Speaker 1: Pushkin before we do any talking. I just want you.
Speaker 1: Can you just read the opening.
Speaker 2: Scene exterior Ape Sanctuary Day. Bubbles, a grizzled, muscular thirty
Speaker 2: three year old chimpanzee, lazily knuckle wocks across the floor
Speaker 2: of a large domed enclosure nestled in a verdant, Florida
Speaker 2: woodland Superimposition Center for Great Apes Watchuola, Florida present day.
Speaker 3: There are many kinds of kingdoms in this world, and
Speaker 3: many kinds of kings.
Speaker 2: Bubble scoops up a hunk of sweet potato from the ground.
Speaker 3: I have known more than most, though all here have
Speaker 3: served outside these castle walls in some capacity.
Speaker 2: It comes upon a cluster of three chips and acknowledges them.
Speaker 3: Butchered chippers served the Ringling Brothers, as did Petunia.
Speaker 2: Moving along, he passes two other chips.
Speaker 3: Ellie and her friend Kodua were both in a Super
Speaker 3: Bowl commercial.
Speaker 2: A third chip runs over, waxed Ellie on the head
Speaker 2: and then runs off.
Speaker 3: That's Jonah. He starred in a Planet of the Apes film.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately it was the one people didn't enjoy.
Speaker 2: Bubble's effortlessly as sens a wooden jungle gym and then
Speaker 2: sits perched on top of it, overlooking his domain, munching
Speaker 2: his sweet potato.
Speaker 3: Now this is their kingdom, and I am their king.
Speaker 3: But it was not always so. I was once heir
Speaker 3: to the greatest kingdom on earth, one ruled by a
Speaker 3: king like none before him. But every kingdom, great or small,
Speaker 3: has its boundaries, it's walls. Every kingdom is itself a
Speaker 3: kind of cage. I have in my life. Become a
Speaker 3: student of cages.
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode three of Development Hell, our series about
Speaker 1: the Hollywood that Never was. I heard about this script
Speaker 1: from Franklin Leonard, who runs something called the Blacklist. It's
Speaker 1: a Hollywood institution that polls movie executives every year, asking
Speaker 1: them to name their most liked unproduced screenplays. The project
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today hit number one on
Speaker 1: the Blacklist. It was called simply Bubbles, A story told
Speaker 1: through the eyes of the most unreliable of all unreliable narrators,
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee who rose as high as a chimp can
Speaker 1: rise and then fell, and the entire town, the entire
Speaker 1: community of Development executive Studio Hancho's producers, everyone in Hollywood
Speaker 1: agreed that this was the best thing they had read.
Speaker 1: But do you know when Bubbles hit number one on
Speaker 1: the Blacklist twenty fifteen, nine years ago, Hollywood decided as
Speaker 1: a group that a story about a chimp called Bubbles
Speaker 1: was the absolute best script of twenty fifteen. And yet
Speaker 1: in the decades since, Hollywood has decided that they did
Speaker 1: not want to make a movie told through the eyes
Speaker 1: of a chimp called Bubbles. Why this is why all
Speaker 1: of us revision is history, decided the world needed development hell,
Speaker 1: a series devoted entirely to the stories that Hollywood loves
Speaker 1: but will not share with the rest of us. So
Speaker 1: I called up the creator of Bubbles, Isaac Adamson, screenwriter, novelist,
Speaker 1: thwarted chronicler of the inner lives of large primates. You
Speaker 1: may hear in Isaac's voice a certain resis ignation about
Speaker 1: the fate of his screenplay, but that's not how I feel.
Speaker 1: I read Bubbles, and I thought I have to do something. First,
Speaker 1: they came for the chimpanzees, and I did not speak
Speaker 1: out because I was not a chimpanzee.
Speaker 3: You know that ends.
Speaker 1: So here we have a middle aged chimp who is
Speaker 1: clearly in some kind of retirement, has been pastured out
Speaker 1: to this sanctuary in Orlando. But he speaks in this grandiose,
Speaker 1: formal manner about this life. Tell me, give me a
Speaker 1: little more in your own words, about the character of
Speaker 1: this of Bubbles, this majestic aging chimp.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think of Bubbles kind of as a
Speaker 2: would be king in exile. You know, he's had this amazing,
Speaker 2: adventurous life and now it's kind of been he's been
Speaker 2: removed from and he's sort of biding his time away
Speaker 2: from the life that he thought he was going to
Speaker 2: have and from the kingdom that he felt that he
Speaker 2: was going to inherit.
Speaker 1: He's a tragic figure, yeah, definitely, Yeah, but he has
Speaker 1: And what's hilarious. This is a comedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's core.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's core. It's many other things as well, but
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally a comedy. I must say parenthetically, Isaac that
Speaker 1: I love this script so much. You know how in
Speaker 1: your world in Hollywood it's always X meets Y. A
Speaker 1: movie is always described as ex meets Why. You know
Speaker 1: what this is? You probably, I'm sure you've thought this
Speaker 1: is this script is uh uh Remains of the Day
Speaker 1: meets Puff the Magic Dragon.
