Dish

by Jeannette Walls

  Jackson’s supporters, including his own family, were hardly more honorable. “Every single person I’ve contacted on Jackson’s side or in his family has wanted money,” said Dimond. “People would say, ‘Michael’s a lovely well-balanced young man and if you give me $5,000 I’ll go on the record with that.’ ” The singer’s father, Joseph Jackson, wanted $150,000 to appear on talk shows to defend his son. He negotiated with Hard Copy, but talks fell apart because the show wanted Michael’s mother to appear too, and Joe couldn’t deliver her.* When PBS did an exposé on how checkbook journalism fueled the Jackson controversy, Jackson’s parents said they’d be willing to speak out against it—for $100,000.

  Pellicano’s most successful tactic, however, was taping the accuser’s father apparently negotiating the terms of a screen deal or settlement. The detective had been dealing with the father for four months and had been recording the calls. He gave reporters twenty-five-minute tapes of the conversations, and although the evidence from the recordings was far from conclusive, the fact that anyone would have financial discussions with someone who supposedly molested his son was enough to turn the tide in Jackson’s favor. After Pellicano released the recording, a poll showed that only 12 percent of those questioned believed the allegations against Jackson; most believed that he was the victim of extortion.

  It wasn’t from his biological family that Jackson would find his most effective supporters. It was from his Hollywood family, particularly Elizabeth Taylor. Chen Sam, Taylor’s spokeswoman, had urged the star to disassociate herself from the messy controversy. On August 29, Sam got a call from the New York Post’s Richard Johnson, checking out a story that Taylor was on her way to Singapore to publicly support Jackson. Sam convinced the columnist that the story wasn’t true. Later that day, Johnson called back. He’d heard the story again. He had details. Chen angrily denied the story, threatening to sue Johnson if he printed anything. Soon after she hung up the phone, Sam got a call from Liz Taylor. The star was on the plane heading to Singapore.

  “You can’t do this!” Sam screamed at Taylor. Sam slammed down the phone. “Goddamn her!” Sam said. “She thinks she’s going to get another bauble from Cartier!”

  “What do you mean?” an assistant asked.

  Sam explained that once, to thank Taylor for her public support, Michael Jackson gave the star a $250,000 canary diamond necklace. “Now every time he’s in trouble, she rushes to his side hoping for another little gift.” Whatever Taylor’s motives, the former screen goddess’s trip to Singapore turned into a minor media event in itself. Taylor and two members of her entourage took three of the seats in the first class cabin; the other twelve were all filled with tabloid reporters. Chen Sam’s office suspected Jackson’s people had tipped off the reporters.

  “Michael is one of my best friends in the whole world, and I can’t think of anything worse that a human being could go through than what he’s going through now,” Taylor told one reporter during the flight. “He’s a very sensitive, very vulnerable, very shy person. I believe totally that Michael will be vindicated.” Asked about the motive for the allegations, Taylor said, “Well, I think all of that is becoming quite clear—extortion.”

  Sam watched furiously as the woman whose image she had spent much of her adult life shaping appeared on A Current Affair, defending Jackson. “She looked like Elvis on a bad day,” said a member of Sam’s staff. “She was wearing an unflattering Hawaiian shirt and Chen was furious because her hair and makeup hadn’t been done. The lighting was terrible.”

  “How could she do this to me?” wailed Sam.

  But with Elizabeth Taylor’s support, others were more willing to defend Jackson. Sharon Stone spoke in his defense. Donald Trump stood up for the singer, at one point putting Jackson up in his Plaza Hotel. “If anyone wants to mess with Michael,” said Trump, “they have to come through me first.” Liz Smith weighed in, urging Pepsi not to drop his sponsorship on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.* Smith attacked Diane Dimond and Hard Copy for so aggressively exploiting the scandal. When Dimond reported a Jackson biographer’s unsubstantiated and apparently untrue claims that a video existed of the star having sex with a minor, Smith wrote, “Diane Dimond glowed as she hasn’t in months, squeezing out every scintilla of innuendo from what appears to be a totally baseless rumor.” Jackson filed a $100 million lawsuit against Hard Copy and Dimond.

