Do celebrities commit the same sins as we mere mortals and unfairly draw the world’s attention for the commonplace? Or do they break the rules on such a grand scale that they get the infamy they deserve?
The answer would be . . . yes.
Fame and celebrity never have been more easily and instantly attainable, thanks to the rise of 24/7 celebrity coverage, TMZ, YouTube, and the net. And thanks to those same forces, fame and celebrity have never been so dangerous. In a world of 2.6 billion camera-equipped smartphones, instant web access, and the live feeds on Facebook, Periscope, and Snapchat, a celebrity’s life is a scandal waiting to happen.
And when scandal erupts, a number of celebrities have called our firm for advice. (Our work for many of them remains invisible.) Although Sitrick And Company focuses on strategic communications counsel for leading companies and corporate titans as well as some of the hottest “unicorn” upstarts, we also have a thriving practice advising stars in entertainment, sports, and the media.
Our client roster is filled with names seen in boldface on TMZ and in the gossip columns of the New York Post. It has included Paris Hilton, Yankee slugger Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez, former Dolphins lineman Richie Incognito, basketball great Kobe Bryant, Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, Chris Brown, actress Halle Berry, radio host Rush Limbaugh, and the Michael Jackson estate. (As a Google search would show, our role in advising all of these clients has been disclosed previously by our being quoted as spokesmen or issuing statements on their behalf.)
That last case, in the aftermath of the tragic death of the King of Pop, inserted my firm into one of the biggest celebrity stories in decades. Led by the creative genius of lawyer John Branca and legendary music executive John McClain, co-executors of the Jackson estate, we were able to restore stability and rebuild the Michael Jackson brand so that his three children would be assured of their father’s support long after his premature demise. It stands as one of the most successful celebrity brand rehabs in history.
Some of the most famous people in the world, revered by millions, come to my firm at some of the most difficult times in their lives. Despite the assumption in some quarters that these stars are spoiled and unrepentant, most of the celebrities I have advised are modest and contrite. They want to make it better, and my partners and I do what we can to help them do that.
When I give speeches, I am fond of saying my firm’s clients have run the gamut from Thomas H. Lee to Tommy Lee, and while I always hope this line will elicit a few laughs, it is a bit of a comedic risk. Those who know Thomas H. Lee the private-equity magnate may not know Tommy Lee the heavy metal musician, and vice versa. The millennials in the audience might not know who either man is!
The blurring of the line between business and celebrity has resulted in our representing clients from both worlds. Is Sir Richard Branson a business figure or a celebrity? What about Elon Musk of Tesla, who has been a client of our firm?
It is difficult to generalize about managing celebrity scandal. The personalities and situations and details are unique to each case. No one approach can work for most cases, let alone all of them, and yet . . . of course some inferences can be drawn from the scores of celebrity cases I have handled. My aim is to synthesize these cases into an overarching way to think about managing and fixing celebrity crises.
When celebrities stumble into controversy, two things help me rehabilitate their reputations. First, Americans love celebrities. They are our royalty, as many people have said. And second, Americans love a great comeback. They will forgive you if your infraction is not too grave and you do the right thing in the aftermath, although I am not a big believer in mournful, Jimmy Swaggart-style apologies. Okay, you’re sorry—but those are just words. What are you doing to fix it? And then there is the issue of nuance: as I told one very high profile individual, America will forgive an illness, but not a sickness. (You can use your imagination to determine what that means.) For celebrity crisis cases, my Rule 5 is critical: Focus on the fix.
Other factors can make it especially difficult to defuse the crises of the rich and famous. This is a schadenfreude-prone era. Jealousy has made bringing down big celebrities a sport. Moreover, the celebrity news cycle isn’t just 24/7 nowadays—it is every couple of minutes, a couple of dozen times per hour, every hour around the clock and around the world. Now it is the consumption of celebrity news that goes on non-stop 24/7 on billions of smartphones, tablets, and flat-screens, feeding an appetite for dish that is global and insatiable.
Celebrities know that their claim to fame could be wiped out in a few tweets. Get caught using the wrong word in a video shot by some fan with an iPhone and your career can be impaired in a microsecond, even if you were joking and there is no evidence that you are, say, racist. (One very high profile case comes to mind.) This only adds to their insecurity and their vulnerability by the time they come to us . . . oftentimes later than they should have.
Therefore, if you want to find a way to fix a problem, you must proceed quickly but with caution, making certain to find out, up front, whether the client did what he or she is accused of doing and has any additional skeletons waiting to tumble out of the closet. Which means: You must be sure to ask your client, “Is it true? Is there anything else we need to worry about?” This is Job No. 1 not just in celebrity cases, but in all crisis situations. I don’t lie for clients, and I won’t assert their innocence unless they have explicitly assured me of same (and their assurance has to be plausible). This is in their interest as much as it is in mine. Lies make a bad problem worse.
