Before You Judge Me

by Tavis Smiley

  The problem is that propofol is an intravenous anesthetic whose use is restricted to operating rooms, where its dispensation can be properly supervised and monitored by an anesthesiologist. But because over a long period of time Michael has convinced various professionals—dentists, plastic surgeons, and dermatologists—to inject him with propofol during painful treatments, he is certain that the drug is safe.

  On April 6, 2009, Dr. Conrad Murray, at his client’s request, orders the first shipment of propofol from a pharmaceutical firm in Las Vegas. Murray, who still hasn’t been formally hired by AEG, won’t actually stay at the Carolwood estate until May. On this evening in April, though, Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse who has already made several visits to Michael’s home in 2009, arrives to advise him about nutrition, her specialty. In the past she has served him protein drinks designed to boost his energy.

  In earlier meetings with Lee, Michael mentioned the benefits of propofol in promoting his sleep. Unfamiliar with the drug, Lee looked it up in the Physicians’ Desk Reference and was alarmed at what she found. She now reads the entry to Michael, pointing out the dangers and the critical fact that it should be administered only in a hospital setting.

  Michael has heard all this before. He remains unconvinced and continues arguing his point: that many of his physicians have freely given him propofol. They have assured him of its safety. He has taken it in the past and it has worked wonders. With strenuous rehearsals on the horizon, he needs at least eight hours of sleep. He assures Lee that he doesn’t like drugs. He never uses them for recreational purposes, never gets high. He takes medicine only when necessary, and he takes only what physicians have pronounced 100 percent safe. Propofol is safe, he says. And when it comes to guaranteeing sleep, nothing but propofol will do the job.

  For all his cajoling, Lee stands firm. Even when she tells Michael that taking propofol could mean that he might never wake up, he remains adamant, arguing that as long as she is there to monitor him, there is no danger.

  Ignoring Michael’s request, the nurse gives him an herbal remedy and tucks him into bed as a mother would a child. Like a child, Michael is watching a Donald Duck cartoon on his computer. When Lee suggests that he shut down the device, he resists, explaining that cartoons are part of his ritual. In addition, soft classical music is piped in over loudspeakers. The combination of Disney characters and orchestral melodies calms Michael to the point that he can finally fall asleep.

  Four hours later, though, he awakens, visibly rattled. He tells Lee, who has been sitting in a chair in the corner of his bedroom, that this is what always happens. He says that even if he does manage to sleep, it’s never for more than three or four hours. He can’t tolerate such a situation. Only propofol can help. Only propofol gets him the rest he needs.

  Seeing that the nurse will not submit to his request, he thanks her nonetheless. He gives her a farewell hug and expresses gratitude for her concern. Michael sees Cherilyn Lee as a loving and nurturing caretaker. But because she doesn’t buy into the notion that, when it comes to medicine, Michael knows just what is needed, he will never summon her to the house again.

  Michael is seductive. His singing, his dancing, his stage persona, his offstage personality, his whole aura of natural charm, draw you to him. He has wielded the power of his celebrity with calculated skill. Over and over again, he has described himself as shy. Perhaps. But if so, he has slyly used his shyness and whisper-quiet voice to achieve his own ends. This has been especially true in his relationships with physicians, many of whom he has subtly seduced into giving him what he wants.

  The case of Arnold Klein, who in the spring of 2009 continues to treat Michael with Botox and inject him with Demerol, is especially telling. Long ago, Klein was drawn into Michael’s inner circle. That meant VIP access to Michael’s concerts and invitations to Michael’s home. It meant becoming Michael’s close personal friend. But was it as a friend or a physician that Klein provided Michael with the facial treatments designed to preserve his youth and the medicines to dull the pain? For Michael, there was no boundary between the professional and the personal. That’s why he so nimbly denies his dependence on drugs. How could you call it an addiction? Well-respected physicians, Michael reasons, are prescribing these medicines. Would they do so if they felt that he had an addiction problem? Beyond that, these physicians are his personal friends. They not only care for him; they love him. Would loving friends dispense medicines that would in any way harm him? Of course not.

