This is It!: We Interview Michael's Team!

After seeing the amazing Michael Jackson doc This is It, TeenHollywood got to speak with director Kenny Ortega, Music Supervisor for the intended tour Michael Bearden and choreographer Travis Payne, all also producers for the film and close friends of the King of Pop.  Michael was so excited about making the concert the ultimate experience for fans that he told Ortega "if the audience can go home at the end of this concert and they can go to sleep, then we've failed! They should stay awake texting, e-mailing and talking about this show until the sun comes up and after that. It has to be that much fun for them". 

We'll say only that the movie is as close as the world will ever get to seeing the energetic, in control Michael in final tour mode. Successfully melding 3-D video, amazing set pieces and gimmicks, perfect choreography and top notch musicianship, the film presents Michael at work in rehearsals and backstage as he crafted and tweaked the show that he wanted to bring the world as his final on stage curtain call.

According to director Kenny Ortega, he was a wreck after Jackson's death and was only going to look at the footage but then "I became haunted. How could I let anybody else touch this? This is the last documentation of Michael Jackson. We're doing it together so who else knows?  I have to do this". Ortega looked to the heavens and asked the superstar "don't leave me now!" So, he started putting the pieces of the enormous jigsaw puzzle together.

Ortega felt that Michael didn't intend to retire at all but spend more time on films, working for the environment and other pursuits. "Michael had been talking a long while about filmmaking. After he did the 50 shows, he wanted to do a film. We were talking about doing "Legs Diamond" as a motion picture musical.  We were talking about doing "Thriller" in 3-D as a full-length motion picture musical. We thought about doing a contemporary "Oliver" for television."

This series of concerts starting in London were to be for Jackson's fans and to show his kids exactly what all the fuss was about concerning their dad; he wanted them to see him in his element; on stage with his music. Ortega stated that Michael had a three-fold reason for doing the tour; for the fans, for his children and for the planet since he was so concerned about the limited time we have left to save mother earth. Thus, elaborate film and stage performances of "Earth Song" and "We Are the World" were to be included. Ortega stressed that Michael was also a team player. "He was very collaborative and respectful of all the minds around him. He loved hearing what we had to offer him".

The director wanted fans to know how excited Michael was about the whole production. He was really excited about bringing HD 3-D to the concert. "These four 3-D films were going to be woven into the show". Ortega felt that M.J. was most excited about "Thriller" and the anniversary of the album. "He was going to give the audience a 4-D experience; the world's largest HD 3-D screen was going to have film footage on it. There would be a stage filled with effects and dance and coming off the stage would be dry ice moving into the arena. Then there were elements coming down the aisles, out of the ceilings and from under the stage. In the midst of "Thriller" you would have this experience happening above you, around you, in front of you and behind you". Jackson knew that this was the time. He could still perform at top level. An early phone call to Ortega named the shows, "Kenny, this is it! This is my final curtain call". Ortega told him "that's the name of the concert!"

We knew that Michael was polling his fans on the internet to tell him which songs they would most like to see on the tour. Music Director Michael Bearden gave us the inside scoop, "He went online, well, his oldest son Michael probably got him online and he actually did have a computer print-out of the fans' survey and he had his hand-written notes on it.  He pulled out his reading glasses, which I thought was great, as he showed me the list and I said 'Well, MJ, that's cool but you don't have any J (Jackson) 5' and he'd go, 'I don't?' and he'd ball it up and we'd start over. It was angst-ridden for both of us.  He so loved the fans he wanted to do everything they wanted. I reminded him that he'd be on the stage for 24 hours!"

Choreographer Travis Payne spoke of a 6 A.M. phone call he got from Michael early on. "We need new dancers", said Jackson. Having worked with an excellent troupe of dancers on two other Jackson tours, Travis was "iffy" but then he "got" it. "We need to find some diamonds in the rough from all over the world?" "Now you're getting it", replied the superstar.  Almost 7,000 dancers applied. This was whittled down to about a thousand and Michael himself sat secretly in the back of the room, helping Travis pare down the hopefuls until "he picked just the right people to join this family".  

We were impressed and happy that the original choreography was intact for "Thriller", "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" and Travis told us M.J. (as his friends called him) would have it no other way saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  I don't want to cheat the audience". Michael was into making the performance sound like the records and maintain the integrity. Then some additions and tweaking could take place.  

Entire performances are pieced together seamlessly from various rehearsals but the only hint of this is that Michael's clothes change. Sound and video is perfect. We asked Bearden how this was done.  "It was pretty difficult actually. The band was live.  We played everything live so we had to make sure that the tempos were the same.  You feel differently on different days so it was hard to piece that together but we were pretty consistent and M.J. was as well.  He had a built-in clock. If tempo wasn't right, he'd stop me with "needs to be a little faster'. Some songs that Jackson loved he turned down because they wouldn't have the right on-stage production value to please the fans. "All the songs were like his children".

This is It footage was never meant to be a film. "I used to call it our 'game film'", stated Bearden. "We'd look and compare how we looked last week and try to make that better or say 'ah, let's not keep that'. Nothing was ever added to the film. It's the footage we had." Bearden said that Michael told him he wanted to do the tour because he was still young enough to do it and his children were old enough now to appreciate it. Bearden revealed that Michael would stop rehearsal with "okay, I gotta go". "But we've got another hour". "Oh, I'll be back.  I have to put my kids to bed". Jackson wanted to make sure that his kids would be "proud of daddy forever".