March 7, 2024 • 41 mins
This is the story behind a biopic about a chimpanzee named Bubbles, sidekick to the King of Pop. Malcolm talks with the writer, Isaac Adamson, about the project’s rise and fall. Netflix optioned the script, a director was attached, and then… everything fell apart. In the episode, Isaac reads from his 2015 Black List winning script, and he and Malcolm consider whether now is the time for “Bubbles.”
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin before we do any talking. I just want you.
Can you just read the opening.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Scene exterior Ape Sanctuary Day. Bubbles, a grizzled, muscular thirty
three year old chimpanzee, lazily knuckle wocks across the floor
of a large domed enclosure nestled in a verdant, Florida
woodland Superimposition Center for Great Apes Watchuola, Florida present day.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
There are many kinds of kingdoms in this world, and
many kinds of kings.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Bubble scoops up a hunk of sweet potato from the ground.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I have known more than most, though all here have
served outside these castle walls in some capacity.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It comes upon a cluster of three chips and acknowledges them.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Butchered chippers served the Ringling Brothers, as did Petunia.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Moving along, he passes two other chips.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Ellie and her friend Kodua were both in a Super
Bowl commercial.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
A third chip runs over, waxed Ellie on the head
and then runs off.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
That's Jonah. He starred in a Planet of the Apes film.
Unfortunately it was the one people didn't enjoy.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Bubble's effortlessly as sens a wooden jungle gym and then
sits perched on top of it, overlooking his domain, munching
his sweet potato.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Now this is their kingdom, and I am their king.
But it was not always so. I was once heir
to the greatest kingdom on earth, one ruled by a
king like none before him. But every kingdom, great or small,
(02:07):
has its boundaries, it's walls. Every kingdom is itself a
kind of cage. I have in my life. Become a
student of cages.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Welcome to episode three of Development Hell, our series about
the Hollywood that Never was. I heard about this script
from Franklin Leonard, who runs something called the Blacklist. It's
a Hollywood institution that polls movie executives every year, asking
them to name their most liked unproduced screenplays. The project
(02:48):
we're going to talk about today hit number one on
the Blacklist. It was called simply Bubbles, A story told
through the eyes of the most unreliable of all unreliable narrators,
a chimpanzee who rose as high as a chimp can
rise and then fell, and the entire town, the entire
(03:08):
community of Development executive Studio Hancho's producers, everyone in Hollywood
agreed that this was the best thing they had read.
But do you know when Bubbles hit number one on
the Blacklist twenty fifteen, nine years ago, Hollywood decided as
a group that a story about a chimp called Bubbles
(03:29):
was the absolute best script of twenty fifteen. And yet
in the decades since, Hollywood has decided that they did
not want to make a movie told through the eyes
of a chimp called Bubbles. Why this is why all
of us revision is history, decided the world needed development hell,
a series devoted entirely to the stories that Hollywood loves
(03:51):
but will not share with the rest of us. So
I called up the creator of Bubbles, Isaac Adamson, screenwriter, novelist,
thwarted chronicler of the inner lives of large primates. You
may hear in Isaac's voice a certain resis ignation about
the fate of his screenplay, but that's not how I feel.
(04:13):
I read Bubbles, and I thought I have to do something. First,
they came for the chimpanzees, and I did not speak
out because I was not a chimpanzee.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
You know that ends.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So here we have a middle aged chimp who is
clearly in some kind of retirement, has been pastured out
to this sanctuary in Orlando. But he speaks in this grandiose,
formal manner about this life. Tell me, give me a
(04:52):
little more in your own words, about the character of
this of Bubbles, this majestic aging chimp.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah. Well, I think of Bubbles kind of as a
would be king in exile. You know, he's had this amazing,
adventurous life and now it's kind of been he's been
removed from and he's sort of biding his time away
from the life that he thought he was going to
have and from the kingdom that he felt that he
(05:22):
was going to inherit.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
He's a tragic figure, yeah, definitely, Yeah, but he has
And what's hilarious. This is a comedy.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, that's core.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yes, that's core. It's many other things as well, but
it's fundamentally a comedy. I must say parenthetically, Isaac that
I love this script so much. You know how in
your world in Hollywood it's always X meets Y. A
movie is always described as ex meets Why. You know
what this is? You probably, I'm sure you've thought this
is this script is uh uh Remains of the Day
(05:58):
meets Puff the Magic Dragon.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I actually has never thought of it that way. That's
what I hadn't heard before.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
But do you see what do you do? You you
know what I'm you know what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I definitely that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So let's explain Bubbles is a real was a real chimp.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, correct, he was. He is a real chimp. He's
still alive and living at this Ape Sanctuary in Florida, and.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
He he is famous, and he's probably one of the
most famous chimps of our generation.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, I would, I would think so for sure. I
mean he's up there with like Cheetah from previous generations.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I suppose, oh Cheetah, you mean like Tarzan ssidekick in
those tarz En movies and TV shows. So Bubbles is
on Cheetah's level. He's famous.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Uh, he is famous because he was Michael Jackson's Chimpionzee
during the height of Jackson's fame.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, and he was more than a kind of pet.
He was. He was like a he was like Michael
Jackson's companion.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
He was when Michael Jackson went on tour. He took
him all over the world. You know, he tried to
take him to Europe. He had some trouble getting him
into the country because of the animal quarantine laws, but
he did. He took him to Japan, he took him.
He took him famously to a meeting with the mayor
of Osaka.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So you had this idea of doing a movie about
Michael Jackson seeing through the eyes of his chimp Bubbles.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, I guess the genesis of it happened a long
time before I actually sat down to write the script.
You know, it was right around the time Michael Jackson died,
and there were all sorts of articles about every aspect
of his life. And I happened across something in like
People or you know, one of those magazines that you
kind of flipped through at the DAAs office, and it
(07:51):
was just a little blurb about, well, whatever happened to Bubbles,
you know, remember Michael Jackson's chimpanzee. And I thought out,
that's kind of interesting because I sort of remembered Bubbles
being around and everything. And then a couple of years later,
there was a there was a book that was shortlisted
for the Man Booker Prize in the UK, me Cheetah,
and I thought it was like the Tarzan story told
(08:13):
from Cheetah's perspective, that. It turns out I was totally wrong.
I didn't actually read the book. I just read about it.
I'm like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, so a
certain point, I just decided to try to write a
Michael Jackson story told from the perspective of this, you know,
of this chimpanzee. But it was really important to me
to make the chimpanzee the lead character, the real protagonist,
(08:37):
not just how it be. He's kind of a fly
on the wall witnessing all this crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And how did you come to give the give bubbles
the persona that he has. I mean, there's a million
directions you could go with a chimp. If we're going
to live inside the mind of a chimp, the chimp
could be a rascal, he could be a partier, he
could be a you know, I mean, he could be
the imagure, he could be an immature adolescent. I mean,
(09:02):
there's a million chimps, and you chose this kind of formal,
self serious, grandiose kind of character to be. How where
did that I where did that notion come from?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Well there was a couple of things, really, because yeah,
although this is a comedy, I did see it. You know,
as a tragedy. From Bubble's perspective, he sort of has
this notion that Michael Jackson is a real king, you know,
like a monarch, and chimpanzees are very hierarchical animals. There's
definitely a pecking order there. Once I sort of had
this idea of it's almost a Shakespearean tragedy about a
(09:40):
king and his son that would be king. Then I
started thinking, we'll be really funny if if Bubbles spoke
in this kind of pseudo Shakespearean language, just to elevate
it a little bit. Yeah, so that's kind of where
a lot of that came from. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, but it gives him an enormous amount of dignity
if he was. If he was, this is one of
the first things that's struggling about this. I was like,
why am I Why do I feel Bubbles is pain?