  So to those, like sister Janet, who question his relationship to drugs and even attempt to intervene, Michael responds irately. He does not require rehab. He is fine. His drug intake is under control. He is, in fact, under the supervision of experienced doctors like Arnold Klein and Conrad Murray, men who, in Michael’s mind, have made their mark on the medical community and always have his best interests at heart.

  In mid-April, rehearsals begin at CenterStaging, in Burbank. Michael only occasionally drops in to check on the progress. Instead, he works at home with his choreographer, Travis Payne, on a regular basis. He also continues to vacillate between warring managers. He is not at all certain which ones truly care about him. After the initial meeting at Carolwood with his father and Leonard Rowe, he cut off contact with them. But they, as well as Michael’s mother, have persisted. They have insisted that they see him again. The letter naming Rowe as Michael’s manager remains unsigned, as does the resolution for plans for a Jacksons reunion concert underwritten by promoter Patrick Allocco.

  Given Michael’s contractual obligation to do fifty shows in London, advisors are urging him to avoid another meeting with those determined to undermine his relationship with AEG. The result would be a legal nightmare. But Michael, wanting to please Mother, agrees to the meeting with Joseph, Leonard Rowe, and Patrick Allocco, this one at Sportsmen’s Lodge, in Studio City, where he signs the letter—anything to placate this group. In a handwritten addendum, though, Michael states that Rowe is being appointed for “financial overseeing only” and that this decision “can be revoked at any time.”

  The letter is written to Randy Phillips at AEG, who is more uncertain than ever about who is managing Michael and what this means for the immediate future.

  Frank Dileo, Michael’s “Uncle Tookie” and the manager for whom he holds the warmest sentiment, has been working both sides of the street. He initially forged an agreement with Rowe to facilitate the reunion concert. But now he is edging his way into the AEG camp. In the wake of so much confusion, Dileo does not have a hard time persuading Phillips that, given his long and successful history with Michael, he and he alone can win back the artist’s trust.

  But who can Michael trust?

  For now, trust is not the issue. He simply wants to make himself happy by making everyone else happy. He wants peace with his father, peace with his mother, peace with his siblings, peace with his old managers and new managers, peace with his old promoters and new promoters.

  Yes, he’ll agree to do whatever the world wants.

  Yes, he’ll not only please his fans; he’ll thrill them. He’ll give them all he’s got—and then some.

  He’ll sign this piece of paper. He’ll sign that piece of paper.

  He’ll bring all these forces together as only he can.

  He’ll do all this in the name of love.

  And in doing it, he prays, he’ll find the ultimate peace: the peace of mind that will allow him to close his eyes and sleep.

  14

  Disappear into the Dance

  In April of 2009, Michael watches 1951’s Royal Wedding. As Fred Astaire, in top hat and tails, returns to his hotel room, he reflects on his infatuation with a beautiful young woman. Astaire breaks into a song—“You’re All the World to Me”—but singing alone can’t express the joy in his heart: he’s gotta dance. And dance he does, up the side of one wall and then down the side of another. But even that feat can’t contain his romantic energy. His gravity-defying artistry has him dancing on the
ceiling, leaping and spinning with the kind of lyrical dexterity that Michael has been emulating ever since he was first exposed to Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers movies when he was a teenager.

  “He’d play Fred and I’d play Ginger,” said sister Janet. “We’d be doing the dances as we watched the movies—Top Hat, The Barkleys of Broadway, Follow the Fleet, Shall We Dance. Michael was the perfect Astaire. He had that ease of movement, that smoothness that made dancing as natural as walking. He’d patiently teach me the intricate steps until we had perfected the routines. During other times in my childhood Michael could be less than kind, but not when it came to dancing. He was the sweetest teacher you can imagine. He had us both floating on air. He used to say that he wanted to do what Astaire did—disappear into the dance.”

