Latest / Revisionist History / Bubbles with Isaac Adamson | Development Hell

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Bubbles with Isaac Adamson | Development Hell · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin before we do any talking. I just want you.
0:25
Speaker 1: Can you just read the opening.
0:27
Speaker 2: Scene exterior Ape Sanctuary Day. Bubbles, a grizzled, muscular thirty
0:35
Speaker 2: three year old chimpanzee, lazily knuckle wocks across the floor
0:38
Speaker 2: of a large domed enclosure nestled in a verdant, Florida
0:42
Speaker 2: woodland Superimposition Center for Great Apes Watchuola, Florida present day.
0:52
Speaker 3: There are many kinds of kingdoms in this world, and
0:56
Speaker 3: many kinds of kings.
0:58
Speaker 2: Bubble scoops up a hunk of sweet potato from the ground.
1:02
Speaker 3: I have known more than most, though all here have
1:06
Speaker 3: served outside these castle walls in some capacity.
1:10
Speaker 2: It comes upon a cluster of three chips and acknowledges them.
1:13
Speaker 3: Butchered chippers served the Ringling Brothers, as did Petunia.
1:18
Speaker 2: Moving along, he passes two other chips.
1:21
Speaker 3: Ellie and her friend Kodua were both in a Super
1:24
Speaker 3: Bowl commercial.
1:25
Speaker 2: A third chip runs over, waxed Ellie on the head
1:28
Speaker 2: and then runs off.
1:29
Speaker 3: That's Jonah. He starred in a Planet of the Apes film.
1:34
Speaker 3: Unfortunately it was the one people didn't enjoy.
1:37
Speaker 2: Bubble's effortlessly as sens a wooden jungle gym and then
1:40
Speaker 2: sits perched on top of it, overlooking his domain, munching
1:43
Speaker 2: his sweet potato.
1:46
Speaker 3: Now this is their kingdom, and I am their king.
1:52
Speaker 3: But it was not always so. I was once heir
1:57
Speaker 3: to the greatest kingdom on earth, one ruled by a
2:02
Speaker 3: king like none before him. But every kingdom, great or small,
2:07
Speaker 3: has its boundaries, it's walls. Every kingdom is itself a
2:12
Speaker 3: kind of cage. I have in my life. Become a
2:18
Speaker 3: student of cages.
2:27
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode three of Development Hell, our series about
2:31
Speaker 1: the Hollywood that Never was. I heard about this script
2:35
Speaker 1: from Franklin Leonard, who runs something called the Blacklist. It's
2:39
Speaker 1: a Hollywood institution that polls movie executives every year, asking
2:43
Speaker 1: them to name their most liked unproduced screenplays. The project
2:48
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about today hit number one on
2:51
Speaker 1: the Blacklist. It was called simply Bubbles, A story told
2:55
Speaker 1: through the eyes of the most unreliable of all unreliable narrators,
3:00
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee who rose as high as a chimp can
3:04
Speaker 1: rise and then fell, and the entire town, the entire
3:08
Speaker 1: community of Development executive Studio Hancho's producers, everyone in Hollywood
3:13
Speaker 1: agreed that this was the best thing they had read.
3:17
Speaker 1: But do you know when Bubbles hit number one on
3:19
Speaker 1: the Blacklist twenty fifteen, nine years ago, Hollywood decided as
3:26
Speaker 1: a group that a story about a chimp called Bubbles
3:29
Speaker 1: was the absolute best script of twenty fifteen. And yet
3:32
Speaker 1: in the decades since, Hollywood has decided that they did
3:35
Speaker 1: not want to make a movie told through the eyes
3:38
Speaker 1: of a chimp called Bubbles. Why this is why all
3:42
Speaker 1: of us revision is history, decided the world needed development hell,
3:47
Speaker 1: a series devoted entirely to the stories that Hollywood loves
3:51
Speaker 1: but will not share with the rest of us. So
3:55
Speaker 1: I called up the creator of Bubbles, Isaac Adamson, screenwriter, novelist,
4:01
Speaker 1: thwarted chronicler of the inner lives of large primates. You
4:06
Speaker 1: may hear in Isaac's voice a certain resis ignation about
4:10
Speaker 1: the fate of his screenplay, but that's not how I feel.
4:13
Speaker 1: I read Bubbles, and I thought I have to do something. First,
4:19
Speaker 1: they came for the chimpanzees, and I did not speak
4:22
Speaker 1: out because I was not a chimpanzee.
4:26
Speaker 3: You know that ends.
4:29
Speaker 1: So here we have a middle aged chimp who is
4:36
Speaker 1: clearly in some kind of retirement, has been pastured out
4:41
Speaker 1: to this sanctuary in Orlando. But he speaks in this grandiose,
4:48
Speaker 1: formal manner about this life. Tell me, give me a
4:52
Speaker 1: little more in your own words, about the character of
4:55
Speaker 1: this of Bubbles, this majestic aging chimp.
5:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think of Bubbles kind of as a
5:05
Speaker 2: would be king in exile. You know, he's had this amazing,
5:09
Speaker 2: adventurous life and now it's kind of been he's been
5:12
Speaker 2: removed from and he's sort of biding his time away
5:18
Speaker 2: from the life that he thought he was going to
5:21
Speaker 2: have and from the kingdom that he felt that he
5:22
Speaker 2: was going to inherit.
5:24
Speaker 1: He's a tragic figure, yeah, definitely, Yeah, but he has
5:29
Speaker 1: And what's hilarious. This is a comedy.
5:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's core.
5:34
Speaker 1: Yes, that's core. It's many other things as well, but
5:37
Speaker 1: it's fundamentally a comedy. I must say parenthetically, Isaac that
5:40
Speaker 1: I love this script so much. You know how in
5:43
Speaker 1: your world in Hollywood it's always X meets Y. A
5:46
Speaker 1: movie is always described as ex meets Why. You know
5:48
Speaker 1: what this is? You probably, I'm sure you've thought this
5:52
Speaker 1: is this script is uh uh Remains of the Day
5:58
Speaker 1: meets Puff the Magic Dragon.
