stuff. And I don't care. I don't care. I don't. I'm sorry, I don't care. You can care. There are documentaries about it. Google it. He's not hard to research. Soon as you type in MI, you're either gonna get Jackson or Jordan. That's it. You're gonna get Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Pick one.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

When I was a kid, the Michael Jackson Moonwalker movie really, really inspired me. And like many kids at that time when Michael Jackson was at his peak, he was everything from the music videos to the music to seeing what his music did to the people around me. You know, I come from a blended household of black and white. My mother's black, my dad's white. But whenever a Michael Jackson song was being played, everyone was the same. We all knew the lyrics, we all knew the songs, we knew the dances, we tried to emulate, everyone wanted to moonwalk. Everyone wanted to do the my backstory, everyone wanted to do the smooth criminal boy. You know, we wanted to do the lean forward, we wanted to do the walk, we wanted to do the head joint, you know. We wanted to do that. And when I look back at those times with my family and just being a kid, this is why nostalgia is always going to be in, because it feels good. It feels good to listen to a Michael Jackson song in the car with the windows down and you're blasting Liberian girl. And you could sing it at the top of your lungs, and for some reason, with his songs, whenever you sing it, you always sound good.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Always.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

And to see from where he was with the Jackson 5, and then Off the Wall, and then Thriller was completely different from Off the Wall, and Bad was completely different from Thriller, and Dangerous was completely different from bad. And then you have Blood on the Dance Floor, and then the History album, and then the uh Invincible album. Like they're all different, but the through line is Michael. And through each album, you can see kind of where he was in his life at that time. Each album was a timestamp.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

He died my senior year in college.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

I was taking summer classes to graduate. I already walked across stage in May. He died in June, I believe. And I remember I was sleeping in my apartment, uh, my on campus apartment, and my mom called me and she said Michael Jackson died. And I remember I said, No, he didn't, and I just hung up the phone because like Kobe, like certain people, you just knew that they were immortal, they were never gonna go. And then after I hung up the phone, I I turned on the news, and there it is.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Michael Jackson found dead in his home.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Not too long after that, a bunch of us on the basketball team gathered in my apartment and we watched the funeral. We watched all these people share stories and these artists play, and we watched thousands and thousands of people just inside the arena to mourn the death of not just the greatest entertainer of all time, not just the greatest dancer of all time, not just the greatest musician and artist and most famous person to ever live, but also our timestamp and soundtrack to our lives.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

As mysterious as Michael was, you still kind of felt like you knew him. At least I did.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

And so when this movie came about, I was very excited because it's Michael Jackson. I had no idea what it was going to be about. I heard rumors that it was gonna be about his whole life, I heard a part of his life. You know, I've heard that they they've shot parts of the trial and all these things beyond the bad album era, but some things he can cleared or whatever. And they're breaking it up in two parts. I don't know. All I know is when I saw that this movie was coming out, and when I saw the first trailer, immediately I went right back to that kid who was four years old, that when he was getting babysat by his 19-year-old brother or his uncle that couldn't sit still, the only thing that would work is the Michael Jackson Moonwalker movie. I remember picking up my mom picking up my best friend at that Fred growing up together, and her driving us in a Geo Metro and listening to the Dangerous album, and us just loving the jam song because we were big basketball guys, and seeing Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson in the same music video was just like you can't even put that into words, what that's like now, because there's no one as great as Michael Jackson, and there's no one as great as Michael Jordan, but now they're both together. It's like, what? And we just loved that song. And we loved Michael Jackson. And we would go, I would go over to his house, and you know, he comes from a musical family. You know, he's been the musical director for Bruno Mars and and Katy Perry. And he's my friend Fred is one of my best friends. And, you know, he's super successful in music. But it's it's interesting to see what he's done in his career. I can go back to when we were five, six, seven years old and having a guitar and the drums and playing dress up and putting on shows in his living room. When I was nine years old, I was in summer camp, and me and one of my best friends, Lim, I was the best man at his wedding last year. We went to the summer camp, and every summer at the end, you do a talent show. And the group that I was in, me and John Frierson, we did ABC. And we were dancing and doing backflips, and we won the talent show. My brother, um, who passed away in 2007. Um, when I was a kid when I was playing baseball, I was like nine years old, so he was about fourteen, fifteen. There was this one game where um the umpire couldn't make it, and we needed an umpire in order to play.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

And my brother Ian said, uh, I'll do it. He never umped a day in his life.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

But I remember when he was umping that game, there were moments when he would call a strike, and he would do like a Michael Jackson kick, and he'd be like, he he, and like strike, and then he'd do like a Michael Jackson and call someone out, like all that. That sticks in my mind as a moment that I'll never forget with my brother. I say all this to say when I think about going to see this movie, I don't think about the complications or the complexities or the controversy. I think of the comfort. And so forgive me for choosing to spend two hours admiring and honoring someone that brought so much comfort, not to just my life, but to millions and millions of those around us. And that's what I choose to do, and that's what I choose to focus on. So this Friday, I will be there.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

I'll be there.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

And I will have my large upgraded popcorn, extra butter and salt with my double cheese to dump the popcorn and the cheese and eat. I'll have my ginger ray, ginger rail zero, and I'm gonna be locked in and going back to the times when everything just made sense. So that's my take, that's my stance, and I'm sticking to it.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

So he he