seeingvoices12 said:

I wouldn't hold your breath...
[Edited 4/4/09 12:33pm]

MattyJam said:

LOL. Yeah, I wish MJ was a little more prolific (a bit like Prince) in that regard.

I have never seen MJ live, but by the recording I have seen. He has essentially been doing the same show since "Off the Wall"/ "Triumph" tour. He basically uses a template and substitutes songs. This is not a diss, just an observation. I hope that he will go with a totally new show and let himself and his co-designers be creative. I don't expect him to do a different show every night, That has never been his thing. But I do expect a brilliant show and one that breaks somewhat from the past...while still including "Billie Jean" and "Beat It"

newpowerhippies said:

I don't know if that's fair...

On the HIStory tour he performed eight tracks from the album (Scream, TDCAU, YANA, Earth Song, D.S. which was later replaced by BOTD, Stranger In Moscow, History)...

And he also included Dangerous and In The Closet which were never previously performed in concert.

MattyJam said:

Fair enough MattyJam. What I mean by his shows following a template is that if you watch his shows you will see different songs on different tours, but ultimately the songs serve a similar emotional purpose as previous songs did. For example YANA replaces "She's Out of My Life". Also compare shows of other artist, For instance every tour Prince does it appears really differnt from his previous tours. Different staging even if the songs are the same. "Lovesexy" is totally different from say "Musicology" for example. The same is true for Madonna.
Again, not dissing MJ,I am a fan. If I had the extra income, I would be in London for this tour. Just stating that it is time MJ did something really different, while still being MJ. By the way I think he was moving in that direction with "Invincible". I did notice the different staging he was doing on the MSG concert (Beat IT)...would love to see him just go for it.

Well I think he will have to change things a bit, because the o2 is an arena, and all his previous tours have been catered for stadiums.

Also, it's been ten years since his last tour and I'm sure he won't want to look like an old relic, so I feel fairly confident that he'll shake things up a bit.

Will Michael Jackson's Real Manager Please Stand Up

Posted: April 2, 2009

ATLANTA (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) -- Rowe Entertainment appears to have sparked a controversy after they issued a press release through Champion Management, announcing that Leonard Rowe was going to be assuming management duties for the prodigal King of Pop, Michael Jackson.

Sources close to the matter have told CelebrityAccess that Rowe had joined forces with Michael Jackson's father Joseph Jackson to convince Michael to let them assume handling the artist's business affairs but that they had been rebuffed by the singer.

On the other side of the issue, Frank Dileo maintains that Rowe's press release was less than factual and that they manage Jackson.

A spokesman for Dileo told CelebrityAccess that they would release a statement along with AEG to address Rowe's claims next week and suggested that legal action may be in the offing.

However, AEG's Randy Phillips told CelebrityAccesss that they have been working with Dr. Tohme Tohme in connection with all of Michael Jackson's dates. Mr. Phillips went on to say that they are currently contemplating no legal action against Rowe and that they aren't planning any press releases.

Rowe is known for his work as a tour promoter and has worked with a number of artists including Marvin Gaye, however his most recent spate of publicity stemmed from a string of lawsuits late last year over an R. Kelly tour that Rowe promoted.

According to court documents, Kelly accused Rowe of selling shares in Kelly's "Double Up" tour to investors without Kelly's permission, despite a contractual stipulation that barred such sales. The court agreed and awarded Kelly $3.4 million over the matter.

Kelly's suit wasn't the only litigation to stem from the tour and the investors who'd purchased the non-existent shares in the tour filed suit against Rowe as did singer Ne-Yo, who won a $700,000 judgment against Rowe after he was dropped from Kelly's tour after only two shows.

Rowe was also part of a group of African-American promoters who attempted in 1998 to sue a number of entertainment firms, including CAA, WMA, Clear Channel Entertainment, APA and the Howard Rose Agency for $700 million, alleging racial discrimination. Several of the firms opted to settle but the case was finally rejected by the court in 2005.

Mr. Rowe did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

- CelebrityAccess Staff Writers


http://encore.celebrityac...leId=30345

http://www.nimmer.net/nim...orweb1.htm

Defense team videographer Larry Nimmer says Michael’s more normal than we’ve been led to believe


If you think Michael Jackson is an alien, an experiment in plastic surgery, a freak with a mental disorder or a child-molester who can’t stop touching his own (and apparently everyone else’s) crotch, you’re not alone. It seems just about everyone these days, from the TV newscasters to the tabloid magazines to everyday citizens going about their lives, think the King of Pop uses his royal power for strange (at best) or evil (at worst) deeds—whether they believe the “not guilty” verdict or not.