When a man strikes a woman, no matter what the circumstances, there is almost no explanation that will mitigate the fallout. Period. In situations like this, when it comes down to “he said, she said,” “he” inevitably loses. Having said that, in most cases, there is no excuse. Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances—a wife or girlfriend struck him, say in the head, with a phone or a stiletto heel, and he was pushing away from her in self-defense. Still, we don’t try to make any excuses. After all, whom is the public going to believe?
The Wheel of Pain
I have handled cases on both sides of this lamentable divide. In one case, a rock star who was accused of beating and drugging his soon-to-be ex-wife refused to even discuss, let alone sign, his divorce settlement. My suggestion: let’s put him and his record label where they deserve to be—on the Wheel of Pain.
The Wheel of Pain, as I explained in my first book, is a tactic that should be employed only when absolutely necessary—and even then only when you are absolutely certain of your facts. But when those conditions are satisfied, it can bring almost instantaneous results. Like all the others in this book, it is designed to change someone’s mind. The difference is in this case, the “someone” happens to be the public or the press and ultimately the adversary himself.
Here, what we were doing was basically putting the bad acts of this rock star, which previously had been kept private or confined to court papers, out there for the world to see.
So, after getting the lawyer’s and client’s permission, we granted an exclusive interview to a major celebrity magazine in which my client revealed how the rock star had her living in fear, how he had drugged her to the point that she fell to the floor and was gasping for breath, how he had beaten her up and smashed her belongings (allegations she had made in court). Then we suggested to the reporter for this celebrity magazine that she call the star’s record label and ask for a response for the story she was writing. It worked startlingly swiftly. Prior to the article’s publication, the celebrity and the executives at his record label were ignoring calls from my client’s lawyer. Within a few weeks after it was published, my client had her divorce settlement signed, sealed, and delivered.
In another case, one I cannot say much about, a young woman got drunk and ended up in a violent argument with her famous boyfriend (my client), attacking him in a jealous rage while he was driving. He shoved her away, photos of her injuries were “leaked,” and charges were filed. But none of these details ever became public. Heartfelt apology, counseling, a one-on-one interview and no jail time, and his career was restored.
We have always been fascinated by the lives of the famous, but these days far more media outlets, traditional and online, feed that fascination, stoking and extending the coverage of any given scandal and going to new extremes in how much they will reveal—and just how personal and intrusive they will get. Mishaps and smalltime embarrassments that ended up on the cutting-room floor when the gossip columns had limited space now show up everywhere online, where space is infinite.
As the appetite for gossip has grown, journalists’ definition of “newsworthy” has expanded. They are more relaxed in their decisions about what is a plausible rumor worth repeating versus what gets ruled out as irresponsible aspersion and, in the case of a handful of blogs, less mindful of an obligation to seek comment before running a story that will hurt someone.
Today, celebrity scandal is good business if you are TMZ or even the New York Times. There is a difference in what news the two media organizations consider “fit to print,” but both of them make sure that what is posted or printed is both vetted and “lawyered” where necessary. But scandal can be very bad business if you are the celebrity—in business, Hollywood, or sports—at the center of a breaking crisis. As I tell clients, it’s one thing when something is done in the shadows of darkness, but when a misdeed is brought out into the daylight, it’s something else altogether. A drunk-driving arrest can reduce your next movie paycheck by a few million dollars and knock even more value off your celebrity brand in the long term. If it is high-profile enough, it can cost an executive his or her job.
Think about it: some four thousand people are arrested in the United States for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs every single day. That’s scary, reprehensible, and sad, but it is so commonplace that most of the time it isn’t newsworthy. Yet when it involves someone famous, suddenly it is major news. When it involves someone famous, viewers and readers are riveted by it, and the media run as many stories on it as they can to lure a larger audience and, in the longer run, sell more advertising at higher prices.
There’s a basic truth I keep in mind as I devise a strategy for celebrity cases: this isn’t about the public’s need to know—this is about business. With the right strategy, you can use this approach to your advantage, recognizing the value of granting access and exclusive interviews. Yet most people in the celebrity PR business do the opposite: they duck, cover, and stay quiet, hoping it will go away. There are three things to keep in mind in a celebrity crisis:
• The bigger or more salacious the problem, or the bigger the “star,” the more negative is the publicity that will follow.
• Odds are it will not go away—at least, not anytime soon—and in the world we live in, these things can stay online forever.
