Leaving Neverland (HBO) Movie

First part premieres this Sunday, 3/3. Second part comes 3/4

 

This is gonna be a rough watch.

 

Part 1 was really tough to watch. I had to take breaks during it.

 

Very disturbing stuff. Yeah I was only able to watch an hour or so of it myself.

 

I got an hour into part 1 last night, but then had to shovel and go to bed. Difficult to watch for sure, but looking forward to the next 3 hours of watching it. So many of my friends are like this is all false, but I don't believe that is the case.

 

Yeah I had to check out midway through. Rough stuff, and social media is even worse

 

So many parts of this are horrific, and some of the worst stuff for me isn’t even the particularly graphic descriptions. Just that audio of him saying that the best part of Hawaii was being with Jimmy is incredibly disturbing, and all the footage of Wade as a kid doing these incredibly sexualized dances seems like an entire layer in the grooming in and of itself.

The reaction from the public isn’t surprising but is still super disappointing.

 

the fact that there are people on Twitter who only use it to defend abusers is disgusting, I've seen it with Johnny Depp and Woody Allen too

 

Also it’s totally unrelated to the actual point of the film, but what is up with the Harrison Ford giving away Indy’s whip story?! Such a throwaway line but it sketched me out big time in the context of this.

 

I don't know if I'll be able to watch this, can't exactly afford a new television if it prompts me to throw something through mine.

 

This brings up some good points about what is certainly one of the messiest and most challenging aspects of the documentary.

The Mothers of Michael Jackson’s Victims Failed Their Sons. Leaving Neverland Fails Those Moms, Too.

 

This had me crying last night. Hard to hear graphic stories like these about one of my idols.

There's a big divide online obviously about whether or not these two guys are lying. But putting aside the allegations of sexual assault, everything else that is discussed in the documentary are backed by either evidence or a third party witness. The faxes, the voicemails, his attempts to push the parents away, him asking Wade's mom if he could live with MJ for a year unsupervised. Only Michael, James and Wade know what happened behind those closed doors, but you cannot deny that everything else that we know as fact isn't incredibly disturbing. A 32 year old man shouldn't be calling a 10 year every day having conversations that sometimes lasted 6 hours.

 

very difficult and illuminating watch. thought the similarities between the 2 accounts were particularly damning. hard to read a lot of the reaction on social media, as you have the cult of his followers who will believe he is innocent no matter what. I also love the "let him rest" narrative, as if talking about this now is effecting him in any way since he's dead

 

Anyone that says "let him rest" really means "I don't want to think of him this way".

 

It absolutely means “let me rest” in reference to reevaluating him in their lives.

The official trailer on YouTube has around 4k likes to 17k dislikes in a perfect distillation of what his followers are doing here.

Now I want a huge documentary that really delves into how messy and rough and imperfect these stories are in reality and takes everyone to task on their constant need for every single case to be cut and dry and flawless for any story to be taken seriously.

 

Its crazy how many videos are floating around with people trying to disprove all of the info in these docs.

 

I just hit that Hawaii part. As Jimmy is asking him what his favorite part wasI yelled "oh god don't say Jimmy" aaaaaand it was indeed hanging out with a 10 year old

 

MJ fans are the craziest, most aggressive folks on social media.

 

Yeah there’s definitely a reason for that, and it isn’t to convince anyone else

 

I was just going to watch the first part last night, but was so captivated, I watched both. Everything about this was so fucked up. The mothers should be in jail for the shit they pulled. It's going to be impossible for me to feel well when his music comes on the radio from now on.

 

I really really reeeaaaalllllyyyyy want to believe these mothers were just horrifically naive/blinded by a megastar's careful manipulation ...it'd make this slightly easier to reconcile. Like hey you failed your sons on a colossal level but at least you didn't do it on purpose? i guess

Anyway I kinda wish they'd have touched on how the other two boys are doing now. I know the one kid's dad killed himself too

 

That article I posted goes into how they sort of failed the mothers as well by not giving as much detail about how they were manipulated and groomed as well. I think Wade’s mom in particular is in as much denial as anyone else in the story, and it’s horrifying as well as heartbreaking. Obviously they still failed their children on a massive level, but I don’t necessarily believe that it was as malicious as some of the reaction has been to them.

 

I'm really curious about Gavin Arizo now. I wonder if they tried reaching out to him for this doc.

 

Everything I’ve heard is that he specifically only approached the two of them and was not planning to make a film about the broader accusations.

 

Think along with their naivety and being star struck, a lot of the gullibility was due to his childlike personality. Like if it was Michael Jordan instead I imagine all of them say “no way!” and freak out. I feel there’s a good chance that he was so damaged from his childhood abuse that he didn’t mentally/emotionally progress from that timeframe, but then you do have to reconcile that with how cunning and manipulative he was so who knows. Either way, point being, I think they really felt like their kids were just playing with another kid.

Also, not sure how you can objectively watch this and not find them entirely credible.