Speaker 2: I actually has never thought of it that way. That's
Speaker 2: what I hadn't heard before.
Speaker 1: But do you see what do you do? You you
Speaker 1: know what I'm you know what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So let's explain Bubbles is a real was a real chimp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct, he was. He is a real chimp. He's
Speaker 2: still alive and living at this Ape Sanctuary in Florida, and.
Speaker 1: He he is famous, and he's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most famous chimps of our generation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would, I would think so for sure. I
Speaker 2: mean he's up there with like Cheetah from previous generations.
Speaker 1: I suppose, oh Cheetah, you mean like Tarzan ssidekick in
Speaker 1: those tarz En movies and TV shows. So Bubbles is
Speaker 1: on Cheetah's level. He's famous.
Speaker 2: Uh, he is famous because he was Michael Jackson's Chimpionzee
Speaker 2: during the height of Jackson's fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was more than a kind of pet.
Speaker 1: He was. He was like a he was like Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's companion.
Speaker 2: He was when Michael Jackson went on tour. He took
Speaker 2: him all over the world. You know, he tried to
Speaker 2: take him to Europe. He had some trouble getting him
Speaker 2: into the country because of the animal quarantine laws, but
Speaker 2: he did. He took him to Japan, he took him.
Speaker 2: He took him famously to a meeting with the mayor
Speaker 2: of Osaka.
Speaker 1: So you had this idea of doing a movie about
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson seeing through the eyes of his chimp Bubbles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess the genesis of it happened a long
Speaker 2: time before I actually sat down to write the script.
Speaker 2: You know, it was right around the time Michael Jackson died,
Speaker 2: and there were all sorts of articles about every aspect
Speaker 2: of his life. And I happened across something in like
Speaker 2: People or you know, one of those magazines that you
Speaker 2: kind of flipped through at the DAAs office, and it
Speaker 2: was just a little blurb about, well, whatever happened to Bubbles,
Speaker 2: you know, remember Michael Jackson's chimpanzee. And I thought out,
Speaker 2: that's kind of interesting because I sort of remembered Bubbles
Speaker 2: being around and everything. And then a couple of years later,
Speaker 2: there was a there was a book that was shortlisted
Speaker 2: for the Man Booker Prize in the UK, me Cheetah,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was like the Tarzan story told
Speaker 2: from Cheetah's perspective, that. It turns out I was totally wrong.
Speaker 2: I didn't actually read the book. I just read about it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, so a
Speaker 2: certain point, I just decided to try to write a
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson story told from the perspective of this, you know,
Speaker 2: of this chimpanzee. But it was really important to me
Speaker 2: to make the chimpanzee the lead character, the real protagonist,
Speaker 2: not just how it be. He's kind of a fly
Speaker 2: on the wall witnessing all this crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 1: And how did you come to give the give bubbles
Speaker 1: the persona that he has. I mean, there's a million
Speaker 1: directions you could go with a chimp. If we're going
Speaker 1: to live inside the mind of a chimp, the chimp
Speaker 1: could be a rascal, he could be a partier, he
Speaker 1: could be a you know, I mean, he could be
Speaker 1: the imagure, he could be an immature adolescent. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a million chimps, and you chose this kind of formal,
Speaker 1: self serious, grandiose kind of character to be. How where
Speaker 1: did that I where did that notion come from?
Speaker 2: Well there was a couple of things, really, because yeah,
Speaker 2: although this is a comedy, I did see it. You know,
Speaker 2: as a tragedy. From Bubble's perspective, he sort of has
Speaker 2: this notion that Michael Jackson is a real king, you know,
Speaker 2: like a monarch, and chimpanzees are very hierarchical animals. There's
Speaker 2: definitely a pecking order there. Once I sort of had
Speaker 2: this idea of it's almost a Shakespearean tragedy about a
Speaker 2: king and his son that would be king. Then I
Speaker 2: started thinking, we'll be really funny if if Bubbles spoke
Speaker 2: in this kind of pseudo Shakespearean language, just to elevate
Speaker 2: it a little bit. Yeah, so that's kind of where
Speaker 2: a lot of that came from. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it gives him an enormous amount of dignity
Speaker 1: if he was. If he was, this is one of
Speaker 1: the first things that's struggling about this. I was like,
Speaker 1: why am I Why do I feel Bubbles is pain?
Speaker 1: Because he eventually will go through a great deal of pain.
Speaker 1: I was asking, so why do I feel it so keenly?
