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发表于 2009-11-2 09:51:01
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Q: Did your Hocus Pocus background help reinvent Thriller?
KO: It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt but it also came from my background of loving Michael Jackson’s Thriller and being a huge fan of all of his short film work. But it was one of the first ideas that Michael and I talked about was let’s create a 3-D experience in an arena for the fans. Of course, people were like, ‘What?’ The technology, they were really racing to get it finished. We had the first HD 3-D screen up and we were creating these films. There were people that were not even sure it was going to work. When we first tested the 3-D on the screen in the arena, it was mind blowing. Then what we were planning on doing was Michael had all these other ideas. We had Michael Curry who designed The Lion King was one of our scenic designers and puppeteer designers. We had giant illuminated characters dropping out of the ceiling over the heads of the audience and these beautiful puppets that were coming down the aisles and moving out of the vomitoriums. Michael was so excited about it. He liked to call it a 4-D experience. So, you were going to have a 3-D movie, the cast on stage and then the smoke billowing off the edge of the stage into the audience and all of these elements dropping in over your head and your 3-D glasses on.
Q: Did you ever want to add something reflecting on the emotional background?
KO: You know, the only reason why I didn’t do it was because I didn’t want anyone to ever say that we fabricated anything. We didn’t. There is absolutely nothing in this film that wasn’t created from the time Michael Jackson announced that he was doing the concerts until the day that Michael died. We didn’t want to touch it. It was like I called it sacred final documentation and if we went back in to shoot the band or anything, then we left ourselves open to people going, ‘That really wasn’t how it happened. They tried to color it differently.’ However, in the DVD series, there is a tremendous, I would say, three to four hours of information that’s not in the film that comes again from that source, but also now post source. So that we did go back and now talked in hindsight about the experience of working with Michael and we completed some ideas that Michael had blessed and signed off on that we didn’t have quite finished by the time Michael had died. So you’re going to see an even sort of completer picture and come to understand more detail about all the elements of what we had planned for the show.
Q: How would you like Michael to be remembered as an artist and as a person?
KO: I think people were saying it last night. They were echoing everything that I felt in my heart. People coming up to me and saying, ‘We didn’t get it. We didn’t get the closure from CNN. We didn’t get to say goodbye properly from CNN.’ Not meaning that they were being irresponsible. It was just that the information wasn’t there and that people were saying that not only did we get to have these final moments with Michael as the artist, but we got to come to know him better than ever before as a man. You really came to appreciate his kindness and his sweetness and his generosity and the wonderful collaborative spirit that he was about and the way that he worked with people, never wanting to offend anyone. My God, if he thought that he embarrassed somebody, it would just knock him to his knees. That’s why you always saw him, even in the deepest frustrating moments for him, he would say, ‘With the love. That’s what the rehearsal’s for’ because he really appreciated us so much. He said to me, ‘Kenny, go out and find the best artists in the world. Invite them to come and join our journey and then let’s inspire them to go to places that they’ve never been before.’ So Michael knew who was in front of him and he had the greatest admiration and respect for everybody. Even if he had a little debate or a disagreement with someone, he never wanted it to get to the place where that person might have thought that he didn’t care for them or that he didn’t respect them.
Q: Shouldn’t he have done movie musicals?
KO: Yeah, we were going to do a couple of films. Before we even knew that we were going to do This Is It, Michael and I were already in the early development stages in talking about doing a Legs Diamond musical and a full length 3-D Thriller motion picture. Michael was not intending to resign from the business. He wasn’t retiring. However, this was what he was calling his final curtain call for live touring. What he thought was he’ll do the 50 shows in London and then he really said, ‘If it works and I still feel good and I still have the energy, I would love to go to Africa. I would love to go to India. I would love to go to Japan.’ Travis (Payne) and I saw it. Michael was intending to go out there with his children and see the whole rest of the world, share that experience with them, meet the fans, take one more grand bow and then he wanted to pull the plug on his live performing because he said, ‘I don’t want to be out there doing it when I can’t do it with the integrity that I’m known for. However, let’s make movies and great albums and develop projects together.’ So he was excited about so much. He had so much more in him still.
Q: What did you discover about Michael and yourself and your friendship doing this?
KO: Well, you know, Michael just gave me such trust. From the very moment that we began, it’s like he threw the clay in the middle of the table and he said, ‘Put your hands in it with me right now.’ He loved creative jousting with me. He loved it. He loved wrestling down ideas. Whatever stuck to the wall the next day, we didn’t even remember who came up with it. We so didn’t care. It was such a partnership. It was so easy, out of our ego, and it was so about what belonged in the storytelling. Michael had for a couple of years been entertained by so many people with ideas and he would call me every once in a while, we would have dinner, we’d talk on the telephone. He’d come to visit me on set and he’d say, ‘There’s nothing out there that has enough purpose behind it for me to want to do it,’ meaning in the live arena. He’d say, ‘Keep thinking.’ I was doing my films and suddenly I got this phone call, after two years of us talking about the possibility of maybe doing something live, and he said, ‘Kenny, this is it.’ I swear, that’s what he said. ‘This is it.’ Then during the conversation while we were talking, he said it like five times and I laughed and I said, ‘You should call the tour This is It because you keep saying it.’ What happened when we got together right after that was, before any conceptual ideas, he started talking to me about the reasons why, the reasons behind wanting to go out and do it. Here’s why we need to do this and now let’s create the show that gives worth to these reasons. That is what I’ll take with me. His sense of responsibility, that it wasn’t enough to just go out there because he could. It had to be important. It had to have worth. It had to have reason, raison d’etre as Gene Kelly used to say to me all the time. What’s the reason for being there that’s going to inspire me to get up every day and want to put on my costume and get on that stage and be Michael Jackson.
Q: How do you respond to theThis Is Not It website? Would you take legal action?
KO: I don’t. I mean, everybody, the way I look at it is they’re all fans. Everything is coming from a sense of loss. There are some fans out there that are just looking to sort of point at something, to point to the reason why we don’t have Michael anymore, put blame. All I would say is Michael didn’t live that way. That’s not the spirit of Michael Jackson. Michael didn’t assume. There were an awful lot of people though that did assume about Michael Jackson. They created scenarios and they speculated and even persecuted him and demoralized him. I would just say to anyone, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, if you weren’t there, if you don’t have the information, don’t put that information - - don’t. Don’t do it. See the movie. Look at the movie. The movie speaks for itself. It’s Michael. It’s Michael talking, Michael doing, Michael sharing. It’s pretty clear. It’s pretty honest. It’s pretty raw. It’s pretty unguarded. That Michael wanted to be there. He was doing this. This nourished him. It invigorated him. It excited him. He wanted to do this more than anything other than spend time with his children. This is what he wanted to do.
Q: What do you look for in artists to participate?
KO: Collaborators and people that are not afraid to go on a journey and get outside of their head and that are less concerned about an idea being theirs and more concerned about being a part of a team that arrives at something that’s special.
Q: What’s going on in High School Musical land?
KO: I’m not going to do High School Musical 4 but I hear that they might be doing an all new cast, all new.
Q: What happened to all the sets?
KO: All of it’s in storage. All of it’s in storage. Some of it is spectacular. Somehow maybe in the future we might be able to pull it all into some kind of idea. I don't know. I hope it’s not just going to sit behind closed doors. |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2009-11-2 09:50:30
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显身卡
发表于 2009-11-2 11:14:32