  The reaction to Dimond’s coverage was, she said, “swift and threatening and violent.” Her phones were tapped, she believed, her car was followed, her past investigated, her friends and family called and harassed. Some of it came from irate Michael Jackson fans—a gang of them once physically attacked her. More often, she said, it was from Pellicano and his team.

  “For months, the Michael Jackson story consumed every waking moment of my life. At every turn, Anthony Pellicano kept popping up,” said Dimond. “I started hearing from friends that Anthony Pellicano had called, asking questions like where does she live? Where did she come from? Does she have any kids?” Other reporters would pass along veiled threats, she said, from Pellicano—which he denied making. “He’d say, ‘Tell Diane Dimond I’m watching her.’ or ‘Tell her I hope her health is good.’ ” Dimond became convinced that her phone was tapped. “Paramount was pretty convinced too,” she said. “They got a security expert to come to my house…. They found evidence of some weird tampering.” Dimond also believed that her phones at Hard Copy were tapped. She decided to do her own detective work and devised a plot with her husband.

  One morning at 9 A.M., Dimond’s husband called her at her office: “How’s that special on Anthony Pellicano coming?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s great,” Dimond replied. “We’ve got all sorts of things on him. We’re going to expose everything, including the whole story about Elizabeth Taylor’s husband’s grave.”

  At 9:28 A.M., Dimond got a call. “What kind of story are you doing on Anthony Pellicano?” someone from Paramount’s legal department wanted to know. Dimond said she wasn’t doing any story on the detective. “I just got a call from Weitzman’s office,” the caller told Dimond. “They were quite sure you are doing a story on Pellicano.”

  “After that,” said Dimond. “I never used my desk phone.”

  By late 1993, some of Pellicano’s tactics started to backfire. For one thing, the tabloid media had realized that if celebrities like Jackson could hire private investigators to dig up the dirt, so could they. Private investigator Don Crutchfield, another of Pellicano’s Los Angeles area competitors, was uncovering unsettling information about Jackson’s relationships with children and was appearing on Hard Copy with it.

  Some people close to Jackson were persuading the singer that his lawyers and Pellicano were making mistakes and talking to the press too much. “If it were in my camp, I would get rid of everyone,” said the singer’s brother Jermaine Jackson. “His representatives are just plain stupid.” By then, Jackson was said to have been spending $100,000 a week on his legal defense. Faced with these expenses and with four months of uninterrupted tabloid hysteria, Jackson switched tactics, parting company with Pellicano in December 1993. “I swear on my children [he has nine of them] this decision was not Michael Jackson’s,” said the detective. “If I wanted to, I could be working on this case today.” Pellicano also continued to maintain that Jackson was innocent. Weitzman stayed on the case but Bert Fields also quit and was replaced by Johnnie Cochran, the flamboyant attorney who would later defend O. J. Simpson. The following month, the case was settled for a reported $27 million.

  Pellicano claimed he was dead set against paying any money. “There was no way that Bert Fields and I would have settled that case,” Pellicano said. “No chance, no way.” And indeed the settlement, which was publicly viewed as a tacit admission of guilt, effectively crippled Jackson’s career.

  Part of the problem was that he could no longer afford his high-priced help. “Michael Jackson is teetering on the edge of financial ruin,” according to John C
onnolly, the reporter who exposed Donald Trump’s dire financial straits in 1990. “The payoffs, the lawyers, the protectors cost him a fortune.”

  Jackson quietly tried to sell tainted Neverland, but no one was willing to pay $26 million for the spot where the alleged child molestation had taken place. The lucrative product endorsements were gone. The audiences no longer filled up stadiums. In 1997, paychecks issued to employees of Jackson’s company, MJJ, bounced. No more $100,000 a month retainer fees. No more $250,000 canary diamond necklaces.

  Jackson’s Hollywood defenders began disappearing from the picture. Eventually, even Elizabeth Taylor reportedly started avoiding Jackson’s phone calls. Liz Smith also stopped defending him, and one day repeated a comment attributed to the singer’s ex-manager, Sandy Gallin, suggesting that Jackson was, indeed, a pedophile.* “Why is Liz always picking on me?” Jackson complained. “Liz is always nice to Lisa Marie, and Lisa Marie is much weirder than I am!”