Because he eventually will go through a great deal of pain.
I was asking, so why do I feel it so keenly?
(10:14):
And I realize it's because he has this very precious
dignity which he's going to enormous lengths to preserve. And
if he was just the stereotypical chimp who's just had
to eat bananas and jump around. Then there's no steakes
if he's right humiliated. But in this case, it was enormous.
(10:35):
I mean his pride, Bubbles. Bubbles just has this enormous
amount of pride in his position and his status and
his accomplishments and which is it's just deeply hilarious.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I know, I think, you know, it would have
been a fun to just the visual juxtaposition of this chimpanzee,
which I think we all associate with that kind of
you know, wacky hygienks and slapstick and wrapping its head
and you know, blowing raspberries and all those things we've
seen in all kinds of movies and TV shows and
commercials and even nature documentaries. But then you know, having
(11:12):
that sort of goofy, funny exterior aspect to it, but
there's really sort of deep, kind of sad interior thing
going on at the same time. I thought that was
an interesting juxtaposition.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, and he's an he not only does he he
he misunderstands who Michael Jackson is. So when he when
Michael Jackson is referred to as the King of Pop,
Bubbles thinks that means he is the king actually the
king of pop And not only that, he consistently misunderstands
(11:44):
all these things that we understand about Michael Jackson. I'm
wondering if you could read there's that incredibly lovely scene
where he's talking about the first time he discusses Michael
Jackson's cosmetic surgery. Could you can you There's a number
of times where he does. But I'm wondering whether you
can find that section forgot with pagees on. Oh here
we are thirteen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Interior, Havenhurst Mansion, Michael's bathroom night. Michael looks at the
man in the mirror, unhappily, inspecting his face for a
moment before picking up a bottle of Porcelina skin bleaching cream.
Bubbo sits on the stool next to him, watching as
Michael rubs the cream into his face.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Before venturing forth to the battlefield, he would don warpaint
that turned his face a spectral, phantasmic shade, meant to
strike fear into the heart of his enemies.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Later, Michael faces the mirror again, a bandage covers his nose.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Often he would return from these battles with bandages covering
wounds received in combat.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Michael peels the bandage away to reveal a noticeably narrowed nose.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
But he had remarkable powers of self healing, each time,
recovering from such injuries without so much as a scarm.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
He's such a hilariously unreliable narrator about his king. That's
like half the fun of this. That's why, you know
what I said, it's half Remains of the Day. Remains
of the Day as a novel about a butler to
an English lord who's sympathetic to the Nazis in the
years before the Second World War, and the butler thinks
that his master is one of the great statesmen of
(13:33):
his day instead of just being a groveling neo Nazi,
you know, and the whole that's a tragic novel. But
the whole thing is that butler never understands who his
master is. Yeah, but this is the same thing. Bubbles
is like the butler and remains the day. He just
doesn't he never ever cottons on to the kind of
(13:58):
holeomnists in Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I guess yeah, I think you know, because he is
a chimpanzee, and he does he misinterprets a lot of
what he sees. I think it sort of allows him
to return innocence too that you know, Yeah, a quote
unquote normal person that was seeing some of the things
that Bubbles was exposed to. You know, we're coming to
say conclusions. The Bubbles does, for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
But Bubbles does there are certain things he used a
lot in this in this screenplay about Joe Michael Jackson's
tyrannical father, and Bubbles does understand that there is something
deeply kind of corrosive and tragic about that relationship.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, it's true. I mean he does. I think one
thing that he's geared at sensing is sort of power dynamics,
and he can kind of understand that. Ye had Michael's
maybe the king, but here's this other figure who is
unkind to him but clearly has power over him. You know,
in some sense.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
You have an enormous amount of fun in the script
with populating it with every single pop culture person of
them of the moment, I lost track, I was keeping
track of all of the cameos. We get Elizabeth Taylor,
we get lots of Quincy Jones, we get bon Jovi
in a hilarious scene when bon Jovi basically co opt
(15:25):
Bubbles for a crazy night on the town LaToya obviously,
Corey Feldman, Prince, Yeah, Prince. In a memorable scene when
we see Prince encounter Michael Jackson, threw bubbles his eyes, bubbles,
tries to make sense of.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The uh.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
This, I mean, this part of the scripture sounds like
you must. I pictured you laughing out loud as you
were writing these scenes.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh yeah, definitely, every pretty much every scene there was
there is something that just made me giggle, And even
before I was writing it, when I was just researching
it and coming upon all these stories. I mean, bon
Jovi tells that story clip and I think it's on
YouTube about how when he was in Osaka. Yeah, he
basically they gave him bubbles for the night and they
(16:17):
just had a big hotel party. And the Prince story,
that's another one that was based on, you know, a
true thing that happened. I mean, Michael Jackson being the
massive figure he was at that time, he did interact
with pretty much everybody who was everybody you know in
pop culture during that period.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
What's also interesting is that there's things happening inside bubbles
which you made up yourself. Everything that happens outside it
seems like so basically recovering Michael Jackson's life when he's
writing and touring for The Bad for Bad? Is it bad?
Was the appen called bad?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah? It was bad? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, you're just fishing through all of the true accounts
of that era and taking out stories basically.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah. And there's other stories that I've heard, you know,
since since the script got out and I talked to
so many people about it and everybody was sharing their
Michael Jackson stories and rumors and all kinds. I've heard
a lot of others, just kind of wild stories since then,
you know, involving mcdonna and Michael Jackson, and some involving
Bubbles and people that that saw him when he was
(17:18):
at Neverland, And yeah, I've heard I've heard a couple
where Bubbles was probably not as well behaved as he
generally is in the script. Yeah. Yeah, well that's good.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
That goes I'm saying, we have to give him, if
we're going to give him some dignity, he can't be
throwing his faces at the wall every every five minutes, right. Yeah,
of course, there are all kinds of things about Michael
Jackson's story that are not funny. When we come back
Isaac hits a roadblock as he tries to get the
Bubbles movie made. We're back Mychael Jackson dies in two
(18:10):
thousand and nine, but Bubbles is still alive, and nearly
six years later, Isaac Adamson writes the biopic We're talking
about the story of the King of Pop from the
point of view of his pet chimpanzee. He's thinking of
using stop motion animation to tell the story for obvious reasons.
Hollywood is used to dealing with Prima Donna's but a
(18:31):
chimp as the star of a movie would be on
a whole other level. And Isaac isn't ignoring the pedophilia
allegations against Michael Jackson. The Leaving Neverland documentary that exposed
Jackson's behavior isn't out yet, but there's been investigations in
the nineteen nineties that have become headline news. So around
twenty fifteen, Isaac takes his admittedly unusual project and starts
(18:54):
shopping it and studios like it. In twenty seventeen, Netflix
bought the project and Isaac entered development.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Hell, you know, when Netflix bought the project, I had
to do a pretty lengthy annotation for them, citing anything
in the script. I had to basically cite a source
for yeah, just to get clearance from their legal department,
and we ended up, you know, in the latest versions
(19:25):
of the script, some of the names changed in certain cases,
or a few characters kind of got squashed down into
one character.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Who did you lose in the in the legal review.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, the biggest change had to do with a lot
of this stuff related to legal charges that Michael Jackson faced,
and we just changed some of the names there because
there were a few things that were included in the
script that were a little bit there was a whole
lot of proof for the only stories about our like
disreputable British tabloids and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, So this brings up this crucial thing, which is
what begins as this kind of strange, kind of light
hearted romp takes a dark turn in the second act
and we actually get into my you know, Michael's well
(20:19):
known the well known allegations around Michael Jackson's pedophilia, only
this time we're seeing it through the eyes of a
kind of jilted of our jilted chimp. Who's Who's Who's
place of prominence next to Michael has been uh, he's
been supplanted by by by a young boy. Yeah, and Isaac,
(20:48):
this is like it gets heavy.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
It does, Yeah, it does. I mean it's a heavy
it's a heavy kind of story. I feel like the
Michael Jackson story is a heavy story, and Bubble's story
within that story, it is kind of a heavy story.
