Jaafar Jackson plays Michael Jackson in the biopic, “Michael.”
“Cinema,” Martin Scorsese has said, “is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.”
It’s one of those statements that is both simple on the surface, and profound underneath. Because sometimes, even more important than what you see on the screen, is what you don’t.
It goes far beyond composition, and it comes down to the constant, conscious choices of the person telling a story — the sort of creative decisions that, years later, film school students still obsess over.
What is the director putting on the screen, and what are they leaving off? And why? Those are the questions driving the current debate over “Michael,” the new biopic about Michael Jackson. The film follows the pop star’s career from early childhood, through his first solo albums, to that final, brief reunion tour with his brothers in 1984, presented here as a declaration of his own independence.
To use Scorsese’s words, that’s what’s in the frame.
What’s out?
Jaafar Jackson in “Michael.”
The decades of ugly gossip and surreal scandal that followed (including early accusations of child molestation), a major out-of-court settlement, bizarre behavior, a couple of ill-considered marriages, substance abuse and, in 2005, additional, multiple charges of molestation (for which he was tried, and acquitted).
Why not make that part of the story, too?
Well, reportedly the first abuse scandal was, until the Jackson estate belatedly discovered a clause in that 1993 settlement that precluded the plaintiff from ever being referenced in any movie about Michael Jackson. Although scenes had already been shot detailing some of those events, they were scrapped, and an entirely new ending created. That’s the official story, anyway.
Of course, the filmmakers still could have detailed other controversial events, including the 2005 trial. Instead, however, they chose to present a popular, sanitized version of Michael Jackson — probably what the estate wanted, and needed, all along. (MJ is still a profitable product; many of Jackson’s siblings and one of his children served as executive producers on “Michael,” while a nephew, Jaafar Jackson, plays him as an adult.)
And having the estate’s cooperation was essential — a recurring problem with making biopics, particularly of musical legends. After all, you can’t do a proper story about a songwriter if you can’t get the rights to the songs they have written, and usually you can’t, unless you win the cooperation of the artist or their heirs. It’s why there has never been a proper biopic of Jimi Hendrix, and the reason — well, one of them — why “Bohemian Rhapsody,” vetted by the surviving members of Queen, was so mediocre.
Honesty gets traded for access. Controversy is avoided in favor of cash. And what could have become a real biographical film becomes pure fan service and brand protection — a kind of cinematic tribute band. The rare exceptions seem to come when the artist is still alive, and more open to a genuine evaluation of their life and work than risk-averse, profit-protecting heirs might be.
Jeremy Allen White in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
For example, last year’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” instead of dramatizing the huge breakthroughs and triumphs of Bruce Springsteen’s career, zeroed in on one formative but painfully problematic period in 1981. Burned out after The River Tour, he went into self-imposed exile, avoiding friends and colleagues while battling depression and confronting half-buried traumas (and eventually rediscovering himself, and a brave new sound).
Similarly, 2024’s “A Complete Unknown,” rather than attempting to encompass the whole of Bob Dylan’s long and ever-changing career, focused on its most formative stage, detailing how the musician arrived in Greenwich Village, determined to follow as closely in his idol Woody Guthrie’s footsteps as he could — until other people, and other sounds, showed him there were plenty of other paths he could take, too, while he searched for his own.
Neither film was above inventing incidents or fudging facts to fit their narratives. The Springsteen biopic, while following the musician’s own, autobiographical accounts of his rough childhood and later mental-health struggles, nonetheless felt it necessary to insert a bittersweet love story, having him romance a plucky single mom — a weary, working-class, down-the-Shore waitress who sounded more like a character in one of his songs than an actual person from his past.
Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown.”
Conversely, “A Complete Unknown” took a real woman and diminished her by turning her into fiction. Die-hard Dylanphiles know all about Suze Rotolo, the singer’s first New York girlfriend, who shared his early, explosive years of fame (she is pictured walking down a Village street with him on the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album). At Dylan’s insistence, however, she is called “Sylvie Russo” here — while the portrayal avoids huge chunks of their relationship, including how she introduced him to avant-garde literature and art, became pregnant by him and, before they broke up, chose an abortion.
Still, unlike “Michael,” even with their inventions and elisions, neither film portrays its subject as flawless. These movie versions of Springsteen and Dylan remain recognizably human; they can be short-tempered, demanding and alternately egotistical and insecure, hungry for adulation and yearning for solitude. In other words — in a single word — artists. And although both films focus on a particular phase in their subjects’ lives, it’s not because widening their viewpoint would be inconvenient, or insulting, or controversial. They’re trying to stay focused, not be false.
That doesn’t seem to be true of “Michael.” Even apart from the very real problems they had with that legal injunction (and why didn’t anyone read the fine print until after the scenes were shot?), there are still huge (and hugely disturbing) parts of its subject’s life that are simply ignored.
People, too. Janet Jackson — who is not one of the siblings with an executive producer credit, by the way — isn’t here at all. The late Frank DiLeo, Jackson’s loyal manager at the time, has been disappeared, too, reduced to a “special thanks” in the end credits. Yet attorneys John Branca and John McClain — who, not coincidentally, are the co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate, and the two lead producers on this project — are both onscreen, with Branca’s character getting a prominent role.
Yes, cinema is always a matter of what you show, and what you hide.
But so is self-interest.
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