6:01
Speaker 2: I actually has never thought of it that way. That's
6:03
Speaker 2: what I hadn't heard before.
6:04
Speaker 1: But do you see what do you do? You you
6:06
Speaker 1: know what I'm you know what I'm getting at.
6:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely that makes sense.
6:10
Speaker 1: So let's explain Bubbles is a real was a real chimp.
6:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct, he was. He is a real chimp. He's
6:16
Speaker 2: still alive and living at this Ape Sanctuary in Florida, and.
6:19
Speaker 1: He he is famous, and he's probably one of the
6:23
Speaker 1: most famous chimps of our generation.
6:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would, I would think so for sure. I
6:30
Speaker 2: mean he's up there with like Cheetah from previous generations.
6:34
Speaker 1: I suppose, oh Cheetah, you mean like Tarzan ssidekick in
6:38
Speaker 1: those tarz En movies and TV shows. So Bubbles is
6:42
Speaker 1: on Cheetah's level. He's famous.
6:45
Speaker 2: Uh, he is famous because he was Michael Jackson's Chimpionzee
6:49
Speaker 2: during the height of Jackson's fame.
6:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was more than a kind of pet.
6:55
Speaker 1: He was. He was like a he was like Michael
6:57
Speaker 1: Jackson's companion.
6:59
Speaker 2: He was when Michael Jackson went on tour. He took
7:01
Speaker 2: him all over the world. You know, he tried to
7:03
Speaker 2: take him to Europe. He had some trouble getting him
7:06
Speaker 2: into the country because of the animal quarantine laws, but
7:11
Speaker 2: he did. He took him to Japan, he took him.
7:14
Speaker 2: He took him famously to a meeting with the mayor
7:17
Speaker 2: of Osaka.
7:18
Speaker 1: So you had this idea of doing a movie about
7:22
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson seeing through the eyes of his chimp Bubbles.
7:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess the genesis of it happened a long
7:31
Speaker 2: time before I actually sat down to write the script.
7:33
Speaker 2: You know, it was right around the time Michael Jackson died,
7:37
Speaker 2: and there were all sorts of articles about every aspect
7:40
Speaker 2: of his life. And I happened across something in like
7:45
Speaker 2: People or you know, one of those magazines that you
7:48
Speaker 2: kind of flipped through at the DAAs office, and it
7:51
Speaker 2: was just a little blurb about, well, whatever happened to Bubbles,
7:54
Speaker 2: you know, remember Michael Jackson's chimpanzee. And I thought out,
7:57
Speaker 2: that's kind of interesting because I sort of remembered Bubbles
7:59
Speaker 2: being around and everything. And then a couple of years later,
8:03
Speaker 2: there was a there was a book that was shortlisted
8:07
Speaker 2: for the Man Booker Prize in the UK, me Cheetah,
8:10
Speaker 2: and I thought it was like the Tarzan story told
8:13
Speaker 2: from Cheetah's perspective, that. It turns out I was totally wrong.
8:16
Speaker 2: I didn't actually read the book. I just read about it.
8:18
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, so a
8:22
Speaker 2: certain point, I just decided to try to write a
8:24
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson story told from the perspective of this, you know,
8:28
Speaker 2: of this chimpanzee. But it was really important to me
8:31
Speaker 2: to make the chimpanzee the lead character, the real protagonist,
8:37
Speaker 2: not just how it be. He's kind of a fly
8:39
Speaker 2: on the wall witnessing all this crazy stuff going on.
8:42
Speaker 1: And how did you come to give the give bubbles
8:45
Speaker 1: the persona that he has. I mean, there's a million
8:48
Speaker 1: directions you could go with a chimp. If we're going
8:51
Speaker 1: to live inside the mind of a chimp, the chimp
8:53
Speaker 1: could be a rascal, he could be a partier, he
8:57
Speaker 1: could be a you know, I mean, he could be
9:00
Speaker 1: the imagure, he could be an immature adolescent. I mean,
9:02
Speaker 1: there's a million chimps, and you chose this kind of formal,
9:08
Speaker 1: self serious, grandiose kind of character to be. How where
9:15
Speaker 1: did that I where did that notion come from?
9:17
Speaker 2: Well there was a couple of things, really, because yeah,
9:20
Speaker 2: although this is a comedy, I did see it. You know,
9:23
Speaker 2: as a tragedy. From Bubble's perspective, he sort of has
9:27
Speaker 2: this notion that Michael Jackson is a real king, you know,
9:30
Speaker 2: like a monarch, and chimpanzees are very hierarchical animals. There's
9:34
Speaker 2: definitely a pecking order there. Once I sort of had
9:37
Speaker 2: this idea of it's almost a Shakespearean tragedy about a
9:40
Speaker 2: king and his son that would be king. Then I
9:42
Speaker 2: started thinking, we'll be really funny if if Bubbles spoke
9:45
Speaker 2: in this kind of pseudo Shakespearean language, just to elevate
9:49
Speaker 2: it a little bit. Yeah, so that's kind of where
9:52
Speaker 2: a lot of that came from. Yeah.
9:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it gives him an enormous amount of dignity
9:59
Speaker 1: if he was. If he was, this is one of
10:01
Speaker 1: the first things that's struggling about this. I was like,
10:03
Speaker 1: why am I Why do I feel Bubbles is pain?
10:07
Speaker 1: Because he eventually will go through a great deal of pain.
10:10
Speaker 1: I was asking, so why do I feel it so keenly?
