Is leaving neverland true
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That moment in the commercial was, literally, the first time he’d ever seen Jackson in person. (As a kid, Robson already showed a hint of the talent that would lead him, as an adult, to make a name for himself as the choreographer for ‘N Sync and Britney Spears.) Meanwhile, James Safechuck, then 9 years old, starred in one of Jackson’s Pepsi commercials - he was the kid who pokes around Michael’s dressing room, then flashes a bedazzling smile when the star walks in on him. Robson, who was five at the time, was officially too young to enter the contest, but they let him perform anyway he did the scissory moves from the “Bad” video wearing a pint-size buckled-black-leather outfit, and he was an instant hit. Wade Robson grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and during Jackson’s 1987 concerts there a dance contest was held for children, the winner of whom would get to meet Jackson. Jackson, no surprise, met the two boys through show business.
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Some will walk out of it shaken, others, on some level, liberated by the extent of its claims. “Leaving Neverland” is a kind of true-life horror movie. And that’s part of what’s gripping and dismaying about “Leaving Neverland.” The filmmaker, Dan Reed, forces us to confront the idea that the greatest pop genius since the Beatles was, beneath his talent, a monster.
#IS LEAVING NEVERLAND TRUE MOVIE#
The phrase that keeps coming up in the movie is “larger-than-life.” He truly was. Of course, he was still the biggest celebrity on the planet, a reality he used in the most manipulative way possible. The photos catch him sitting around with them, looking surprisingly not “on,” with a relaxed, letting-his-hair-down vibe we’re unused to seeing. Jackson became the kids’ “pals,” and he befriended their families, too. They describe, in abundantly articulate and deeply emotional detail, how abuse took place within the context of what appeared (to them) to be a relationship of hypnotic warmth and trust. And one reason it’s more powerful than anything we’ve previously encountered on the subject - though plenty has been reported about it, beginning with an in-depth Vanity Fair article in 1994 - is that the two don’t just describe the sexual activities they say Jackson subjected them to (oral sex, mutual masturbation, the viewing of porn). In “Leaving Neverland,” the testimony of Robson and Safechuck is overwhelmingly powerful and convincing.