Speaker 1: And I realize it's because he has this very precious
Speaker 1: dignity which he's going to enormous lengths to preserve. And
Speaker 1: if he was just the stereotypical chimp who's just had
Speaker 1: to eat bananas and jump around. Then there's no steakes
Speaker 1: if he's right humiliated. But in this case, it was enormous.
Speaker 1: I mean his pride, Bubbles. Bubbles just has this enormous
Speaker 1: amount of pride in his position and his status and
Speaker 1: his accomplishments and which is it's just deeply hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I think, you know, it would have
Speaker 2: been a fun to just the visual juxtaposition of this chimpanzee,
Speaker 2: which I think we all associate with that kind of
Speaker 2: you know, wacky hygienks and slapstick and wrapping its head
Speaker 2: and you know, blowing raspberries and all those things we've
Speaker 2: seen in all kinds of movies and TV shows and
Speaker 2: commercials and even nature documentaries. But then you know, having
Speaker 2: that sort of goofy, funny exterior aspect to it, but
Speaker 2: there's really sort of deep, kind of sad interior thing
Speaker 2: going on at the same time. I thought that was
Speaker 2: an interesting juxtaposition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's an he not only does he he
Speaker 1: he misunderstands who Michael Jackson is. So when he when
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson is referred to as the King of Pop,
Speaker 1: Bubbles thinks that means he is the king actually the
Speaker 1: king of pop And not only that, he consistently misunderstands
Speaker 1: all these things that we understand about Michael Jackson. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you could read there's that incredibly lovely scene
Speaker 1: where he's talking about the first time he discusses Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's cosmetic surgery. Could you can you There's a number
Speaker 1: of times where he does. But I'm wondering whether you
Speaker 1: can find that section forgot with pagees on. Oh here
Speaker 1: we are thirteen.
Speaker 2: Interior, Havenhurst Mansion, Michael's bathroom night. Michael looks at the
Speaker 2: man in the mirror, unhappily, inspecting his face for a
Speaker 2: moment before picking up a bottle of Porcelina skin bleaching cream.
Speaker 2: Bubbo sits on the stool next to him, watching as
Speaker 2: Michael rubs the cream into his face.
Speaker 3: Before venturing forth to the battlefield, he would don warpaint
Speaker 3: that turned his face a spectral, phantasmic shade, meant to
Speaker 3: strike fear into the heart of his enemies.
Speaker 2: Later, Michael faces the mirror again, a bandage covers his nose.
Speaker 3: Often he would return from these battles with bandages covering
Speaker 3: wounds received in combat.
Speaker 2: Michael peels the bandage away to reveal a noticeably narrowed nose.
Speaker 3: But he had remarkable powers of self healing, each time,
Speaker 3: recovering from such injuries without so much as a scarm.
Speaker 1: He's such a hilariously unreliable narrator about his king. That's
Speaker 1: like half the fun of this. That's why, you know
Speaker 1: what I said, it's half Remains of the Day. Remains
Speaker 1: of the Day as a novel about a butler to
Speaker 1: an English lord who's sympathetic to the Nazis in the
Speaker 1: years before the Second World War, and the butler thinks
Speaker 1: that his master is one of the great statesmen of
Speaker 1: his day instead of just being a groveling neo Nazi,
Speaker 1: you know, and the whole that's a tragic novel. But
Speaker 1: the whole thing is that butler never understands who his
Speaker 1: master is. Yeah, but this is the same thing. Bubbles
Speaker 1: is like the butler and remains the day. He just
Speaker 1: doesn't he never ever cottons on to the kind of
Speaker 1: holeomnists in Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: I guess yeah, I think you know, because he is
Speaker 2: a chimpanzee, and he does he misinterprets a lot of
Speaker 2: what he sees. I think it sort of allows him
Speaker 2: to return innocence too that you know, Yeah, a quote
Speaker 2: unquote normal person that was seeing some of the things
Speaker 2: that Bubbles was exposed to. You know, we're coming to
Speaker 2: say conclusions. The Bubbles does, for sure.
Speaker 1: But Bubbles does there are certain things he used a
Speaker 1: lot in this in this screenplay about Joe Michael Jackson's
Speaker 1: tyrannical father, and Bubbles does understand that there is something
Speaker 1: deeply kind of corrosive and tragic about that relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. I mean he does. I think one
Speaker 2: thing that he's geared at sensing is sort of power dynamics,
Speaker 2: and he can kind of understand that. Ye had Michael's
Speaker 2: maybe the king, but here's this other figure who is
Speaker 2: unkind to him but clearly has power over him. You know,
Speaker 2: in some sense.
Speaker 1: You have an enormous amount of fun in the script
Speaker 1: with populating it with every single pop culture person of
Speaker 1: them of the moment, I lost track, I was keeping
Speaker 1: track of all of the cameos. We get Elizabeth Taylor,
Speaker 1: we get lots of Quincy Jones, we get bon Jovi
Speaker 1: in a hilarious scene when bon Jovi basically co opt
Speaker 1: Bubbles for a crazy night on the town LaToya obviously,
Speaker 1: Corey Feldman, Prince, Yeah, Prince. In a memorable scene when
Speaker 1: we see Prince encounter Michael Jackson, threw bubbles his eyes, bubbles,
Speaker 1: tries to make sense of.