But yeah, I think you've used these kids at first
as just sort of these annoying sort of interlopers that
are that are taking Michael's attention away from him, and
(21:12):
then he sees them kind of, you know, as rivals
and even comes to fear like maybe they're actually part
of the succession now and not me.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Once again, the one way in which Bubbles is h
sees the world clearly is to the the prism of hierarchy, right,
and so he understands accurately that in the in Michael
Jackson's hierarchy, these boys are now higher up than he is. Correct,
they can they occupy a place in Michael's heart that
(21:43):
he does not. And this is, like I said, this
is why I said, this is remains the day meets Puff,
the Magic Dragon. It's the Puff story. Then when day
it happened, Jackie Paper came no more. It's that's that's
what happens to him. He gets pushed aside, and it's like,
it broke my heart when that happened.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, it's it's a tough Uh, it's a tough moment.
It's tough thing for bubbles. And I think you know,
if you if you talk to the kids who were
around Michael Jackson a lot at that time, I think
a lot of them went through similar experiences with him
when where you know, he they were his favorite, and
then some and then someone else came along, you know,
(22:30):
and they were just sort of jilted out of out
of neverland. And I think, you know, and in certain
cases that that hurt these kids a lot, even some
of the ones that like Corey Fellman, you know, who
says that Michael Jackson never touched him or you know,
did anything sexually untoward, but he was just hurt by
that whole experience of feeling like they were buddies and
he was the favorite, and then one day he's just
(22:51):
out mm hmmm hmm.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
What does it do to our understanding of that part
of Michael Jackson's life that we're viewing it to the
eyes of a chimp.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like, you know,
in a certain sense, it gives us bubbles interpretation and
often misinterpretation of these things that he sees. It works
almost as a distant distcencing device that allows us to
sort of see things through a different viewpoint that wasn't
(23:29):
necessarily our own, you know, or the way I experienced
Michael Jackson when I was a kid growing up in
the eighties. I mean, when I was growing up and
where I was, it didn't really matter what kind of
music you listened to, you liked Michael Jackson. Like, if
you were into you know, Iron Maiden and heavy metal
and all that stuff, you still like Michael Jackson. If
(23:50):
you were listening to Duran, Duran and a bunch of
new Waves, you still like Michael Jackson. Everybody liked Michael Jackson,
you know. I remember seeing the Thriller video a thousand
times on MTV when I was when I was a
little kid, So yeah, I was definitely a fan. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, I'm trying to kind of figure out why years later,
the kind of psychological dimensions of this story would have
would have been so kind of clear to you, right,
the sort of weird like you know, an entire generation
of seventh grader is kind of encounter Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm sure a lot of
people were jealous of those real life kids at the
time that you know, oh my god, you know, Jimmy's
getting to go to Neverland, getting to go on vacation
with Michael, and it looked like the greatest life ever.
You're just eating ice cream and watching movies and you know,
riding on the Ferris we opt Michael Jackson's house and
(24:42):
all that kind of thing, and just the sort of,
you know, the darkness that was actually going on and
eat or even in just the sort of hollowness of
those kind of fake friendships too. It was something that
I don't think a lot of people certainly knew at
the time.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Do you think that that scene Michael through Bubble's eyes
makes Michael a more sympathetic character to us or less.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, that's tough. I mean, I think he probably comes
off as a little bit less sympathetic because we are
we're told the story from kind of a quote unquote
victim's viewpoint, you know, because it is it is Bubbles
telling the story. But at the same time, Bubbles can't really,
especially in the early, you know version of the script,
(25:34):
can't really bring himself to to hate Michael Jackson. He's
still even in the last you know that that first
scene I read, in the last scene in the script,
he's hoping one day Michael Jackson is going to come again.
He's still waiting for Michael to return, you know, so
they can rule the world together once more. But yeah,
(25:56):
it's tough. I don't I think maybe different audiences would
have different reactions. You know, everybody has a lot of
different reactions to Michael Jackson in general.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, what was hard about writing the script?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
You know, honestly, just from a technical point of view,
the hardest thing was keeping Bubbles as the protagonist and
not letting Michael take over too much of the script,
just because he is such a such a compelling figure,
and you know, finding ways to include the moments that
I wanted from Michael Jackson's life, but have Bubbles somehow
(26:30):
be there for them, hopefully and more than just like
like I was saying, for a fly on the wall
capacity where he's just sort of reporting what he's seeing,
because to give him stakes in some of those instances.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
But he can't The thing about Bubbles is he can't
grow Kenny. He he's if you if you have an
unreliable narrator, as in Remains of the Day, the pathos
comes from the fact that the world outside the narrator
changes and the narrator is blind to it. Right, So
you if the unreliable narrator becomes reliable at the end,
(27:08):
then it kind of roomined it.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Oh my wrong, Yeah, that's a good that's a good
question too, especially as it relates to sort of you know,
versions of the script that we that we revised after
leaving never Land. It came out I think I felt
and the producers thought that we couldn't allow Bubbles to
(27:29):
be quite as ambiguous or I guess agnostic about what
happened it never Land, because he is telling our movie
and then therefore makes the movie feel like we're agnostic
about it and you know, trying to question, well, maybe
all those terrible things didn't happen, which was not our
intention at all. So in later versions of the script
(27:53):
and the changes are pretty small, but I think Bubbles
does display a clearer understanding, clearer understanding of what's going
on there. It kind of loses his innocence a little bit,
and his parting with Michael Jackson is a little more final.
We don't really see him long, you know, to see
Michael again in those last moments. I do feel like
(28:15):
kind of needed to write it that way based on
everything going on. But it is a good question whether
that sort of undermines a lot of a lot of
the other things in the script about you know, his
unreliable narration and his innocence over a while. I think
he became a little bit less innocent character in the
in the final versions of it, as I think everybody became,
(28:37):
you know, less innocent after leaving Neverland hit and really
had the impact that it did. I don't think people
could pretend, you know, pretending more about Michael Jackson, who
who really was, at least in certain aspects of his life.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Talk a little bit more about leaving Nozzlin, which comes
out when.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I believe it was January twenty nineteen, premiered at sun Dance.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, and so you and you wrote your script? First
draft was written when?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, this the first draft of this script was written
in March twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
And when do you see it? Do you see it
right away?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I didn't see it right away. It's funny. My manager
was in Sundance and he went to the premiere of
it and he called me immediately and it's like, I
think we got a problem. Then I saw the film,
and the thing that I really underestimated was just the
power of hearing these guys tell their own stories in
their own words, and you know, they really become real
(29:40):
people in a way that they're not when you're just
looking at court documents or magazine article or something like that,
and you really heard them, you know, expressing the hurt
and the pain of the things that they had been through. Yeah,
I mean that had that had a huge impact on
the project for sure, in the negative sense for me.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
But when you when your manager said you had a problem,
what did he mean exactly? Did he mean that the
script as it presently is doesn't work anymore because it's
too ambiguous about Michael Jackson's kind of sinister side or
does it mean did he mean that just that you
had to rewrite it? I mean, how dire was your
(30:22):
manager's kind of perspective.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I think the real problem and the thing that he
saw coming was that Michael Jackson was just going to
be toxic, and I think once Leaving Neverland came out,
it was going to be hard to make this sort
of whimsical, fun movie that I think a lot of
people thought they were signing up for coming onto this project. Yeah,
I think that's what he meant by We're in trouble,
(30:46):
just because almost overnight just sort of perception around Michael
Jackson changed and nobody wanted anything to do with any
Michael Jackson project at that time.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
So, prior to Leaving Neverland, was this script on track
to be made into a movie.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah, it was. We had Taikaway TV you know, attached
to direct it, and there was another director, Marcus Staffson,
who was going to work on all the stop motion
animation because that's how we had decided to do it.