• Assertions can be exaggerated or completely false, especially in court filings. But, if they are in court filings, the media will feel they are fair game, even if you say you have evidence that the allegations are false. While most responsible media will print your denial, it rarely will garner as much space as the allegation. That’s because the lawsuit is news. What you say is a response to the news. Plus, what you say orally or in an email is not protected from a defamation standpoint, but what you say in a court filing has something called litigation privilege. Our legal system insulates the filer from libel charges—in making even the most irresponsible, false, and damaging allegations—so long as the charges are made in court proceedings. (This applies to the man on the street as well as the man on the screen.) And the media can simply report, “In a lawsuit filed today, person x said. . . .”
In talking about celebrity crisis and media coverage, we can’t ignore one of the newer arrivals and now one of the most powerful outlets of the celebrity machine: TMZ. The website and TV show, the creations of Harvey Levin, a University of Chicago–trained lawyer, are often the scourge of celebrities, taking a page from the Mike Wallace-60 Minutes handbook and ambushing them as they emerge from an airport, hotel, limo, or restaurant.
Yet a word to the wise for any celebrity or any executive approaching his own kind of celebrity status: you ignore TMZ at your peril. Some people dismiss it, but they are wrong to do so. As a story posted on BuzzFeed News on July 24, 2014, pointed out,
TMZ has been responsible for breaking the biggest celebrity scandals of the last 10 years: effectively ending a 30-year career (Mel Gibson), tarnishing golf’s most sacred idol (Tiger Woods), and puncturing the pristine image of celebrity royalty (Solange Knowles attacking Jay Z). But it isn’t just celebs: In 2009, TMZ caught a bank spending millions of taxpayer bailout funds on a lavish party (Northern Trust), and, via spin-off TMZS-ports, instigated the $2 billion sale of an NBA team by applying the same surveillance to former Clippers owner (Donald Sterling), once reserved for the Hollywood stars and socialites.
I recently worked with a prominent Washington, DC, lawyer who, to my amazement, had never even heard of TMZ. While I will get flack for saying this, in my years of dealing with TMZ, I have found Harvey and his people to be consistently careful to ensure that what they publish is accurate.
Do I always like what they publish about my clients? No, of course not, but overall I have found them to be fair. And TMZ doesn’t traffic only in the negative. This isn’t to say that negative stories cannot be helpful, if one is on the attack. While TMZ is probably the best known of the online media outlets in its realm, there are scores of others, including Radar.com and online versions of what are referred to as “traditional” media, including People.com, which isn’t as daring.
Last year a prominent client came under a blistering attack in a book that was widely picked up in the media. Research showed that, despite the author’s holier-than-thou attitude, he himself had a history of spousal abuse, racism, and anti-Semitism. So we presented evidence of this record to a highly viewed online outlet, its lawyers vetted it, and these facts were all over the Internet over the weekend—before the publicity campaign began for the book. Suddenly my client’s chief accuser now was the focus of a torrent of new accusations.
Pre-Empting the News
Making a pre-emptive strike in the so-called gossip media also can be useful when you need to pre-empt bad news by releasing it yourself (admittedly not something that is endorsed by many in my profession) or getting out the “bad news” first and ensuring that countering facts also are included in the story. A client of mine, a very rich and well-known woman, was going through a highly publicized bad divorce with her prominent husband, and although they had split up, she feared he was going to leak word to the media that she had taken up with one of their low-level employees. This was factually accurate and unquestionably would have attracted media coverage, especially with the spin her ex’s PR folks would have put on the story. What to do?
We pre-empted the story. I placed a call to an editor I knew, providing him with information about the background and “pedigree” of the boyfriend and telling him when and where his cameras could get a shot of my client with her new beau. They weren’t well known enough to be recognizable to the photographers, so I told the editor I would be sitting at the restaurant table with them, have your photographers check out my company website to see my photo so they will know where to point their cameras. “Just be sure you shoot me from the back,” I said. They complied. When the photos ran, you could see a crescent of the back of my head in the foreground; and now, any tinge of scandal had been neutralized by the facts, as opposed to hyperbole on the part of the ex.
In another case, I had a famous basketball player who was just emerging from surgery and getting inaccurate and unfavorable coverage about his future in the NBA. He wanted to grant an exclusive interview to a particular reporter at ESPN to set things straight, but that would upset every other basketball reporter who covered him and had asked for an interview, as I pointed out to the star. But if, say, the New York Post or TMZ or ESPN were to ambush him, getting the first, on-the-spot interview, no beat reporter would be scooped by a rival and nobody would be upset. Then my guy could circle back for the follow-up with the beat reporter at ESPN or anyone else. So I called an editor at one of these media outlets and told him where the hoops star would be at two o’clock the following afternoon. And there, as fate would have it, he was “ambushed.”
