As I put in an earlier email, Kenny Ortega seems to have been the only one with his
priorities on straight - concerned about MJ more than the show.
It was a tough position
for everybody to be in.
To refer to MJ as lazy
was totally unjust and unrealistic, though, and I think shows just how little
these people understood who MJ was or how he was. OR what he'd been through due
to the decade of allegations and the trial, and what that can do to a sensitive
spirit. PTSD really would cover what he suffered - Lauren has a good
point.
How could he have been
lazy and accomplish the things he did? Ridiculous that Gongaware even said it.
Worn out - tired - lonely - paranoid - yes, he had every right to be those things.
I think MJ was just as
strongly repelled by fear of past abuses as he was attracted by the wonderful
artistic challenge of the comeback. He had a dream team to pull from and they
had lots of innovative ideas, which couldn't help but stimulate him. But IF he
failed somehow... they'd be on him like locusts. And he'd lose everything! Lord
Almighty.
It seems even more unbelievable
every time I think about the position he was in and the challenges to overcome.
RB also made a good
point about these men spouting off out of panic that their butts were going to
be in trouble with the boss if "the Artist" didn't shape up and do what they
thought he should do in the way they thought he should do it. Can financial
concerns override basic humanity? We know it can and did in MJ's life so many
times. Another true irony in his sea of ironies.
Yes, it does take an
army of financial types and everything else you can imagine to get a superstar
like Michael onto the world stage, RB, I totally agree -
But
at the end of the day, when the show is ON, only two things matter ---- the man
on the stage and the people in the audience. Nothing else matters. Nothing.
If
that special chemical reaction doesn't work for some reason, it doesn't matter
how many Gongawares or Phillipses or Ortegas or Beardens have been involved.
That
reality alone decides the priorities in my humble opinion. This is my
experience of live performance, and my passion for it.
And yano, I almost
didn't care if Phillips and Gongaware were "nice people" or not -
though I mistrusted their priorities because of Phillips pursuing MJ for AEG
for such a long time - I just hoped that what they showed during This Is It was
genuine respect for MJ and grief that he was gone. It seemed so in the film.
Now sadly, I know better.