Dan Harmon and Starburns was producing it, so we had
all his his company was on it. Netflix bought the
(31:23):
project at Con and I think it was twenty seventeen,
so yeah, it was. It was kind of ready to go.
The two things that killed it were well, Taiko yitd
had this other movie that he wanted to do kind
of in the meantime called Jojo Rabbit, So yeah, you know,
(31:45):
he went off to do that, and then in the meantime,
Leaving Neverland came out, and I think we got to
a point and we're pretty deep in pre production. They'd
already hired all the department heads, we had forty some
animators working on it, and it was kind of getting
to the point where we needed we need to Tyke
I to really engage and start making some directorial decisions.
(32:08):
And he was just not engaged in the project. We
knew something was up, and finally he just you know,
he made the call to his agent or whatever, get
me out of this. I can't do this anymore. And
that's when it sort of died. Netflix had said, well,
you've got two months to find another director for this,
and then three days later they completely changed their minds
(32:31):
went no, we're killing it. Everybody's fired. Go home. So yeah,
that that's not a good day.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
We'll be right back. Do you do you did the
script revert to you at any point or do they
own it?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
It has recently? Yeah, I own it now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Do you think it's dead?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I don't know. You know, things kind of never die.
It's funny and people bring it up to me all time,
but we haven't really pursued any serious avenues towards getting
it going again, but who knows. I will say it's
it's pretty obvious to me that Michael Jackson, just as
a public figure is not. I mean, you know, they're
making a Michael Jackson biopic right now. Just yesterday, I
(33:25):
sure on the on the Super Bowl was wearing you know,
like a Michael Jackson glove. I don't think we would
have seen that in the immediate wake of leaving Neverland.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I I to take
a contrary position. I feel like this is more interesting
post never Land than pre Neverland. I mean, it goes
from being if you do this in this movie at
a time when we think of Michael as a talented eccentric,
(33:57):
then the movie is fun and whimsical, but there's nothing
at stake. It's just it's just another log on the
fire of Jackson celebrity. It's a clever log and the
fire you know, is wonderful, but it's not deviating in
any But now it's like now that they know going
(34:18):
in that Michael Jackson is this kind of complicated, twisted,
deeply problematic figure. Then the fact that Bubbles is straining
through his chimp eyes to see him clearly and failing
is like it's got it's heart wrenching. This movie now
(34:40):
has kind of it's got steaks now that it didn't
have before. It's like, it's important for us to know
what we know about Michael Jackson for this to move
us emotionally. And what you're saying, you know, this idea
that Michael Jackson's toxic or is more toxic than it
used to be, is absolutely right. But this is not
a Michael Jackson movie. It's a Bubbles movie. It's a
(35:04):
movie about bubbles, right, A naive underling with this kind
of self deception, powerful self deception, trying to make sense
of a world that he has no understanding of.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
It's like it's heartbreaking, Yeah, I mean to me, it is.
I don't think anything. What we've learned about Michael Jackson.
It's been funny to me because I say we learned it,
but everybody kind of knew it anyway. And that's what's
been odd about the reaction to me is that there
(35:40):
wasn't anything new in these revelations, but suddenly had been
gone through me too, and all the stuff that came
with it. I think we just as a culture learned
to take a lot of that stuff a lot more
seriously and you know, give it the weight that it deserves.
And I think that's what sort of changed about, you know,
the public perception at least of Michael Jackson. But for me,
(36:01):
I mean I always, I always kind of believed that
the kids are telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
You know, Bubbles becomes a stand in for us all.
We all looked the other way with Michael Jackson for years,
right because we were in love with his talent and
his music, and Bubbles is just he's just representing our
own kind of a willful blindness. Bubbles just wants thinks
(36:26):
he's the king, and because he's the king, he's not
willing to entertain any idea that his monarch might be flawed,
at least until the very end. Or And I think
that's like, like I said, it's such a stronger, better,
more more powerful movie after that stuff's come out.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, I mean I would agree. I think what frightens
a lot of people, or at least did you know
a few years ago when this was all when the
movie sort of fell apart, It's just the sort of
moral panic around anything related to pedophilia in our country currently,
you know, whether it's stuff like Pizza Gate or just
(37:09):
using pedo as a broad insult. I know Netflix had
gone through some things too, with the controversy surrounding quds.
I just think that it just became it became a
word that you know, nobody really wanted to be associated
with in any form whatsoever. You know, don't even want
(37:29):
it coming out of their mouths when they're talking about
a movie. And I can understand too, Why why if you're,
you know, a big name director, you don't want to
spend a whole lot of time at Coln or wherever
answering questions about Michael Jackson's pedophelia. You know, I can
understand one, you know, not just not wanting to deal
with it. But I agree. I think it does make
(37:50):
the story a little bit deeper, a little bit more interesting,
and I think it does implicate the audience in some
interesting ways.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I mean, this is the story. What happens to the
script is this kind of the the the meta story
is about kind of Hollywood abandoning it's because position as
a kind of cultural authority. I mean, you would think
that a medium as powerful as film would would feel
(38:19):
free to address the most complex of topics and kind
of force us to think about them in new ways
and confront our own complicity and all that kind of thing.
And you know, I feel that at various times in
Hollywood's history, film has done that. There's been these moments
when but like this is a classic example of an
(38:41):
opportunity to kind of address that, and the fact that
nobody wants to do that breaks my heart.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, I mean it's possible it could see the light
of day. You know, again, sometime who knows. It's funny
because sometimes you can see it. You know what's interesting
about it the director, actors and producers, you know, the
people who are sort of intimately involved with it on
a creative level. But then when you're just talking to
(39:08):
marketers or publicists or whoever else like that, or you know,
find financial people, it's just another product.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Can you one last thing, Isaac? Could you read a
little bit of where Bubble struggles to come to terms
with what he is observing at Neverland.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, let me find a good one here. Okay, I
found a good one. Exterior never Land Amusement Park day
Bubbles glowers as Michael leads a delegation of kids down
the path towards the amusement park. There's a manic quality
(39:49):
to Michael's movements.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
He was as some mad pied piper, determined not to
drive the snakes away, but lead them instead to the
very heart of his kingdom.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Michael laughs a little too brightly as he rides atop
the carousel horse with all those noisy little friends, almost continuous.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Determined to lower the drawbridge for these pine sized trojan
horses and let them carry him away in a stampede
of frivolity. I knew then that no ordeal would change him,
no brush with ignominy, no humiliation, no torture, no trial,
no punishment. He had waded so far into a sea
(40:35):
of infamy that returning was as tedious as continuing to
the other side. And a troubling notion arose, was what
I had taken for reckless folly, masking something darker. My
loyalty had found its limit, and I could serve no longer.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
This episode was produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence and Tali Emlin,
with ben at Afh Haffrey, editing by Sarah Nix, original
scoring by Luis Garra, Engineering by Ecco Mountain. Our executive
producer is Jacob Smith, and our special guest voice actor
was the old Pushkin friend Ethan Herschenfeld. An extra special
(41:35):
thanks to Franklin Leonard at the Blacklist from bringing Bubbles
to the attention of the world, I'm Malcolm Glabo.