For all the buzz about how the Internet has made traditional media obsolete, traditional media still can trump the online outposts. At the risk of being repetitive, you ignore the old-guard media to your detriment. Yes, TMZ has been responsible for breaking numerous stories, but the New York Post, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other mainstream media have their own impressive lists. While big stories might break online, the biggest consequences are usually felt after a story has appeared in more traditional media.
This isn’t to minimize the impact of the new media. The fact is, stories of consequence, whether in sports, entertainment, or even business, that break first on, say, TMZ, almost always get picked up and repeated by mainstream media, often by the most prestigious of traditional media. This in itself is a testament to the power of online outlets. Still, while online outlets’ reporting on infractions can prompt inquiries and consternation and perhaps the same ultimate consequences as if the stories had appeared first in the Los Angeles Times or New York Times, the impact of those stories’ appearing in such august media almost guarantees those consequences.
Journalists may be friendly to you—they may even be good friends of yours—but that doesn’t mean they won’t do a negative story on you or your clients when it is warranted. They will listen to what you have to say, but they have a job to do. I have valued relationships with many reporters and editors, counting them among my friends, but I wouldn’t ask them, or expect them, not to do their jobs. Here are two key points: (1) It’s all about the facts, and (2) I rarely make demands of reporters; when warranted, I make requests.
Demands are reserved for breaches of journalistic ethics, refusal to include our comment if my client is a defendant in litigation or the subject of a critical story, or something like that. Even then I show respect, and if the journalist refuses, I don’t raise my voice. I explain why I think it’s unfair, and if they refuse, I tell them I am going to go to their editor. I tell them not as a threat, but as a courtesy. PR people in Hollywood and Washington are known to make demands on the media, sometimes in a demeaning way. I never have seen this “strategy,” if you can call it that, work out very well.
TMZ was the first to break the news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death, just eighteen minutes after doctors at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles had pronounced him dead. TMZ’s flash headline: “Michael Jackson passed away today at the age of 50.” The Los Angeles Times got out confirmation seven minutes later. The fabulously talented entertainer, who lived an unorthodox and much-scrutinized personal life, had been given an overdose of propofol, a hospital anesthetic, on top of lorazepam and midzalom.
The Michael Jackson case blew up into the biggest story around the world for weeks and months afterward. One of my partners on the case, Jim Bates, still recalls the first sign of crisis that day: a gaggle of TV helicopters hovering over Jackson’s home, ten miles from our offices (then in Century City in LA). Ten minutes later, choppers were hovering over the hospital where Jackson would be declared dead.
John Branca called me within hours of learning he would be the Michael Jackson estate’s co-executor and asked if we would represent the estate. I was in Hawaii, attending the wedding of a friend’s son. The following Monday morning, Jim Bates got a call from Branca. Bates and Branca knew each other from when Jim was a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times. As an article in Vanity Fair later noted: “By the time the will and a related trust agreement arrived at the courthouse, (John) Branca . . . already had retained the services of . . . Mike Sitrick—described by the website Gawker as the ‘Ninja Master of the Dark Art of Spin.’”
Around the same time, another player in the Jackson saga contacted another partner at my firm, Terry Fahn. The call came from a representative of AEG, sponsor of the planned Michael Jackson comeback tour for which Jackson was in rehearsals when he died. We went to work for the Jackson estate.
The Michael Jackson Estate
At the time of the singer’s death, the estate was half a billion dollars in debt and wobbling, financially. Jackson’s reputation had been through the wringer, even after he was acquitted of allegations of child molestation in 2005. His finances, frankly, were a mess. He had been described as a millionaire who lived like a billionaire. Jackson had been forced to cede control of his world-famous Neverland ranch after defaulting on a note, and he was so stretched that at the time of his demise he was $1,800 behind on the phone bill and nine thousand dollars behind on his water and electric bill—and he still owed $341,000 to his lawyer in the child-abuse defense.
To bring in new income, fast, Jackson had set a deal with AEG, a giant concert promoter and venue owner, to play fifty sold-out concerts in a row, all of them at the O2 arena in London. He was in Los Angeles in rehearsals at AEG’s Staples Center for that run when he died—cutting off the new income stream and putting his estate’s finances in even deeper trouble.
Yet if the estate were to start selling off assets to raise money to cover expenses, it would reduce the potential for creating recurring revenue that could continue supporting Michael Jackson’s three children. His oldest, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. (known as Prince), was twelve years old when the King of Pop died. His second-born, daughter Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, was eleven, and his youngest, Prince Michael Jackson II, was seven. The youngest was called “Blanket,” and he came to global fame as an infant, when Jackson held him over a hotel balcony in Paris to acknowledge hordes of fans below.
