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Controversial MJ Documentary Leaving Neverland [GENERAL DISCUSSION THREAD]

I know it's hard for them with everything going on. but they need to speak out more. this is their family member who was and is the biggest superstar in the world.
 
Or their probably too scare to speak out because the media like to twist things up. i feel so sorry for them. prayers to the family. none them deserve this. :(
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Whitney Houston hit the nail on the head in 1994 when she referred to the media&#39;s targeted attacks against her and Michael Jackson as &quot;media racism.&quot;<br><br>&quot;You do not convict someone of a crime that you have no idea they committed. I hate the media for doing it to him.&quot;<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MJInnocent?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MJInnocent</a> <a href="https://t.co/p44AzWKkeK">pic.twitter.com/p44AzWKkeK</a></p>&mdash; TSCM (@MJJRepository) <a href="https://twitter.com/MJJRepository/status/1140057956169506817?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
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i am happy that the other family members dont pay any attention to this bullshit and the bastards wade and james. Waht should they say? OF COURSE they would defend michael. Would it help? no! They are doing exact the right thing by just ignoring this crap and keep gpoing with life and business.

just imagine janet and paris and prince and blanket would say something? it would get all the media attention again and in the end it will be negative for MJ again because the media will say that the family has to say this because they are depending on MJs money (which is not true but the people and media dont give a **** about the truth).

TAJ is doing a great job and he represents the whole family. period. I hope I will never hear any word about LN or ANY of the actors names out of janets or paris pr princes or blankets mouth. NEVER EVER. they are not worth to be mentioned. there is NO reason to talk about them. it wouldnt help.
 
Glanni said:
i am happy that the other family members dont pay any attention to this bullshit and the bastards wade and james. Waht should they say? OF COURSE they would defend michael. Would it help? no! They are doing exact the right thing by just ignoring this crap and keep gpoing with life and business.

just imagine janet and paris and prince and blanket would say something? it would get all the media attention again and in the end it will be negative for MJ again because the media will say that the family has to say this because they are depending on MJs money (which is not true but the people and media dont give a **** about the truth).

TAJ is doing a great job and he represents the whole family. period. I hope I will never hear any word about LN or ANY of the actors names out of janets or paris pr princes or blankets mouth. NEVER EVER. they are not worth to be mentioned. there is NO reason to talk about them. it wouldnt help.
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I agree ? %!!!!
 
https://www.urbaninsite.com/news/lavelle-smith-jr-unveils-the-truth-about-michael-jackson/


Lavelle Smith Jr. Unveils The Truth About Michael Jackson


Lavelle Smith Jr. unveils the truth about Michael Jackson In new & explosive documentary called “The Man Behind The Dance.”

Opportunity Knocks On Michael Jackson’s Fan Base& Critics Door As The Man Behind The Dance Launches Fact-Finding Footage With Formal Michael’s Choreographer & Friend, Lavelle Smith Jr.

David Van Hoesen & Thibault Weewauters, both living in Antwerp, Belgium, are pleased to announce the launching of their first and new international documentary called “The Man Behind The Dance.” on June 25 2019. The two-part documentary features an explosive interview with Lavelle Smith, Michael Jackson’s formal choreographer and personal friend. An official trailer of the documentary that was released on social media has already viewed more than 60,000 views within a few days of release.

Lavelle Smith Jr., who is being interviewed by David Van Hoesen & Thibault Weewauters is speaking publicly on the issue from a close point of view for the first time since the death of Michael Jackson. The uncensored documentary saw an outspoken, angry, and emotional Lavelle Smith touching on the allegations, lies, and the truth about his dear late friend (Michael).

Smith ‘s no-hold-back presentations and replies to questions brought a truckload of new revelations and theoretical facts previously unknown to the public. This new documentary brings to the fore new, jaw-dropping information that both Michael’s fans and die-hard critics will find interesting, considering Smith’s close relationship with the late pop legend.

Michael personally recruited Lavelle Smith Jr., and in this documentary, the famous dancer and choreographer wasted no time to speak openly and forcefully on various issues surrounding the late singer’s life.

In the first part of The Man behind The Dance, Lavelle Smith Jr. came out blazing touching issues like on the HBO documentary ‘Leaving Neverland’ and the anniversary of the 10-year death of Michael Jackson, about the allegations, the lies, the truth and last performance together and the death of his dear friend.

It was an in-depth conversation that triggers both anger and sadness.

“The best achievement we can get is the truth. We must tell people who are making false allegations and put the spotlight back to the real artist and human being Michael Jackson was,” stated, Lavelle Smith.

The second part of the documentary covers even more sensitive and revealing issues people will certainly find interesting to watch.
 
WannaScream said:
I guess the poll shouldn't be a surprise. I don't think it's only a case of haters or prejudice, I do think a lot of people (worldwide, not just the UK) lack critical thinking skills. They are the people that believe what they read in tabloids or see in documentaries and not question it. They jump to conclusions based on small amounts of information, whether it be one sided or sources that have a reputation to be BS. If an individual doesn't recognise they do this, or they are happy to do this, then it's hard to rationalise with them.
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This is so true about the critical thinking. I work in education, and I make it a point whenever possible to talk to students about critical thinking. I typically phrase it as the idea that people should regularly question "how do I know the things I know/think I know?" So many people these days lack that skill (not just when it comes to discussions about Michael, obviously, but in all kinds of daily interactions and decisions), so I'm doing what I can to fix it in my own small way.
 