Pushkin before we do any talking. I just want you.
Can you just read the opening.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Scene exterior Ape Sanctuary Day. Bubbles, a grizzled, muscular thirty
three year old chimpanzee, lazily knuckle wocks across the floor
of a large domed enclosure nestled in a verdant, Florida
woodland Superimposition Center for Great Apes Watchuola, Florida present day.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
There are many kinds of kingdoms in this world, and
many kinds of kings.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Bubble scoops up a hunk of sweet potato from the ground.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I have known more than most, though all here have
served outside these castle walls in some capacity.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It comes upon a cluster of three chips and acknowledges them.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Butchered chippers served the Ringling Brothers, as did Petunia.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Moving along, he passes two other chips.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Ellie and her friend Kodua were both in a Super
Bowl commercial.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
A third chip runs over, waxed Ellie on the head
and then runs off.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
That's Jonah. He starred in a Planet of the Apes film.
Unfortunately it was the one people didn't enjoy.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Bubble's effortlessly as sens a wooden jungle gym and then
sits perched on top of it, overlooking his domain, munching
his sweet potato.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Now this is their kingdom, and I am their king.
But it was not always so. I was once heir
to the greatest kingdom on earth, one ruled by a
king like none before him. But every kingdom, great or small,
(02:07):
has its boundaries, it's walls. Every kingdom is itself a
kind of cage. I have in my life. Become a
student of cages.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Welcome to episode three of Development Hell, our series about
the Hollywood that Never was. I heard about this script
from Franklin Leonard, who runs something called the Blacklist. It's
a Hollywood institution that polls movie executives every year, asking
them to name their most liked unproduced screenplays. The project
(02:48):
we're going to talk about today hit number one on
the Blacklist. It was called simply Bubbles, A story told
through the eyes of the most unreliable of all unreliable narrators,
a chimpanzee who rose as high as a chimp can
rise and then fell, and the entire town, the entire
(03:08):
community of Development executive Studio Hancho's producers, everyone in Hollywood
agreed that this was the best thing they had read.
But do you know when Bubbles hit number one on
the Blacklist twenty fifteen, nine years ago, Hollywood decided as
a group that a story about a chimp called Bubbles
(03:29):
was the absolute best script of twenty fifteen. And yet
in the decades since, Hollywood has decided that they did
not want to make a movie told through the eyes
of a chimp called Bubbles. Why this is why all
of us revision is history, decided the world needed development hell,
a series devoted entirely to the stories that Hollywood loves
(03:51):
but will not share with the rest of us. So
I called up the creator of Bubbles, Isaac Adamson, screenwriter, novelist,
thwarted chronicler of the inner lives of large primates. You
may hear in Isaac's voice a certain resis ignation about
the fate of his screenplay, but that's not how I feel.
(04:13):
I read Bubbles, and I thought I have to do something. First,
they came for the chimpanzees, and I did not speak
out because I was not a chimpanzee.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
You know that ends.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So here we have a middle aged chimp who is
clearly in some kind of retirement, has been pastured out
to this sanctuary in Orlando. But he speaks in this grandiose,
formal manner about this life. Tell me, give me a
(04:52):
little more in your own words, about the character of
this of Bubbles, this majestic aging chimp.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah. Well, I think of Bubbles kind of as a
would be king in exile. You know, he's had this amazing,
adventurous life and now it's kind of been he's been
removed from and he's sort of biding his time away
from the life that he thought he was going to
have and from the kingdom that he felt that he
(05:22):
was going to inherit.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
He's a tragic figure, yeah, definitely, Yeah, but he has
And what's hilarious. This is a comedy.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, that's core.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yes, that's core. It's many other things as well, but
it's fundamentally a comedy. I must say parenthetically, Isaac that
I love this script so much. You know how in
your world in Hollywood it's always X meets Y. A
movie is always described as ex meets Why. You know
what this is? You probably, I'm sure you've thought this
is this script is uh uh Remains of the Day
(05:58):
meets Puff the Magic Dragon.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I actually has never thought of it that way. That's
what I hadn't heard before.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
But do you see what do you do? You you
know what I'm you know what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I definitely that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So let's explain Bubbles is a real was a real chimp.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, correct, he was. He is a real chimp. He's
still alive and living at this Ape Sanctuary in Florida, and.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
He he is famous, and he's probably one of the
most famous chimps of our generation.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, I would, I would think so for sure. I
mean he's up there with like Cheetah from previous generations.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I suppose, oh Cheetah, you mean like Tarzan ssidekick in
those tarz En movies and TV shows. So Bubbles is
on Cheetah's level. He's famous.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Uh, he is famous because he was Michael Jackson's Chimpionzee
during the height of Jackson's fame.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, and he was more than a kind of pet.
He was. He was like a he was like Michael
Jackson's companion.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
He was when Michael Jackson went on tour. He took
him all over the world. You know, he tried to
take him to Europe. He had some trouble getting him
into the country because of the animal quarantine laws, but
he did. He took him to Japan, he took him.
He took him famously to a meeting with the mayor
of Osaka.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
So you had this idea of doing a movie about
Michael Jackson seeing through the eyes of his chimp Bubbles.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, I guess the genesis of it happened a long
time before I actually sat down to write the script.
You know, it was right around the time Michael Jackson died,
and there were all sorts of articles about every aspect
of his life. And I happened across something in like
People or you know, one of those magazines that you
kind of flipped through at the DAAs office, and it
(07:51):
was just a little blurb about, well, whatever happened to Bubbles,
you know, remember Michael Jackson's chimpanzee. And I thought out,
that's kind of interesting because I sort of remembered Bubbles
being around and everything. And then a couple of years later,
there was a there was a book that was shortlisted
for the Man Booker Prize in the UK, me Cheetah,
and I thought it was like the Tarzan story told
(08:13):
from Cheetah's perspective, that. It turns out I was totally wrong.
I didn't actually read the book. I just read about it.
I'm like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, so a
certain point, I just decided to try to write a
Michael Jackson story told from the perspective of this, you know,
of this chimpanzee. But it was really important to me
to make the chimpanzee the lead character, the real protagonist,
(08:37):
not just how it be. He's kind of a fly
on the wall witnessing all this crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And how did you come to give the give bubbles
the persona that he has. I mean, there's a million
directions you could go with a chimp. If we're going
to live inside the mind of a chimp, the chimp
could be a rascal, he could be a partier, he
could be a you know, I mean, he could be
the imagure, he could be an immature adolescent. I mean,
(09:02):
there's a million chimps, and you chose this kind of formal,
self serious, grandiose kind of character to be. How where
did that I where did that notion come from?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Well there was a couple of things, really, because yeah,
although this is a comedy, I did see it. You know,
as a tragedy. From Bubble's perspective, he sort of has
this notion that Michael Jackson is a real king, you know,
like a monarch, and chimpanzees are very hierarchical animals. There's
definitely a pecking order there. Once I sort of had
this idea of it's almost a Shakespearean tragedy about a
(09:40):
king and his son that would be king. Then I
started thinking, we'll be really funny if if Bubbles spoke
in this kind of pseudo Shakespearean language, just to elevate
it a little bit. Yeah, so that's kind of where
a lot of that came from. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, but it gives him an enormous amount of dignity
if he was. If he was, this is one of
the first things that's struggling about this. I was like,
why am I Why do I feel Bubbles is pain?
Because he eventually will go through a great deal of pain.
I was asking, so why do I feel it so keenly?