  Michael adores Astaire. So great is his respect for the dancer that he dedicated his autobiography to the man. Years ago, Michael had to obtain copies of Astaire movies in order to watch them, but now there is YouTube, where every enchanting Astaire routine is accessible in a second. Renewing his love of the dancer’s relaxed-beyond-reason demeanor, Michael watches Astaire as Rod Riley, the dancing detective in The Band Wagon, directed by Vincente Minnelli, father of Michael’s friend Liza. This is the character that Michael reimagined in his “Smooth Criminal” video from 1988. Michael not only wears a replica of Astaire’s white suit/blue shirt/white tie/white fedora outfit, he mimics the moves of the master, the gentle tough guy whose dancing feet will defeat a gang of notorious hoodlums. He goes so far as to literally quote Astaire’s description of statuesque costar Cyd Charisse when, at the beginning of “Dangerous,” Michael muses, “She came at me in sections… The girl was dangerous… The girl was bad.”

  For Michael, dancing must reflect an edge of danger, that same sort of street danger that, as a child, he recognized in the moves of James Brown. Astaire’s cinematic version of danger, in which a threatening situation is squeezed into a set piece—a compact narrative that unfolds in five or six minutes—became the template for Michael’s string of extravagant videos in the eighties, starting with “Billie Jean.” When Michael managed to combine Brown’s dark funk with Astaire’s airy elegance, he created a style whose appeal cut across all class and racial divides.

  But Michael goes much further than either James Brown or Fred Astaire. If dance is danger, he pushes that danger to the limit. As Michael’s song from 1997 says, there’s “blood on the dance floor.” Dance, his lyrics explain, is his escape. That escape is sometimes violent. In the extended version of the “Black or White” video, for example, a black panther wanders through the set and into a back lot. The panther then morphs into Michael, who breaks into an astounding dance that’s void of music. For nearly five minutes, Michael has what amounts to a syncopated nervous breakdown. Incensed by the swastika and racist epithets—“Nigger go home,” “No more wetbacks”—scribbled on the windows of an abandoned vehicle, he dances the car into destruction, smashing its windows with a tire iron. Rather than sing, he screams his frustrations, like a werewolf howling at the moon. He sexualizes his rage by stroking his crotch and ripping at his shirt before remorphing into the animal from which he emerged. Then, as if to signal that it’s all a harmless fantasy, the music returns, the “Black or White” groove is reestablished, and we see Bart Simpson watching Michael’s video before Homer grabs the remote and, complaining about the loud noise, flicks off the TV.

  For Michael, the dance ritual runs the gamut from the innocence of Shirley Temple, his favorite child star, to the deadly violence of West Side Story, his favorite musical. Often—as in “Black or White”—he is able to combine these elements: the sublime and the sinister, the carefree and the callous, the cheery and the menacing. Like his singing range, his dancing range is remarkable—another outlet for turning his unfiltered feelings into art.

  Michael spends a mid-April morning watching YouTube clips of his short films—the term he prefers to “videos”—to remind himself of the routines he must re-master for his comeback concerts. Over the years, his choreography has become increasingly complex and demanding. There is the graveyard frivolity of “Thriller”; the gang warring in “Beat It” (echoing West Side Story); the Martin Scorsese–directed subway drama “Bad”; the hyper-heterosexualized “The Way You Make Me Feel”; the celebrity-studded “Liberian Girl”; the gangster-leaning “Smooth Criminal,” with its startling call-and-response interlude; the self-mocking “Leave Me Alone”; the glittery, Egyptian-edged “Remember the Time”; the ambitious “Heal the World”; the daring “Give In to Me”; the spacey “Scream”; the brooding “Stranger in Moscow”; the Spike Lee–directed, Brazil-set “They Don’t Care About Us”; the epic “Ghosts”; and the barroom-brawling “You Rock My World” (with cameos from Chris Tucker and Marlon Brando).

  Michael revels in the originality of the choreography. But mimicking these short films in live concerts requires more than originality; it requires verisimilitude. Michael must craft dance routines and employ dancers who give the audience the impression of the original videos that have been viewed millions of times. This is a formidable chore.