10:14
Speaker 1: And I realize it's because he has this very precious
10:19
Speaker 1: dignity which he's going to enormous lengths to preserve. And
10:23
Speaker 1: if he was just the stereotypical chimp who's just had
10:27
Speaker 1: to eat bananas and jump around. Then there's no steakes
10:31
Speaker 1: if he's right humiliated. But in this case, it was enormous.
10:35
Speaker 1: I mean his pride, Bubbles. Bubbles just has this enormous
10:40
Speaker 1: amount of pride in his position and his status and
10:45
Speaker 1: his accomplishments and which is it's just deeply hilarious.
10:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I think, you know, it would have
10:51
Speaker 2: been a fun to just the visual juxtaposition of this chimpanzee,
10:55
Speaker 2: which I think we all associate with that kind of
10:58
Speaker 2: you know, wacky hygienks and slapstick and wrapping its head
11:02
Speaker 2: and you know, blowing raspberries and all those things we've
11:05
Speaker 2: seen in all kinds of movies and TV shows and
11:09
Speaker 2: commercials and even nature documentaries. But then you know, having
11:12
Speaker 2: that sort of goofy, funny exterior aspect to it, but
11:16
Speaker 2: there's really sort of deep, kind of sad interior thing
11:20
Speaker 2: going on at the same time. I thought that was
11:21
Speaker 2: an interesting juxtaposition.
11:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's an he not only does he he
11:27
Speaker 1: he misunderstands who Michael Jackson is. So when he when
11:32
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson is referred to as the King of Pop,
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Speaker 1: Bubbles thinks that means he is the king actually the
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Speaker 1: king of pop And not only that, he consistently misunderstands
11:44
Speaker 1: all these things that we understand about Michael Jackson. I'm
11:46
Speaker 1: wondering if you could read there's that incredibly lovely scene
11:49
Speaker 1: where he's talking about the first time he discusses Michael
11:53
Speaker 1: Jackson's cosmetic surgery. Could you can you There's a number
11:58
Speaker 1: of times where he does. But I'm wondering whether you
12:00
Speaker 1: can find that section forgot with pagees on. Oh here
12:03
Speaker 1: we are thirteen.
12:11
Speaker 2: Interior, Havenhurst Mansion, Michael's bathroom night. Michael looks at the
12:17
Speaker 2: man in the mirror, unhappily, inspecting his face for a
12:20
Speaker 2: moment before picking up a bottle of Porcelina skin bleaching cream.
12:24
Speaker 2: Bubbo sits on the stool next to him, watching as
12:26
Speaker 2: Michael rubs the cream into his face.
12:29
Speaker 3: Before venturing forth to the battlefield, he would don warpaint
12:33
Speaker 3: that turned his face a spectral, phantasmic shade, meant to
12:38
Speaker 3: strike fear into the heart of his enemies.
12:43
Speaker 2: Later, Michael faces the mirror again, a bandage covers his nose.
12:47
Speaker 3: Often he would return from these battles with bandages covering
12:51
Speaker 3: wounds received in combat.
12:53
Speaker 2: Michael peels the bandage away to reveal a noticeably narrowed nose.
12:58
Speaker 3: But he had remarkable powers of self healing, each time,
13:02
Speaker 3: recovering from such injuries without so much as a scarm.
13:10
Speaker 1: He's such a hilariously unreliable narrator about his king. That's
13:15
Speaker 1: like half the fun of this. That's why, you know
13:18
Speaker 1: what I said, it's half Remains of the Day. Remains
13:21
Speaker 1: of the Day as a novel about a butler to
13:23
Speaker 1: an English lord who's sympathetic to the Nazis in the
13:27
Speaker 1: years before the Second World War, and the butler thinks
13:29
Speaker 1: that his master is one of the great statesmen of
13:33
Speaker 1: his day instead of just being a groveling neo Nazi,
13:38
Speaker 1: you know, and the whole that's a tragic novel. But
13:43
Speaker 1: the whole thing is that butler never understands who his
13:48
Speaker 1: master is. Yeah, but this is the same thing. Bubbles
13:52
Speaker 1: is like the butler and remains the day. He just
13:53
Speaker 1: doesn't he never ever cottons on to the kind of
13:58
Speaker 1: holeomnists in Michael Jackson.
14:01
Speaker 2: I guess yeah, I think you know, because he is
14:04
Speaker 2: a chimpanzee, and he does he misinterprets a lot of
14:06
Speaker 2: what he sees. I think it sort of allows him
14:08
Speaker 2: to return innocence too that you know, Yeah, a quote
14:12
Speaker 2: unquote normal person that was seeing some of the things
14:14
Speaker 2: that Bubbles was exposed to. You know, we're coming to
14:18
Speaker 2: say conclusions. The Bubbles does, for sure.
14:22
Speaker 1: But Bubbles does there are certain things he used a
14:25
Speaker 1: lot in this in this screenplay about Joe Michael Jackson's
14:33
Speaker 1: tyrannical father, and Bubbles does understand that there is something
14:39
Speaker 1: deeply kind of corrosive and tragic about that relationship.
14:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. I mean he does. I think one
14:45
Speaker 2: thing that he's geared at sensing is sort of power dynamics,
14:50
Speaker 2: and he can kind of understand that. Ye had Michael's
14:53
Speaker 2: maybe the king, but here's this other figure who is
14:56
Speaker 2: unkind to him but clearly has power over him. You know,
14:59
Speaker 2: in some sense.
15:02
Speaker 1: You have an enormous amount of fun in the script
15:04
Speaker 1: with populating it with every single pop culture person of
15:10
Speaker 1: them of the moment, I lost track, I was keeping
15:14
Speaker 1: track of all of the cameos. We get Elizabeth Taylor,
15:18
Speaker 1: we get lots of Quincy Jones, we get bon Jovi
15:21
Speaker 1: in a hilarious scene when bon Jovi basically co opt
15:25
Speaker 1: Bubbles for a crazy night on the town LaToya obviously,
15:32
Speaker 1: Corey Feldman, Prince, Yeah, Prince. In a memorable scene when
15:38
Speaker 1: we see Prince encounter Michael Jackson, threw bubbles his eyes, bubbles,
15:42
Speaker 1: tries to make sense of.