You can basically say this whole year is about Michael. the good and the bad. why? because 3 white man trying to destroy a decrease black/african-american man legacy all because of some gosh darn money! money is most definitely evil! and this whole world is full of it! Michael were so right.


 
People get mad when i talk about the race card. but what else is it? Michael was very sweet man and loved everyone. so what else it is?
 
NatureCriminal7896 said:
I know it's hard for them with everything going on. but they need to speak out more. this is their family member who was and is the biggest superstar in the world.
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They only bothered to support mj when it could effect their cash flow. Once kj dies it stops anyway. Most of them are better off keeping quiet as they are clueless of the facts and just make themselves look stupid and mj guilty.
 
Glanni said:
i am happy that the other family members dont pay any attention to this bullshit and the bastards wade and james. Waht should they say? OF COURSE they would defend michael. Would it help? no! They are doing exact the right thing by just ignoring this crap and keep gpoing with life and business.

just imagine janet and paris and prince and blanket would say something? it would get all the media attention again and in the end it will be negative for MJ again because the media will say that the family has to say this because they are depending on MJs money (which is not true but the people and media dont give a **** about the truth).

TAJ is doing a great job and he represents the whole family. period. I hope I will never hear any word about LN or ANY of the actors names out of janets or paris pr princes or blankets mouth. NEVER EVER. they are not worth to be mentioned. there is NO reason to talk about them. it wouldnt help.
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So true,, I agree, too (y)
 
Nantucket Cat said:
This is so true about the critical thinking. I work in education, and I make it a point whenever possible to talk to students about critical thinking. I typically phrase it as the idea that people should regularly question "how do I know the things I know/think I know?" So many people these days lack that skill (not just when it comes to discussions about Michael, obviously, but in all kinds of daily interactions and decisions), so I'm doing what I can to fix it in my own small way.
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This is definitely the problem about some people in the world, especially in my country. As you've mentioned above, I see that with almost ~60% of the people lack that skill in all kinds of interactions, they hear it on some tv channel/news or read it on a paper and think it is the truth, with no questioning at all :(
 
Glanni said:
i am happy that the other family members dont pay any attention to this bullshit and the bastards wade and james. Waht should they say? OF COURSE they would defend michael. Would it help? no! They are doing exact the right thing by just ignoring this crap and keep gpoing with life and business.

just imagine janet and paris and prince and blanket would say something? it would get all the media attention again and in the end it will be negative for MJ again because the media will say that the family has to say this because they are depending on MJs money (which is not true but the people and media dont give a **** about the truth).

TAJ is doing a great job and he represents the whole family. period. I hope I will never hear any word about LN or ANY of the actors names out of janets or paris pr princes or blankets mouth. NEVER EVER. they are not worth to be mentioned. there is NO reason to talk about them. it wouldnt help.
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(y) And it would unnecessarily extend these maggots' 5 minutes of fame.
 
Nantucket Cat said:
This is so true about the critical thinking. I work in education, and I make it a point whenever possible to talk to students about critical thinking. I typically phrase it as the idea that people should regularly question "how do I know the things I know/think I know?" So many people these days lack that skill (not just when it comes to discussions about Michael, obviously, but in all kinds of daily interactions and decisions), so I'm doing what I can to fix it in my own small way.
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I agree.
 
NatureCriminal7896 said:
You can basically say this whole year is about Michael. the good and the bad. why? because 3 white man trying to destroy a decrease black/african-american man legacy all because of some gosh darn money! money is most definitely evil! and this whole world is full of it! Michael were so right.
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It is the LOVE of money that is evil. Some people love it and want it so bad they will lie, cheat, steal, and Kill for it as what is happening now. Look at Jordan Chandler. He know this is lies that came from his lie but he just sit back and let this trash keep coming up but it is going to come back on him or his kin until he set this right.
 
terrell said:
It is the LOVE of money that is evil. Some people love it and want it so bad they will lie, cheat, steal, and Kill for it as what is happening now. Look at Jordan Chandler. He know this is lies that came from his lie but he just sit back and let this trash keep coming up but it is going to come back on him or his kin until he set this right.
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Maybe he sees how they treat Brett Barnes. Anyway, Google Jordan Chandler Marina Del Rey, click on the link to the site mylife.com, scroll down a bit and a new Yahoo emailadress has been added there. You have to become a member to see the whole adress but it is possible to get a trial period but still you will probably not receive a reply.
 
La74 said:
Maybe he sees how they treat Brett Barnes. Anyway, Google Jordan Chandler Marina Del Rey, click on the link to the site mylife.com, scroll down a bit and a new Yahoo emailadress has been added there. You have to become a member to see the whole adress but it is possible to get a trial period but still you will probably not receive a reply.
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Well, he has face it. Brett did not start this, Jordan did. It is about making the wrong right. All of this still comes from HIM and his father. He needs to do the right thing, once he do the right thing in correcting this lie, Jordan does not have to answer to anyone. His family lied on MJ. either way, Jordan is going to have to face up to his lie before he leave this earth. It always happen in some way. He needs to do it to save his own soul.
 