Speaker 2: The uh.
Speaker 1: This, I mean, this part of the scripture sounds like
Speaker 1: you must. I pictured you laughing out loud as you
Speaker 1: were writing these scenes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely, every pretty much every scene there was
Speaker 2: there is something that just made me giggle, And even
Speaker 2: before I was writing it, when I was just researching
Speaker 2: it and coming upon all these stories. I mean, bon
Speaker 2: Jovi tells that story clip and I think it's on
Speaker 2: YouTube about how when he was in Osaka. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: basically they gave him bubbles for the night and they
Speaker 2: just had a big hotel party. And the Prince story,
Speaker 2: that's another one that was based on, you know, a
Speaker 2: true thing that happened. I mean, Michael Jackson being the
Speaker 2: massive figure he was at that time, he did interact
Speaker 2: with pretty much everybody who was everybody you know in
Speaker 2: pop culture during that period.
Speaker 1: What's also interesting is that there's things happening inside bubbles
Speaker 1: which you made up yourself. Everything that happens outside it
Speaker 1: seems like so basically recovering Michael Jackson's life when he's
Speaker 1: writing and touring for The Bad for Bad? Is it bad?
Speaker 1: Was the appen called bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was bad? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just fishing through all of the true accounts
Speaker 1: of that era and taking out stories basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's other stories that I've heard, you know,
Speaker 2: since since the script got out and I talked to
Speaker 2: so many people about it and everybody was sharing their
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson stories and rumors and all kinds. I've heard
Speaker 2: a lot of others, just kind of wild stories since then,
Speaker 2: you know, involving mcdonna and Michael Jackson, and some involving
Speaker 2: Bubbles and people that that saw him when he was
Speaker 2: at Neverland, And yeah, I've heard I've heard a couple
Speaker 2: where Bubbles was probably not as well behaved as he
Speaker 2: generally is in the script. Yeah. Yeah, well that's good.
Speaker 1: That goes I'm saying, we have to give him, if
Speaker 1: we're going to give him some dignity, he can't be
Speaker 1: throwing his faces at the wall every every five minutes, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, there are all kinds of things about Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's story that are not funny. When we come back
Speaker 1: Isaac hits a roadblock as he tries to get the
Speaker 1: Bubbles movie made. We're back Mychael Jackson dies in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, but Bubbles is still alive, and nearly
Speaker 1: six years later, Isaac Adamson writes the biopic We're talking
Speaker 1: about the story of the King of Pop from the
Speaker 1: point of view of his pet chimpanzee. He's thinking of
Speaker 1: using stop motion animation to tell the story for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: Hollywood is used to dealing with Prima Donna's but a
Speaker 1: chimp as the star of a movie would be on
Speaker 1: a whole other level. And Isaac isn't ignoring the pedophilia
Speaker 1: allegations against Michael Jackson. The Leaving Neverland documentary that exposed
Speaker 1: Jackson's behavior isn't out yet, but there's been investigations in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties that have become headline news. So around
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Isaac takes his admittedly unusual project and starts
Speaker 1: shopping it and studios like it. In twenty seventeen, Netflix
Speaker 1: bought the project and Isaac entered development.
Speaker 2: Hell, you know, when Netflix bought the project, I had
Speaker 2: to do a pretty lengthy annotation for them, citing anything
Speaker 2: in the script. I had to basically cite a source
Speaker 2: for yeah, just to get clearance from their legal department,
Speaker 2: and we ended up, you know, in the latest versions
Speaker 2: of the script, some of the names changed in certain cases,
Speaker 2: or a few characters kind of got squashed down into
Speaker 2: one character.
Speaker 1: Who did you lose in the in the legal review.
Speaker 2: Well, the biggest change had to do with a lot
Speaker 2: of this stuff related to legal charges that Michael Jackson faced,
Speaker 2: and we just changed some of the names there because
Speaker 2: there were a few things that were included in the
Speaker 2: script that were a little bit there was a whole
Speaker 2: lot of proof for the only stories about our like
Speaker 2: disreputable British tabloids and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this brings up this crucial thing, which is
Speaker 1: what begins as this kind of strange, kind of light
Speaker 1: hearted romp takes a dark turn in the second act
Speaker 1: and we actually get into my you know, Michael's well
Speaker 1: known the well known allegations around Michael Jackson's pedophilia, only
Speaker 1: this time we're seeing it through the eyes of a
Speaker 1: kind of jilted of our jilted chimp. Who's Who's Who's
Speaker 1: place of prominence next to Michael has been uh, he's
Speaker 1: been supplanted by by by a young boy. Yeah, and Isaac,
Speaker 1: this is like it gets heavy.
