Michael Jackson's "This is it" means life is no dress rehearsal: Wanna dance?

Michael Jackson's "This is It" means life is no dress rehearsal
Movie Poster

This is it if you want a feel-good movie where your feet can’t hold still, thanks to the immortal Michael Jackson.  Whether you are fifty or fifteen, you will find yourself dancing in your seat if you catch Michael Jackson's “This is It”.  You have through Thanksgiving and if you need something to perk you up as the holiday blues approach, you will get your money’s worth out of this backstage pass. You actually get one with your ticket to hang around your neck. Cute.

I originally decided to go with more of a sense of journalist duty, to investigate the final work of the pop icon who died at my age, fifty, making international news. The myth, the legend, it all seems to be true. Moroever I went to see Michael Jackson’s “This is It” in the city of my alma mater, Berkeley, a place of my youth.  Yesterday on a beautiful sunny fall day in the San Francisco Bay Area, I rode my bicycle to BART from my home and went to the Regal Theater. It’s an older place at 2274 Shattuck, a few doors from a contemporary theater.  The Regal has sound muffling carpets and  tiny rooms and smaller screens, the old Berkeley student feel from when I was an undergraduate from 1977 to 1982, before the world went digital.

Here's a video clip:

Since then the world has seen not only the millennium but Katrina and then 9/11. I lived in New Orleans during the millennium and it was a happier time. Young people and music lovers and exhibitionists looked to the future and gathered en masse to celebrate not only spring but the next thousand years. New Orleans had a sense of wonder and curiosity about the future. Unfortunately like New Orleans the future would have a dark and deadly side. Little did I know then the bicycle I rode through the French Quarter would survive Katrina. Moreover I would be riding that survivor in Berkeley to see “This is It” with Michael saying calmly,

Fix the planet.

So I have to disagree with the characterization of Michael as a self-proclaimed martyr. He’s more than a warped innocent whose people capitalized on his sense of evangelism or wish to serve as a world leader for peace. When the film director Ortega puts up the images of Princess Diana, Obama and Mother Theresa at the beginning of the film, he with these icons sets the tone, it’s a sign of our times. Perhaps these images would better fit at the end of the film after Earth Song and Michael has sung his own creed.

As the teary-eyed young ethnic male dancer says in the beginning amid the other teary-eyed young and mostly ethnic chosen few, Michael’s music and dancing is a reason to believe in something, as life is hard.

You can find links to the performers and crew at IMDB:  This is it.

Funkier

Michael wanted things funkier, we hear him say after the audition. We are told if the dancer doesn’t ooze, the dancer doesn’t make it. You are an extension of Michael, the dancers are told. We go to the toaster—a pop up speed platform catapulting each male dancer from a pit above and onto the stage. Going exponential, we go to Culver City Studios where eleven soldiers of the future and the apocalypse will become eleven hundred. Into infinity, Michael says at the control board. Indeed. He meant to mobilize. 

His show goes airborne with state of the art aerialists and contortionists.

From the digital apocalypse to retro romance of Bogart

The dancers on stage are no candy asses either, they move with electricity or testosterone, lithe, sharp and strong, like cheerleaders. Bruce Jones handles special effects. Dorian Holly is the vocal leader. From the apocalypse we go retro. Michael is after all multi-generational. We see Michael in Smooth Criminal being superimposed into a black and white film with Gilda singing in silk and Bogart chasing Michael with a machine gun, all of which comes alive on stage out of the video.

Let it simmer

Other Michaelian utterances:

Let it simmer.

He kept repeating that. Another point was cues, both receiving and giving. He utters something about being nourished by the music.

On to the exuberant “The Way You Make Me Feel” with a sexy dancer strutting her stuff provocatively past Michael, back and forth. Young, spontaneous, joyful and playful. Michael also gave a lot of face time to the funky and pretty blond guitarist. He presents her as a wind blown force of nature while he sings it don’t matter if you’re Black or White.