I see Max Landis (J Landis' son) is now being called out as an abuser (of multiple women). Sadly sounds legitimate. Sigh.
 
myosotis said:
I see Max Landis (J Landis' son) is now being called out as an abuser (of multiple women). Sadly sounds legitimate. Sigh.
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The way things are going now, everyone is being called an abuser. It does not take much to be accused. I tell people be careful in judging others unless you know their case. Just morning, I heard a radio host who use to be hard on MJ before he died (she is a little better now) who account was hacked and saying she was saying all kind of racist comments, etc. She was hurt by it and did not want people to think she said those things. She had to admit people can LIE ON you. See how it comes back. I was amazed to hear it about her.
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="de"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Those worried about Michael losing listeners, don't be. Climbed over 310 thousand since last week &#128526; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MJFam?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MJFam</a> <a href="https://t.co/NfYeYY0QB5">pic.twitter.com/NfYeYY0QB5</a></p>&mdash; R.D. Smith (@MindofSmithy) <a href="https://twitter.com/MindofSmithy/status/1140714123514302464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">17. Juni 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="de"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">*Update* Leaving Neverland: The Aftermath ... will be shown Saturday 22nd June from 2.30pm at TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood &#128588;&#127996; Here are where tickets can be purchased to support &#128591;&#127996;<br> <a href="https://t.co/IumzEdoyKk">https://t.co/IumzEdoyKk</a></p>&mdash; Jin (@jin_n_t0nic) <a href="https://twitter.com/jin_n_t0nic/status/1140624524322324480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">17. Juni 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="de"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">You are Good <a href="https://twitter.com/tajjackson3?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tajjackson3</a>- &quot;Stand up for what's right, even if you stand alone&quot; <a href="https://t.co/fNcUqPGm0Q">https://t.co/fNcUqPGm0Q</a></p>&mdash; MJJJusticeProject (@MJJJusticePrjct) <a href="https://twitter.com/MJJJusticePrjct/status/1141059547185811456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">18. Juni 2019</a></blockquote>
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gREED trying desperately to make a case for his investigation- free film, to justify his award nominations....

Strange that he doesn't mention that Robson (as an adult) defended MJ in court- and would never have been selected as a defence witness if MJ was not innocent. Or that Robson, after his son's birth, was begging Cirque in 2011 for a choreography job so he could make a great production 'for Michael' (until he was rejected), or Safechuck's mother, or the rail station time travel or Brandi or etc etc etc.
gREED grabbed a tiger by the tail, and now he isn't able to let go. Robson and Safechuck made a willing fool of him.

&#8216;Leaving Neverland&#8217; Director Dan Reed Talks Why There&#8217;s Support for Michael Jackson But Not Bill Cosby

Awards Daily&#8217;s Megan McLachlan speaks with director Dan Reed of HBO&#8217;s Leaving Neverland about why people are reluctant to believe Wade Robson and James Safechuck, the victims who didn&#8217;t want to appear on camera, and why celebrities like Bill Cosby don&#8217;t have the same support from fans as Michael Jackson.
As a documentary filmmaker, Dan Reed has uncovered uncomfortable truths about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, ISIS, and people who tried to cash in on 9/11. But the director didn&#8217;t know what he was getting into when he started work on Leaving Neverland, his two-part documentary about the alleged sexual abuse at the hands of Michael Jackson.

Since airing on HBO in the spring of 2019, the documentary has provoked a lot of conversation and even inspired many people to come forward with their own stories of sexual abuse. However, it&#8217;s also brought about Michael Jackson truthers who defend the King of Pop as innocent of all charges.

I had a chance to chat with Reed about why he decided to take on this project, how he handles death threats, and the directorial decision to focus on these two families.

Awards Daily: What made you decide to delve into this very controversial story? Why was this important to you?

Dan Reed: Leaving Neverland happened as a result of an opportunity rather than any decision of mine to go off on Michael Jackson. It was an opportunity to do what this documentary did, which was to take people on a journey right through two decades of two families&#8217; encounter with a grooming pedophile&#8212;it&#8217;s really rare to get that opportunity. I don&#8217;t know if there are many documentaries that have done this&#8212;nevermind with a predator as famous as Jackson. My background as a documentary filmmaker didn&#8217;t include anything about music or show business, and I had made one documentary before that dealt with child sexual abuse with a vigilante in the United Kingdom [The Paedophile Hunter, from 2014]. What Leaving Neverland has in common with the rest of my work is that it&#8217;s about people surviving immense trauma and coming to terms with it. It gives people insight into their journey through the most terrible thing that can happen to them, how it takes them to a place where they can take stock of what happened and talk about it.

This film came about because I came across James [Safechuck] and Wade [Robson]. At the request of Channel 4 in the UK, I was looking very generally at the Michael Jackson controversy. I really thought this was something I wasn&#8217;t going to take much time on. And suddenly I noticed this mention in a forum of the lawsuit that James and Wade brought against the estate, and I delved into who they were and what they wanted and ended up meeting them and interviewing them, and everything changed.

AD: Were you aware of the passionate Michael Jackson fans? I interviewed your composer Chad Hobson for Awards Daily, too, and when I published the piece, I was immediately inundated with Michael Jackson fans harassing me. How have you dealt with the harassment? Were you concerned about the backlash?

