MONDO EXTRAS

Movies That Rock, huh? That seems a little ahead of itself. Didn't this used to be like Grease and Grace of My Heart and that? When did VH-1 get to decide whether or not their own movies rocked? I think whether something rocks or not should be a decision made by the people, over time. Technically speaking, To Die For rocks, but it's not tangentially musical, so I guess it doesn't count. That Thing You Do? Both rocks and rocks. This movie? Neither. What it does is freak me out from minute one. I had no idea how bizarre this film was going to be -- I thought it was going to be your typical made-for-TV biopic, like the Cybill Shepherd movie about Martha Stewart. That was a movie that rocked.

Things get awesome before the credits even start, almost. We begin with a strange, creepy montage and some strange, creepy music: Lots of shots of this weird Chinese dragon sculpture from different angles, gold records, a mirror, and the shimmery sounds of ambient crap. Cut to...a bunch of little kids. What? Already? Starting right in with the little kids? That hardly seems fair. Oh, there's little Michael, sitting on a stoop, watching the children play. Flex Armstrong -- who I have all these other issues with -- has the voice dead on, as he Michael-overs, "By the age of thirteen, I had four number one hits with my brothers, the Jackson Five." Little Michael is wearing a brown vest and a truly '70s band-collar shirt with a disturbing black, orange, and yellow geometric pattern. He also seems to be wearing some pigment-enhancing makeup. He looks a bit like Soul Man. How funny would it be if they cast an actual white kid and put him in blackface to back up the claims that Michael's quasi-Caucasian features he acquired several years ago are in fact for real? Okay, not that funny. But I think that's what they did. Which is this whole other kind of funny. Joe Jackson comes out to yell at little Michael and tell him to get back in there and practice. Joe Jackson, creepy in real life, is super-creepy right here. Pinched, mean little face, Jheri-curled afro...his threats of domestic violence are nothing compared to the assault of his terrifying Joe Jackson face.

Later that night, Michael lies in bed, a satin harlequin mobile hanging above him. A ghostly voice whispers to him: "Michael...Michael!" He tosses and turns, discomfited. "Michael, it's me! Diana!" I get excited, because it's always been my dream that Diana Ross will appear to me in my dreams like some kind of Motown Old Testament sign of things to come. That's exactly what happens here. Amid flashing cameras and slowly burning filaments, Diana Ross's face appears, drifting before us on the screen. It is so fucking scary. I screamed a little bit. She looks like Alfre Woodard with marionette lines drawn on and the exact same voice as Michael Jackson. I guess this means he was always totally insane, even when he was just thirteen. Was she really that old back then? She looks like 28 Days Later, or one of those Oprah vanity projects where she gets to be all the ages of poverty. This lady looks nothing like Diana Ross, although weirdly, she looks more like a member of the Jackson family than anybody else in the cast, if you subtract the school-play old lady makeup. "You're going to be a big star," rasps the floating head of Diana Ross, "but there will be hurt and pain. Always." Little Michael wiggles and groans some more. "Follow your heart. Follow your heart. Follow your heart." Diana Ross's head floats away, her words of nausea and loathing drifting away like Michael's chance at adult sexuality.

Michael awakes to an even more terrifying visual effect: the coat rack in his room -- perhaps this is an illusion created by the glowing head of Diana Ross as it flies away to go drink and drive and rent movies -- becomes, in rapid succession, a morphing shadow puppet of older Michaels: shadow Beat It Michael, in t-shirt and jeans; shadow Billie Jean Michael, in the Matt Drudge hat and high-water slacks; and several different kinds of shadow Black or White Michael, with the incredibly vanishing mental stability and crotching all over the place. He doesn't morph into a shadow panther, sadly. Dude, no wonder he's crazy. Besides not really ever having a childhood and having all that money and the mean dad and the weird siblings and the sex stuff, at the age of thirteen he was privy not only to visions of an aged Diana Ross, but also his entire career trip into the toilet, rendered in shadows on his wall. I think I'm crazy, now, and all I did was see it on the TV.

