Filmen This Is It skildrar tidsperioden april-juni 2009 och följer Michael Jacksons repetitioner inför de utsålda konserterna på O2 Arena i London.
Bland det aldrig tidigare visat extramaterialet som nu släpps på blu-ray/dvd återfinns de två dokumentärerna Staging The Return: Beyond The Show och Staging The Return: The Adventure Begins samt minidokumentärerna Auditions: Searching for the World’s Best Dancers, Memories of Michael (där Jacksons medarbetare delar med sig av sina minnen) och The Gloved One (om Michael Jacksons kostymer).
Blu-ray-utgåvan innehåller dessutom de två kortfilmerna Smooth Criminal och Thriller (som skulle visats som en del av This Is It-showen) samt de tre minidokumentärerna Making Smooth Criminal, Dancing Machine (där koreografen Travis Payne berättar om sitt samarbete med Michael Jackson) och The Unfinished Rehearsals (som endast finns med på den europeiska utgåvan) där filmens regissör Kenny Ortega och produktionsdesignern Michael Cotteon berättar om två dansnummer som inte var med i biofilmen.
På blu-ray-utgåvan finns även annat bonusmaterial, bl.a ett fotogalleri med bilder från repetitionerna samt en ny BDLive funktion med movieIQ och interaktiv spellista för This Is It. Med movieIQ får man tillgång till information om ensemblen, filmteamet, musiken och produktionen samtidigt som man tittar på filmen.
Intervju med This Is It-showens music supervisor Michael Bearden:
How did you come up with the show’s set list?
– Well, if M.J. performed every hit he ever sang, he’d be on stage for at least a week. So, he actually went on-line and asked the fans what they wanted to hear. He ended up with a computer print-out of a list from one to maybe fifty or a hundred songs. He really wanted to give and serve the fans what they wanted. He loved his fans more than any other artist I’ve ever worked with ever. So one day, we were having a meeting and he showed me the print out [of the fan picks], then he showed me his personal handwritten list and asked me, ?What do you think, Bearden?” And I said, ?M.J., this is cool, but you have no ?Jackson Five’ or ?Off the Wall’ songs here.” And he said, ?I don’t?” It was an angst-ridden time for us because he had so much material and great stuff, and he wanted to honor the fans but Michael also wanted to do his message pieces. So there were so many songs, like ?Bad” and ?Remember the Time,” that I wanted him to do and he wanted to do, but I said, ?If we do this M.J., we’ll be on stage for three or five hours every night and you can’t do that.” And he said, ?Yeah, I don’t want to do that.”
What was he planning for his finale or encore?
– We sort of got that far, but not really. To this day we still don’t have the finished set list. We were on our way – just chiseling away. In fact, one day I blew up the set list to poster size and put it in his dressing room. I left it with him and said, ?I’m going outside. You just mark it up.” When I came back in, it was untouched. He said, ?I can’t do it. You have to do it.” So we’d take things off and he’d look at me as I put the marker by a song to cut it out and he’d say, ?No, no!” It was painful. In terms of an encore, we were maybe going to do ?Man in the Mirror.”
Q. Was Michael planning to do live vocals for every song?
– Yes and I didn’t want him to. Everybody does some lip-syncing and I’ll tell you why. Let’s do a little experiment. Just sit in your chair and bounce and try having a conversation. Now try dancing and singing. I would tell him, ?M.J., everybody knows you can sing, you’ve been doing it since you were five.” I told him, ?It’s not like a Milli Vanilli thing…it’s your voice.” But he refused. Then I’d say, ?At least let me lower the key some.” And he would go, ?Okay, but only a half step.” But he resisted the lip-syncing and that was a credit to his genius.
Are you planning a tribute concert to Michael?
– Hopefully next year around his birthday we’ll do something, but it’s not definite.
Claes Olson