DR: To be honest, the backlash doesn&#8217;t really exist if you&#8217;re not on Twitter or social media. It&#8217;s something that lives on the comment pages of media articles like the one you wrote about Chad, and it lives obviously on the pages of Twitter and Facebook, etc. I&#8217;m generally too busy to spend a long time on social media, so I wasn&#8217;t really aware of what that would feel like. Subsequently, I noticed that everything I tweeted, even if it was &#8216;Nice weather in London today&#8217;, was met with, &#8216;Lies! Lies! Lies&#8217; and a torrent of abuse. I didn&#8217;t know that was going to happen. We did get a lot of direct emails to my company to the general email address and a lot of those were really nasty, but that kind of stopped, like someone switched off a faucet, as soon as the documentary was broadcast on HBO. Then we got all these amazing messages from people&#8212;a trickle compared to the flood of hatred that was coming to us&#8212;but a trickle of messages that really continues to this day, from people who found in the documentary a way to release themselves from years of silence about being sexually abused as a child.

AD: Did you receive any death threats at all?

DR: My work for many years has brought me into contact with terrorists and criminals and guerrilla armies and what have you, so there have been occasions where people have threatened to kill me and I take that very seriously. On Leaving Neverland, I&#8217;ve had dozens if not hundreds of emails which contained threats, but none of which I found credible. So I haven&#8217;t gone into hiding. I&#8217;ve taken precautions to protect me and my family, though I&#8217;m not going to mention what they are. There hasn&#8217;t been any manifestation of violence so far. We&#8217;re vigilient, because all it takes is one lunatic.


AD: Yeah. It&#8217;s scary out there. Wade Robson and James Safechuck have also suffered abuse. Even though support for abuse victims has grown in the #MeToo age, why do you think people don&#8217;t want to believe them? Do you think it has to do with them being men?

DR: If you take a deep breath and step back and ignore the shouting about Wade and James for a second, and just say&#8212;wait a minute&#8212;it&#8217;s not that common for people to come out and describe in huge detail an array of facts and really coherent evidence that is backed up by all the circumstantial evidence. It&#8217;s not that common for people to do that and not be telling the truth. This is a difficult thing for people to come out and say. Why aren&#8217;t they believed? Why are they attacked? I think the reason has to be partly because we&#8217;re saturated by the Jackson version or the version that Jackson lawyers have put out, which is it&#8217;s all about the money. They have painted Jackson as a martyr and victim of gold-digging. That&#8217;s a bizarre thing. If you think of other rich and famous people, I&#8217;m sure there are plenty of people trying to scam them, but not by pretending that they were sexually abused as children.

A deeper reason is yes, it&#8217;s harder for people to confront the taboo of male sexual abuse, with the victims being men. That&#8217;s a harder thing for people to get their head around. It&#8217;s something people don&#8217;t want to face, in particular when those males are children. It&#8217;s a really uncomfortable thing for people to think about, someone having sex with a little boy. To my mind, child sexual abuse, male or female, is absolutely, equally horrific. But for some reason, I think it is more difficult to get people&#8217;s heads around the male aspect of it. It&#8217;s something people would rather not think about.

Another factor is Jackson&#8217;s status and fame as an entertainer. His songs are like the soundtrack to happy moments in people&#8217;s lives and he was so famous. People just can&#8217;t grasp both the fact that he was this guy who wrote these songs that are enduring and woven into the fabric of our culture, and also that Michael the human being liked to have sex with little boys. Those two facts simply do not fit in the same narrative.

When we make people so famous and we give them an almost god-like status of someone really good in the world, it&#8217;s very hard then to reconcile what they do as human beings with that status. Leaving Neverland is partly about the impossibility of digesting the fact that someone who has that celebrity status bestowed upon them can also be human. Any person can be a pedophile. You&#8217;re not more or less likely to be a pedophile if you&#8217;re rich and famous. Yes, you can say Michael Jackson was a victim of his circumstances, but what we can say for sure is that Wade and James were victims of Michael Jackson and so were their families. He&#8217;s the perpetrator in this story. If everyone who had a hard time as a child had a license to rape a kid, I think our society would be in a bit of a mess.

AD: Were there any other accusers who came forward to you but didn&#8217;t want to be on camera?

DR: I met with Jason Francia, the son of Michael Jackson&#8217;s chambermaid. He was kind of casually molested by Jackson, he wasn&#8217;t drawn into the same kind of close, pseudo-romantic relationship as James and Wade were. He was molested while his mom was cleaning somewhere else in the house. He was paid off by Jackson. I sat and had dinner with Jason&#8212;and this is public knowledge, by the way, I&#8217;m not breaking any confidences&#8212;and he didn&#8217;t feel ready to do what Wade and James did, which is basically make themselves targets for these crazies out there. That&#8217;s probably a very big consideration for anyone else who wants to come forward. This isn&#8217;t people making casual threats, but people hacking your bank account, private details. I&#8217;ve had successful hacking attempts on me. These are people who are a real nuisance. You have to think really hard before taking that on.

AD: You focused on interviewing two families. Some documentaries include psychologists and less biased sources. What was the reasoning behind focusing on the families?

DR: That was a filmmaking choice, not a journalistic thing. I wanted people to really concentrate just on what James and Wade and their families were saying; I wanted to try to get them to explain everything that they had gone through. I wanted to get them to speak about and interpret their experience as much as possible. What was great about After Neverland [Oprah&#8217;s show] was that you had a psychotherapist who stood up and said a few things. I didn&#8217;t want to make my documentary into an educational program. Not to say I didn&#8217;t want it to be educational&#8212;I just didn&#8217;t want it to feel dry. I wanted people to be immersed in the two families&#8217; experience.

