'Leaving Neverland': Sundance's Michael Jackson Doc Leaves Audience Shellshocked
There was no gaggle of protestors outside the Egyptian Theater in Park City, Utah early Friday morning, despite news reports that the Sundance Film Festival had been told to brace for a massive disruption on Main Street. There were, however, policemen patrolling the area with bomb-sniffing dogs, three times the usual security of a typical screening and, per Festival Director John Cooper, “healthcare professionals in the lobby” in case anyone bothered by the material needed to talk to someone immediately.
The warning to the packed house was warranted: Leaving Neverland, Dan Reed’s two-part, four-hour documentary focusing on two men who claimed that Michael Jackson had abused them as children, opens with a disclaimer about “graphic” descriptions of sexual acts involving underage participants. And after hearing these subjects recount in horrifying detail what they say took place in various hotels, houses and on the Neverland Ranch, it’s hard not to feel that you’ve experienced post-traumatic stress disorder yourself. During a 10-minute intermission, audience members appeared slightly dazed. By the end of the screening, the crowd looked completely shellshocked.
Centered primarily around extensive on-camera interviews conducted with Wade Robson and James Safechuck — with additional testimonies from their family members and spouses — Neverland begins with the two men recalling their first encounters of the King of Pop. For Robson, an Australian kid who became enamored of the singer after his mother Joy brought home a “Making-Of Thriller” videotape, hearing Jackson’s music for the first time led to obsessively studying the artist’s moves; after getting first prize at a Jackson-themed dance contest at a mall, he won the chance to meet the man himself during a concert stop in Brisbane. He was eventually pulled onstage to perform his moves for the crowd and spent time with the pop star at his hotel before Jackson left. If you’re ever in America, Jackson tells the Robson family, look me up. That would eventually lead to Joy, Wade and his sister being invited to spend time at the ranch later on. By this time, the child had permed his hair and taken to wearing carbon copies of Jackson’s outfits. He was seven years old.
As for Safechuck, a gig acting in a Pepsi commercial — in which he sneaks into Jackson’s dressing room, trying on the singer’s sunglasses until the man himself shows up — brought him into the singer’s orbit. Unlike Robson, he wasn’t a superfan; like Robson, he was immediately enamored of the pop superstar paying attention to him and making him feel “important.” Jackson also befriended the family, often having dinner and movie nights at the Safechuck house in Simi Valley, California. He flies the family to Hawaii during a Pepsi convention, and invites the boy to sleep in his hotel room. On the flight back, you can hear the singer flattering James to an unusual degree. Jackson invites the family to his pre-Neverland estate, eventually convincing the Safechucks to let James stay there on his own with the singer. He was 10 years old.
Neverland keeps cutting between these two stories, as the men begin to recall how the singer would allegedly initiate physical contact during “sleepovers” and “escalate” things from there. The stories suggest a similar pattern of childlike playing, followed by claims of grooming, mutual masturbation, further sexual advances and long lectures from Jackson about how you couldn’t really trust your parents, and you definitely could not trust women. Gifts, trips and other high-life perks are lavished on family members, yet both boys’ mothers recall how they’d consistently be separated from their sons whenever the chance arose. Safechuck recalls how Neverland Ranch was set up with a series of tucked-away bedrooms and secret rooms where these alleged sexual activities could take place without folks knowing. Robson, who Jackson nicknamed “Little One,” describes a “secret wedding” between the two.
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/leaving-neverland-michael-jackson-doc-sundance-784801/
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