(10:14):
And I realize it's because he has this very precious
dignity which he's going to enormous lengths to preserve. And
if he was just the stereotypical chimp who's just had
to eat bananas and jump around. Then there's no steakes
if he's right humiliated. But in this case, it was enormous.
(10:35):
I mean his pride, Bubbles. Bubbles just has this enormous
amount of pride in his position and his status and
his accomplishments and which is it's just deeply hilarious.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I know, I think, you know, it would have
been a fun to just the visual juxtaposition of this chimpanzee,
which I think we all associate with that kind of
you know, wacky hygienks and slapstick and wrapping its head
and you know, blowing raspberries and all those things we've
seen in all kinds of movies and TV shows and
commercials and even nature documentaries. But then you know, having
(11:12):
that sort of goofy, funny exterior aspect to it, but
there's really sort of deep, kind of sad interior thing
going on at the same time. I thought that was
an interesting juxtaposition.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, and he's an he not only does he he
he misunderstands who Michael Jackson is. So when he when
Michael Jackson is referred to as the King of Pop,
Bubbles thinks that means he is the king actually the
king of pop And not only that, he consistently misunderstands
(11:44):
all these things that we understand about Michael Jackson. I'm
wondering if you could read there's that incredibly lovely scene
where he's talking about the first time he discusses Michael
Jackson's cosmetic surgery. Could you can you There's a number
of times where he does. But I'm wondering whether you
can find that section forgot with pagees on. Oh here
we are thirteen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Interior, Havenhurst Mansion, Michael's bathroom night. Michael looks at the
man in the mirror, unhappily, inspecting his face for a
moment before picking up a bottle of Porcelina skin bleaching cream.
Bubbo sits on the stool next to him, watching as
Michael rubs the cream into his face.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Before venturing forth to the battlefield, he would don warpaint
that turned his face a spectral, phantasmic shade, meant to
strike fear into the heart of his enemies.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Later, Michael faces the mirror again, a bandage covers his nose.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Often he would return from these battles with bandages covering
wounds received in combat.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Michael peels the bandage away to reveal a noticeably narrowed nose.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
But he had remarkable powers of self healing, each time,
recovering from such injuries without so much as a scarm.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
He's such a hilariously unreliable narrator about his king. That's
like half the fun of this. That's why, you know
what I said, it's half Remains of the Day. Remains
of the Day as a novel about a butler to
an English lord who's sympathetic to the Nazis in the
years before the Second World War, and the butler thinks
that his master is one of the great statesmen of
(13:33):
his day instead of just being a groveling neo Nazi,
you know, and the whole that's a tragic novel. But
the whole thing is that butler never understands who his
master is. Yeah, but this is the same thing. Bubbles
is like the butler and remains the day. He just
doesn't he never ever cottons on to the kind of
(13:58):
holeomnists in Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I guess yeah, I think you know, because he is
a chimpanzee, and he does he misinterprets a lot of
what he sees. I think it sort of allows him
to return innocence too that you know, Yeah, a quote
unquote normal person that was seeing some of the things
that Bubbles was exposed to. You know, we're coming to
say conclusions. The Bubbles does, for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
But Bubbles does there are certain things he used a
lot in this in this screenplay about Joe Michael Jackson's
tyrannical father, and Bubbles does understand that there is something
deeply kind of corrosive and tragic about that relationship.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah, it's true. I mean he does. I think one
thing that he's geared at sensing is sort of power dynamics,
and he can kind of understand that. Ye had Michael's
maybe the king, but here's this other figure who is
unkind to him but clearly has power over him. You know,
in some sense.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
You have an enormous amount of fun in the script
with populating it with every single pop culture person of
them of the moment, I lost track, I was keeping
track of all of the cameos. We get Elizabeth Taylor,
we get lots of Quincy Jones, we get bon Jovi
in a hilarious scene when bon Jovi basically co opt
(15:25):
Bubbles for a crazy night on the town LaToya obviously,
Corey Feldman, Prince, Yeah, Prince. In a memorable scene when
we see Prince encounter Michael Jackson, threw bubbles his eyes, bubbles,
tries to make sense of.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
The uh.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
This, I mean, this part of the scripture sounds like
you must. I pictured you laughing out loud as you
were writing these scenes.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh yeah, definitely, every pretty much every scene there was
there is something that just made me giggle, And even
before I was writing it, when I was just researching
it and coming upon all these stories. I mean, bon
Jovi tells that story clip and I think it's on
YouTube about how when he was in Osaka. Yeah, he
basically they gave him bubbles for the night and they
(16:17):
just had a big hotel party. And the Prince story,
that's another one that was based on, you know, a
true thing that happened. I mean, Michael Jackson being the
massive figure he was at that time, he did interact
with pretty much everybody who was everybody you know in
pop culture during that period.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
What's also interesting is that there's things happening inside bubbles
which you made up yourself. Everything that happens outside it
seems like so basically recovering Michael Jackson's life when he's
writing and touring for The Bad for Bad? Is it bad?
Was the appen called bad?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah? It was bad? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, you're just fishing through all of the true accounts
of that era and taking out stories basically.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah. And there's other stories that I've heard, you know,
since since the script got out and I talked to
so many people about it and everybody was sharing their
Michael Jackson stories and rumors and all kinds. I've heard
a lot of others, just kind of wild stories since then,
you know, involving mcdonna and Michael Jackson, and some involving
Bubbles and people that that saw him when he was
(17:18):
at Neverland, And yeah, I've heard I've heard a couple
where Bubbles was probably not as well behaved as he
generally is in the script. Yeah. Yeah, well that's good.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
That goes I'm saying, we have to give him, if
we're going to give him some dignity, he can't be
throwing his faces at the wall every every five minutes, right. Yeah,
of course, there are all kinds of things about Michael
Jackson's story that are not funny. When we come back
Isaac hits a roadblock as he tries to get the
Bubbles movie made. We're back Mychael Jackson dies in two
(18:10):
thousand and nine, but Bubbles is still alive, and nearly
six years later, Isaac Adamson writes the biopic We're talking
about the story of the King of Pop from the
point of view of his pet chimpanzee. He's thinking of
using stop motion animation to tell the story for obvious reasons.
Hollywood is used to dealing with Prima Donna's but a
(18:31):
chimp as the star of a movie would be on
a whole other level. And Isaac isn't ignoring the pedophilia
allegations against Michael Jackson. The Leaving Neverland documentary that exposed
Jackson's behavior isn't out yet, but there's been investigations in
the nineteen nineties that have become headline news. So around
twenty fifteen, Isaac takes his admittedly unusual project and starts
(18:54):
shopping it and studios like it. In twenty seventeen, Netflix
bought the project and Isaac entered development.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Hell, you know, when Netflix bought the project, I had
to do a pretty lengthy annotation for them, citing anything
in the script. I had to basically cite a source
for yeah, just to get clearance from their legal department,
and we ended up, you know, in the latest versions
(19:25):
of the script, some of the names changed in certain cases,
or a few characters kind of got squashed down into
one character.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Who did you lose in the in the legal review.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, the biggest change had to do with a lot
of this stuff related to legal charges that Michael Jackson faced,
and we just changed some of the names there because
there were a few things that were included in the
script that were a little bit there was a whole
lot of proof for the only stories about our like
disreputable British tabloids and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, So this brings up this crucial thing, which is
what begins as this kind of strange, kind of light
hearted romp takes a dark turn in the second act
and we actually get into my you know, Michael's well
(20:19):
known the well known allegations around Michael Jackson's pedophilia, only
this time we're seeing it through the eyes of a
kind of jilted of our jilted chimp. Who's Who's Who's
place of prominence next to Michael has been uh, he's
been supplanted by by by a young boy. Yeah, and Isaac,
(20:48):
this is like it gets heavy.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
It does, Yeah, it does. I mean it's a heavy
it's a heavy kind of story. I feel like the
Michael Jackson story is a heavy story, and Bubble's story
within that story, it is kind of a heavy story.
