Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Wade Robson didn’t dance for five years. James Safechuck can’t listen to a Michael Jackson song without being gripped by anxiety. Both men, fathers of young children, expressed fear over their sons turning the ages of 7 and 10. These were the ages Robson, now 36, and Safechuck, now 40, were, respectively, when they allege Jackson began sexually molesting them.
The two men are the subjects of Dan Reed’s upcoming documentary Leaving Neverland, which will debut on HBO on March 3 after having its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The documentary provides detailed accounts of the allegations first brought forth by Robson and Safechuck in 2013 and 2014, in lawsuits against the Jackson estate that were eventually dismissed due to statutes of limitations. In addition to providing detailed accusations of both sexual activity and repeated efforts by Jackson to quiet the boys, Leaving Neverland showcases the effect the late pop star had on Robson and Safechuck’s families, with detailed interviews with the men’s mothers, wives, and siblings.
In 1993, Jackson was accused of molesting 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. The case ended after Jackson reached a civil settlement with the Chandler family for $20 million. In 2003, an arrest warrant was issued and Jackson was charged with seven counts of child molestation and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent for the purpose of committing a felony. He was acquitted in 2005 of all charges. In a 2003 British documentary, Jackson admitted to sharing his bed with young boys but called it a loving act that had nothing to do with sex.
Jackson denied all charges. He was aided in his defense by both Robson and Safechuck. Robson testified on Jackson’s behalf during both trials while Safechuck declined to provide testimony in the second trial, a move that Safechuck says angered Jackson and ended his relationship with the pop star. The about-face by the two victims is investigated thoroughly in the film and Robson elaborated on it further. “There was no repressed memory. I never forgot any of it,” he said. “A lot of what was going on when I was 11, was the direct fear that Michael put into me that if anybody was to find out about this, both of us would go to jail for the rest of our lives. I absolutely believed that. I was terrified of that. And I was terrified for Michael. I loved Michael and I was trying to save him. So many things were going on at the same time: fear, shame, confusion, and love. I knew I was telling a lie but I knew I had to. I felt like I had no choice.”
Since the two-part, four-hour documentary was first announced it’s been the subject of controversy. The extended Jackson family and their die-hard supporters have waged attacks on the film, its subjects, and journalists covering the movie. Howard Weitzman, an attorney for Jackson’s estate, called the film disgraceful in a 10-page letter to HBO, adding “We know that this will go down as the most shameful episode in HBO’s history. We know that Michael’s devoted fans, and all good people in the world, will not swiftly forgive HBO for its conduct.”
The filmmakers and subjects of the film expected such uproar. The embrace they received from their Sundance audience proved more surprising. “Getting public support is not something we are used to,” said Safechuck, during an interview in Park City, Utah, the day after the film’s premiere last month. “We are not used to people believing us. My mother believes me—I’m used to that—but I’m not used to other people believing me.”
Robson and Safechuck first met Reed in 2016 when the director approached them with interest in telling their story. Reed, a British documentarian best known for his work covering the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, had no real interest in Jackson or show business. He wasn’t even very familiar with any of his songs. Rather, Reed was compelled by the opportunity to be inside the story, to take a closer look at the controversies that dogged Jackson since his first accuser, Chandler, came forward in 1993.
“I would not have done this story if it hadn’t been for these guys,” said Reed, sitting at a conference table with Robson and Safechuck. “This is a chance to reveal something true and extraordinary about a story we think we all know. . . . It’s very rare that you get that incredible turning of the tables, the inside of a huge story, one that’s never been resolved yet is one that everyone knows about.”
Reed spent two days interviewing Safechuck and three speaking with Robson. He also said he needed to take a step back and talk to the family members to understand how their mothers, specifically, could have let their young sons sleep in Jackson’s bed, spend weekends at his Neverland Ranch, and put so much trust into a man with such strange proclivities. Both men confirmed that they weren’t paid for their time or their stories. Rather, they say they were compelled to participate in order to get the truth out. And they did so before the #MeToo movement gave people with allegations of sexual abuse an opportunity for a fairer hearing. Below are edited excerpts from our interview.
Vanity Fair: Is it possible for you two to describe what it was like watching this film with an audience full of strangers?
James Safechuck: I think it will take a few more watches because the first [time] is kind of a shock. You’re watching a movie with you in it. That in itself is hard to . . . get. It was difficult for me to read the audience. I didn’t know if they were connecting to certain parts or not. It might have been obvious to other people, but for me, it was just a lot of nerves and disassociation.
Haven’t you both mastered the art of disassociation?
Safechuck: Yeah, right. I said to Wade yesterday that I don’t want to switch off. The survival mechanism of switching off is something we are used to doing. And it’s easy to default to that. And I do not want to do that. I want to go there and stay in the moment and try and feel it.
Wade Robson: In other places, whether its been in the legal proceedings or even talking to friends about this subject matter, it tends to be narrowly focused on what happened between Michael and me. And what the film goes into is the entire effect on our whole families. We had no part in the interviews with our families and they revealed so many feelings that I never knew about me, about our family. Hearing their perspectives keeps re-clarifying the breadth of what this has done to our family. The weight of that keeps hitting at a harder and harder level.
Dan, you said that you had other interviews and you had a wider scope but you pared the film down to just the families. Now that’s being used against you by the estate and his fans that you are only telling one side of the story. What do you say to that?
Dan Reed: What is the other side of the story? That Michael Jackson was a great entertainer and a great guy? That may be true but he also raped children.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to represent the other side, the other side being Jackson and his lawyers and the people who don’t believe he was a serial child molester. Jackson and his lawyers and the people who attack these guys are represented in the film. We have Jackson’s dad saying this is awful and terrible and they are liars—I’m talking about the other children who brought complaints of their own. And his lawyers say these are a pack of lies.