15:45
Speaker 2: The uh.
15:47
Speaker 1: This, I mean, this part of the scripture sounds like
15:51
Speaker 1: you must. I pictured you laughing out loud as you
15:54
Speaker 1: were writing these scenes.
15:56
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely, every pretty much every scene there was
16:00
Speaker 2: there is something that just made me giggle, And even
16:02
Speaker 2: before I was writing it, when I was just researching
16:04
Speaker 2: it and coming upon all these stories. I mean, bon
16:07
Speaker 2: Jovi tells that story clip and I think it's on
16:10
Speaker 2: YouTube about how when he was in Osaka. Yeah, he
16:14
Speaker 2: basically they gave him bubbles for the night and they
16:17
Speaker 2: just had a big hotel party. And the Prince story,
16:20
Speaker 2: that's another one that was based on, you know, a
16:22
Speaker 2: true thing that happened. I mean, Michael Jackson being the
16:24
Speaker 2: massive figure he was at that time, he did interact
16:27
Speaker 2: with pretty much everybody who was everybody you know in
16:30
Speaker 2: pop culture during that period.
16:33
Speaker 1: What's also interesting is that there's things happening inside bubbles
16:36
Speaker 1: which you made up yourself. Everything that happens outside it
16:39
Speaker 1: seems like so basically recovering Michael Jackson's life when he's
16:43
Speaker 1: writing and touring for The Bad for Bad? Is it bad?
16:48
Speaker 1: Was the appen called bad?
16:49
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was bad? Yeah.
16:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just fishing through all of the true accounts
16:54
Speaker 1: of that era and taking out stories basically.
16:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's other stories that I've heard, you know,
17:00
Speaker 2: since since the script got out and I talked to
17:03
Speaker 2: so many people about it and everybody was sharing their
17:06
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson stories and rumors and all kinds. I've heard
17:09
Speaker 2: a lot of others, just kind of wild stories since then,
17:12
Speaker 2: you know, involving mcdonna and Michael Jackson, and some involving
17:15
Speaker 2: Bubbles and people that that saw him when he was
17:18
Speaker 2: at Neverland, And yeah, I've heard I've heard a couple
17:22
Speaker 2: where Bubbles was probably not as well behaved as he
17:25
Speaker 2: generally is in the script. Yeah. Yeah, well that's good.
17:28
Speaker 1: That goes I'm saying, we have to give him, if
17:30
Speaker 1: we're going to give him some dignity, he can't be
17:32
Speaker 1: throwing his faces at the wall every every five minutes, right. Yeah,
17:39
Speaker 1: of course, there are all kinds of things about Michael
17:42
Speaker 1: Jackson's story that are not funny. When we come back
17:45
Speaker 1: Isaac hits a roadblock as he tries to get the
17:48
Speaker 1: Bubbles movie made. We're back Mychael Jackson dies in two
18:10
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, but Bubbles is still alive, and nearly
18:14
Speaker 1: six years later, Isaac Adamson writes the biopic We're talking
18:18
Speaker 1: about the story of the King of Pop from the
18:20
Speaker 1: point of view of his pet chimpanzee. He's thinking of
18:24
Speaker 1: using stop motion animation to tell the story for obvious reasons.
18:28
Speaker 1: Hollywood is used to dealing with Prima Donna's but a
18:31
Speaker 1: chimp as the star of a movie would be on
18:33
Speaker 1: a whole other level. And Isaac isn't ignoring the pedophilia
18:37
Speaker 1: allegations against Michael Jackson. The Leaving Neverland documentary that exposed
18:42
Speaker 1: Jackson's behavior isn't out yet, but there's been investigations in
18:45
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties that have become headline news. So around
18:49
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Isaac takes his admittedly unusual project and starts
18:54
Speaker 1: shopping it and studios like it. In twenty seventeen, Netflix
18:59
Speaker 1: bought the project and Isaac entered development.
19:04
Speaker 2: Hell, you know, when Netflix bought the project, I had
19:13
Speaker 2: to do a pretty lengthy annotation for them, citing anything
19:17
Speaker 2: in the script. I had to basically cite a source
19:19
Speaker 2: for yeah, just to get clearance from their legal department,
19:22
Speaker 2: and we ended up, you know, in the latest versions
19:25
Speaker 2: of the script, some of the names changed in certain cases,
19:30
Speaker 2: or a few characters kind of got squashed down into
19:33
Speaker 2: one character.
19:34
Speaker 1: Who did you lose in the in the legal review.
19:38
Speaker 2: Well, the biggest change had to do with a lot
19:42
Speaker 2: of this stuff related to legal charges that Michael Jackson faced,
19:45
Speaker 2: and we just changed some of the names there because
19:48
Speaker 2: there were a few things that were included in the
19:50
Speaker 2: script that were a little bit there was a whole
19:53
Speaker 2: lot of proof for the only stories about our like
19:55
Speaker 2: disreputable British tabloids and stuff like that.
19:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this brings up this crucial thing, which is
20:02
Speaker 1: what begins as this kind of strange, kind of light
20:09
Speaker 1: hearted romp takes a dark turn in the second act
20:15
Speaker 1: and we actually get into my you know, Michael's well
20:19
Speaker 1: known the well known allegations around Michael Jackson's pedophilia, only
20:25
Speaker 1: this time we're seeing it through the eyes of a
20:28
Speaker 1: kind of jilted of our jilted chimp. Who's Who's Who's
20:33
Speaker 1: place of prominence next to Michael has been uh, he's
20:39
Speaker 1: been supplanted by by by a young boy. Yeah, and Isaac,
20:48
Speaker 1: this is like it gets heavy.
