The original cut of the biopic “Michael” hit the four-hour mark as it charted Michael Jackson’s journey from a young boy (played by Juliano Valdi) singing with his brothers as “The Jackson 5” to rising to become a global megastar (his nephew, Jaafar Jackson), and ending with the King of Pop selling out London’s Wembley Stadium on the “Bad” world tour.
As previously reported, the accusations of child abuse were scrapped from the film after attorneys for the Jackson estate, which served as a producer, realized there was a clause in a settlement with one of the singer’s accusers, Jordan Chandler, that barred the depiction or mention of him in any movie. Thus, “Michael” needed to be recut.
Enter John Ottman, trusted collaborator of producer Graham King and editor of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (Editors Tom Cross and Conrad Buff had worked on previous versions; Ottman brought on editor Harry Yoon to aid in the workload.)
Ottman tells Variety the legal restrictions on covering the allegations left filmmakers no choice. “A saw was taken down the middle of the movie,” he says. “There really wasn’t much discussion.”
The editor only intended to be on board the production for a couple of weeks to help navigate the many challenges the film was facing, but to get the project where it needed to be required a complete overhaul. “That’s when the transition happened,” he says. “I ended up recutting the whole movie.”
Ottman, who has an “edited by” credit on the film, explains: “During that time, I focused on injecting much-needed intimacy into Michael’s creative process, and much more humor and energy. Graham really responded to the shifts I was making — like the way I eliminated 25 minutes of voiceover so that the audience could be more involved in Michael’s childhood.”
Ottman, who watched the full four-hour version of the film, focused on making the early storyline more succinct to establish why Michael was anxious to get out from under his father’s thumb. He also focused on Michael’s creative artistry and aimed to really get inside his head.
“I did all these sequences of him tinkering with his music,” Ottman says. “There’s a little montage with his finger-snapping and things like when he’s at the bulletin board in his studio [trying to write a song].”
Ottman also wanted to build on the loneliness factor. The childhood sequences show a young Michael growing up without any real friends, so as he becomes famous, he starts adopting animals, including Bubbles the chimp, his llama and pet snake. “I hope people pick up on the fact that those [animals] were his real friends,” Ottman says.
Ottman and King usually see eye-to-eye, but they differed over the voiceover sequence. Originally, Jaafar, as the older Michael, spoke over clips of his childhood. “You weren’t in the scenes and experiencing that ride. That was one of my major accomplishments, restoring those scenes to be in real time,” Ottman says, explaining that focusing on young Michael helped ground the emotion. “That feeling and warmth you have for him really transfers into the future with the older Michael Jackson.”
Elsewhere, Ottman looked for moments where he could “dig out as much humor as possible.” Those included moments like when little Michael can’t keep his feet still in the recording studio, or when the older Michael walks his pet llama down the street, and he sees some neighbors passing by, or when Michael slips in a Prince joke. According to Ottman, those moments “helped not only endear us to the character, but just keeps the audience having a fun time.”
Ottman also borrowed a few shots from the second half of the original cut to make the scenes blend seamlessly. For example, when Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) is hired as Michael’s head of security, Ottman says, “in the next scene, they’re performing at this county fair, and Bill’s nowhere to be seen. So luckily, he’s sitting near a Ferris wheel in Neverland Ranch in the second half of the film, so I just used those shots.”
The one sequence that kept Ottman up at night was the “Bad” concert scene that ends the film. At this point, Michael had successfully broken away from his father’s control and was on his solo tour. Ottman calls it his “mini-Live Aid,” referring to the iconic Queen concert sequence in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The scene needed to “kick ass” and be character-driven, and also mark a celebration of Jackson being free.
“With movies like this, if the storyline of the narrative of the film just stops for the sequences, the sequences tend to die,” Ottman says.
It was a conscious choice to bookend the film with “Bad.” By teasing the performance at the start of the film, Ottman says, “you’re telling the audience we’re going to come back to this, and it’s more fulfilling when we come back.”
When looking through the footage, it was clear that Jaafar Jackson’s performance really brought the scene to life. “Jaafar gave me so many lightning bolt moments,” he says. “My mission is to get every one of them on the screen.” To spotlight just how good Jaafar was, Ottman favored close-ups to highlight his emotions and the way he sang Michael’s lyrics, and used wider shots to capture the dance moves and atmosphere.
The highlight of editing the film for Ottman was seeing Jaafar Jackson and Valdi’s performances. “I’m witnessing the beginning of two great careers,” he says. “I was there when it happened.”
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