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Movies That Rock, huh? That seems a little ahead of itself. Didn't this used to be like Grease and Grace of My Heart and that? When did VH-1 get to decide whether or not their own movies rocked? I think whether something rocks or not should be a decision made by the people, over time. Technically speaking, To Die For rocks, but it's not tangentially musical, so I guess it doesn't count. That Thing You Do? Both rocks and rocks. This movie? Neither. What it does is freak me out from minute one. I had no idea how bizarre this film was going to be -- I thought it was going to be your typical made-for-TV biopic, like the Cybill Shepherd movie about Martha Stewart. That was a movie that rocked.

Things get awesome before the credits even start, almost. We begin with a strange, creepy montage and some strange, creepy music: Lots of shots of this weird Chinese dragon sculpture from different angles, gold records, a mirror, and the shimmery sounds of ambient crap. Cut to...a bunch of little kids. What? Already? Starting right in with the little kids? That hardly seems fair. Oh, there's little Michael, sitting on a stoop, watching the children play. Flex Armstrong -- who I have all these other issues with -- has the voice dead on, as he Michael-overs, "By the age of thirteen, I had four number one hits with my brothers, the Jackson Five." Little Michael is wearing a brown vest and a truly '70s band-collar shirt with a disturbing black, orange, and yellow geometric pattern. He also seems to be wearing some pigment-enhancing makeup. He looks a bit like Soul Man. How funny would it be if they cast an actual white kid and put him in blackface to back up the claims that Michael's quasi-Caucasian features he acquired several years ago are in fact for real? Okay, not that funny. But I think that's what they did. Which is this whole other kind of funny. Joe Jackson comes out to yell at little Michael and tell him to get back in there and practice. Joe Jackson, creepy in real life, is super-creepy right here. Pinched, mean little face, Jheri-curled afro...his threats of domestic violence are nothing compared to the assault of his terrifying Joe Jackson face.

Later that night, Michael lies in bed, a satin harlequin mobile hanging above him. A ghostly voice whispers to him: "Michael...Michael!" He tosses and turns, discomfited. "Michael, it's me! Diana!" I get excited, because it's always been my dream that Diana Ross will appear to me in my dreams like some kind of Motown Old Testament sign of things to come. That's exactly what happens here. Amid flashing cameras and slowly burning filaments, Diana Ross's face appears, drifting before us on the screen. It is so fucking scary. I screamed a little bit. She looks like Alfre Woodard with marionette lines drawn on and the exact same voice as Michael Jackson. I guess this means he was always totally insane, even when he was just thirteen. Was she really that old back then? She looks like 28 Days Later, or one of those Oprah vanity projects where she gets to be all the ages of poverty. This lady looks nothing like Diana Ross, although weirdly, she looks more like a member of the Jackson family than anybody else in the cast, if you subtract the school-play old lady makeup. "You're going to be a big star," rasps the floating head of Diana Ross, "but there will be hurt and pain. Always." Little Michael wiggles and groans some more. "Follow your heart. Follow your heart. Follow your heart." Diana Ross's head floats away, her words of nausea and loathing drifting away like Michael's chance at adult sexuality.

Michael awakes to an even more terrifying visual effect: the coat rack in his room -- perhaps this is an illusion created by the glowing head of Diana Ross as it flies away to go drink and drive and rent movies -- becomes, in rapid succession, a morphing shadow puppet of older Michaels: shadow Beat It Michael, in t-shirt and jeans; shadow Billie Jean Michael, in the Matt Drudge hat and high-water slacks; and several different kinds of shadow Black or White Michael, with the incredibly vanishing mental stability and crotching all over the place. He doesn't morph into a shadow panther, sadly. Dude, no wonder he's crazy. Besides not really ever having a childhood and having all that money and the mean dad and the weird siblings and the sex stuff, at the age of thirteen he was privy not only to visions of an aged Diana Ross, but also his entire career trip into the toilet, rendered in shadows on his wall. I think I'm crazy, now, and all I did was see it on the TV.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26Next