20:50
Speaker 2: It does, Yeah, it does. I mean it's a heavy
20:54
Speaker 2: it's a heavy kind of story. I feel like the
20:56
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson story is a heavy story, and Bubble's story
20:58
Speaker 2: within that story, it is kind of a heavy story.
21:02
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think you've used these kids at first
21:05
Speaker 2: as just sort of these annoying sort of interlopers that
21:08
Speaker 2: are that are taking Michael's attention away from him, and
21:12
Speaker 2: then he sees them kind of, you know, as rivals
21:15
Speaker 2: and even comes to fear like maybe they're actually part
21:17
Speaker 2: of the succession now and not me.
21:20
Speaker 1: Once again, the one way in which Bubbles is h
21:24
Speaker 1: sees the world clearly is to the the prism of hierarchy, right,
21:30
Speaker 1: and so he understands accurately that in the in Michael
21:34
Speaker 1: Jackson's hierarchy, these boys are now higher up than he is. Correct,
21:40
Speaker 1: they can they occupy a place in Michael's heart that
21:43
Speaker 1: he does not. And this is, like I said, this
21:46
Speaker 1: is why I said, this is remains the day meets Puff,
21:49
Speaker 1: the Magic Dragon. It's the Puff story. Then when day
21:52
Speaker 1: it happened, Jackie Paper came no more. It's that's that's
21:56
Speaker 1: what happens to him. He gets pushed aside, and it's like,
22:02
Speaker 1: it broke my heart when that happened.
22:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a tough Uh, it's a tough moment.
22:11
Speaker 2: It's tough thing for bubbles. And I think you know,
22:13
Speaker 2: if you if you talk to the kids who were
22:16
Speaker 2: around Michael Jackson a lot at that time, I think
22:19
Speaker 2: a lot of them went through similar experiences with him
22:22
Speaker 2: when where you know, he they were his favorite, and
22:27
Speaker 2: then some and then someone else came along, you know,
22:30
Speaker 2: and they were just sort of jilted out of out
22:32
Speaker 2: of neverland. And I think, you know, and in certain
22:35
Speaker 2: cases that that hurt these kids a lot, even some
22:38
Speaker 2: of the ones that like Corey Fellman, you know, who
22:40
Speaker 2: says that Michael Jackson never touched him or you know,
22:43
Speaker 2: did anything sexually untoward, but he was just hurt by
22:46
Speaker 2: that whole experience of feeling like they were buddies and
22:49
Speaker 2: he was the favorite, and then one day he's just
22:51
Speaker 2: out mm hmmm hmm.
22:53
Speaker 1: What does it do to our understanding of that part
22:58
Speaker 1: of Michael Jackson's life that we're viewing it to the
23:02
Speaker 1: eyes of a chimp.
23:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like, you know,
23:13
Speaker 2: in a certain sense, it gives us bubbles interpretation and
23:16
Speaker 2: often misinterpretation of these things that he sees. It works
23:21
Speaker 2: almost as a distant distcencing device that allows us to
23:25
Speaker 2: sort of see things through a different viewpoint that wasn't
23:29
Speaker 2: necessarily our own, you know, or the way I experienced
23:32
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson when I was a kid growing up in
23:34
Speaker 2: the eighties. I mean, when I was growing up and
23:38
Speaker 2: where I was, it didn't really matter what kind of
23:41
Speaker 2: music you listened to, you liked Michael Jackson. Like, if
23:44
Speaker 2: you were into you know, Iron Maiden and heavy metal
23:48
Speaker 2: and all that stuff, you still like Michael Jackson. If
23:50
Speaker 2: you were listening to Duran, Duran and a bunch of
23:53
Speaker 2: new Waves, you still like Michael Jackson. Everybody liked Michael Jackson,
23:57
Speaker 2: you know. I remember seeing the Thriller video a thousand
23:59
Speaker 2: times on MTV when I was when I was a
24:01
Speaker 2: little kid, So yeah, I was definitely a fan. Yeah.
24:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to kind of figure out why years later,
24:09
Speaker 1: the kind of psychological dimensions of this story would have
24:13
Speaker 1: would have been so kind of clear to you, right,
24:16
Speaker 1: the sort of weird like you know, an entire generation
24:19
Speaker 1: of seventh grader is kind of encounter Michael Jackson.
24:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm sure a lot of
24:25
Speaker 2: people were jealous of those real life kids at the
24:28
Speaker 2: time that you know, oh my god, you know, Jimmy's
24:31
Speaker 2: getting to go to Neverland, getting to go on vacation
24:34
Speaker 2: with Michael, and it looked like the greatest life ever.
24:36
Speaker 2: You're just eating ice cream and watching movies and you know,
24:40
Speaker 2: riding on the Ferris we opt Michael Jackson's house and
24:42
Speaker 2: all that kind of thing, and just the sort of,
24:45
Speaker 2: you know, the darkness that was actually going on and
24:48
Speaker 2: eat or even in just the sort of hollowness of
24:51
Speaker 2: those kind of fake friendships too. It was something that
24:55
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot of people certainly knew at
24:57
Speaker 2: the time.
24:59
Speaker 1: Do you think that that scene Michael through Bubble's eyes
25:04
Speaker 1: makes Michael a more sympathetic character to us or less.
25:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's tough. I mean, I think he probably comes
25:17
Speaker 2: off as a little bit less sympathetic because we are
25:21
Speaker 2: we're told the story from kind of a quote unquote
25:24
Speaker 2: victim's viewpoint, you know, because it is it is Bubbles
25:27
Speaker 2: telling the story. But at the same time, Bubbles can't really,
25:31
Speaker 2: especially in the early, you know version of the script,
25:34
Speaker 2: can't really bring himself to to hate Michael Jackson. He's
25:39
Speaker 2: still even in the last you know that that first
25:42
Speaker 2: scene I read, in the last scene in the script,
25:44
Speaker 2: he's hoping one day Michael Jackson is going to come again.