  As he is driven from the Carolwood estate to the Kodak Theatre, Michael considers the backbreaking work of putting together a show. Until now, he has left it to others to scrutinize the hundreds of prospective dancers who have assembled in Los Angeles. Psychologically, he was not ready to face the work. But today is different. Today he has decided that he can no longer ignore the calls imploring him to get more hands-on with the staging of the show. Today is the final audition for dancers. Today Michael is showing up.

  As he looks out the window and reflects on the smoggy Hollywood afternoon, he is not happy that some of his original ideas have been scrapped. With P. T. Barnum in mind, Michael envisioned a glorious stage entrance at London’s O2 that no one would ever forget. He proposed that he ride in on the back of a bejeweled elephant. Sitting next to him would be three monkeys. Panthers, on gold chains, would stride beside him. Flocks of parrots and rare exotic birds would fly overhead. His fans would go wild. But when PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the Captive Animals’ Protection Society got wind of the plans, they protested. They sternly admonished Michael that the era of tolerating animal exploitation of this variety was long over. Realizing that he was, in fact, out of step with the times, Michael scrapped his proposal.

  He arrives at the Kodak Theatre wondering whether some of his other ideas are also anomalies. It has been thirteen long years since HIStory, the last time he mounted a major show. Since then, the world of entertainment has radically changed. He worries that he is not altogether current. Might this show run the risk of appearing old-fashioned or out-of-date? The idea is intolerable. It can’t happen. It won’t happen. Michael won’t let it happen.

  He is reassured when, seated next to his director, Kenny Ortega, he watches the final group of dancers vying for spots in his show. The dancers are superb. He moves closer to the stage to get a better look. Michael judges their suitability for his show not merely by their moves but by the look in their eyes. Do they have that fire? That desire? Are they able to lose themselves in the routine? Can they disappear into the dance?

  Michael is satisfied that they can. In his judgment, the group he chooses is among the best he has ever employed. For some of the set pieces, he will do what he has always done: re-create the feeling of the Jackson 5 by sharing the stage with four male dancers. This is the lineup he has known since he started out in the sixties, a lineup that affords him a sense of comfort and reassurance. On songs like “Smooth Criminal” and “They Don’t Care About Us,” he will double the number of male dancers to eight. A sensuous female dancer will provoke his moves in “The Way You Make Me Feel.”

  The dancers are in place. Kenny Ortega, a man Michael trusts, is steering the mighty ship with a steady hand. Michael has dozens of ideas about innovations and improvements for the show, but now, he decides, is not the time to delineate them. To do so would be too e
xhausting. He must protect his energy. He must allow Ortega to direct. It’s more than two months before the London opening. Right now he wants these rehearsals to take their course without him. He leaves the theater feeling that, although the demands upon him to whip the show into tip-top shape are tremendous, those demands can wait.

  Like the enormity of his show, the enormity of his managerial problem is something he’d rather not consider. He’ll get to it later. One day at a time, one decision at a time.

  On April 17, he pays still another visit to the Beverly Hills office of Dr. Arnold Klein. Having expressed concern about perspiring during his performances, Michael was told that Botox applied to the axillae—the underarms—will help. The application is painful. Thus Michael is given three hundred milligrams of Demerol, the drug that he finds so alluring.

  That evening, becalmed by his medical treatment, he turns to one of his other soothing balms: shopping. With ever-present security in tow, he’s off to Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, a well-stocked store favored by serious readers. He thinks first of his kids. He picks out a pile of children’s books before moving over to the music section, where he peruses tomes on himself. He’s amazed at how many there are. Presuming that they are filled with misinformation, he cares less about the content than he does about his images on the covers. He carefully considers the way the books physically portray him. He feels that they feature less than flattering photographs. Why do they inevitably choose pictures in which he looks disheveled or, even worse, grotesque? Why do they portray him as some sort of monster? Michael lumps his biographers in the same category as the paparazzi: insatiable vultures looking to pick him apart.