  “Michael’s problems with the media are mostly of his own making,” Smith responded. “Too much spin control and not enough common sense.”

  One by one, Jackson lost the circle of high-powered, high-priced Hollywood heavyweights who had for years protected him from public scrutiny. They were replaced by figures from New Age religions or the Third World. A number of cult watchers claim that his marriage to devout Scientologist Lisa Marie Presley was arranged by the controversial religion. Jackson, who proposed to Elvis’s daughter over the telephone, was such a tarnished star that some wondered why the Scientologists wanted him among its members, but Presley effectively used Jackson to do public relations for the church.* Deepak Chopra, according to one source, took up Michael Jackson’s cause and orchestrated an extraordinary Life magazine cover story, photographed by Harry Benson, that showed Jackson playing with his son, Prince. In 1997, a Saudi prince named Waleed bin Talal—who is also a big investor in EuroDisney, Donald Trump’s properties, Steven Seagal films, and Planet Hollywood—took over much of Jackson’s financial empire.

  Michael Jackson hasn’t entirely disappeared, however. Stories regularly appear in the tabloids about Jackson’s sexual prowess and about the “love triangle” between him, Lisa Marie, and his second wife, Debbie Rowe. “Jacko’s Wacko Plan to Have 2 Wives” read the National Enquirer. “Michael Jackson has hatched a bizarre plan to have two wives—and his pregnant wife Debbie couldn’t be happier.” He also sold pictures of his newborn son to the tabloid OK!, reportedly for $1.3 million.†

  Although no formal charges were ever brought against Michael Jackson, the scandal effectively ruined his career. Anthony Pellicano loudly and repeatedly said that he was opposed to settling, and the perception in some Hollywood circles was that if the singer had stuck with the private detective and Fields, he would have never gone down in flames. The collapse of Michael Jackson’s career showed Pellicano and the rest of Hollywood that in the face of scandal, the best strategy was to fight back—and fight dirty if necessary. Ever since the Michael Jackson scandal, Pellicano has never been busier.

  When Cheryl Shuman, Hollywood’s “optician to the stars,” went on a tabloid TV show and claimed that she had evidence that Steven Seagal beat his wife, Seagal hired Anthony Pellicano. Shuman claimed she was harassed and followed and once was beaten so badly that she ended up in the emergency room of a hospital, though she could never prove who was behind the attacks. When Time magazine writer Richard Zoglin looked into her allegations in early 1995, he got a seven-page threatening letter from Seagal’s attorney, including dirt that had been dug up by Pellicano. “It included everything down to Shuman’s exact prescription for Prozac,” said Zoglin. They had effectively undermined Shuman’s credibility as a source. Time dropped the story. “I don’t blame them,” said Zoglin. “On the one hand, it’s a story that deserved to be told, on the other hand, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.”

  Reporter John Connolly also experienced Pellicano’s hardball P.R. when he wrote an article on Seagal. Connolly claimed that he had evidence that Seagal was linked to the mob, had lied about his CIA experience, and had paid to have someone killed. Seagal turned Pellicano loose on Connolly. The reporter, a former cop, didn’t back down, but the experience was harrowing. “Most journalism schools don’t teach reporters how to respond to a Louisville Slugger,” said Connolly. “His tactics have a real chilling effect.”

  Pellicano’s star continued to rise. He was hired as a technical consultant in the films Ransom and The Firm. He butted heads again with Diane Dimond when Hard Copy reported on the Jerry Springer scandals and the controversial talk show host hired Pellicano. “I really think I am the best in the world,” Pellicano said shortly before the Jackson scandal. “I would say that in the next ten years, I’m going to make millions of dollars.”