I did quite a few interviews with former police investigators from the Santa Barbara sheriff&#8217;s department and the LAPD, people who investigated the Jackson case in &#8217;93 and 2004/2005. They were great interviews and certainly shed a lot of light, and none of the investigators were in any doubt at all that Jackson was a pedophile. But these were people who&#8217;d already spoken in the press or who&#8217;d already been quoted before, and I felt that they were giving secondhand information. They had no direct knowledge of the things they were talking about. Being investigators, they were investigating secondhand information. They were talking to people who were there.

Members of the household staff] had glimpsed stuff, but a lot had been interviewed by the tabloid press and may have taken money for the interview. The Jackson camp always found ways to discredit the members of the Jackson household. I wanted to distance Leaving Neverland from all of the controversy that had gone before it. I didn&#8217;t want to be relying on people who were at best circumstantial witnesses&#8212;the maid who saw a child naked in the shower with Jackson, who she thought was Wade&#8212;I thought that that was less powerful than Wade himself who had been in the shower with Jackson.

Had Michael Jackson been alive, I would have of course sought to interview him, and had he given me one, I would have included it in the program. There&#8217;s no doubt about that. But sadly he&#8217;s dead&#8212;and I say sadly because I would have loved to have seen him brought to justice and taken to court. I included at some length Jackson&#8217;s protestations of innocence at the time of previous allegations, I included his lawyers&#8217; rebuttals of allegations, in multiple places in the documentary. Also, when Wade came out with his charges in 2013, I included the reactions of fans, Michael&#8217;s former lawyers commenting on Wade&#8217;s new allegations&#8212;so the Jackson camp is well-represented in their rebuttals and denials.

Also, I want to say this&#8212;I&#8217;ve been doing forensic journalism for 30 years. What we&#8217;re talking bout here is acts that took place between two individuals behind closed doors. To my knowledge, no one else was present when Jackson was having sex with Wade or with James. There are no eye witnesses, no one with direct knowledge of the central facts of Leaving Neverland&#8212;the sexual molestation of these two children by Michael Jackson. To people who say, &#8216;Why didn&#8217;t you include members of the Jackson family?&#8217; [as some kind of journalistic balance], it&#8217;s apples and oranges. They are not journalistically equivalent. Having someone give the equivalent of a character reference in court is not the same as someone saying, &#8216;I saw him shoot that guy.&#8217;

The elephant in the room is that Jackson spent so many nights in bed behind closed doors with little boys who were not his children. That&#8217;s something that nobody denies. He doesn&#8217;t seem to have hidden from anyone the fact that he spent nights with kids. That&#8217;s a fundamental fact that&#8217;s never addressed by the other side. That&#8217;s what baffles me. On one hand, you attack Wade and James for making these allegations, and on the other hand, you have no explanation for what Michael was actually doing. He managed to get away with it because Michael Jackson is a great entertainer, and people can&#8217;t get their head around the fact that he might have also been a man who was consistently cruel to children.

AD: That leads to my last question. I think about how other iconic figures like Bill Cosby have fallen from grace with sexual abuse allegations. But there&#8217;s not a huge group defending him like they are Michael Jackson. Why do you think MJ fans are so passionate about Michael Jackson compared to other figures like Bill Cosby?

DR: Jackson&#8217;s supernova fame transcends any other figure of the late 20th Century; compared to Cosby and R. Kelly, he&#8217;s on another level. Cosby never incorporated surviving the allegations of sexual abuse into his mythology. Jackson and his lawyers fight back against the children who made allegations against him&#8212;it became the story people embraced. Jackson found a way of incorporating it into his identity, and it became part of his victim story.

He masqueraded as someone who loved children and was innocent and child-like at heart, filled with pure love, which is cruelly ironic. Because he built that lie very consistently, he saw himself that way. It made it even harder for people to make that huge stretch back to maybe he&#8217;s the complete opposite. It&#8217;s the magnitude of his fame and his narrative that he&#8217;s a child at heart. He made such a play of being falsely accused and being a martyr. A lot of people&#8217;s hearts went out to him. Being a victim of child sexual abuse is the hardest thing to disclose. It&#8217;s completely standard for people not to disclose. If you put all that stuff together, it&#8217;s incredibly difficult for people to believe that Jackson was a pedophile.

https://www.awardsdaily.com/2019/06/18/leaving-neverland-director-dan-reed-interview/
 
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myosotis;4260246 said:
gREED trying desperately to make a case for his investigation- free film, to justify his award nominations....

Strange that he doesn't mention that Robson (as an adult) defended MJ in court- and would never have been selected as a defence witness if MJ was not innocent. Or that Robson, after his son's birth, was begging Cirque in 2011 for a choreography job so he could make a great production 'for Michael' (until he was rejected), or Safechuck's mother, or the rail station time travel or Brandi or etc etc etc.
gREED grabbed a tiger by the tail, and now he isn't able to let go. Robson and Safechuck made a willing fool of him.

&#8216;Leaving Neverland&#8217; Director Dan Reed Talks Why There&#8217;s Support for Michael Jackson But Not Bill Cosby

Awards Daily&#8217;s Megan McLachlan speaks with director Dan Reed of HBO&#8217;s Leaving Neverland about why people are reluctant to believe Wade Robson and James Safechuck, the victims who didn&#8217;t want to appear on camera, and why celebrities like Bill Cosby don&#8217;t have the same support from fans as Michael Jackson.
As a documentary filmmaker, Dan Reed has uncovered uncomfortable truths about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, ISIS, and people who tried to cash in on 9/11. But the director didn&#8217;t know what he was getting into when he started work on Leaving Neverland, his two-part documentary about the alleged sexual abuse at the hands of Michael Jackson.