But the Carpinteria-based videographers who worked with Jackson’s defense team on the trial say that just because In Touch and Court TV say Jackson’s w@cko doesn’t mean he is. In fact, according to videographer Larry Nimmer and the two people who helped him film and edit video for Jackson’s defense team, the pale-faced, high-voiced star might not be (gasp!) a freak. And he might just be innocent too.

“I found him a lot more normal a person than he’s perceived,” said Nimmer, whose company Nimmer Legal Graphics helped Jackson’s defense team with everything from filming a tour of Neverland Ranch to editing outtakes from previous interviews to show during closing arguments.

During the process of working on these videos, Nimmer discovered that public and media perception of the pop prince may be seriously skewed. And he suspects the common suspicion that Jackson is, indeed, a child molester might be a result of the same sensationalist media and conservative culture that has most of America assuming Jackson just got away with a crime.

“My personal opinion is that no, he didn’t do it,” said Nimmer.

Nimmer’s assistant Tom Friedman agreed.

“Within about five minutes (on Neverland Ranch), I was convinced Jackson was innocent and is a generous, big-hearted person,” Friedman said.

What does Nimmer (and his team) know?

Larry Nimmer isn’t just a Jackson fan, blinded by devotion, who also happens to have some video editing skills.

Instead, he’s an upper-middle-aged multimedia producer in Carpinteria who makes his living with Nimmer Legal Graphics, a company that provides video, scale models, graphs and other visual aids for court cases. With an impressive resume that includes shooting music videos (he was doing it two years before MTV started airing them), working for the CBS TV news affiliate in San Francisco, creating numerous documentaries and overseeing the Santa Barbara Film Festival—and that’s all in addition to carving a place for himself as the premier legal graphics producer in the tri-county area—Nimmer’s the real deal: an objective, professional media producer with no personal stake in this, or any trial’s, outcome.



And his assistants were similarly un-invested in the trial or their image of Jackson. Tom Friedman, who frequently works with Nimmer on documentaries and legal videos, said he was never really interested in the pop star, but “like most people did, I thought he was a strange, potentially bizarre individual.” Another assistant, Chrissy Strassburg, said she’s always respected Jackson’s music, but distrusted his seeming insecurity and his obsession with his looks.

All made a commitment to approach their job as objectively as possible. When Friedman and Nimmer went to Neverland to film the tour, for example, Nimmer said he didn’t want to use any videographic “trickery” to create a sentimental or skewed view of the ranch. And the video they made, which showed a beautiful, rolling and surprisingly conservative estate, wasn’t just the selection of the more pleasant or normal aspects of Neverland—it was, said Nimmer and Friedman, an accurate portrayal of what it was like to be there.

“There were no weird pictures of kids, no pornographic titles on the shelves,” said Friedman. “I didn’t see anything at all that made me think, ‘If they see this, he’s going to fall.’”

The ranch

Three days of filming by Nimmer, with lots of help from Friedman and assistance on nighttime shots by Strassburg, led to a 19-minute video that jurors in the Jackson case saw. Originally, said Nimmer, Jackson’s defense had wanted to give jurors a tour of the ranch, which would not only give them a sense of Jackson’s personality and character, but would also relate directly to accusations of where and how the alleged molestation happened, or where and how the accuser’s mother said she was held against her will. But the judge wouldn’t allow it.

So since Jackson’s defense team couldn’t bring the jurors to Neverland Ranch, they had Nimmer Legal Graphics bring Neverland to the jury.

The process started with several days of visits, including all-access tours for Nimmer and his assistants. Jackson wasn’t there, since he was in court, and his kids were kept out of sight, per Jackson’s request, but otherwise Nimmer could see anything he wanted. He rode the trains on the property, visited the amusement park and the zoo, had lunch in the family dining room and peeked into the private wing of the main house, where Jackson and his kids have bedrooms.

“The prosecution made it out to be a place where only bad things happened,” said Nimmer, a tall, slender, bespectacled man with graying hair who could easily pass as someone’s science teacher. But he and his team said the mythical ranch is profoundly different than people might expect.

Yes, there are elements that are fantastical, whimsical or opulent, but for the most part, “it feels very normal, like a nice mansion,” said Nimmer. “It’s kind of a cross between Disneyland and a Montecito estate.”



