On 24 June 2009, Michael Jackson walked onto the stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles for a rehearsal. He was 50 years old and preparing for the biggest comeback in music history: fifty concerts at London’s O2 Arena, starting that July.
There was no audience that night, just his band, his dancers and his crew. Cameras were rolling for reference, the way they always were. Nobody watching had any idea they were filming the last performance of his life.
He died the following afternoon, on 25 June 2009. And that reference footage — never meant for anyone outside the production — became a film that grossed over $260 million, at one point the highest-grossing concert movie ever.
Michael Jackson – Earth Song (This Is It June 24, 2009) LAST REHEARSAL
Here is what makes the footage so hard to watch now. He was good. Not going through the motions, not marking it out. Crew members and performers who were there have described him that night as energetic, focused and completely committed.
One AEG executive said: “He had great energy. He really looked good and he was very upbeat.” He was cracking jokes. He was having a good time. In the words of the same executive: “During rehearsal, I could tell that he was feeling it. He was on his way to giving a great performance.”
The last song Michael Jackson ever sang was “Earth Song.” It is his environmental anthem, and the staging that night involved a huge video sequence about a forest being destroyed, with Jackson lifted above the stage on a crane. He also ran through “Billie Jean” and, at a sound check, “Man in the Mirror.” His drummer Jonathan Moffett has since confirmed that “Man in the Mirror” was one of the very last songs he played with him.
Michael Jackson – This Is It Last Rehearsal (June 24, 2009)
Then he stopped and spoke to everybody. He gathered the crew and thanked them, talking about the London shows and what he hoped they would be like. He told them, “God bless you.” Then he went home.
The next day the show was over before it began. The tour was canceled. And a decision had to be made about hundreds of hours of footage sitting in a vault. Director Kenny Ortega has been very clear that none of it was ever intended for release. It was working footage, shot so the team could review the staging. But after Jackson’s death, the concert promoter and his estate agreed to turn it into a film, and Michael Jackson’s This Is It opened in cinemas worldwide on 28 October 2009, just four months later.
One critic pointed out what gives the film its odd power. What you are really watching is not a concert. It is a perfectionist at work — Jackson stopping the band, adjusting tempos, patiently explaining exactly how a note should hang before it drops. He is not performing for a crowd. He is building something. The same critic noted that Jackson, an obsessive controller of his own image, probably would never have approved its release.
It ends with him standing on that stage, arms out. Then a message on the screen: Michael Jackson, King of Pop, Love Lives Forever. He had roughly eighteen hours left.