Dan Reed

He's an icon for many people.

He represents, you know, and there's part of his story, to be honest, sitting there in the movie theater watching the Jackson biopic.

There's a story played by, I think, a really good child actor of how Jackson comes up and, you know, he overcomes odds.

He's got a very domineering, violent father and his sheer talent, you know, allows him to escape that.

that very claustrophobic grind of the future that his father had planned out for him.

And that's a beautiful story of overcoming against the odds.

The problem is that as soon as the film goes into Jackson's adult persona, then it becomes something completely different and really a lie made out of whole cloth.

But I think people can enjoy the music if they want to.

I've got nothing against people enjoying Jackson's music.

I just kind of don't want them to then try and erase or smear the young men in my documentary who are telling the truth.

So unfortunately, there's an uncomfortable truth, an inconvenient truth about Jackson is that as a human being, as a person, he was a monster.

He was nasty to children.

He hurt a lot of children.

As a performer, as an entertainer, he has a timeless appeal to a huge audience worldwide.

I've never advocated cancelling him or banning him.

I just think people need to accept both facts.

Well, we've had, you know, at the time when Leaving Level 9 first came out in 2019, we had all these death threats and

People saying they do dreadful things to my kids and my family and all that.

And that's standard for the Jackson fans, really.

They're a nasty lot.