25:47
Speaker 2: He's still waiting for Michael to return, you know, so
25:51
Speaker 2: they can rule the world together once more. But yeah,
25:56
Speaker 2: it's tough. I don't I think maybe different audiences would
25:59
Speaker 2: have different reactions. You know, everybody has a lot of
26:01
Speaker 2: different reactions to Michael Jackson in general.
26:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was hard about writing the script?
26:09
Speaker 2: You know, honestly, just from a technical point of view,
26:12
Speaker 2: the hardest thing was keeping Bubbles as the protagonist and
26:16
Speaker 2: not letting Michael take over too much of the script,
26:19
Speaker 2: just because he is such a such a compelling figure,
26:22
Speaker 2: and you know, finding ways to include the moments that
26:25
Speaker 2: I wanted from Michael Jackson's life, but have Bubbles somehow
26:30
Speaker 2: be there for them, hopefully and more than just like
26:34
Speaker 2: like I was saying, for a fly on the wall
26:35
Speaker 2: capacity where he's just sort of reporting what he's seeing,
26:39
Speaker 2: because to give him stakes in some of those instances.
26:43
Speaker 1: But he can't The thing about Bubbles is he can't
26:46
Speaker 1: grow Kenny. He he's if you if you have an
26:50
Speaker 1: unreliable narrator, as in Remains of the Day, the pathos
26:56
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that the world outside the narrator
27:00
Speaker 1: changes and the narrator is blind to it. Right, So
27:02
Speaker 1: you if the unreliable narrator becomes reliable at the end,
27:08
Speaker 1: then it kind of roomined it.
27:09
Speaker 2: Oh my wrong, Yeah, that's a good that's a good
27:13
Speaker 2: question too, especially as it relates to sort of you know,
27:17
Speaker 2: versions of the script that we that we revised after
27:22
Speaker 2: leaving never Land. It came out I think I felt
27:26
Speaker 2: and the producers thought that we couldn't allow Bubbles to
27:29
Speaker 2: be quite as ambiguous or I guess agnostic about what
27:36
Speaker 2: happened it never Land, because he is telling our movie
27:40
Speaker 2: and then therefore makes the movie feel like we're agnostic
27:43
Speaker 2: about it and you know, trying to question, well, maybe
27:46
Speaker 2: all those terrible things didn't happen, which was not our
27:48
Speaker 2: intention at all. So in later versions of the script
27:53
Speaker 2: and the changes are pretty small, but I think Bubbles
27:55
Speaker 2: does display a clearer understanding, clearer understanding of what's going
27:59
Speaker 2: on there. It kind of loses his innocence a little bit,
28:03
Speaker 2: and his parting with Michael Jackson is a little more final.
28:07
Speaker 2: We don't really see him long, you know, to see
28:10
Speaker 2: Michael again in those last moments. I do feel like
28:15
Speaker 2: kind of needed to write it that way based on
28:19
Speaker 2: everything going on. But it is a good question whether
28:22
Speaker 2: that sort of undermines a lot of a lot of
28:24
Speaker 2: the other things in the script about you know, his
28:27
Speaker 2: unreliable narration and his innocence over a while. I think
28:30
Speaker 2: he became a little bit less innocent character in the
28:34
Speaker 2: in the final versions of it, as I think everybody became,
28:37
Speaker 2: you know, less innocent after leaving Neverland hit and really
28:40
Speaker 2: had the impact that it did. I don't think people
28:42
Speaker 2: could pretend, you know, pretending more about Michael Jackson, who
28:48
Speaker 2: who really was, at least in certain aspects of his life.
28:52
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit more about leaving Nozzlin, which comes
28:54
Speaker 1: out when.
28:57
Speaker 2: I believe it was January twenty nineteen, premiered at sun Dance.
29:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you and you wrote your script? First
29:05
Speaker 1: draft was written when?
29:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, this the first draft of this script was written
29:12
Speaker 2: in March twenty fifteen.
29:14
Speaker 1: And when do you see it? Do you see it
29:16
Speaker 1: right away?
29:18
Speaker 2: I didn't see it right away. It's funny. My manager
29:21
Speaker 2: was in Sundance and he went to the premiere of
29:23
Speaker 2: it and he called me immediately and it's like, I
29:26
Speaker 2: think we got a problem. Then I saw the film,
29:30
Speaker 2: and the thing that I really underestimated was just the
29:32
Speaker 2: power of hearing these guys tell their own stories in
29:36
Speaker 2: their own words, and you know, they really become real
29:40
Speaker 2: people in a way that they're not when you're just
29:42
Speaker 2: looking at court documents or magazine article or something like that,
29:46
Speaker 2: and you really heard them, you know, expressing the hurt
29:49
Speaker 2: and the pain of the things that they had been through. Yeah,
29:54
Speaker 2: I mean that had that had a huge impact on
29:56
Speaker 2: the project for sure, in the negative sense for me.
30:00
Speaker 1: But when you when your manager said you had a problem,
30:03
Speaker 1: what did he mean exactly? Did he mean that the
30:06
Speaker 1: script as it presently is doesn't work anymore because it's
30:11
Speaker 1: too ambiguous about Michael Jackson's kind of sinister side or
30:17
Speaker 1: does it mean did he mean that just that you
30:19
Speaker 1: had to rewrite it? I mean, how dire was your
30:22
Speaker 1: manager's kind of perspective.