Earth Song

Back to reality and real crime fighting, fighting crimes against humanity. Things are not black and white. The trials of the terrorists are just starting and the debate is whether to have the trial in New York. Michael Jackson had seen all of the devastation too during his fifty years and asked during this film, what have we done? This is it he says, if we don’t fix the earth, nobody else will. He pays tribute to the rain forest and the Earth in a beautiful video called Earth Song, near the end of the film. Unfortunately it becomes a confrontation with a forklift unearthing the magical forest, turning vibrant green to dirt brown much like the terrorists turned the twin towers to dust and rubble.

Baryshnikov did it with both hands

However Michael kept his sense of joy, his infinite love of music and dance and childlike sense of appreciation of Mother Earth. It was in his blood, it was his life. And in turn all of us fifty year olds and older know the world as Jackson did. He came into this world dancing and singing and that’s the way he went out. Not a bad way to go. Crotch grabbing to the end. That was the one moment of comic relief during the film, during Billy Jean he gets a bit too much into it with the encouragement of his dancers and crew off stage. It’s a self-effacing move perhaps, an act of defiance against being seen as a sex object, I venture to say. Although a soloist Micheal is the product of family. A big, MidWestern family.

Admittedly Michael isn't the only historical figure to get into trouble for alleged pederasty.  Remember Oscar Wilde and his love that dare not speak it's name?

There were only seven others in the Berkeley theater with me and the little family of two Black parents and a child giggled at the crotch grabbing. We had seen a Russian dance instructor earlier telling the dancers, why not, Baryshnikov does it with both hands, Michael with just one. Except I’ve seen Baryshnikov and he’s petite, maybe 5’5” and Michael was much taller, with huge hands. In any event. The other group in the theater consisted of three young Asian girls who like me sat right to the bitter end and the screen went dark; and then the lone middle aged white woman behind me. After all is said and done, I would say this is the only ghetto moment and something held over from times gone by. The rest is a class act. He’s a veteran performer putting new twists on beloved classics, capitalizing on new technology to convey his message to the world: This is it.

Spoiler alert: There’s a fantastic update of Thriller. The new holographic dead rising from the grave come alive (again) on stage with Michael.  Spirits were to soar through the aisles.
 

Post 9/11 video 'Cry' was shot out of San Francisco; I lipsynched in the redwoods

Michael Jackson's "This is it" closes after Thanksgiving, unless it's extended again.  So, what about that self-styled messianic persona?  I have read he had a Christian upbringing by his mother.  Perhaps accusing him of playing God or more likely a martyr like Jesus is too harsh, he was just trying to be good and grounded in a world of idol worship.

For example.  Michael Jackson cast his post 9/11 messianic video " Cry" out of San Francisco.  I never would have imagined the man would be dead at fifty.  I'm fifty.  So when the promoters call Michael Jackson's film "This is it", I take this to mean this world is our reality, no dress rehearsal as they say. Life can end tomorrow so live it today.

Here's more, including the lyrics and a video:  Cry on Invincible

I was about forty one during "Cry" and 9/11 had just happened while Katrina would be the future.  I had just come home to San Francisco from New Orleans where I worked at the PBS station.  I interviewed jazz musicians backstage at JazzFest.  Sting had performed "Moon Over Bourbon Street".

"Cry"  was just about my first background acting job ever when I got on the bus.  I would perform in the background of "Cry", lip synching and holding hands in a long line in a secret location, under the redwoods. 

I drove alone in the dark across the San Francisco Bay Bridge about 4:00 a.m.  to catch the bus.  I parked my Jetta GLS in the parking lot at the pier next to Red's Java House under the bridge.  Extras collected in the dark and got onto the buses.  A big Black man came through and handed out xerox copies of the lyrics to "Cry".  One woman who had come all that way read them and got off the bus, saying "I can't do this."

The rest of us rode silently in the dark through Pacifica down Highway One.  Entering the redwoods north of Santa Cruz, cell phones went dead and murmurs of "Blair Witch Project" rippled through the bus.  Yet we just settled into breakfast at the picnic tables and watched the sunrise through the tree tops. 

The song actually felt spiritual, call and response.  It was fun to sing.  The more I lipsynched the more confident I felt to actually sing out.  The song was pre-recorded anyway, played over and over on a portable CD player for us to lipsynch to.

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