Michael Jackson had been wise and fortunate to name Branca and John McClain, a music producer who had been a close friend of Michael Jackson since their childhood, co-executors of his will. McClain is a co-founder of the innovative and street-wise record label Interscope, and he orchestrated the dazzling rise of Jackson’s sister Janet.
John Branca, a long-time partner of the powerhouse law firm Ziffren Brittenham, is one of the most successful and creative lawyers in the music business, a legend who has represented more than thirty members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, from the Elvis Presley estate to the Beach Boys, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Carlos Santana, the Bee Gees, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, the Eagles’ Don Henley, and more.
Branca had represented Michael Jackson since the days of Thriller, released in 1983 and the best-selling album of all time. He wisely had advised Jackson to buy the Beatles’ music catalog in 1985. That purchase, combined with Jackson’s own trove of songs, would form the foundation of the fortune left to his children. Jackson had been best man at Branca’s wedding, bringing along Bubbles, the chimpanzee he had dressed in a tiny tuxedo. The singer and his advisor had broken off relations and reconciled three times, the third time coming just weeks before Jackson died. Even during their times apart, and despite Jackson’s filing three wills in succession to reflect changes with each new child, Jackson always had stuck with Branca and McClain as co-executors.
John Branca and John McClain were the leaders of what they would come to call Team Jackson, flanked by litigator Howard Weitzman, who was named one of the top fifteen lawyers in the country by The National Law Journal, and dealmaker Joel Katz, attorney Zia Modabber, probate attorneys Paul Gordon Hoffman and Jeryll Cohen, as well as Karen Langford (Branca’s right hand or left hand, whichever you like), Jeff Jampol, music publicist Diana Baron, and (from Sitrick And Company) Jim Bates, Terry Fahn, and me. At my firm, our day-to-day mission, led by Jim Bates, was to help Branca and McClain rebuild the Jackson brand, which was critical to the success of the estate, as well as reinforce the credibility and legitimacy of the new management, which in the early days was under attack. This included attacks on the authenticity of Jackson’s last will and testament and a flurry of inaccurate rumors.
True: Jackson’s three children would be cared for by his mother, Katherine, or by the singer Diana Ross if his mother were unavailable. Not true: Jackson’s remains were to be buried at Neverland. We had to see that the truth was reported so that the estate could get on with its main job of building the success of the Michael Jackson estate for the well-being of his kids.
The co-executors, Branca and McClain, moved swiftly to stabilize the estate’s finances, fend off a barrage of sometimes bizarre charges and lawsuits, and strike a multitude of new deals bringing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Michael’s heirs. The success is due in large part to John Branca, one of the smartest and shrewdest strategists in the music business whom I have had the pleasure of calling my client.
Along the way, Team Jackson was able to rebut criticism of the executors to a remarkable degree and refocus attention on the artistry of Michael Jackson, helping his celebrity estate become one of the most successful in history and achieving what 60 Minutes called “the most remarkable financial and image resurrection in pop culture history.”
Countering Rumors, Court Challenges
From the get-go, Team Jackson had to contend with confusing rumors, court challenges, and an assortment of oddball characters and hangers-on in the wake of Jackson’s death. Enter litigator Howard Weitzman. Howard was and is the estate’s right hand, serving as counsel to the executors in every sense of the word. His clients have included every major motion picture studio, talent agencies William Morris, ICM, and CAA, and many high-profile clients including John DeLorean, Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando, Morgan Freeman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Early on, Michael’s mother sought to remove Branca and McClain as co-executors. Under the will, she stood to receive 40 percent of her son’s wealth and custody of his three children, with their 40 percent share, with her stake passing on to the kids after her death. She eventually dropped her challenge. Jackson’s estranged dad, Joe Jackson, was complaining loudly about receiving nothing from his son’s estate, but a judge ruled he had no standing to sue. A few years later, moreover, he would come around to praise the work of Branca and McClain.
Then five of Michael’s eight siblings leaked to the media a letter demanding that Branca and McClain resign. It was strictly a PR move. None of them had been named in Michael’s will, and none had standing in probate court. The five were Randy, Janet, Rebbie, and two members of the original Jackson Five, Jermaine and Tito (who quickly asked that his name be removed). The other two surviving members of the Jackson Five, Jackie and Marlon, didn’t sign the letter, nor did the remaining Jackson sibling, La Toya. Along the way, a fight erupted at the family mansion in which one Jackson ripped off the shirt worn by another, and the police were called. Howard Weitzman and Mrs. Jackson’s attorney worked things out, but in the meantime, all of this generated more headlines across hundreds of websites.