30:25
Speaker 2: I think the real problem and the thing that he
30:28
Speaker 2: saw coming was that Michael Jackson was just going to
30:31
Speaker 2: be toxic, and I think once Leaving Neverland came out,
30:34
Speaker 2: it was going to be hard to make this sort
30:37
Speaker 2: of whimsical, fun movie that I think a lot of
30:39
Speaker 2: people thought they were signing up for coming onto this project. Yeah,
30:44
Speaker 2: I think that's what he meant by We're in trouble,
30:46
Speaker 2: just because almost overnight just sort of perception around Michael
30:50
Speaker 2: Jackson changed and nobody wanted anything to do with any
30:54
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson project at that time.
30:57
Speaker 1: So, prior to Leaving Neverland, was this script on track
31:01
Speaker 1: to be made into a movie.
31:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. We had Taikaway TV you know, attached
31:06
Speaker 2: to direct it, and there was another director, Marcus Staffson,
31:10
Speaker 2: who was going to work on all the stop motion
31:12
Speaker 2: animation because that's how we had decided to do it.
31:15
Speaker 2: Dan Harmon and Starburns was producing it, so we had
31:19
Speaker 2: all his his company was on it. Netflix bought the
31:23
Speaker 2: project at Con and I think it was twenty seventeen,
31:28
Speaker 2: so yeah, it was. It was kind of ready to go.
31:33
Speaker 2: The two things that killed it were well, Taiko yitd
31:39
Speaker 2: had this other movie that he wanted to do kind
31:41
Speaker 2: of in the meantime called Jojo Rabbit, So yeah, you know,
31:45
Speaker 2: he went off to do that, and then in the meantime,
31:49
Speaker 2: Leaving Neverland came out, and I think we got to
31:52
Speaker 2: a point and we're pretty deep in pre production. They'd
31:56
Speaker 2: already hired all the department heads, we had forty some
31:59
Speaker 2: animators working on it, and it was kind of getting
32:02
Speaker 2: to the point where we needed we need to Tyke
32:04
Speaker 2: I to really engage and start making some directorial decisions.
32:08
Speaker 2: And he was just not engaged in the project. We
32:11
Speaker 2: knew something was up, and finally he just you know,
32:13
Speaker 2: he made the call to his agent or whatever, get
32:15
Speaker 2: me out of this. I can't do this anymore. And
32:19
Speaker 2: that's when it sort of died. Netflix had said, well,
32:25
Speaker 2: you've got two months to find another director for this,
32:28
Speaker 2: and then three days later they completely changed their minds
32:31
Speaker 2: went no, we're killing it. Everybody's fired. Go home. So yeah,
32:34
Speaker 2: that that's not a good day.
32:39
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Do you do you did the
32:54
Speaker 1: script revert to you at any point or do they
32:56
Speaker 1: own it?
32:57
Speaker 2: It has recently? Yeah, I own it now. Yeah.
33:01
Speaker 1: Do you think it's dead?
33:03
Speaker 2: I don't know. You know, things kind of never die.
33:07
Speaker 2: It's funny and people bring it up to me all time,
33:09
Speaker 2: but we haven't really pursued any serious avenues towards getting
33:13
Speaker 2: it going again, but who knows. I will say it's
33:15
Speaker 2: it's pretty obvious to me that Michael Jackson, just as
33:18
Speaker 2: a public figure is not. I mean, you know, they're
33:21
Speaker 2: making a Michael Jackson biopic right now. Just yesterday, I
33:25
Speaker 2: sure on the on the Super Bowl was wearing you know,
33:28
Speaker 2: like a Michael Jackson glove. I don't think we would
33:31
Speaker 2: have seen that in the immediate wake of leaving Neverland.
33:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I I to take
33:39
Speaker 1: a contrary position. I feel like this is more interesting
33:43
Speaker 1: post never Land than pre Neverland. I mean, it goes
33:49
Speaker 1: from being if you do this in this movie at
33:52
Speaker 1: a time when we think of Michael as a talented eccentric,
33:57
Speaker 1: then the movie is fun and whimsical, but there's nothing
34:02
Speaker 1: at stake. It's just it's just another log on the
34:06
Speaker 1: fire of Jackson celebrity. It's a clever log and the
34:11
Speaker 1: fire you know, is wonderful, but it's not deviating in
34:14
Speaker 1: any But now it's like now that they know going
34:18
Speaker 1: in that Michael Jackson is this kind of complicated, twisted,
34:23
Speaker 1: deeply problematic figure. Then the fact that Bubbles is straining
34:29
Speaker 1: through his chimp eyes to see him clearly and failing
34:35
Speaker 1: is like it's got it's heart wrenching. This movie now
34:40
Speaker 1: has kind of it's got steaks now that it didn't
34:42
Speaker 1: have before. It's like, it's important for us to know
34:46
Speaker 1: what we know about Michael Jackson for this to move
34:50
Speaker 1: us emotionally. And what you're saying, you know, this idea
34:54
Speaker 1: that Michael Jackson's toxic or is more toxic than it
34:57
Speaker 1: used to be, is absolutely right. But this is not
35:00
Speaker 1: a Michael Jackson movie. It's a Bubbles movie. It's a
35:04
Speaker 1: movie about bubbles, right, A naive underling with this kind
35:10
Speaker 1: of self deception, powerful self deception, trying to make sense
35:15
Speaker 1: of a world that he has no understanding of.
35:19
Speaker 2: It's like it's heartbreaking, Yeah, I mean to me, it is.
35:25
Speaker 2: I don't think anything. What we've learned about Michael Jackson.
35:30
Speaker 2: It's been funny to me because I say we learned it,
35:33
Speaker 2: but everybody kind of knew it anyway. And that's what's
35:36
Speaker 2: been odd about the reaction to me is that there
35:40
Speaker 2: wasn't anything new in these revelations, but suddenly had been
35:43
Speaker 2: gone through me too, and all the stuff that came
35:46
Speaker 2: with it. I think we just as a culture learned
35:49
Speaker 2: to take a lot of that stuff a lot more
35:50
Speaker 2: seriously and you know, give it the weight that it deserves.
