Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Michael, the biopic about legendary pop star Michael Jackson's life is in cinemas from today. There has been well-documented controversy around the making of it, including reshoots and revisions. And our very own presenter of Screen Time, John Fardy, has seen it. And he joins me now. John, the reviews are terrible. They are. And they're about to get even worse, I'm afraid.
Chapter 2: What is the biopic 'Michael' about?
So I just say at the start, like, this gives me no pleasure. I was one of... was bad on cassette and you know i till my my head as that other song goes i i loved them uh and was a massive fan even when it wasn't cool to be when all my pals were into the red hot chili peppers and metallica and blur or whatever i i adored michael jackson's music so it gives me no pleasure to you know uh
tear this apart, but I don't think we've any choice. Park all the controversy for the second. We'll come back to it.
Chapter 3: What controversies surrounded the making of 'Michael'?
Yeah, but first of all, this is like a bog-standard biopic that, like, the script... I think I could have written it on the back of an envelope. So it begins in Gary, Indiana in 1966, where famously the Jackson brothers were schooled and treated fairly horribly by a stage dad in the form of Joe Jackson, played by the great...
Oscar-nominated Coleman Domingo, who you think really should have known better. So we have about 30 minutes of that. Then fast forward, we're in 1978, 79, where Michael Jackson wants to break away and he's doing Off the Wall. And then he has great success with that. And there's this tug between him and his dad who wants him to stay with the Jacksons. Then we have Thriller where
which goes, you know, interstellar and galactic. And we see lots of clips of him making that and shooting videos and stuff.
Chapter 4: How does John Fardy feel about the film's reviews?
But it's just really, there's no drama. There's no interior life of Michael Jackson shown in this. So it's just Michael Jackson, the star. Yeah. And like, you know, so whenever you see a biopic, there's usually like if it's, you know, Cash, Elton John, all these people, there's moments of them falling in love or there's moments of them just being broken by something.
We don't really see any of that. The only thing we see is him befriending animals as in as an escape. You know, he's bringing llamas home and he's
there's a scene where this truck arrives and the whole family are standing in his mansion and they're wondering what is it what is it michael and a monkey comes out and this is bubbles and that's about as dramatic as it gets to be honest and there's occasional scenes of him staring at peter pan books going that's who i want to be but like to me that's just that's very pedestrian screenwriting you know
Yeah, I mean, some of the reviews have called it bad karaoke and they've called it just like cosplay. You know, there's absolutely nothing in it. Now, there is all of the scandal around Michael Jackson, which was left out.
And we were told that was because there was a legal agreement between one of his alleged victims and the Jackson family or the Jackson Trust, which meant that that case couldn't be mentioned. But I mean, it's not really a reasonable explanation, is it?
Because you can avoid mentioning that one case and fulfil the obligations of that legal agreement, but you don't have to leave out all of the scandal around Michael Jackson and the claims that were made against him. You absolutely don't. And, you know, that statement that was issued from the Jackson estate, you know,
is very handy and I don't mean to be cruel but saying that there was an NDA they discovered in this out-of-court settlement with this young man Jordan Chandler so thereby we can't mention anything to do with his clearly strange relationship with children and it's more pointed at times because you may know there was three and a half hours of this and apparently
And now it's just over two hours, but apparently it went on. So it now stops in 1988 where he's on the stage at Wembley. Sorry to give a spoiler, but he's broken free from Joseph, let's say, and he's out on his own and that's where it ends. Now, apparently there was, as I say, nearly two hours more of footage that went in.
to all these things that happened in the 90s and noughties around accusations of child abuse. And that's all been left on the colouring room floor. But as a result of it, you have this really strange scene where he's in a toy shop, Toys R Us, I think it is, and he's buying some toys and all these kids come up to him and he starts signing autographs.
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Chapter 5: What are the main plot points covered in the biopic?
the songbook because the other thing that we haven't mentioned in this, at times there is no plot and there is just reconstructed concert footage. Similar to the way people kind of criticise parts of Bohemian Rhapsody where they had, you know, the last 20 minutes of the movie was Queen on stage at Live Aid.
Now, you know, you can disagree about the merits of that, but in this movie it feels very strange. And, you know, the famous performance of Motown 25 where he did Billie Jean and you saw the moonwalk for the first time, they've just redone all that.
So a lot of this movie is reconstructed concert footage and a lot of the movie is the songs playing over the absence of anything happening other than people walking around. So the cynic in you can't help but think they are really hoping this is just going to sell. I know people don't sell music in the same way, but it's certainly going to put the songbook front and center again. So I'm baffled.
I don't know how these people are involved.
Chapter 6: How does 'Michael' portray Michael Jackson's early life?
Now, Colman Domingo has said things like, you know, we don't know what happened. I want to play a character and that's fair enough. But with all the noise around this, you have to wonder why He chose it. And, you know, there's this famous quote by T-Bone Burnett, the musician that, you know, the history of rock and roll is a guy with a guitar going, daddy. And there's a lot of truth in that.
If you look at Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, all these people, they had these really weird relationships with their dad. And in all those biopics, you see the effect those weird relationships had, whether it be drugs, whether it be, you know, sleeping with too many people who weren't their husbands or wives or whatever.
Whereas in this, we don't see really what effect this abusive father had on Michael. And we're all left to suppose what effect it did have. But they don't mention that at all. So I was just left with a kind of bitter taste. And as I say, I say that as someone who was once a huge fan. And how is his nephew in the role as Michael? Oh, Jafar Jackson. I mean, he's not bad.
It's kind of, it strikes me as an impersonation, you know, but you have to wonder what kind of set it was like, you know. I can't imagine there was a lot of, you know, ad-libbing or, you know, this was not Robert De Niro and Taxi Driver doing 27 takes and people being encouraged to go off script. I imagine. I wasn't on the set. He's fine. He looks a lot like him.
Most of the singing though is the original. Michael Jackson. And look, I suppose, you know, on the positive side of things, there are moments in the movie, like, they have the isolated vocals of him singing Don't Stop Till You Get Enough for the first time. And it's spine-tingling. Like, that voice was from a different planet. The rhythm in it, the melody...
But, you know, that's one very small entry on the positive side of the balance sheet. We want the full story, right? We want this complicated, complex story about a man who was clearly brilliant, but an alleged paedophile. Yes, we do. And we get none of that. And again, people are going to say, well, it was just alleged.
But if you stand back and look at the life of Michael Jackson, that is one of the biggest things on the pitch. And not to mention, it just seems preposterous, you know. And there's, you know, various people calling for this not to be seen and various groups coming out. And, you know... You have to be sympathetic to that.
I mean, the whole point of movies in a way is, you know, future actors watch these movies and they feel seen and they think, well, maybe I could do something like this. Like movies are important. They help create reality in a way. And you have to question what reality this is saying to people. John, thanks so much. John Fardy there, presenter of Screen Time on Newstalk.
Lionsgate, who made the film, are talking now about preserving the opportunity to tell more of the story in a subsequent film or films.
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