But I found Wade and James’s accounts so persuasive and internally consistent and credible that I thought it wasn’t worth breaking the storytelling perspective completely to introduce extraneous people who didn’t have the kind of intimate access to Jackson, who weren’t part of that world that he created around the kids and the abuse. I think there is a divide between people who’ve seen the film and totally get it—I don’t think there was a single person in the cinema yesterday who didn’t get what we were doing—and the people who haven’t seen it and are saying but, but.
Plus: Read Maureen Orth’s Groundbreaking 1994 Investigation
We also did fact-checks and we looked for whatever corroboration we could find. The central facts they reveal are the facts of the abuse. And we had the conversations that they had to describe the sex in some detail. We couldn’t skirt around that. It would leave a space for the naysayers, for the people whose interest is in discrediting James and Wade [to suggest] it was just affection, just cuddles, it was harmless. No, it was grown-up sexual activity except it was with little children.
The allegations of abuse are terribly upsetting, made even more so by the fact that both of your accounts were so similar.
Robson: That’s been one of the craziest experiences for me. James and I haven’t been able to be together or talk to each other, and while I had an expectation, at least with the sexual details, that they would probably be relatively similar, in seeing the film, [I was surprised] to the degree that they were. Beyond the sexual abuse and activity, [I was also surprised] by our symptoms, the details of our lives, us becoming fathers. It’s been mind-blowing to learn each other’s stories.
What is the extent of communication you two had before meeting here in Sundance?
Safechuck: We were in one meeting together with our lawyers, supervised.
Robson: One meeting years and years ago.
Didn’t you want to just pick up the phone and talk to each other?
Safechuck: What brought me into the case was wanting to talk to Wade. And then as soon as I get there, they say, great but you can’t talk to him. That was really tough.
Robson: It’s been this feeling through this time of not being able to communicate but having some sort of knowingness that even though technically we don’t, we know each other deeper than we know most other people in our lives because of what we’ve been through. I just wanted to be able to connect about that and validate each other’s experiences, mostly the experiences post abuse: the effects, the struggles, to share that with some who, instinctually, is going to understand.
Safechuck: I would just hold on to knowing that Wade is out there. There was comfort in knowing that I wasn’t alone. It also made decisions about doing this movie difficult. We couldn’t [decide together] “should we do it.” We had to make these decisions independently. What do we want? We want the truth. We want to be heard. Is this the right thing to do? Those were hard decisions.
Wade, one of the accusations against you is that you filed your lawsuit because you were broke after they fired you from the Jackson Cirque du Soleil show?
Robson: It’s just completely inaccurate. I was hired three times for that show because it kept taking different iterations. And the third time was just preceding my second nervous breakdown. I was in between nervous breakdowns. So the third time, as I was crumbling and falling apart, I removed myself from the project. The accusation is completely false.
Dan, did you reach out to Macaulay Culkin for this piece?
Reed: No, we did not. Macaulay has gone on the record many, many times, including recently to say that his relationship with Jackson was innocent.
Wade, so much of your career as a dancer and choreographer, is tied to Michael. Do you think you could have had the career you had without him?
Robson: The exact career? No. Michael was the physical access point with which I was first introduced to dance. A good deal about my fear in talking about this, in telling the truth, was that my whole life, including my career, would fall apart. Once I began talking about it, everything got painted black. I quit everything: dance, music, film, everything I’d ever known because it was all tied to Michael. If I started dancing, there’s Michael, in my body. That was the feeling. So I stopped all of it for five years. I didn’t dance for five years. And I never thought I would ever again in my life.
Thankfully, just over a year and a half ago, I’d done enough internal work and done enough pulling these things apart—separating him from art in my life and dance in my life—somehow dance flew back into my heart and I started trying to approach it differently, being more playful and not so outcome-oriented, which is so much of the seriousness that he put into me. Everything was about being the best, ruling the world, changing the world, all these insanely heavy expectations for something that is artistic and is supposed to be experimental and joyful.
What’s it like for both of you when you hear a Michael Jackson song today?
Safechuck: It’s still really hard for me. And I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t hear a song. You go out to have a drink with your friend, you’re trying to relax and let everything go, and he’ll come on. Every time. It’s hard. It gets easier, but it’s still hard.
Robson: In the beginning, I was extremely sensitive to it. I would be at a lunch or a dinner with my wife, my child, and something would come on, and it would take over my whole body and I would have to leave the place. It’s rarely that physically intense now, unless I’m in a place for children, a playground, an inside gym. In those types of situations, a Michael song will come on and it’s a place that is supposed to protect children. That’s really difficult.
Safechuck: You know what is a hard one for me: my kids love Weird Al [Yankovic] and they love [the “Bad” parody] “Fat.” They love it! And I’m like, God, do I take this away from my kids?
Robson: My son came home from school one day, a few years ago, and he said, check out this thing my friend taught me: and he did some version of the Moonwalk. It was extremely triggering to me but then, as a parent, I’m trying to stop myself, because I don’t want to put my issues on him. But Michael is everywhere. It’s challenging.
More Great Stories from Vanity Fair
— What 2019’s Oscar nominees wore to their first Oscars
— Is this the anti-Bachelor dating show we’ve been waiting for?
— It’s good to be Regina King
— Just how millennial is Armie Hammer?
— The inimitable Glenn Close and her seven Oscar-nominated roles
— Plus: Read Maureen Orth’s Groundbreaking 1994 Investigation
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.
This story was originally published by Vanity Fair
via USAHint.com
No comments:
Post a Comment