Since airing on HBO in the spring of 2019, the documentary has provoked a lot of conversation and even inspired many people to come forward with their own stories of sexual abuse. However, it&#8217;s also brought about Michael Jackson truthers who defend the King of Pop as innocent of all charges.

I had a chance to chat with Reed about why he decided to take on this project, how he handles death threats, and the directorial decision to focus on these two families.

Awards Daily: What made you decide to delve into this very controversial story? Why was this important to you?

Dan Reed: Leaving Neverland happened as a result of an opportunity rather than any decision of mine to go off on Michael Jackson. It was an opportunity to do what this documentary did, which was to take people on a journey right through two decades of two families&#8217; encounter with a grooming pedophile&#8212;it&#8217;s really rare to get that opportunity. I don&#8217;t know if there are many documentaries that have done this&#8212;nevermind with a predator as famous as Jackson. My background as a documentary filmmaker didn&#8217;t include anything about music or show business, and I had made one documentary before that dealt with child sexual abuse with a vigilante in the United Kingdom [The Paedophile Hunter, from 2014]. What Leaving Neverland has in common with the rest of my work is that it&#8217;s about people surviving immense trauma and coming to terms with it. It gives people insight into their journey through the most terrible thing that can happen to them, how it takes them to a place where they can take stock of what happened and talk about it.

This film came about because I came across James [Safechuck] and Wade [Robson]. At the request of Channel 4 in the UK, I was looking very generally at the Michael Jackson controversy. I really thought this was something I wasn&#8217;t going to take much time on. And suddenly I noticed this mention in a forum of the lawsuit that James and Wade brought against the estate, and I delved into who they were and what they wanted and ended up meeting them and interviewing them, and everything changed.

AD: Were you aware of the passionate Michael Jackson fans? I interviewed your composer Chad Hobson for Awards Daily, too, and when I published the piece, I was immediately inundated with Michael Jackson fans harassing me. How have you dealt with the harassment? Were you concerned about the backlash?

DR: To be honest, the backlash doesn&#8217;t really exist if you&#8217;re not on Twitter or social media. It&#8217;s something that lives on the comment pages of media articles like the one you wrote about Chad, and it lives obviously on the pages of Twitter and Facebook, etc. I&#8217;m generally too busy to spend a long time on social media, so I wasn&#8217;t really aware of what that would feel like. Subsequently, I noticed that everything I tweeted, even if it was &#8216;Nice weather in London today&#8217;, was met with, &#8216;Lies! Lies! Lies&#8217; and a torrent of abuse. I didn&#8217;t know that was going to happen. We did get a lot of direct emails to my company to the general email address and a lot of those were really nasty, but that kind of stopped, like someone switched off a faucet, as soon as the documentary was broadcast on HBO. Then we got all these amazing messages from people&#8212;a trickle compared to the flood of hatred that was coming to us&#8212;but a trickle of messages that really continues to this day, from people who found in the documentary a way to release themselves from years of silence about being sexually abused as a child.

AD: Did you receive any death threats at all?

DR: My work for many years has brought me into contact with terrorists and criminals and guerrilla armies and what have you, so there have been occasions where people have threatened to kill me and I take that very seriously. On Leaving Neverland, I&#8217;ve had dozens if not hundreds of emails which contained threats, but none of which I found credible. So I haven&#8217;t gone into hiding. I&#8217;ve taken precautions to protect me and my family, though I&#8217;m not going to mention what they are. There hasn&#8217;t been any manifestation of violence so far. We&#8217;re vigilient, because all it takes is one lunatic.


AD: Yeah. It&#8217;s scary out there. Wade Robson and James Safechuck have also suffered abuse. Even though support for abuse victims has grown in the #MeToo age, why do you think people don&#8217;t want to believe them? Do you think it has to do with them being men?

DR: If you take a deep breath and step back and ignore the shouting about Wade and James for a second, and just say&#8212;wait a minute&#8212;it&#8217;s not that common for people to come out and describe in huge detail an array of facts and really coherent evidence that is backed up by all the circumstantial evidence. It&#8217;s not that common for people to do that and not be telling the truth. This is a difficult thing for people to come out and say. Why aren&#8217;t they believed? Why are they attacked? I think the reason has to be partly because we&#8217;re saturated by the Jackson version or the version that Jackson lawyers have put out, which is it&#8217;s all about the money. They have painted Jackson as a martyr and victim of gold-digging. That&#8217;s a bizarre thing. If you think of other rich and famous people, I&#8217;m sure there are plenty of people trying to scam them, but not by pretending that they were sexually abused as children.

A deeper reason is yes, it&#8217;s harder for people to confront the taboo of male sexual abuse, with the victims being men. That&#8217;s a harder thing for people to get their head around. It&#8217;s something people don&#8217;t want to face, in particular when those males are children. It&#8217;s a really uncomfortable thing for people to think about, someone having sex with a little boy. To my mind, child sexual abuse, male or female, is absolutely, equally horrific. But for some reason, I think it is more difficult to get people&#8217;s heads around the male aspect of it. It&#8217;s something people would rather not think about.

Another factor is Jackson&#8217;s status and fame as an entertainer. His songs are like the soundtrack to happy moments in people&#8217;s lives and he was so famous. People just can&#8217;t grasp both the fact that he was this guy who wrote these songs that are enduring and woven into the fabric of our culture, and also that Michael the human being liked to have sex with little boys. Those two facts simply do not fit in the same narrative.