At another point, the family matriarch went missing for several days. Young Paris tweeted messages asking about her whereabouts, but Katherine turned out to be resting at a resort with a couple of her grown children. All of these pulses created waves of media coverage, and we had to ensure that the Michael Jackson estate’s main priorities—to stabilize and build the finances and ensure income for the three Jackson children—weren’t threatened by any new developments.
Meanwhile, at various points such headline-generating figures as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were in the mix, not to mention a mysterious man named Thome Tohme. Three years after Jackson’s death, Kim Masters wrote in the Hollywood Reporter, “. . . as his luster began to fade, the vultures began to circle, leaving the executors of his estate in legal battles with crazies, creditors and, now, the shadowy guru at the King of Pop’s side in his final days.”
Tohme, who claimed to hold a medical degree and to be an ambassador-at-large from Senegal (neither of which could be verified by reporters at the time), was close to Jackson in his final year before being fired a few months before Jackson died. Tohme was claiming credit for a Jackson rebound and demanding compensation. The estate sued him for enriching himself, while he countersued in an effort to get money.
Overall, the estate would employ twenty different law firms fending off the challenges or filing actions of their own on the estate’s behalf. One woman sued the Jackson estate for $50 million, claiming the singer had been stalking her for years and continued to do so even after he died. Another lawsuit sought a trillion dollars, alleging that Michael Jackson had stolen the plaintiff’s secret formula for a herpes cure. A third case, filed by a convicted criminal, sought a billion dollars and alleged the plaintiff had had an affair with Jackson in the 1970s which inspired his albums Thriller and Bad. There was also a three-million-dollar lawsuit filed by a local man who opposed spending taxpayer dollars on police needed to control the huge number of fans spilling into downtown Los Angeles for Michael Jackson’s memorial service at Staples Center, which was broadcast worldwide. It was tossed out of court.
The estate also had to fend off claims from a promoter, Howard Mann, who had purchased a number of Jackson’s personal items in a bankruptcy proceeding a few years earlier and now saw stunning upside in a museum tour. Mann had “cut his teeth in the titillation trade,” as one story in the Los Angeles Times put it, describing him as having dabbled in a startup for online gambling, featuring female porn stars as topless dealers, and a naked women’s wrestling league.
In the months after Jackson’s death, Mann had approached Katherine Jackson, offering her “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in return for her cooperation, he told the paper. The snag: Mrs. Jackson had no legal authority over the name, copyright, trademark, and intellectual property rights pertaining to Michael Jackson. All of that was under the control of the Jackson estate, which viewed Howard Mann’s plans as an infringement. Branca turned to the estate’s attorney Howard Weitzman of Kinsella Weitzman to go to court to stop the threat. Weitzman told the media, referring to Howard Mann, “His day is coming. The estate will take appropriate legal action.”
Branca and McClain were in a difficult and rather sensitive position. They didn’t want to show any disrespect for Michael Jackson’s mom, yet had to make it clear, in their dealings with the media, that the Jackson estate was in charge to avoid confusion in deals they were making for the benefit of the estate. Ultimately, the courts would side with the estate.
Branca and Team Jackson also had to fend off the Heal the World Foundation, which was a barely extant charity claiming to represent Michael Jackson. It popped up two days after his death, when a woman who had never met Michael, according to media reports, claimed to have won his okay to start a charity with the same name as one that he had let go dormant years earlier. It was funded in part by one Howard Mann.
Our side had to handle this gently, so we put out a statement emphasizing that this new foundation had, as an Associated Press story reported, “done little fundraising or charitable giving” and that it had “no relation to Michael Jackson’s charity that touched so many lives before becoming inactive several years before Michael’s death.” If the Jackson estate didn’t move against Heal the World, “others would be profiting from IP that rightfully belongs to Michael’s children.” Ultimately, lawyers for Katherine Jackson and the executors would broker a deal putting the Heal the World Foundation under control of the estate.
During Jim Bates’ tenure at Sitrick And Company, he has developed an expertise in entertainment, representing producers, studios, and celebrities and their estates. A former deputy entertainment editor at the Los Angeles Times, he has worked on dozens of entertainment cases while at Sitrick, from the estates of Michael Jackson and author Philip K. Dick to wrestler Hulk Hogan, producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, music producer Dr. Luke, the Screen Actors Guild, videogame giant Activision Blizzard, and the producers of The Wolf of Wall Street and the producer of Thomas the Tank Engine.
The biggest change Jim has seen over the years is rapid-fire pace of gossip items. It used to require a major new step to spark a follow-up story on some celebrity’s strife. Now every quarter-turn is worthy of an entire spate of stories, every response can generate a news item, and any follow-up response to that first response does the same. A star’s fleeting tweet becomes an entire story, sparking a flurry of other tweets that emanate like ripples from a pebble dropped into a pond.