35:54
Speaker 2: And I think that's what sort of changed about, you know,
35:57
Speaker 2: the public perception at least of Michael Jackson. But for me,
36:01
Speaker 2: I mean I always, I always kind of believed that
36:04
Speaker 2: the kids are telling the truth.
36:05
Speaker 1: You know, Bubbles becomes a stand in for us all.
36:10
Speaker 1: We all looked the other way with Michael Jackson for years,
36:15
Speaker 1: right because we were in love with his talent and
36:17
Speaker 1: his music, and Bubbles is just he's just representing our
36:21
Speaker 1: own kind of a willful blindness. Bubbles just wants thinks
36:26
Speaker 1: he's the king, and because he's the king, he's not
36:29
Speaker 1: willing to entertain any idea that his monarch might be flawed,
36:35
Speaker 1: at least until the very end. Or And I think
36:37
Speaker 1: that's like, like I said, it's such a stronger, better,
36:43
Speaker 1: more more powerful movie after that stuff's come out.
36:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would agree. I think what frightens
36:53
Speaker 2: a lot of people, or at least did you know
36:55
Speaker 2: a few years ago when this was all when the
36:57
Speaker 2: movie sort of fell apart, It's just the sort of
37:00
Speaker 2: moral panic around anything related to pedophilia in our country currently,
37:05
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's stuff like Pizza Gate or just
37:09
Speaker 2: using pedo as a broad insult. I know Netflix had
37:14
Speaker 2: gone through some things too, with the controversy surrounding quds.
37:18
Speaker 2: I just think that it just became it became a
37:23
Speaker 2: word that you know, nobody really wanted to be associated
37:25
Speaker 2: with in any form whatsoever. You know, don't even want
37:29
Speaker 2: it coming out of their mouths when they're talking about
37:31
Speaker 2: a movie. And I can understand too, Why why if you're,
37:35
Speaker 2: you know, a big name director, you don't want to
37:37
Speaker 2: spend a whole lot of time at Coln or wherever
37:40
Speaker 2: answering questions about Michael Jackson's pedophelia. You know, I can
37:44
Speaker 2: understand one, you know, not just not wanting to deal
37:47
Speaker 2: with it. But I agree. I think it does make
37:50
Speaker 2: the story a little bit deeper, a little bit more interesting,
37:52
Speaker 2: and I think it does implicate the audience in some
37:55
Speaker 2: interesting ways.
37:57
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the story. What happens to the
37:59
Speaker 1: script is this kind of the the the meta story
38:04
Speaker 1: is about kind of Hollywood abandoning it's because position as
38:11
Speaker 1: a kind of cultural authority. I mean, you would think
38:15
Speaker 1: that a medium as powerful as film would would feel
38:19
Speaker 1: free to address the most complex of topics and kind
38:23
Speaker 1: of force us to think about them in new ways
38:25
Speaker 1: and confront our own complicity and all that kind of thing.
38:28
Speaker 1: And you know, I feel that at various times in
38:31
Speaker 1: Hollywood's history, film has done that. There's been these moments
38:35
Speaker 1: when but like this is a classic example of an
38:41
Speaker 1: opportunity to kind of address that, and the fact that
38:44
Speaker 1: nobody wants to do that breaks my heart.
38:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's possible it could see the light
38:49
Speaker 2: of day. You know, again, sometime who knows. It's funny
38:53
Speaker 2: because sometimes you can see it. You know what's interesting
38:56
Speaker 2: about it the director, actors and producers, you know, the
38:59
Speaker 2: people who are sort of intimately involved with it on
39:05
Speaker 2: a creative level. But then when you're just talking to
39:08
Speaker 2: marketers or publicists or whoever else like that, or you know,
39:12
Speaker 2: find financial people, it's just another product.
39:16
Speaker 1: Can you one last thing, Isaac? Could you read a
39:19
Speaker 1: little bit of where Bubble struggles to come to terms
39:24
Speaker 1: with what he is observing at Neverland.
39:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me find a good one here. Okay, I
39:33
Speaker 2: found a good one. Exterior never Land Amusement Park day
39:42
Speaker 2: Bubbles glowers as Michael leads a delegation of kids down
39:45
Speaker 2: the path towards the amusement park. There's a manic quality
39:49
Speaker 2: to Michael's movements.
39:53
Speaker 3: He was as some mad pied piper, determined not to
39:58
Speaker 3: drive the snakes away, but lead them instead to the
40:01
Speaker 3: very heart of his kingdom.
40:03
Speaker 2: Michael laughs a little too brightly as he rides atop
40:06
Speaker 2: the carousel horse with all those noisy little friends, almost continuous.
40:11
Speaker 3: Determined to lower the drawbridge for these pine sized trojan
40:15
Speaker 3: horses and let them carry him away in a stampede
40:19
Speaker 3: of frivolity. I knew then that no ordeal would change him,
40:25
Speaker 3: no brush with ignominy, no humiliation, no torture, no trial,
40:30
Speaker 3: no punishment. He had waded so far into a sea
40:35
Speaker 3: of infamy that returning was as tedious as continuing to
40:39
Speaker 3: the other side. And a troubling notion arose, was what
40:45
Speaker 3: I had taken for reckless folly, masking something darker. My
40:54
Speaker 3: loyalty had found its limit, and I could serve no longer.
41:14
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence and Tali Emlin,
41:18
Speaker 1: with ben at Afh Haffrey, editing by Sarah Nix, original
41:22
Speaker 1: scoring by Luis Garra, Engineering by Ecco Mountain. Our executive
41:26
Speaker 1: producer is Jacob Smith, and our special guest voice actor
41:31
Speaker 1: was the old Pushkin friend Ethan Herschenfeld. An extra special
41:35
Speaker 1: thanks to Franklin Leonard at the Blacklist from bringing Bubbles
41:39
Speaker 1: to the attention of the world, I'm Malcolm Glabo.