When we make people so famous and we give them an almost god-like status of someone really good in the world, it&#8217;s very hard then to reconcile what they do as human beings with that status. Leaving Neverland is partly about the impossibility of digesting the fact that someone who has that celebrity status bestowed upon them can also be human. Any person can be a pedophile. You&#8217;re not more or less likely to be a pedophile if you&#8217;re rich and famous. Yes, you can say Michael Jackson was a victim of his circumstances, but what we can say for sure is that Wade and James were victims of Michael Jackson and so were their families. He&#8217;s the perpetrator in this story. If everyone who had a hard time as a child had a license to rape a kid, I think our society would be in a bit of a mess.

AD: Were there any other accusers who came forward to you but didn&#8217;t want to be on camera?

DR: I met with Jason Francia, the son of Michael Jackson&#8217;s chambermaid. He was kind of casually molested by Jackson, he wasn&#8217;t drawn into the same kind of close, pseudo-romantic relationship as James and Wade were. He was molested while his mom was cleaning somewhere else in the house. He was paid off by Jackson. I sat and had dinner with Jason&#8212;and this is public knowledge, by the way, I&#8217;m not breaking any confidences&#8212;and he didn&#8217;t feel ready to do what Wade and James did, which is basically make themselves targets for these crazies out there. That&#8217;s probably a very big consideration for anyone else who wants to come forward. This isn&#8217;t people making casual threats, but people hacking your bank account, private details. I&#8217;ve had successful hacking attempts on me. These are people who are a real nuisance. You have to think really hard before taking that on.

AD: You focused on interviewing two families. Some documentaries include psychologists and less biased sources. What was the reasoning behind focusing on the families?

DR: That was a filmmaking choice, not a journalistic thing. I wanted people to really concentrate just on what James and Wade and their families were saying; I wanted to try to get them to explain everything that they had gone through. I wanted to get them to speak about and interpret their experience as much as possible. What was great about After Neverland [Oprah&#8217;s show] was that you had a psychotherapist who stood up and said a few things. I didn&#8217;t want to make my documentary into an educational program. Not to say I didn&#8217;t want it to be educational&#8212;I just didn&#8217;t want it to feel dry. I wanted people to be immersed in the two families&#8217; experience.

I did quite a few interviews with former police investigators from the Santa Barbara sheriff&#8217;s department and the LAPD, people who investigated the Jackson case in &#8217;93 and 2004/2005. They were great interviews and certainly shed a lot of light, and none of the investigators were in any doubt at all that Jackson was a pedophile. But these were people who&#8217;d already spoken in the press or who&#8217;d already been quoted before, and I felt that they were giving secondhand information. They had no direct knowledge of the things they were talking about. Being investigators, they were investigating secondhand information. They were talking to people who were there.

Members of the household staff] had glimpsed stuff, but a lot had been interviewed by the tabloid press and may have taken money for the interview. The Jackson camp always found ways to discredit the members of the Jackson household. I wanted to distance Leaving Neverland from all of the controversy that had gone before it. I didn&#8217;t want to be relying on people who were at best circumstantial witnesses&#8212;the maid who saw a child naked in the shower with Jackson, who she thought was Wade&#8212;I thought that that was less powerful than Wade himself who had been in the shower with Jackson.

Had Michael Jackson been alive, I would have of course sought to interview him, and had he given me one, I would have included it in the program. There&#8217;s no doubt about that. But sadly he&#8217;s dead&#8212;and I say sadly because I would have loved to have seen him brought to justice and taken to court. I included at some length Jackson&#8217;s protestations of innocence at the time of previous allegations, I included his lawyers&#8217; rebuttals of allegations, in multiple places in the documentary. Also, when Wade came out with his charges in 2013, I included the reactions of fans, Michael&#8217;s former lawyers commenting on Wade&#8217;s new allegations&#8212;so the Jackson camp is well-represented in their rebuttals and denials.

Also, I want to say this&#8212;I&#8217;ve been doing forensic journalism for 30 years. What we&#8217;re talking bout here is acts that took place between two individuals behind closed doors. To my knowledge, no one else was present when Jackson was having sex with Wade or with James. There are no eye witnesses, no one with direct knowledge of the central facts of Leaving Neverland&#8212;the sexual molestation of these two children by Michael Jackson. To people who say, &#8216;Why didn&#8217;t you include members of the Jackson family?&#8217; [as some kind of journalistic balance], it&#8217;s apples and oranges. They are not journalistically equivalent. Having someone give the equivalent of a character reference in court is not the same as someone saying, &#8216;I saw him shoot that guy.&#8217;

The elephant in the room is that Jackson spent so many nights in bed behind closed doors with little boys who were not his children. That&#8217;s something that nobody denies. He doesn&#8217;t seem to have hidden from anyone the fact that he spent nights with kids. That&#8217;s a fundamental fact that&#8217;s never addressed by the other side. That&#8217;s what baffles me. On one hand, you attack Wade and James for making these allegations, and on the other hand, you have no explanation for what Michael was actually doing. He managed to get away with it because Michael Jackson is a great entertainer, and people can&#8217;t get their head around the fact that he might have also been a man who was consistently cruel to children.

