Given the entertainment industry prefers simple messages, forcefully packaged, there’s an inconvenient irony to the latest Michael Jackson documentary landing just as Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody continues its grimly disingenuous awards run. Though Singer was removed as director near the end of the Bohemian Rhapsody shoot for set absences – and not for the litany of abuse, assault and rape allegations covering his entire career – the studio producing his next film, Red Sonja, defiantly insists Singer remains attached to it.
Last week, the Atlantic published a lengthy investigation, relying on more than 50 sources, alleging the X-Men director’s predatory and abusive behaviour – including rape –towards young men and underage boys. Many of the teenagers were vulnerable and without family support. The magazine builds a powerful case that friends, associates and ultimately his industry aided and abetted Singer.
Yet Avi Lerner, whose Millennium Films is the studio producing Red Sonja, this week dismissed it as “fake news”. He added that, “the over $800m Bohemian Rhapsody has grossed, making it the highest grossing drama in film history, is testament to [Singer’s] remarkable vision and acumen”. Well. Avi’s hardly the first person to wonder: “How can anyone be bad when he makes so much money?” But he might be the first to say it out loud.
And so to Jackson, whose wingnut fans believe is currently riding the great ferris wheel in the sky, while his detractors hope he’s strapped to a flaming wheel in Tartarus instead. For those of us who idealise earthly justice, alas, the Leaving Neverland documentary that premiered at the Sundance festival last weekend is likely to be just another piece in a jigsaw whose picture should have been clear decades ago to all but the wilfully blind. Just as there were with R Kelly, unfortunately, there are whole kingdoms-worth of the wilfully blind.
The film, in which two men detail their alleged childhood abuse by Jackson and the endless damage still rippling out from it, was judged so disturbing that its producers made counsellors available in the lobby afterwards. As for the classic patterns of child abuse, shame and fear set out by Wade Robson and James Safechuck, we can only wonder if they will be the latest piece of evidence to cause otherwise perfectly intelligent people to wonder publicly: “Who knew?” Even those bent on posthumously taking him down still afford Jackson a kind of wizard-like mastery. This week, the lawyer for the two men declared that Jackson “was running the most sophisticated child sex operation the world has ever known”.
And yet, was it? There is hiding in plain sight, and then there is literally building a giant fairground in your garden, admitting you sleep with kids, and spending decades fighting and paying off children – always boys, always around the same age – who accuse you of sexual assault. I mean really, WHO KNEW?
The reality, of course, is that a huge number of people had specific knowledge of Jackson’s behaviour and ignored it ultimately because of money. “Sophisticated” is really a comforting euphemism for “expensive”. All of this is about money: who makes it, and why that makes things go away. How much of it Jackson was worth to a record company – Sony – which has incurred precisely zero public censure. How much of it he could throw at lawyers to silence a parade of children accusing him of the same things, in identical patterns. How much of it he could pass to servants, who were financially dependent on him, in order that they continue turning blind eyes to the endless sleepover parties with young boys, while they looked after his own children in some other wing of Neverland.
Who knew? In 1993, Jackson and his team fought the accusations of abuse by the pre-teen Jordy Chandler, right up to the point that the child was able to describe distinctive splotches on Jackson’s buttocks and penis. Following a legally mandated photoshoot of his genital area, Jackson suddenly U-turned and decided to settle for $23m. It goes on. A child cancer survivor; a child bedmate whose book he inscribed “to my rubba rubba boy”. And on, and on, and on.
As, indeed, it is alleged to have gone on with Singer, who has long been tailed by sexual assault allegations. He denies all the Atlantic’s revelations. Before he denied these, he had a couple of decades of denying other ones, the barest bones of which are as follows. Singer was sued in the 90s by the parents of several child extras who claimed they were filmed naked for a shower scene without permission. The cases were dropped for lack of evidence.
The first rape accusation came in 2014, when a former child actor accused Singer of plying him with drugs and alcohol and raping him. He ended up withdrawing the case after his lawyers dropped him. By this stage, Singer would be fighting the claim by a 17-year-old that he had sexually assaulted him and attempted to rape him. This case was eventually dismissed at the accuser’s request. In late 2014, a documentary on called An Open Secret premiered at a prestigious documentary festival. Featuring actors including Corey Feldman and Todd Bridges, it sought to illuminate the culture of child sexual exploitation in Hollywood and contained numerous references to Singer. “We got zero Hollywood offers to distribute the film,” the producer remarked. “Not even one. Literally no offers for any price whatsoever.”
In 2016, the actor Noah Galvin told a publication profiling him that: “Bryan Singer likes to invite little boys over to his pool and diddle them in the fucking dark of night.” He later apologised. “My comments were false and unwarranted. It was irresponsible and stupid of me to make those allegations against Bryan, and I deeply regret doing so.” In 2017, Singer was accused of raping a 17-year-old boy in 2003; that case remains ongoing.
When the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were pouring out, and #MeToo was snowballing, Westworld star Evan Rachel Wood tweeted: “Let’s not forget about Bryan Singer either.” That post was subsequently deleted. Yet to be erased, however, is another Wood tweet from January this year, which inquires: “So we just … we are all still supposed to be pretending we don’t know about Bryan Singer? Cause it worked out really well with #Spacey and #Weinstein.”
If by this stage it feels like there isn’t enough money in the world to save Singer, Lerner’s invocation of the Bohemian Rhapsody box-office takings should remind you that there currently still is. Ludicrously, Lerner has since claimed that he signed off on this statement by himself, but didn’t write it or read it first. Not that he wants to retract it. He would have just put it differently, by stressing his decision to retain Singer has received no industry criticism. “Nobody called me, not from one agency,” he has since said. “I got support by the head of a studio to say: ‘Well done, Avi. You stand by what you believe, and people should be innocent until they are proven guilty.’ Nobody told me that they’re not going to work with me.”
Sweetly, various publications have in turn dismissed Lerner’s reports of zero industry blowback as a “claim”. Can we stop calling it a claim? Let’s take a leap and believe him. They already knew about Singer. What could be MORE credible than the notion that the big players stayed out of it, either looked away or applauded it, and ultimately agreed with Lerner’s overriding thesis: Bryan Singer makes this town a lot of money. And who are we to doubt the moral weight of that?