But yeah, I think you've used these kids at first
as just sort of these annoying sort of interlopers that
are that are taking Michael's attention away from him, and
(21:12):
then he sees them kind of, you know, as rivals
and even comes to fear like maybe they're actually part
of the succession now and not me.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Once again, the one way in which Bubbles is h
sees the world clearly is to the the prism of hierarchy, right,
and so he understands accurately that in the in Michael
Jackson's hierarchy, these boys are now higher up than he is. Correct,
they can they occupy a place in Michael's heart that
(21:43):
he does not. And this is, like I said, this
is why I said, this is remains the day meets Puff,
the Magic Dragon. It's the Puff story. Then when day
it happened, Jackie Paper came no more. It's that's that's
what happens to him. He gets pushed aside, and it's like,
it broke my heart when that happened.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, it's it's a tough Uh, it's a tough moment.
It's tough thing for bubbles. And I think you know,
if you if you talk to the kids who were
around Michael Jackson a lot at that time, I think
a lot of them went through similar experiences with him
when where you know, he they were his favorite, and
then some and then someone else came along, you know,
(22:30):
and they were just sort of jilted out of out
of neverland. And I think, you know, and in certain
cases that that hurt these kids a lot, even some
of the ones that like Corey Fellman, you know, who
says that Michael Jackson never touched him or you know,
did anything sexually untoward, but he was just hurt by
that whole experience of feeling like they were buddies and
he was the favorite, and then one day he's just
(22:51):
out mm hmmm hmm.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
What does it do to our understanding of that part
of Michael Jackson's life that we're viewing it to the
eyes of a chimp.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like, you know,
in a certain sense, it gives us bubbles interpretation and
often misinterpretation of these things that he sees. It works
almost as a distant distcencing device that allows us to
sort of see things through a different viewpoint that wasn't
(23:29):
necessarily our own, you know, or the way I experienced
Michael Jackson when I was a kid growing up in
the eighties. I mean, when I was growing up and
where I was, it didn't really matter what kind of
music you listened to, you liked Michael Jackson. Like, if
you were into you know, Iron Maiden and heavy metal
and all that stuff, you still like Michael Jackson. If
(23:50):
you were listening to Duran, Duran and a bunch of
new Waves, you still like Michael Jackson. Everybody liked Michael Jackson,
you know. I remember seeing the Thriller video a thousand
times on MTV when I was when I was a
little kid, So yeah, I was definitely a fan. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, I'm trying to kind of figure out why years later,
the kind of psychological dimensions of this story would have
would have been so kind of clear to you, right,
the sort of weird like you know, an entire generation
of seventh grader is kind of encounter Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm sure a lot of
people were jealous of those real life kids at the
time that you know, oh my god, you know, Jimmy's
getting to go to Neverland, getting to go on vacation
with Michael, and it looked like the greatest life ever.
You're just eating ice cream and watching movies and you know,
riding on the Ferris we opt Michael Jackson's house and
(24:42):
all that kind of thing, and just the sort of,
you know, the darkness that was actually going on and
eat or even in just the sort of hollowness of
those kind of fake friendships too. It was something that
I don't think a lot of people certainly knew at
the time.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Do you think that that scene Michael through Bubble's eyes
makes Michael a more sympathetic character to us or less.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, that's tough. I mean, I think he probably comes
off as a little bit less sympathetic because we are
we're told the story from kind of a quote unquote
victim's viewpoint, you know, because it is it is Bubbles
telling the story. But at the same time, Bubbles can't really,
especially in the early, you know version of the script,
(25:34):
can't really bring himself to to hate Michael Jackson. He's
still even in the last you know that that first
scene I read, in the last scene in the script,
he's hoping one day Michael Jackson is going to come again.
He's still waiting for Michael to return, you know, so
they can rule the world together once more. But yeah,
(25:56):
it's tough. I don't I think maybe different audiences would
have different reactions. You know, everybody has a lot of
different reactions to Michael Jackson in general.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, what was hard about writing the script?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
You know, honestly, just from a technical point of view,
the hardest thing was keeping Bubbles as the protagonist and
not letting Michael take over too much of the script,
just because he is such a such a compelling figure,
and you know, finding ways to include the moments that
I wanted from Michael Jackson's life, but have Bubbles somehow
(26:30):
be there for them, hopefully and more than just like
like I was saying, for a fly on the wall
capacity where he's just sort of reporting what he's seeing,
because to give him stakes in some of those instances.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
But he can't The thing about Bubbles is he can't
grow Kenny. He he's if you if you have an
unreliable narrator, as in Remains of the Day, the pathos
comes from the fact that the world outside the narrator
changes and the narrator is blind to it. Right, So
you if the unreliable narrator becomes reliable at the end,
(27:08):
then it kind of roomined it.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Oh my wrong, Yeah, that's a good that's a good
question too, especially as it relates to sort of you know,
versions of the script that we that we revised after
leaving never Land. It came out I think I felt
and the producers thought that we couldn't allow Bubbles to
(27:29):
be quite as ambiguous or I guess agnostic about what
happened it never Land, because he is telling our movie
and then therefore makes the movie feel like we're agnostic
about it and you know, trying to question, well, maybe
all those terrible things didn't happen, which was not our
intention at all. So in later versions of the script
(27:53):
and the changes are pretty small, but I think Bubbles
does display a clearer understanding, clearer understanding of what's going
on there. It kind of loses his innocence a little bit,
and his parting with Michael Jackson is a little more final.
We don't really see him long, you know, to see
Michael again in those last moments. I do feel like
(28:15):
kind of needed to write it that way based on
everything going on. But it is a good question whether
that sort of undermines a lot of a lot of
the other things in the script about you know, his
unreliable narration and his innocence over a while. I think
he became a little bit less innocent character in the
in the final versions of it, as I think everybody became,
(28:37):
you know, less innocent after leaving Neverland hit and really
had the impact that it did. I don't think people
could pretend, you know, pretending more about Michael Jackson, who
who really was, at least in certain aspects of his life.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Talk a little bit more about leaving Nozzlin, which comes
out when.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I believe it was January twenty nineteen, premiered at sun Dance.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, and so you and you wrote your script? First
draft was written when?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, this the first draft of this script was written
in March twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
And when do you see it? Do you see it
right away?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I didn't see it right away. It's funny. My manager
was in Sundance and he went to the premiere of
it and he called me immediately and it's like, I
think we got a problem. Then I saw the film,
and the thing that I really underestimated was just the
power of hearing these guys tell their own stories in
their own words, and you know, they really become real
(29:40):
people in a way that they're not when you're just
looking at court documents or magazine article or something like that,
and you really heard them, you know, expressing the hurt
and the pain of the things that they had been through. Yeah,
I mean that had that had a huge impact on
the project for sure, in the negative sense for me.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
But when you when your manager said you had a problem,
what did he mean exactly? Did he mean that the
script as it presently is doesn't work anymore because it's
too ambiguous about Michael Jackson's kind of sinister side or
does it mean did he mean that just that you
had to rewrite it? I mean, how dire was your
(30:22):
manager's kind of perspective.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I think the real problem and the thing that he
saw coming was that Michael Jackson was just going to
be toxic, and I think once Leaving Neverland came out,
it was going to be hard to make this sort
of whimsical, fun movie that I think a lot of
people thought they were signing up for coming onto this project. Yeah,
I think that's what he meant by We're in trouble,
(30:46):
just because almost overnight just sort of perception around Michael
Jackson changed and nobody wanted anything to do with any
Michael Jackson project at that time.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
So, prior to Leaving Neverland, was this script on track
to be made into a movie.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah, it was. We had Taikaway TV you know, attached
to direct it, and there was another director, Marcus Staffson,
who was going to work on all the stop motion
animation because that's how we had decided to do it.