The video seems to confirm this. Unlike the visions many of us might imagine—a colorful plastic landscape that would appeal to Tim Burton à la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or a raucous, creepy, 24-hour carnival reminiscent of AI’s sin city—the ranch seems rather, well, tame. A modest gate with a low fence leads visitors onto a property of rolling lawns, idyllic lakes and ponds and lush, green trees. The real gate, up ahead, is only slightly bigger, and has only one security guard in a tower checking visitors.

Inside, there is Jackson’s house, a Tudor-style mansion in hues of browns and reds; the amusement park, which is impressive but not sprawling, all-encompassing or even, at that moment, running; the zoo, which resembles the stables and barns on many area ranches except that this one has giraffes and monkeys instead of horses and ponies; and the trains, which even seem tasteful and muted, more like enlarged model trains (which they basically are) than amusement park rides. There is a full-sized movie theater, with posters of Disney movies in the foyer and display cases full of free candy that is handed out by staff. Visitors also get freebie toys and sweets at the main train station.

But on the video, none of these elements seem anything other than ordinary. The only extraordinary thing about them is that they’re all on one property and that they seem to be made for the use of people who don’t live there.

The only thing Nimmer found a little strange was the constant music coming from speakers throughout the property. “It was kind of neutral and happy … and at first it was kind of fun, and then kind of tedious. I wonder how his kids react to it,” said Nimmer.

But otherwise, Nimmer and his team were impressed by how beautiful, tranquil and not that weird the ranch was. Especially Friedman, who’d imagined, “here’s this guy running around in his little, sad wonderland with giraffes frolicking in the fields when there’s so much poverty in the world and so many better ways to spend your money,” he said.

But once at the ranch, Friedman said it was obvious the property was made for the benefit of other people—and not to fulfill Jackson’s own stunted-childhood fantasies or to provide a backdrop for child abuse. The amusement park was clearly built on the scale for large groups of kids to visit, he said, many of whom probably arrived on the luxury bus Jackson had parked on the property, and didn’t seem to cater to any kind of one-on-one or private activity at all.

“This guy doesn’t get on his Ferris wheel every night and go whooping and screaming,” said Friedman. “I doubt very much he’s out there with a little balloon and a noisemaker riding it himself.”

In fact, the video shows a small, modest jungle gym behind the main house made of wood, the kind “you’d see in a very moderate public park, like in Carpinteria,” said Friedman. This seems to be the place where Jackson and his three kids actually spend their time.

“My guess is that he probably spends more time there with his kids than he does frolicking around the amusement park,” said Friedman. Instead, said Friedman and Nimmer, it seems clear that the park is there for the reason Jackson says it’s there: as a 700-acre fantasyland for sick and underprivileged kids who don’t have a chance to experience the real thing. After seeing it for himself, Friedman said it’s too bad Jackson gets a bad rap for something that’s so extraordinarily good.

“Even though it’s his private estate, he’s given a great deal over to the public good. Who else does that? Tom Cruise? Does Bill Gates do it? Does Steven Spielberg do it? Does Barbra Streisand do it? Turn over vast landholdings to access to people? To kids?” said Friedman. “He’s very, very unique … and he’s sacrificed his privacy to do it.”

The house

Going inside Jackson’s mansion was even more illuminating for the video team, said Nimmer. The video shows a surprisingly grown-up house, with gold ornamentation and heavy furniture inspired by traditional French royalty. The only odd touches were paintings of Jackson with children, one of him as a kind of pied piper and one of him reading to a circle of kids, and several mannequins. But the paintings only seemed strange in a narcissistic, not a pedophiliac, sort of way, agreed Nimmer’s team.

And though the prosecution tried to paint Jackson’s mannequins as something strange, Nimmer said the dolls—one of which was a life-like butler at the front door holding a real plate of cookies, while another was a child playing upside down on a chair—“seemed to me kind of playful and fun.”



Friedman agreed, saying the mannequins were “not threatening … If he’s got the money and it tickles his funny bone, why not? ... I don’t think it’s sinister or creepy or implies that the guy’s a sexual predator,” he said, comparing Jackson’s penchant for mannequins to other people’s hobbies of collecting coins or photos of dogs.

Friedman also noted that the house itself, while large, wasn’t excessively so. The rooms were human scale, he said, reasonably informal and reasonably comfortable.

“There were no grand public rooms, no mirrored ballroom where Michael, in the certain moment, would appear and come down off a large balcony,” he said. “It was more like a ranch house than a palace.”

