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Michael Jackson's This Is It: Why everything I believed about Michael Jackson was wrong
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When I was sent tickets to see the premiere of Michael Jackson’s This Is It, I had mixed feelings.
On one hand, I was excited to see the final footage of the rehearsals of what would have been Jackson’s final concert series in London, England. I had never seen Michael Jackson perform live, and this would be as close as I ever got.
On the other hand, I was afraid of how my husband’s family (who are close friends with a Jackson family member) would react to my review if the movie was terrible and overly sentimental, requiring me to write a truthful review that said as much.
I was worried for nothing. This Is It is a brilliant, deeply touching movie and a true work of art.
My husband and I attended a matinee showing, and despite the early film time, the theater was filled with numerous couples and large groups of families with school-aged children—spanning all age groups and racial makeup.
While most of us in the theater were talking, laughing and munching on our concession snacks during the previews, as soon as This Is It began rolling the opening frames, the audience immediately fell silent--you could have heard a pin drop.
During the first fifteen minutes of the film, I could barely breathe and was close to tears. I didn’t understand why I felt this way as I had never been a Jackson fan growing up, instead preferring new wave and punk rock. But here I was utterly transfixed, watching Michael Jackson audition dancers from around the world and then singing “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin.”
I was hooked. I couldn't take my eyes off of Jackson.
Okay, I’m starting to get an understanding of why Michael Jackson fans have hysterically screamed and cried whenever they saw him, I thought.
Then the movie turned comedic as Jackson filmed an “add-in” role for an old black-and-white Rita Hayworth and Humphrey Bogart movie, where Bogey was out to get Jackson, but the ever resourceful “hero” escaped unharmed. Not long after, Jackson made an hilarious “bootie” comment that had the entire audience in stitches.
Michael Jackson is wickedly funny—I had no idea he had such a great sense of humor.
This Is It took a nostalgic turn as Jackson went back to his roots—performing songs from his early years in the Jackson Five—and the movie audience went wild. Those of us who knew the words to those early Jackson Five songs began singing and clapping along, including me and my husband. I could hear voices of mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, singing every word and belting it out as if they were on stage too. (At this point, most of us began applauding after every song Jackson performed in the movie.)
Of course, it was only inevitable that “Thriller” would be included, and while I had never cared much for the song before, after seeing the over-the-top ghoulish film that was created for the tour and the slightly new musical rendition, I was dancing in my seat. My husband and I were laughing and singing and trying our best to keep up with the zombie-like dance moves in the dark.
By the time “Billie Jean” arrived, the gloves were off. Every person (or close to it) was singing at the top of their lungs in the theater. I was having such a good time that I felt like I was at an actual Jackson concert—the only thing missing was the Michael Jackson t-shirt concession stand outside the movie theater doors.
I turned to my husband and said, This is amazing! This has to be the best concert I have ever seen performed!
My husband grabbed my hand and nodded. We looked into each other’s eyes in the darkened theater and I realized then that the world really had lost the Best Entertainer that had ever lived.
When the movie ended, the lone voice of an older African-American woman yelled out, “God bless you, Michael!” as many of us rose to our feet and applauded those incredible last moments of Michael Jackson’s life—entertaining us and generously giving everything he had to the very end.
While I had completely enjoyed the movie and couldn’t wait to write a glowing review, I also left the theater that day a little angry.
Here’s why:
This Is It was probably the only movie or documentary that has ever shown Michael Jackson as a man, an entertainer and a friend--as a real human being, not some fabricated construct of the mass media mindset.
After seeing Jackson repeatedly portrayed as weird, “wacko,” an unstable father, and a mentally disturbed child abuser, ad nauseum, over the past several decades, it was refreshing to see him privately and wholly in his element as just a man.
I, like so many others, fell sway to the negative media hype that consumed Jackson over the past several years. As a survivor of child abuse and molestation myself, I wrote Michael Jackson off as he was repeatedly accused of child molestation, never taking the time to investigate the case and to consider the fact that he was fully acquitted of all charges.
I was angry that the mass media had portrayed Jackson as something he was not and that we in the general public never got to see him before as he now appeared in This Is It.
I told my husband that I felt like I had sold something in a garage sale I had thought was worthless, only to find out later it had been a priceless work of art and I would never see it again.
He nodded his head in agreement, understanding the import and realized loss I was trying so feebly to communicate, and we walked back to our car in thoughtful silence.
While we can never recover those lost moments that we, as a nation, once had with Michael Jackson, while we can never go back in time and tell him we’re sorry we didn’t believe him and support him when he needed us, we can celebrate his musical legacy and his humanitarian accomplishments by buying our tickets to see This Is It, (whose run has been extended through the end of November).
And as the older lady in the theater had said, God Bless You, Michael.
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