Speaker 2: It does, Yeah, it does. I mean it's a heavy
Speaker 2: it's a heavy kind of story. I feel like the
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson story is a heavy story, and Bubble's story
Speaker 2: within that story, it is kind of a heavy story.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think you've used these kids at first
Speaker 2: as just sort of these annoying sort of interlopers that
Speaker 2: are that are taking Michael's attention away from him, and
Speaker 2: then he sees them kind of, you know, as rivals
Speaker 2: and even comes to fear like maybe they're actually part
Speaker 2: of the succession now and not me.
Speaker 1: Once again, the one way in which Bubbles is h
Speaker 1: sees the world clearly is to the the prism of hierarchy, right,
Speaker 1: and so he understands accurately that in the in Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's hierarchy, these boys are now higher up than he is. Correct,
Speaker 1: they can they occupy a place in Michael's heart that
Speaker 1: he does not. And this is, like I said, this
Speaker 1: is why I said, this is remains the day meets Puff,
Speaker 1: the Magic Dragon. It's the Puff story. Then when day
Speaker 1: it happened, Jackie Paper came no more. It's that's that's
Speaker 1: what happens to him. He gets pushed aside, and it's like,
Speaker 1: it broke my heart when that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a tough Uh, it's a tough moment.
Speaker 2: It's tough thing for bubbles. And I think you know,
Speaker 2: if you if you talk to the kids who were
Speaker 2: around Michael Jackson a lot at that time, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of them went through similar experiences with him
Speaker 2: when where you know, he they were his favorite, and
Speaker 2: then some and then someone else came along, you know,
Speaker 2: and they were just sort of jilted out of out
Speaker 2: of neverland. And I think, you know, and in certain
Speaker 2: cases that that hurt these kids a lot, even some
Speaker 2: of the ones that like Corey Fellman, you know, who
Speaker 2: says that Michael Jackson never touched him or you know,
Speaker 2: did anything sexually untoward, but he was just hurt by
Speaker 2: that whole experience of feeling like they were buddies and
Speaker 2: he was the favorite, and then one day he's just
Speaker 2: out mm hmmm hmm.
Speaker 1: What does it do to our understanding of that part
Speaker 1: of Michael Jackson's life that we're viewing it to the
Speaker 1: eyes of a chimp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: in a certain sense, it gives us bubbles interpretation and
Speaker 2: often misinterpretation of these things that he sees. It works
Speaker 2: almost as a distant distcencing device that allows us to
Speaker 2: sort of see things through a different viewpoint that wasn't
Speaker 2: necessarily our own, you know, or the way I experienced
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson when I was a kid growing up in
Speaker 2: the eighties. I mean, when I was growing up and
Speaker 2: where I was, it didn't really matter what kind of
Speaker 2: music you listened to, you liked Michael Jackson. Like, if
Speaker 2: you were into you know, Iron Maiden and heavy metal
Speaker 2: and all that stuff, you still like Michael Jackson. If
Speaker 2: you were listening to Duran, Duran and a bunch of
Speaker 2: new Waves, you still like Michael Jackson. Everybody liked Michael Jackson,
Speaker 2: you know. I remember seeing the Thriller video a thousand
Speaker 2: times on MTV when I was when I was a
Speaker 2: little kid, So yeah, I was definitely a fan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to kind of figure out why years later,
Speaker 1: the kind of psychological dimensions of this story would have
Speaker 1: would have been so kind of clear to you, right,
Speaker 1: the sort of weird like you know, an entire generation
Speaker 1: of seventh grader is kind of encounter Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 2: people were jealous of those real life kids at the
Speaker 2: time that you know, oh my god, you know, Jimmy's
Speaker 2: getting to go to Neverland, getting to go on vacation
Speaker 2: with Michael, and it looked like the greatest life ever.
Speaker 2: You're just eating ice cream and watching movies and you know,
Speaker 2: riding on the Ferris we opt Michael Jackson's house and
Speaker 2: all that kind of thing, and just the sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, the darkness that was actually going on and
Speaker 2: eat or even in just the sort of hollowness of
Speaker 2: those kind of fake friendships too. It was something that
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot of people certainly knew at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that scene Michael through Bubble's eyes
Speaker 1: makes Michael a more sympathetic character to us or less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's tough. I mean, I think he probably comes
Speaker 2: off as a little bit less sympathetic because we are
Speaker 2: we're told the story from kind of a quote unquote
Speaker 2: victim's viewpoint, you know, because it is it is Bubbles
Speaker 2: telling the story. But at the same time, Bubbles can't really,
Speaker 2: especially in the early, you know version of the script,
Speaker 2: can't really bring himself to to hate Michael Jackson. He's
Speaker 2: still even in the last you know that that first
Speaker 2: scene I read, in the last scene in the script,
Speaker 2: he's hoping one day Michael Jackson is going to come again.