Dan Harmon and Starburns was producing it, so we had
all his his company was on it. Netflix bought the
(31:23):
project at Con and I think it was twenty seventeen,
so yeah, it was. It was kind of ready to go.
The two things that killed it were well, Taiko yitd
had this other movie that he wanted to do kind
of in the meantime called Jojo Rabbit, So yeah, you know,
(31:45):
he went off to do that, and then in the meantime,
Leaving Neverland came out, and I think we got to
a point and we're pretty deep in pre production. They'd
already hired all the department heads, we had forty some
animators working on it, and it was kind of getting
to the point where we needed we need to Tyke
I to really engage and start making some directorial decisions.
(32:08):
And he was just not engaged in the project. We
knew something was up, and finally he just you know,
he made the call to his agent or whatever, get
me out of this. I can't do this anymore. And
that's when it sort of died. Netflix had said, well,
you've got two months to find another director for this,
and then three days later they completely changed their minds
(32:31):
went no, we're killing it. Everybody's fired. Go home. So yeah,
that that's not a good day.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
We'll be right back. Do you do you did the
script revert to you at any point or do they
own it?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
It has recently? Yeah, I own it now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Do you think it's dead?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I don't know. You know, things kind of never die.
It's funny and people bring it up to me all time,
but we haven't really pursued any serious avenues towards getting
it going again, but who knows. I will say it's
it's pretty obvious to me that Michael Jackson, just as
a public figure is not. I mean, you know, they're
making a Michael Jackson biopic right now. Just yesterday, I
(33:25):
sure on the on the Super Bowl was wearing you know,
like a Michael Jackson glove. I don't think we would
have seen that in the immediate wake of leaving Neverland.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny because I I to take
a contrary position. I feel like this is more interesting
post never Land than pre Neverland. I mean, it goes
from being if you do this in this movie at
a time when we think of Michael as a talented eccentric,
(33:57):
then the movie is fun and whimsical, but there's nothing
at stake. It's just it's just another log on the
fire of Jackson celebrity. It's a clever log and the
fire you know, is wonderful, but it's not deviating in
any But now it's like now that they know going
(34:18):
in that Michael Jackson is this kind of complicated, twisted,
deeply problematic figure. Then the fact that Bubbles is straining
through his chimp eyes to see him clearly and failing
is like it's got it's heart wrenching. This movie now
(34:40):
has kind of it's got steaks now that it didn't
have before. It's like, it's important for us to know
what we know about Michael Jackson for this to move
us emotionally. And what you're saying, you know, this idea
that Michael Jackson's toxic or is more toxic than it
used to be, is absolutely right. But this is not
a Michael Jackson movie. It's a Bubbles movie. It's a
(35:04):
movie about bubbles, right, A naive underling with this kind
of self deception, powerful self deception, trying to make sense
of a world that he has no understanding of.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
It's like it's heartbreaking, Yeah, I mean to me, it is.
I don't think anything. What we've learned about Michael Jackson.
It's been funny to me because I say we learned it,
but everybody kind of knew it anyway. And that's what's
been odd about the reaction to me is that there
(35:40):
wasn't anything new in these revelations, but suddenly had been
gone through me too, and all the stuff that came
with it. I think we just as a culture learned
to take a lot of that stuff a lot more
seriously and you know, give it the weight that it deserves.
And I think that's what sort of changed about, you know,
the public perception at least of Michael Jackson. But for me,
(36:01):
I mean I always, I always kind of believed that
the kids are telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
You know, Bubbles becomes a stand in for us all.
We all looked the other way with Michael Jackson for years,
right because we were in love with his talent and
his music, and Bubbles is just he's just representing our
own kind of a willful blindness. Bubbles just wants thinks
(36:26):
he's the king, and because he's the king, he's not
willing to entertain any idea that his monarch might be flawed,
at least until the very end. Or And I think
that's like, like I said, it's such a stronger, better,
more more powerful movie after that stuff's come out.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, I mean I would agree. I think what frightens
a lot of people, or at least did you know
a few years ago when this was all when the
movie sort of fell apart, It's just the sort of
moral panic around anything related to pedophilia in our country currently,
you know, whether it's stuff like Pizza Gate or just
(37:09):
using pedo as a broad insult. I know Netflix had
gone through some things too, with the controversy surrounding quds.
I just think that it just became it became a
word that you know, nobody really wanted to be associated
with in any form whatsoever. You know, don't even want
(37:29):
it coming out of their mouths when they're talking about
a movie. And I can understand too, Why why if you're,
you know, a big name director, you don't want to
spend a whole lot of time at Coln or wherever
answering questions about Michael Jackson's pedophelia. You know, I can
understand one, you know, not just not wanting to deal
with it. But I agree. I think it does make
(37:50):
the story a little bit deeper, a little bit more interesting,
and I think it does implicate the audience in some
interesting ways.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
I mean, this is the story. What happens to the
script is this kind of the the the meta story
is about kind of Hollywood abandoning it's because position as
a kind of cultural authority. I mean, you would think
that a medium as powerful as film would would feel
(38:19):
free to address the most complex of topics and kind
of force us to think about them in new ways
and confront our own complicity and all that kind of thing.
And you know, I feel that at various times in
Hollywood's history, film has done that. There's been these moments
when but like this is a classic example of an
(38:41):
opportunity to kind of address that, and the fact that
nobody wants to do that breaks my heart.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, I mean it's possible it could see the light
of day. You know, again, sometime who knows. It's funny
because sometimes you can see it. You know what's interesting
about it the director, actors and producers, you know, the
people who are sort of intimately involved with it on
a creative level. But then when you're just talking to
(39:08):
marketers or publicists or whoever else like that, or you know,
find financial people, it's just another product.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Can you one last thing, Isaac? Could you read a
little bit of where Bubble struggles to come to terms
with what he is observing at Neverland.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, let me find a good one here. Okay, I
found a good one. Exterior never Land Amusement Park day
Bubbles glowers as Michael leads a delegation of kids down
the path towards the amusement park. There's a manic quality
(39:49):
to Michael's movements.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
He was as some mad pied piper, determined not to
drive the snakes away, but lead them instead to the
very heart of his kingdom.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Michael laughs a little too brightly as he rides atop
the carousel horse with all those noisy little friends, almost continuous.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Determined to lower the drawbridge for these pine sized trojan
horses and let them carry him away in a stampede
of frivolity. I knew then that no ordeal would change him,
no brush with ignominy, no humiliation, no torture, no trial,
no punishment. He had waded so far into a sea
(40:35):
of infamy that returning was as tedious as continuing to
the other side. And a troubling notion arose, was what
I had taken for reckless folly, masking something darker. My
loyalty had found its limit, and I could serve no longer.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
This episode was produced by Nina Bird, Lawrence and Tali Emlin,
with ben at Afh Haffrey, editing by Sarah Nix, original
scoring by Luis Garra, Engineering by Ecco Mountain. Our executive
producer is Jacob Smith, and our special guest voice actor
was the old Pushkin friend Ethan Herschenfeld. An extra special
(41:35):
thanks to Franklin Leonard at the Blacklist from bringing Bubbles
to the attention of the world, I'm Malcolm Glabo.
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