AD: That leads to my last question. I think about how other iconic figures like Bill Cosby have fallen from grace with sexual abuse allegations. But there&#8217;s not a huge group defending him like they are Michael Jackson. Why do you think MJ fans are so passionate about Michael Jackson compared to other figures like Bill Cosby?

DR: Jackson&#8217;s supernova fame transcends any other figure of the late 20th Century; compared to Cosby and R. Kelly, he&#8217;s on another level. Cosby never incorporated surviving the allegations of sexual abuse into his mythology. Jackson and his lawyers fight back against the children who made allegations against him&#8212;it became the story people embraced. Jackson found a way of incorporating it into his identity, and it became part of his victim story.

He masqueraded as someone who loved children and was innocent and child-like at heart, filled with pure love, which is cruelly ironic. Because he built that lie very consistently, he saw himself that way. It made it even harder for people to make that huge stretch back to maybe he&#8217;s the complete opposite. It&#8217;s the magnitude of his fame and his narrative that he&#8217;s a child at heart. He made such a play of being falsely accused and being a martyr. A lot of people&#8217;s hearts went out to him. Being a victim of child sexual abuse is the hardest thing to disclose. It&#8217;s completely standard for people not to disclose. If you put all that stuff together, it&#8217;s incredibly difficult for people to believe that Jackson was a pedophile.

https://www.awardsdaily.com/2019/06/18/leaving-neverland-director-dan-reed-interview/
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So in other words, his agenda failed and it's all our fault :kiss:
 
Listen up guys. i feel when the 25th comes, let's all just put to rest once the day is over. even Michael nephew said it also. i said i was gonna defend him on the day too but i change my mind. i'm just gonna celebrate his life on that day. that day should be a day to mourn and celebrate his life.
 
Reed makes himself look like a fool every time he open his mouth. Now he wants to be an expert on what we think and on Cosby. Let a fool speak.
 
myosotis;4260246 said:
DR: To be honest, the backlash doesn’t really exist if you’re not on Twitter or social media. It’s something that lives on the comment pages of media articles like the one you wrote about Chad, and it lives obviously on the pages of Twitter and Facebook, etc. I’m generally too busy to spend a long time on social media, so I wasn’t really aware of what that would feel like.
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I can't help but laugh at this fool, as he CONTINUES to "try" and defend his mockumentary!!!! I have never in my entire life seen a director spend this much time, trying to explain why folks should believe this pack of lies.

AND THANK GOD FOR SOCIAL MEDIA, TWITTER, ETC., because it's a known fact that the majority no longer trust the mainstream media and get most of their day to day information from social media and the like.

LASTLY, Greedy says he doesn't have time for Social Media, but his a$$ had time to respond when that dang TRAIN STATION STORY came out. LOL! That story came out and TWO SECONDS later Reed not only responded, but his response threw Safechuck's lawsuit under the bus. He don't have time for Social Media, Chile Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Big Apple NYC said:
I can't help but laugh at this fool, as he CONTINUES to "try" and defend his mockumentary!!!! I have never in my entire life seen a director spend this much time, trying to explain why folks should believe this pack of lies.

AND THANK GOD FOR SOCIAL MEDIA, TWITTER, ETC., because it's a known fact that the majority no longer trust the mainstream media and get most of their day to day information from social media and the like.

LASTLY, Greedy says he doesn't have time for Social Media, but his a$$ had time to respond when that dang TRAIN STATION STORY came out. LOL! That story came out and TWO SECONDS later Reed not only responded, but his response threw Safechuck's lawsuit under the bus. He don't have time for Social Media, Chile Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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He also had time to create a burner account on twitter and spew MJFacts rhetoric.
 
DR: To be honest, the backlash doesn&#8217;t really exist if you&#8217;re not on Twitter or social media. It&#8217;s something that lives on the comment pages of media articles like the one you wrote about Chad, and it lives obviously on the pages of Twitter and Facebook, etc. I&#8217;m generally too busy to spend a long time on social media, so I wasn&#8217;t really aware of what that would feel like


And in the REAL WORLD, no one cared about your trash other than MJ haters/media people. And didn't this nut posted a picture of MJ in a swim suit on his twitter page and removed it? Go have a seat Reed.
 
myosotis;4260246 said:
DR: I met with Jason Francia, the son of Michael Jackson&#8217;s chambermaid. He was kind of casually molested by Jackson,

he didn&#8217;t feel ready to do what Wade and James did, which is basically make themselves targets for these crazies out there.
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Now I realize this is a very serious subject so I won't laugh, BUT can someone please explain to me how a person can be: "KIND OF CASUALLY MOLESTED?"

As to Jason: if I recall correctly, it was WIDELY reported that during one of the jury breaks (in the small courtyard, that was afforded the jury for private break times), some reporters (being nosy) actually heard the jury making fun of Jason, because he basically said, on the witness stand, that Michael had TICKLED him.

Does anybody else remember that?
 
Big Apple NYC said:
Now I realize this is a very serious subject so I won't laugh, BUT can someone please explain to me how a person can be: "KIND OF CASUALLY MOLESTED?"

As to Jason: if I recall correctly, it was WIDELY reported that during one of the jury breaks (in the small courtyard, that was afforded the jury for private break times), some reporters (being nosy) actually heard the jury making fun of Jason, because he basically said, on the witness stand, that Michael had TICKLED him.

Does anybody else remember that?
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Yes, one juror cracked up when he spoke on that. He was a joke and that is why you barely hear anyone talking about him even Garvin was full of it. It showed. That statement by Reed is a joke.
 
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