Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I gave my brother a New York Times subscription. We exchange articles. And so having read the same article, we can discuss it.
She sent me a year-long subscription so I have access to all the games.
The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. It enriches our relationship. It was such a cool and thoughtful gift.
We're reading the same stuff. We're making the same food. We're on the same page. Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription as a gift at nytimes.com slash gift.
Okay, we have got to talk about this Michael Jackson movie.
From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
Oh my God, that was like the greatest f***ing movie I have ever seen. Oh my God, like I love this man. The obsession I have right now with Michael Jackson is just so unreal.
The record-shattering box office success of Michael. The new biopic about Michael Jackson.
I have not stopped thinking about it. Like, every time I talk to my friends, I'm like, dang, I can't wait to get off the phone with y'all so I can listen to Michael Jackson. He was so majestic and just like a beautiful human being.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the new Michael Jackson biopic?
You are not a movie critic. No. And we're not really here to talk about the artistic merits of this movie about Michael Jackson, although just to say, critics have been pretty unkind to the movie overall, which has done nothing to dampen ticket sales. Your reporting has been focused on how the movie came to be and how it fits into a much larger project of Michael Jackson image repair.
Is that the way to think about it?
Definitely, yeah. It's really a fairly remarkable business story, and it was orchestrated by the people now running his estate. And their project, as you said, has been to rehabilitate Michael Jackson, who'd become a fairly toxic asset, and restore his life and music as exploitable intellectual property.
And this biopic, Michael, is the culmination of that years-long effort, and it's been an undeniable success, I would say.
And where in your mind does the story, the project of image rehabilitation, this business success story, begin? So it really begins right after his death.
Tonight came the word from L.A., Michael Jackson, the king of pop, as he was called, has died.
In 2009. In 2009.
A child star at first, who as an adult was a deeply troubled man.
And to understand just how massive a project the state was facing at that point, you have to remember that Michael Jackson's reputation when he died really could not have been worse.
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Chapter 3: How has Michael Jackson's reputation been rehabilitated over the years?
And when he dies, he's close to $500 million in debt.
Wow.
And I was able to get... very close look at how this happened in the state of his affairs by a ruling in a tax trial that took place after he died between the estate and the IRS. The government arguing that the estate owed hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes based on the value of his name and likeness at the time of his death.
And the estate found itself in this sort of perverse position of arguing that no, his name and likeness and future earning potential were close to nil. because his reputation was so irredeemably degraded. Literally nil, nothing. Pretty much. I mean, you have to remember that the estate is arguing in this case specifically to get the tax burden as low as possible.
So they're making a very extreme argument. And if you read through the judge's ruling, it's really a fascinating document. I mean, the first six months of 2009, he died that summer. The judge found Jackson had only made $24. Wow. That's two-four off of his name and likeness. At the time, he was preparing to return to prison.
Live performance, he'd booked a series of dates in London at the O2 Arena, 50 dates, which had sold out nearly instantly. They couldn't find a sponsor, a corporate sponsor for the shows.
The merch company that they contracted with to make t-shirts and the products, they refused to make any of the products until the shows actually started because they were worried that Jackson wouldn't go through with it. A Q score is a measurement of a brand or a celebrity's consumer appeal, basically.
Right. They're kind of reputational value to the market.
Yeah. By the end of his life, Jackson's had dropped to zero. So that tells you something.
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Chapter 4: What role did Mark Binelli play in the narrative of Jackson's image?
It's genuinely hard to fathom that there could ever be a moment when Michael Jackson, looming as large as he does, could have a brand that was essentially worthless.
Yeah.
Yeah, when we're talking about his personal reputation, the songs are something else. You know, there was always going to be a potential value there because they're just such a huge part of our culture. And so the ultimate project moving beyond the songs would be to rehabilitate the man in some way and stop that reputational bleeding into the rest of his IP, for lack of a better word.
So legal documents describe this really remarkable scene in the hospital where Jackson is pronounced dead and his family is surrounding his bed, mourning him. And meanwhile, a group of advisors have commandeered a room nearby and they've turned it into a war room, essentially.
Their immediate task at hand is to figure out how to deal with this massive amount of debt and basically stave off bankruptcy. Yeah. And so the guy who ends up leading this process is a man named John Branca. He was Jackson's lawyer throughout most of the 80s through sort of peak Jackson era. And he'd just come back onto the scene literally eight days before Jackson died. Mm.
And it turned out that Jackson's will had named Branca and a longtime family friend named John McClain as co-executors. So now suddenly Branca was running the estate, essentially.
And what ends up being Branca's plan? What is his idea for how to take this reputation that's in tatters and this debt that is mounting and somehow turn it around?
Well, the first order of business is to start generating any income. The London shows obviously had been part of that plan before he died. That's off the table with Jackson gone. But there was rehearsal footage of him preparing for the shows. And so they decided to cut it together into a concert film. The film was called This Is It. It premiered in theaters just a few months after his death.
This is the moment. This is it.
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Chapter 5: How did Michael Jackson's estate manage his financial troubles after his death?
Today's episode was produced by Olivia Natt, Muj Zaydi, and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg with help from Michael Benoit. Contains music by Dan Powell, Rowan Emisto, and Diane Wong. And sound design by Alishaba Etube. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Sunday.