Moreover, the accessibility of the net hands a megaphone to nobodies. Many people writing about celebrities have no sources at all, no contact with the famous or their representatives. They just retread and tweet every unsubstantiated rumor reported, even if it originated with a single website. Nevertheless, we have to deal with them. The public doesn’t necessarily differentiate between them and credible sources, and the appetite for celebrity news is so voracious that a report itself becomes the news event, regardless of the source. So we must respond with a counter-story on more fronts than ever before.
One of our first moves in the Jackson case was to quell the rumors regarding the will, though we didn’t take our usual tack of offering exclusive details to one Lead Steer reporter. Instead, we filed the will with the court, putting its entire contents in the public domain—and then, moments later, we sent out a copy of the entire contents of the will to every reporter covering the Jackson estate, so that they could get access to the real thing without having to visit a website, much less go to the courthouse to sift through probate records.
We wanted to show that the bizarre rumors were false, and that the will was legitimate and made perfect sense. The will stated clearly that Jackson’s assets were to go entirely to his three children. They would be cared for by Michael’s mother, who would be taken care of during her lifetime, and a portion of the assets would go to charity.
A Game-Changing Idea
One of Branca’s and McClain’s truly game-changing ideas came just days after Jackson died. The entertainer, renowned for his diligent preparation and striving for perfection, had his rehearsals filmed so he could review the progress, like an NFL coach looking at game films. As soon as Branca and McClain screened the footage, they knew: this could make a movie, a documentary tribute to Michael Jackson, the Performer. To direct the film, they tapped choreographer Kenny Ortega, already known as the architect of the Disney Channel’s enormously successful (and aptly titled) High School Musical franchise. Just four months later came the premiere of This Is It.
It revealed Jackson as a meticulous, concerned, full-on artist, demanding and exacting and, even though it was just a rehearsal, as riveting a performer as he had ever been. It reminded everyone of what we had admired most about Michael Jackson, and it crowded out the controversial imagery that had dogged him in the last years of his career.
It remains the top-grossing documentary of all time in worldwide box office, raking in more than $260 million. Additional sales to television channels and home video also were strong, adding up to over $500 million in total revenue driven by the film. All told, This Is It brought $200 million into the Jackson estate.
At the end of the film, as the credits roll, you will see the names of the key players on Branca and McClain’s team, including Jim Bates, Terry Fahn, and me. A typical Branca and McClain touch, and it meant a lot to all of us who had worked so hard to achieve the Jackson estate’s goals.
At Branca’s direction, and to the delight of all of us on Team Jackson, the film’s smash reception led to one touring show and one Las Vegas-based production based on Jackson’s musical oeuvre, played against the artistry of the acrobats in Cirque de Soleil. This produced another revenue stream and further rehabilitated the musician’s brand. Later, the estate signed Jackson’s longtime music partners at Sony to a $250 million deal to release seven new albums over the next decade, in one of the biggest music deals in industry history.
Early on in the Michael Jackson case, Branca realized that an important constituency had to be cultivated and cared for: Jackson’s millions of adoring fans. It struck him that the fan base fully looked to the Jackson estate to take the lead in restoring the name of Michael Jackson. To build ties to the fan base and mobilize it, Branca brought in extra help in the person of Jeff Jampol, a longtime talent manager and advisor. Jampol manages the estates of Janis Joplin, the Doors’ Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, the Ramones, Rick James, and quite a few more, keeping their income streams flowing by releasing new records, merchandising lines, and live theater tours. This requires maintaining close relations with longtime fans and cultivating new ones, and now he would turn to doing the same for the Jackson estate.
A “fan base” is a burden and an asset that few corporations—the Walt Disney Company being an exception—have to worry about. But in celebrity cases, you ignore fans at the expense of your client. For Branca and Team Jackson, we were able to harness fan outrage to derail a lurid, unauthorized cable TV documentary that we felt would be bad for the Jackson estate. In Europe, the Discovery Channel had begun promoting a tabloid program purported to be a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s autopsy. One ad featured a hospital gurney bearing a shrouded corpse with one hand exposed—wearing Jackson’s trademark glittery glove. In poor taste, at best.
A letter from co-executors Branca and McClain chastising Discovery executives for a program that was in “shockingly bad taste,” was “leaked somehow” to the fan base, and the story blew up . . . in a good way. The cable titan couldn’t afford fan controversy just then, given that it was close to launching the new Oprah channel, OWN. Two days later, Discovery shelved the autopsy program; it never appeared.
Overall, the rehabilitation of the Michael Jackson brand and his estate was a huge success thanks to the efforts of John Branca and his co-executor, John McClain, and the other members of Team Jackson.