  The lesson for the media was equally bottom-line oriented: If they’d ever doubted it before, the Michael Jackson episode showed that scandal sells. That was hardly a new insight—the media feeding frenzy during the Trump divorce was still fresh in everyone’s minds—but that was a soap opera; the Jackson story was a tragedy. The public said they were disgusted by it, but the ratings indicated otherwise. Thanks to Dimond’s series of scoops, Hard Copy’s ratings were up 24 percent during the Michael Jackson coverage. Ratings were also up at A Current Affair—which at one point hired a professional actor to play the part of the young accuser as he gave his deposition describing Jackson’s alleged molestation. By the early 1990s, even the networks were poised to embrace tabloid journalism. ABC News executives told World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings and his producer Paul Friedman to do more “R&P” stories—rape and pillage stories. Network news looked to the tabloid news magazines for direction. When ABC’s PrimeTime Live broadcast Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, the struggling show got a huge ratings boost—60 million Americans watched, more than twice as many viewers as watched anything else on television that week.* If the celebrities and the media learned anything from the Michael Jackson episode, it was to up the stakes on both sides. Yet nothing, people thought, would ever compare with the Michael Jackson saga. A story could not possibly be more sordid, more disturbing—or more of a ratings bonanza—than a worldwide superstar brought down because of his alleged fondness for young boys.

  That was before the O. J. Simpson story.

  * Jackson privately said he didn’t like Pepsi. “I don’t drink that crap,” he once confided.

  * There were later charges, denied by Pellicano, that he had intimidated potential government witnesses.

  * Pellicano and Roseanne have “resolved their differences,” according to a spokeswoman.

  * After Jackson told Oprah Winfrey and her 90 million viewers that he and Shields were in love, the grateful Jackson gave Shields a $100,000 ring and a $200,000 necklace.

  * Among those who confirmed the hyperbaric chamber story for the Enquirer was Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon, Dr. Steven Hoefflin, whose other patients are said to include Liz Taylor, Ivana Trump, Tony Curtis, Don Johnson, Joan Rivers, Nancy Sinatra, and Sylvester Stallone (who denies he’s a patient). Dr. Hoefflin would later be involved in a scandal when some staffers accused him of sexual harassment. He was cleared of the charges.

  * In late 1993, Katherine and Michael’s brother Jermaine appeared on CNN and Hard Copy to speak in Michael’s defense, but Joseph refused to appear. He was still holding out for payment.

  * Pepsi and other corporate sponsors were understandably noncommittal.

  * “Does Michael Jackson like boys?” Gallin allegedly said to E! columnist Bruce Bibby. “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Gallin denied he ever said any such thing, but Bibby stood by the story. “The remark came out of the woods,” Bibby said. “I certainly didn’t ask him.”

  * When MTV was working on an exposé on alternative religions, for example, Lisa Marie called the president of the music network and told them that if they were tough on Scientology, they would lose access to Jackson’s music.

 
† Jackson has said that he was giving the proceeds to charity, but at least one of his charities reportedly has been under investigation for not giving any money to the needy.

  * The interview was especially embarrassing given the set of Jackson’s demands that ABC agreed to, including letting the singer see the taped portions of the interview before broadcast and altering them when Jackson thought that the lighting was unflattering, keeping the air conditioning on high so that his pancake makeup wouldn’t melt, showing his entire four minute, forty-five second video from HIStory, and agreeing to air ten promotional spots from HIStory. ABC didn’t concede to one of Jackson’s requests, however, which was to have Princess Diana introduce him.

  18

  a struggle for respectability

  On June 14, 1994, when two people on the fringe of celebrity were discovered hacked to death in Brentwood, California, it seemed like another run-of-the-mill Hollywood murder. At the National Enquirer’s headquarters in Lantana, Steve Coz, the executive editor and second in command after Iain Calder, got the tip that Monday morning, before any of the news bulletins flashed it. “O.J.’s ex-wife and someone else are dead,” Coz told senior editor David Perel. “You run it.”

  “Okay,” said Perel.

  The story was a natural one for the Enquirer. Its readers, two-thirds of whom are women, loved stories about abused wives, about the dark side of fame, about how rich people who seem to have it all actually lead lives that are desperately unhappy. Initially, it had an advantage over other publications in covering the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. The crime of the century, Steve Coz later boasted, occurred “in the middle of our source network.” Reporters from the tabloid appeared at the murder scene shortly after the coroners did—and before any other reporters. The Enquirer editors also knew the history of O.J.’s violence against Nicole; when the former football star was convicted of beating his wife in 1989, most publications virtually ignored it, but the National Enquirer played up the incident in a full-page story: “O.J. Simpson Charged with Wife-Beating—The Shocking Details!”