And both men noted that there were signs of real life all over the house and the property: from Jackson’s kids’ jackets hanging on pegs in the hallway to the sound of their giggling upstairs while Friedman and Nimmer ate lunch. There were photos of the kids all over the house too, said Nimmer, but most were turned around by staff so they wouldn’t get caught on videotape—which was part of Jackson’s request to protect the privacy of his family.

Outside on the lawn, there were also tricycles that obviously had been used over and over.

“The scooters and little bicycles were battered and just regular … it showed the presence of regular little kids,” said Friedman. “He could get each of those kids a solid gold jet-propelled tricycle, but he just had regular little tricycles. It shows there’s a very human side to this guy.”

Nimmer agreed and, in fact, made sure he got shots in the video of the trikes, the jackets and even a note reading “I love you even more than that … get well soon” that Jackson’s daughter Paris scrawled to him on a chalkboard.

“I wanted to convey to the jury the fact that he is a father and they’re real kids and they have a real relationship,” said Nimmer. In addition to the items he saw around the house, Nimmer also said Jackson’s relationship with his kids was clear from the other videos and interviews Nimmer had to sort through to make the tape for the closing argument, including outtakes from the documentary Living With Michael that seemed to imply Jackson liked sleeping with boys. Those outtakes, said Nimmer, showed “how much he likes talking about his kids and how close he is to the kids … which doesn’t really ever seem to come out in the press.”

In fact, Nimmer took particular issue with the documentary, made by Martin Bashir, which showed Jackson holding hands with a boy, who later became his accuser, and saying he liked sleeping in beds with boys.

“Bashir did not include a lot of the positive stuff about Michael that was shot in the documentary,” said Nimmer.

The verdict

But when it came to deciding whether Jackson was innocent or not, said Nimmer and his team, the facts were the most important part of the trial—a component Nimmer said most of the media seemed to ignore.

“I found it surprising how the media could come up with so many stories based on so little information, when each day there wouldn’t be that much more to report on … They spend a lot of their time speculating,” said Nimmer, who still said he found media coverage—and the spectacle outside the courthouse—entertaining. It was just too bad it was at the expense of someone’s life, he said.

Nimmer said the media seemed to perpetuate the myth of Jackson as a freak, and therefore as a possible molester. And he credits a lot of that to Jackson’s childlike nature, which he witnessed mostly while editing interviews like Bashir’s. Nimmer says Jackson cultivates a childlike nature for composing his music, creating his dances and promoting humanitarian causes.

“People in our country tend to be very conservative and suspect bad intentions and in general think Michael Jackson’s a fool because he’s childlike, whereas I think it’s really refreshing,” said Nimmer. “I’m kind of upset how people automatically dismiss him because he’s childlike.”

As for the accusations themselves, Nimmer and his team said most of them just didn’t add up. For example, the accuser’s mother said she was held at Neverland against her will, without any way to leave or any idea what time it was. But Nimmer’s video shows the posh guest house the woman easily could have left, the clocks all over the property and the scores of staff—including security guards, housekeepers, an administrative team and groundskeepers—who were too numerous, and seemed too down-to-earth, to make likely conspirators or captors.

“I didn’t see any cameras in the trees, monitors on the walls, didn’t see any bloodhounds or electrified fences, any pits with sharpened stakes,” said Friedman. “She could have walked to the road and climbed over the fence.”

Another accusation was that the accuser’s brother came up the stairs to Jackson’s bedroom and saw the pop star touching the boy inappropriately. But Jackson’s defense team argued that an alarm system set up in Jackson’s private wing would’ve been triggered by the brother’s approach, thus making the story impossible (and therefore all the stories not credible)—a fact Nimmer proved with his video.

The prosecution’s claim that Jackson had a house full of porn seemed less likely, said Nimmer, when he visited Jackson’s library of 200,000 books—which ranged in topic from art history to old Hollywood to child-rearing to religion, and made up only a part of the star’s full 700,000-book collection.

And assistant Chrissy Strassburg said, after seeing video of the accuser’s mom saying how much she trusted Michael during a time when she thought the camera was off, that there was no way she could believe the woman was telling the truth about being held at Neverland.

The man

With the evidence seemingly stacked in Jackson’s favor, Nimmer, Friedman and Strassburg were relieved and reassured to know that they were working for the “right” side. And in the process, they learned even more about Jackson.

Nimmer, who only actually met the pop star once, the day Jackson thanked the videographer when he testified about the Neverland video in court, said Jackson was shy, humble, kind and “taller than I thought he would be. I thought he would be a short guy.”