Speaker 2: He's still waiting for Michael to return, you know, so
Speaker 2: they can rule the world together once more. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's tough. I don't I think maybe different audiences would
Speaker 2: have different reactions. You know, everybody has a lot of
Speaker 2: different reactions to Michael Jackson in general.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was hard about writing the script?
Speaker 2: You know, honestly, just from a technical point of view,
Speaker 2: the hardest thing was keeping Bubbles as the protagonist and
Speaker 2: not letting Michael take over too much of the script,
Speaker 2: just because he is such a such a compelling figure,
Speaker 2: and you know, finding ways to include the moments that
Speaker 2: I wanted from Michael Jackson's life, but have Bubbles somehow
Speaker 2: be there for them, hopefully and more than just like
Speaker 2: like I was saying, for a fly on the wall
Speaker 2: capacity where he's just sort of reporting what he's seeing,
Speaker 2: because to give him stakes in some of those instances.
Speaker 1: But he can't The thing about Bubbles is he can't
Speaker 1: grow Kenny. He he's if you if you have an
Speaker 1: unreliable narrator, as in Remains of the Day, the pathos
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that the world outside the narrator
Speaker 1: changes and the narrator is blind to it. Right, So
Speaker 1: you if the unreliable narrator becomes reliable at the end,
Speaker 1: then it kind of roomined it.
Speaker 2: Oh my wrong, Yeah, that's a good that's a good
Speaker 2: question too, especially as it relates to sort of you know,
Speaker 2: versions of the script that we that we revised after
Speaker 2: leaving never Land. It came out I think I felt
Speaker 2: and the producers thought that we couldn't allow Bubbles to
Speaker 2: be quite as ambiguous or I guess agnostic about what
Speaker 2: happened it never Land, because he is telling our movie
Speaker 2: and then therefore makes the movie feel like we're agnostic
Speaker 2: about it and you know, trying to question, well, maybe
Speaker 2: all those terrible things didn't happen, which was not our
Speaker 2: intention at all. So in later versions of the script
Speaker 2: and the changes are pretty small, but I think Bubbles
Speaker 2: does display a clearer understanding, clearer understanding of what's going
Speaker 2: on there. It kind of loses his innocence a little bit,
Speaker 2: and his parting with Michael Jackson is a little more final.
Speaker 2: We don't really see him long, you know, to see
Speaker 2: Michael again in those last moments. I do feel like
Speaker 2: kind of needed to write it that way based on
Speaker 2: everything going on. But it is a good question whether
Speaker 2: that sort of undermines a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: the other things in the script about you know, his
Speaker 2: unreliable narration and his innocence over a while. I think
Speaker 2: he became a little bit less innocent character in the
Speaker 2: in the final versions of it, as I think everybody became,
Speaker 2: you know, less innocent after leaving Neverland hit and really
Speaker 2: had the impact that it did. I don't think people
Speaker 2: could pretend, you know, pretending more about Michael Jackson, who
Speaker 2: who really was, at least in certain aspects of his life.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit more about leaving Nozzlin, which comes
Speaker 1: out when.
Speaker 2: I believe it was January twenty nineteen, premiered at sun Dance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you and you wrote your script? First
Speaker 1: draft was written when?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this the first draft of this script was written
Speaker 2: in March twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: And when do you see it? Do you see it
Speaker 1: right away?
Speaker 2: I didn't see it right away. It's funny. My manager
Speaker 2: was in Sundance and he went to the premiere of
Speaker 2: it and he called me immediately and it's like, I
Speaker 2: think we got a problem. Then I saw the film,
Speaker 2: and the thing that I really underestimated was just the
Speaker 2: power of hearing these guys tell their own stories in
Speaker 2: their own words, and you know, they really become real
Speaker 2: people in a way that they're not when you're just
Speaker 2: looking at court documents or magazine article or something like that,
Speaker 2: and you really heard them, you know, expressing the hurt
Speaker 2: and the pain of the things that they had been through. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that had that had a huge impact on
Speaker 2: the project for sure, in the negative sense for me.
Speaker 1: But when you when your manager said you had a problem,
Speaker 1: what did he mean exactly? Did he mean that the
Speaker 1: script as it presently is doesn't work anymore because it's
Speaker 1: too ambiguous about Michael Jackson's kind of sinister side or
Speaker 1: does it mean did he mean that just that you
Speaker 1: had to rewrite it? I mean, how dire was your
Speaker 1: manager's kind of perspective.
Speaker 2: I think the real problem and the thing that he
Speaker 2: saw coming was that Michael Jackson was just going to
Speaker 2: be toxic, and I think once Leaving Neverland came out,
Speaker 2: it was going to be hard to make this sort
Speaker 2: of whimsical, fun movie that I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people thought they were signing up for coming onto this project. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's what he meant by We're in trouble,
Speaker 2: just because almost overnight just sort of perception around Michael
Speaker 2: Jackson changed and nobody wanted anything to do with any
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson project at that time.
