photo by Kevin Mazur/Sony Pictures
It was another reality check that the King is dead and witnessing the coming together of his This Is It concert, I felt a pang of loss, like the earth just opened up and swallowed up a masterpiece before it could be unveiled to the world. I kept thinking thankfully it was documented! I cried and clapped in the very front row seat at the Grand Rex theater in Paris – if this was the last recent footage I will see of MJ I want to absorb it all.
This Is It is an intense peak into Michael’s magic, vision and brilliance where every lighting effect, guitar chord or dance move was dissected, reinvented, polished, re-rehearsed ‘lets do it one more time’ MJ would say and then finally approved.
There is a scene while rehearsing on the cherry-picker (a crane-like machine that lifts him off stage and above the audience heads) director and producer Kenny Ortega tells him ‘it goes even higher than this Michael’ to which Michael responded ‘You can’t tell me these things, you know I want to go the highest’….(ironic, non?)
The moments that blew me away from the concert-that-will-never-be, was the making of the scene for the ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ number – an endless army of men marching to MJ’s choriography in one beat known as “the drill” (recreated with only 11 dancers in front of a green screen).
The black and white recreation of MJ in the Rita Hayworth scene throwing him her glove – priceless!
And of course there’s Thriller in 3D which would have been an out of this world visual to experience….
And as for the fabulous pixie-eared shoulder jacket he was wearing – if that doesn’t become the next must-have fashion item to own, then I don’t know what will be…
…and dare I not mention MJ at 50 doing his signature move of thrust and grab-of-crotch – from where I was sitting in the front, I was like “WOW”!
It seems that this concert would have shown the world that Michael Jackson was not only back, but an affirmation that he was still the ruler of Pop. This Is It manages to seal his legacy with goose bumps…
Below are some shots and a video of the Paris launch of This Is It at the Grand Rex theater