From video footage, though, he and his team got all kinds of insight into the star’s life: the debilitating chiding he got from his father and cousins about his “fat” nose and bad skin, which may have led to the plastic surgery he had later in life; the young Jackson’s practice of using the money he made performing to buy candy for the neighborhood kids, which naturally extended to a place like Neverland; the way Jackson tried over and over to correct Bashir when he implied that he liked having sex with boys, when what the pop star said was “When you say the word ‘sleep,’ you said it as if it’s sexual. ‘Sleep’ is getting in bed with somebody because they don’t want to be alone when they sleep,” Strassbourg quoted.

And like the jury, they all came to a unanimous decision: Michael didn’t do it.

What’s more, they understand where he’s coming from.

“I don’t believe it’s necessarily wrong to sleep in a bed with a child,” said Nimmer, who used to share a tent with his sons and their friends on Indian Guide camp-outs. “It was kind of like a sleepover, and clearly there wasn’t anything sexual going on there.”

Friedman agreed.

“I don’t see anything wrong with him having kids sleep in his bed with him,” said Friedman, who used to look forward to sharing a bed with his grandfather during childhood holidays. “It’s a sweet gesture. I think it’s very intimate.”

The bottom line, says Nimmer, is it makes him sad that Jackson has had to go through all of this simply because he wants to give back to children and he enjoys their non-threatening company.

“It’s an incredible hoax that the accuser’s family has pulled off to, one, monopolize the life of a superstar and, two, monopolize the world media by coming up with a bogus story,” he said. “Which I believe it is. And which the jury seems to believe it was.”

bboy87 said:

Here we go again!

I recall the Bashir documentary was supposed to be a positive piece that would burnish Mike's image, etc. We all know how well THAT worked out!

So he's trying again...but this time he made sure the producers were on his payroll so he could maintain control over the final product!? (As you can see, I'm not buying Nimmer's story that he and his assistants are totally objective outsiders, etc. )

Oh well, should be interesting either way!
[Edited 4/5/09 12:44pm]

CandaceS said:

This will be interesting to see. Well at least Michael has learned his lesson since last time about making sure the documentary is not biased against him.

we all knew those charges were full of horse dookey and so is law enforcement in santa - wherever in the heck he lived

suga10 said:

Oh what?! This is going to be an actual documentary? I didn't see that said in the article, although i did only skim through it

Arnotts said:

Yep, it's an actual documentary

bboy87 said:

Wonder how that's going to turn out

angel345 said:

Exactly as Mike wanted it to turn out!

CandaceS said:

It's probably likely he doesn't have anything to do with it


You kinda tell when he's involved: alot of press releases, commercials, mentions of it on TV outlets....



this one has gone nearly unnoticed.....kinda like that Aphrodite Jones book

just uploaded this

bboy87 said:

I just saw that.

Timmy84 said:

I'm relieved it's finally online

bboy any news yet? went to Motown50 -- its no longer even on the release list..

majic said:

It isn't? I'll ask around...

Apparently, it'll be released May 2, 2009
[Edited 4/9/09 21:35pm]

So I reckon that some of you have heard or read about the auction.

angel345 said:

Yep, about 5 months ago

bboy87 said:

I need to be clear. He managed to stop the auction. Read about it today.

angel345 said:

goes to KOP

oh crap, you're right!

http://latimesblogs.latim...lltherage/

...A statement from Jackson's representative Tohme Tohme said that "there was so much interest from so many of Jackson’s fans that instead of putting the items in the hands of private collectors, Dr. Tohme and Julien Auctions have made arrangements that will allow the collection to be shared with and enjoyed by Jackson’s fans for many years to come."

Reached by phone he added, "I think we are going to have a beautiful museum someday for Michael."

Press Release



“Dr. Tohme R. Tohme and Darren Julien are pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached today that allows Michael Jackson to retain ownership of the Collection of Michael Jackson. There was so much interest from so many of Jackson’s fans that instead of putting the items in the hands of private collectors, Dr. Tohme and Julien Auctions have made arrangements that will allow the collection to be shared with and enjoyed by Jackson’s fans for many years to come.


“The public exhibition of this wonderful collection belonging to the King of Pop will continue through April 25th in Beverly Hills adjacent to the Beverly Hilton Hotel.


“Dr. Tohme and Julien’s Auction are also pleased to announce that MJJ Productions and Julien’s Auction will each be making a substantial donation to MusiCares to benefit artists in need.”

Damn - and i had three bids on. Oh well. At least I got my catalogues - guess they are collectors items now.

Swa