Speaker 1: So, prior to Leaving Neverland, was this script on track
Speaker 1: to be made into a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. We had Taikaway TV you know, attached
Speaker 2: to direct it, and there was another director, Marcus Staffson,
Speaker 2: who was going to work on all the stop motion
Speaker 2: animation because that's how we had decided to do it.
Speaker 2: Dan Harmon and Starburns was producing it, so we had
Speaker 2: all his his company was on it. Netflix bought the
Speaker 2: project at Con and I think it was twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: so yeah, it was. It was kind of ready to go.
Speaker 2: The two things that killed it were well, Taiko yitd
Speaker 2: had this other movie that he wanted to do kind
Speaker 2: of in the meantime called Jojo Rabbit, So yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: he went off to do that, and then in the meantime,
Speaker 2: Leaving Neverland came out, and I think we got to
Speaker 2: a point and we're pretty deep in pre production. They'd
Speaker 2: already hired all the department heads, we had forty some
Speaker 2: animators working on it, and it was kind of getting
Speaker 2: to the point where we needed we need to Tyke
Speaker 2: I to really engage and start making some directorial decisions.
Speaker 2: And he was just not engaged in the project. We
Speaker 2: knew something was up, and finally he just you know,
Speaker 2: he made the call to his agent or whatever, get
Speaker 2: me out of this. I can't do this anymore. And
Speaker 2: that's when it sort of died. Netflix had said, well,
Speaker 2: you've got two months to find another director for this,
Speaker 2: and then three days later they completely changed their minds
Speaker 2: went no, we're killing it. Everybody's fired. Go home. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that that's not a good day.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Do you do you did the
Speaker 1: script revert to you at any point or do they
Speaker 1: own it?
Speaker 2: It has recently? Yeah, I own it now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's dead?
Speaker 2: I don't know. You know, things kind of never die.
Speaker 2: It's funny and people bring it up to me all time,
Speaker 2: but we haven't really pursued any serious avenues towards getting
Speaker 2: it going again, but who knows. I will say it's
Speaker 2: it's pretty obvious to me that Michael Jackson, just as
Speaker 2: a public figure is not. I mean, you know, they're
Speaker 2: making a Michael Jackson biopic right now. Just yesterday, I
Speaker 2: sure on the on the Super Bowl was wearing you know,
Speaker 2: like a Michael Jackson glove. I don't think we would
Speaker 2: have seen that in the immediate wake of leaving Neverland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I I to take
Speaker 1: a contrary position. I feel like this is more interesting
Speaker 1: post never Land than pre Neverland. I mean, it goes
Speaker 1: from being if you do this in this movie at
Speaker 1: a time when we think of Michael as a talented eccentric,
Speaker 1: then the movie is fun and whimsical, but there's nothing
Speaker 1: at stake. It's just it's just another log on the
Speaker 1: fire of Jackson celebrity. It's a clever log and the
Speaker 1: fire you know, is wonderful, but it's not deviating in
Speaker 1: any But now it's like now that they know going
Speaker 1: in that Michael Jackson is this kind of complicated, twisted,
Speaker 1: deeply problematic figure. Then the fact that Bubbles is straining
Speaker 1: through his chimp eyes to see him clearly and failing
Speaker 1: is like it's got it's heart wrenching. This movie now
Speaker 1: has kind of it's got steaks now that it didn't
Speaker 1: have before. It's like, it's important for us to know
Speaker 1: what we know about Michael Jackson for this to move
Speaker 1: us emotionally. And what you're saying, you know, this idea
Speaker 1: that Michael Jackson's toxic or is more toxic than it
Speaker 1: used to be, is absolutely right. But this is not
Speaker 1: a Michael Jackson movie. It's a Bubbles movie. It's a
Speaker 1: movie about bubbles, right, A naive underling with this kind
Speaker 1: of self deception, powerful self deception, trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of a world that he has no understanding of.
Speaker 2: It's like it's heartbreaking, Yeah, I mean to me, it is.
Speaker 2: I don't think anything. What we've learned about Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: It's been funny to me because I say we learned it,
Speaker 2: but everybody kind of knew it anyway. And that's what's
Speaker 2: been odd about the reaction to me is that there
Speaker 2: wasn't anything new in these revelations, but suddenly had been
Speaker 2: gone through me too, and all the stuff that came
Speaker 2: with it. I think we just as a culture learned
Speaker 2: to take a lot of that stuff a lot more
Speaker 2: seriously and you know, give it the weight that it deserves.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what sort of changed about, you know,
Speaker 2: the public perception at least of Michael Jackson. But for me,
Speaker 2: I mean I always, I always kind of believed that
Speaker 2: the kids are telling the truth.
