This Is It Director Kenny Ortega Reveals All
Written by Judy Sloane & Sheila Roberts Friday, 30 October 2009 20:50
Interview
So when did you realise that you could put all of Michael's rehearsal footage into a film?
KENNY ORTEGA My first reaction was, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ All I did was promise to come and look at the footage to offer an opinion as to whether or not I thought there was enough information there that could be made into a film. As I started to look at the footage, I became haunted and I thought, ‘How could I let anybody else touch this? This is like the last documentation of Michael Jackson and it’s sacred, and I’m there and we’re doing it together.’ It was a moment where I became overwhelmed and I thought, ‘I have to do this.’ And I felt this tremendous weight of responsibility, and it was scary.
The fans were the reason why I could make this film, they had questions, they needed to know what Michael had planned for them; they were travelling from all over the globe to get to London to see him. It was hard, that’s why I call it a mosaic, because it was like a jigsaw puzzle sometimes, trying to find the pieces to put together to be able to tell the story, because we never had planned to make this a movie.
Why are you only putting this on release for two weeks when you know the public want to see it?
ORTEGA No, we don’t know that! There’s never been a film like this. This is Michael Jackson singing in front of 18,000 empty chairs. We have this crappy video footage most of the time, the lighting was still in development, we didn’t design this, there was no script, there was no plan, there weren’t even concerts that were shot; we’d never gotten that far. But we didn’t add one thing to it. This is a pure, honest piece. The two weeks [release] seemed to make sense, we know that there are fans out there that would rush to come and see the movie, but this is a documentary, I wouldn’t let them call it a concert film, and Sony was like, ‘Let’s put it out there for two weeks, because we really don’t know if we’re going to have anybody outside of the fan base really be drawn to it.’ I hope their arrangement with the cinemas out there is if the word-of-mouth does spread and there is an interest from a more general audience that this could be held over in a lot of markets.
So this really was was never meant to be seen.
ORTEGA It wasn’t, it wasn’t. But also, we had three big chunks of footage that we worked with. Those were 10 short films that Michael and I developed and produced together that were incorporated into the concert. Those were made for the live show. Then we had the behind the scenes, interviews, the making of, because Michael had intended to film the concerts in London so he wanted to have a nice 'behind the scenes' to be able to attach to that. Then you had what I call the miracle footage which was the footage that we use. It was a tool for us to videotape the rehearsal so that we could at any time we wanted to go back and look at something and say, ‘Why don’t we open this up musically or you know what we should do here with the lights? Or why not bring the dancers out at this moment?’ We didn’t always turn those cameras on and there were only two of them and sometimes one.
You can imagine the complication of trying to tell a story and cut this movie together. There were times where I was on the floor banging and kicking and screaming because we didn’t design this to be shot as a film. We never planned it. There was no script. I didn’t say, ‘And now go in for the close-up and can we do one more take of that?’ That was never part of it.
How would you like Michael to be remembered as an artist and as a person?
ORTEGA Not only [does This Is It let us] have these final moments with Michael as the artist, but we come to know him better than ever before as a man. You really came to appreciate his kindness and his sweetness and his generosity and the wonderful collaborative spirit that he was about and the way that he worked with people, never wanting to offend anyone. My God, if he thought that he embarrassed somebody, it would just knock him to his knees. Michael knew who was in front of him and he had the greatest admiration and respect for everybody. Even if he had a little debate or a disagreement with someone, he never wanted it to get to the place where that person might have thought that he didn’t care for them or that he didn’t respect them.
What did you discover about Michael and yourself and your friendship doing this?
ORTEGA Michael just gave me such trust. From the very moment that we began, it’s like he threw the clay in the middle of the table and he said, ‘Put your hands in it with me right now.’ He loved creative jousting with me. He loved wrestling down ideas. It was such a partnership. It was so easy, out of our ego, and it was so about what belonged in the storytelling. I got this phone call, after two years of us talking about the possibility of maybe doing something live, and he said, ‘Kenny, this is it.’ I swear, that’s what he said. ‘This is it!’ Then during the conversation while we were talking, he said it like five times and I laughed and I said, ‘You should call the tour This is It because you keep saying it.’ Before any conceptual ideas, he started talking to me about the reasons behind wanting to go out and do it.
That is what I’ll take with me. His sense of responsibility, that it wasn’t enough to just go out there because he could. It had to be important. It had to have worth. It had to have reason, raison d’etre as Gene Kelly used to say to me all the time. What’s the reason for being there that’s going to inspire me to get up every day and want to put on my costume and get on that stage and be Michael Jackson.
Read Interview With This Is It Choreographer and Producer Travis Payne
Read Intervew With This Is It Musical Director Michael Bearden