With the spate of new deals, the Michael Jackson estate cut its half-billion-dollar debt in half and generated almost half a billion dollars in fresh income in the first three years after Jackson passed away. As a crowning move, in March 2016, Branca and the estate agreed to sell to Sony Corporation Michael Jackson’s 50 percent stake in Sony ATV Publishing, which he had owned since 1985. The price tag: $750 million. In this Internet era, which has destroyed much of the value in the music recording business, that is an astounding number.
Jackson, in the deal Branca had negotiated, had paid $41.5 million for the Beatles’ Apple catalog in 1985, or about $93 million in today’s dollars. Now the Jackson estate was selling it for $750 million, an eightfold return over thirty years. The stock market’s inflation-adjusted returns were up five-fold in the same period. Jackson’s copyrights thus performed 60 percent better than stocks, which are considered the best long-term investment of all.
The estate was giving up the copyrights and publishing income for three million songs, from “New York, New York,” “All You Need is Love,” and “You’ve Got a Friend” to the theme song from Mission: Impossible. Yet the estate was able to hold on to other music assets, including Jackson’s master recordings and publishing rights to all of the songs he wrote, such as “Beat It” and “Billie Jean,” and a 10 percent stake in Sony’s EMI Publishing worth well over $200 million.
The latest Sony deal allowed the estate to extinguish that last $250 million in debt, which had been owed to Sony from a loan Jackson had taken out to fix his faltering finances years earlier. It continues on solid footing, protecting the Jackson assets and the brand’s integrity.
Restoring a brand’s integrity can be a difficult feat to pull off for any celebrity under fire. It is important to recognize that a story often has eight sides to it, not just one or two, and often, somewhere beneath all the turmoil and accusations, is the real agenda—making money. Another motive often at work is revenge. A onetime insider and hanger-on, say, who left a celeb’s circle and is miffed to be on the outs. Nobody talking to the media is under oath, so plenty of people feel free to lie.
News—True or Not—Can Spread Before You Have a Chance to Respond
One of the biggest risks of celebrity scandal today is that the news—even when it is untrue—gets out incredibly quickly and spreads so rapidly on the web before anyone has had a chance to respond. While the reporter who broke the first story exposing something salacious might have given the target a chance to comment, that same target may not have been available for comment to other reporters on, say, a Saturday night at eight o’clock. Regardless of whether the subject of the story does get a chance to comment in the first story, dozens of other media outlets will often blithely pick up the story without seeking any further comment themselves. Thus, dozens and dozens of stories can go out with allegations that are not true but with no comment from the other side or with a comment that is incorrectly or misleadingly reported. For the follow-up stories, the speed of news on the web can trump any obligation to hold off until the target of a story can respond.
Making the charge itself, then, can be tantamount to convicting the celebrity. Unfairly, allegations alone can kill a career, even when they are untrue. Sometimes this means you must try to pull off a near-impossible feat: to kill a story outright, before it runs.
A “blind” case in point: some years ago, I got a call from the head of a film company, who was in the middle of producing a motion picture starring a beloved American actor then in his seventies. A damaging story was about to run in the Globe, he told me. “The Boston Globe?” I asked. No, the tabloid Globe, the grocery-stand celebrity Globe. It was about to report that the actor had advanced prostate cancer and had only months to live. The actor said the story wasn’t true, but he could say good-bye to any more acting jobs if this false account got published. “Here’s the name and telephone number of the reporter who called,” my caller said.
The Downside of “No Comment”
So I called up the reporter and introduce myself. “We have it on good authority that your client has advanced prostate cancer and has only months to live,” he said. How do you know? Have you seen his medical reports? “No,” the reporter replies, “but we saw him walking out of his oncologist’s office building, and the doctor there specializes in the worst cases of prostate cancer.” “Can you give me the address?” I asked. “Sure,” he said. So I called my client. It turned out that he was walking out of his internist’s office, which was in the same building. I called the reporter back and told him.
Now, here’s the thing: if I had insisted on leaving it at “no comment,” as some of the most respected PR advisors in this game are wont to do, this story would have run. The actor’s career would have been hurt, and he would have spent the next year denying he was dying. Instead, I got the facts. The Globe, I am happy to report, killed the story. It was all over in a weekend, and I had won another lifelong client.
This is the ideal: to make the problem go away so quietly and quickly as to make my services, at least in the crisis area, no longer necessary.
Still, killing a story where it lies, before it runs and despite all the expense, time, and effort some reporter has put into it, is a rare and difficult achievement. Most of the time it is impossible. The pre-emptive kill requires an arsenal of hard, incontrovertible facts—but, also, it requires good journalists who want to get it right. You will see both elements at center stage in the chapter that follows, on our efforts on behalf of a defense contractor that was in the gun-sights of a major TV news magazine.