Speaker 1: You know, Bubbles becomes a stand in for us all.
Speaker 1: We all looked the other way with Michael Jackson for years,
Speaker 1: right because we were in love with his talent and
Speaker 1: his music, and Bubbles is just he's just representing our
Speaker 1: own kind of a willful blindness. Bubbles just wants thinks
Speaker 1: he's the king, and because he's the king, he's not
Speaker 1: willing to entertain any idea that his monarch might be flawed,
Speaker 1: at least until the very end. Or And I think
Speaker 1: that's like, like I said, it's such a stronger, better,
Speaker 1: more more powerful movie after that stuff's come out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would agree. I think what frightens
Speaker 2: a lot of people, or at least did you know
Speaker 2: a few years ago when this was all when the
Speaker 2: movie sort of fell apart, It's just the sort of
Speaker 2: moral panic around anything related to pedophilia in our country currently,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's stuff like Pizza Gate or just
Speaker 2: using pedo as a broad insult. I know Netflix had
Speaker 2: gone through some things too, with the controversy surrounding quds.
Speaker 2: I just think that it just became it became a
Speaker 2: word that you know, nobody really wanted to be associated
Speaker 2: with in any form whatsoever. You know, don't even want
Speaker 2: it coming out of their mouths when they're talking about
Speaker 2: a movie. And I can understand too, Why why if you're,
Speaker 2: you know, a big name director, you don't want to
Speaker 2: spend a whole lot of time at Coln or wherever
Speaker 2: answering questions about Michael Jackson's pedophelia. You know, I can
Speaker 2: understand one, you know, not just not wanting to deal
Speaker 2: with it. But I agree. I think it does make
Speaker 2: the story a little bit deeper, a little bit more interesting,
Speaker 2: and I think it does implicate the audience in some
Speaker 2: interesting ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the story. What happens to the
Speaker 1: script is this kind of the the the meta story
Speaker 1: is about kind of Hollywood abandoning it's because position as
Speaker 1: a kind of cultural authority. I mean, you would think
Speaker 1: that a medium as powerful as film would would feel
Speaker 1: free to address the most complex of topics and kind
Speaker 1: of force us to think about them in new ways
Speaker 1: and confront our own complicity and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And you know, I feel that at various times in
Speaker 1: Hollywood's history, film has done that. There's been these moments
Speaker 1: when but like this is a classic example of an
Speaker 1: opportunity to kind of address that, and the fact that
Speaker 1: nobody wants to do that breaks my heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's possible it could see the light
Speaker 2: of day. You know, again, sometime who knows. It's funny
Speaker 2: because sometimes you can see it. You know what's interesting
Speaker 2: about it the director, actors and producers, you know, the
Speaker 2: people who are sort of intimately involved with it on
Speaker 2: a creative level. But then when you're just talking to
Speaker 2: marketers or publicists or whoever else like that, or you know,
Speaker 2: find financial people, it's just another product.
Speaker 1: Can you one last thing, Isaac? Could you read a
Speaker 1: little bit of where Bubble struggles to come to terms
Speaker 1: with what he is observing at Neverland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me find a good one here. Okay, I
Speaker 2: found a good one. Exterior never Land Amusement Park day
Speaker 2: Bubbles glowers as Michael leads a delegation of kids down
Speaker 2: the path towards the amusement park. There's a manic quality
Speaker 2: to Michael's movements.
Speaker 3: He was as some mad pied piper, determined not to
Speaker 3: drive the snakes away, but lead them instead to the
Speaker 3: very heart of his kingdom.
Speaker 2: Michael laughs a little too brightly as he rides atop
Speaker 2: the carousel horse with all those noisy little friends, almost continuous.
Speaker 3: Determined to lower the drawbridge for these pine sized trojan
Speaker 3: horses and let them carry him away in a stampede
Speaker 3: of frivolity. I knew then that no ordeal would change him,
Speaker 3: no brush with ignominy, no humiliation, no torture, no trial,
Speaker 3: no punishment. He had waded so far into a sea
Speaker 3: of infamy that returning was as tedious as continuing to
Speaker 3: the other side. And a troubling notion arose, was what
Speaker 3: I had taken for reckless folly, masking something darker. My
Speaker 3: loyalty had found its limit, and I could serve no longer.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence and Tali Emlin,
Speaker 1: with ben at Afh Haffrey, editing by Sarah Nix, original
Speaker 1: scoring by Luis Garra, Engineering by Ecco Mountain. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Jacob Smith, and our special guest voice actor
Speaker 1: was the old Pushkin friend Ethan Herschenfeld. An extra special
Speaker 1: thanks to Franklin Leonard at the Blacklist from bringing Bubbles
Speaker 1: to the attention of the world, I'm Malcolm Glabo.