They Don't Work for Michael Jackson Now, But Hope to Clean Up
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
SANTA MARIA, Calif.
Whosoever works for Michael Jackson, it seems, also works Michael Jackson.
As the prosecution concludes its case this week in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial, it has proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson's home, Neverland ranch, was a shady place to work -- a hotbed of intrigue and petty theft, disgruntled employees and hangers-on. When workers weren't stealing candy from Neverland, or peeking at each other's paychecks, they were getting fired and suing Jackson for millions, selling his "kinky sex secrets" to tabloids and writing tell-all books.
Neverland employees could not form friendships among themselves, Jackson's former chef testified at one point: "Everyone was spying on each other."
This is Phillip LeMarque, who -- according to a prosecution document -- spent seven years running a pornographic Web site called Virtual Sin. He is not to be confused with the Jackson business associate who once produced porn videos, Marc Schaffel.
Criminal trials often attract seedy characters, but the drama playing out on California's central coast is especially dark. "I've never seen a case like this," says Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor and former prosecutor who's been following the case closely. "Nearly every witness has a major credibility issue."
That is to say nearly every witness is working an angle. Debbie Rowe, mother of two of Jackson's three children, said last week that her eccentric ex was surrounded by "opportunistic vultures." There's the former publicist, Bob Jones, who's hoping to make money off a book about working with Jackson, and chef LeMarque, who's doing the same. There's the band of former employees who sued Jackson for wrongful termination, hoping for millions. (They lost and were ordered to pay him more than $1 million instead.)
There's the mother of the accuser, who exercised her Fifth Amendment right not to testify about allegations she committed welfare fraud. There's the mother of another boy allegedly molested by Jackson, who says she let the pop star sleep in her son's bed, and that Jackson gave her jewelry and a $7,000 gift certificate.
Adrian Marie McManus, one of Jackson's former maids, stakes out a narrow morality when she takes the stand. Yes, she testifies, she sold quotes for a tabloid story about Jackson's "kinky sex secrets," but she didn't actually know any kinky sex secrets, so maybe the tabloid misquoted her. Yes, she was part of the gang that sued Jackson, but only after "the harassment and the death threats," which included a Jackson associate asking her about her underwear. Yes, she took a sketch Jackson supposedly made of Elvis Presley, but she never took commemorative Pepsi cans or laundry baskets filled with Jackson's clothes. Yes, she and her husband were once found by a judge to have defrauded a relative's children of money from their estate, but . . . well, this one isn't explained.
Where should our sympathies lie? We look at the witness, plump and calm, sucking complacently on a piece of candy. We look at Jackson, shrunken into his suit, his elfin mask expressionless. These are our choices? We look back at the witness. For some reason, she's being asked about Jackson's monkeys.
"Did you ever have to clean up monkey droppings?" prosecutor Ron Zonen wants to know.
Yes, McManus says. "Not on the floor but on the walls."
"On the walls?" Zonen asks.
"Sometimes monkeys get wild," McManus says.
In this trial, it seems, the stink is everywhere.
We know the type of person who sucks at the teat of celebrity.
We have watched "E! True Hollywood Story." We have browsed, even bought, the supermarket tabloids. We may sneer at the people quoted inside -- the disgruntled cook, the guy who knew Tom Cruise's cousin in third grade. But if we ever got close to a celebrity, perhaps we, too, would want something out of the encounter. An autograph. The sweat of someone famous on our hand. That these people still hold a fascination for us suggests we still believe in the magic that is celebrity. Given the chance, we might all be hangers-on, we might all have a little Kato Kaelin inside of us.
It's because of this trend, which one publicist labels "tabloid culture creep," that celebrities often investigate the backgrounds of potential employees before hiring them. They also have their employees -- nannies, drivers, personal assistants, office workers -- sign confidentiality agreements. When he ran for governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger required his campaign staff to sign them, according to the Los Angeles Times. A former producer for Oprah Winfrey's company signed one, too, and when she tried to write a book about the talk host in 1998, Oprah's lawyers stopped her. This not just about privacy. Image is income in this business.
The best kind of confidentiality agreement, according to entertainment lawyers, is many pages long, remains in effect indefinitely (even past the death of the celebrity), and requires the employee to pay money if she or he violates it. Entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, who once represented Jackson and has represented Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, says his agreements will often include a "liquidated damages" section. This requires that the violator pay the celebrity what was earned from talking to a tabloid or writing a tell-all, as well as a certain amount (say, $50 or $100) per copy of tabloid or book published. Consider: The National Enquirer's weekly circulation is 1.5 million.
There are even confidentiality agreements for the employees of people employed by famous people.
"Every employee, whether you're an intern, whether you're a driver, whether you're my hairdresser, has to sign a confidentiality agreement," says Lizzie Grubman, who runs a boutique PR agency that has represented Britney Spears. That's to prevent the people Grubman knows from repeating what she's said about the people she knows. Not to mention her own personal business.
Grubman, of course, had her own rather public scandal back in 2001 when she backed her SUV into a crowd outside a Hamptons nightclub, injuring 16 people. She pleaded guilty, spent 37 days in jail and then got her own reality show on MTV.
There it is again, the magic of celebrity.
We don't know much about Jackson's policy with regard to confidentiality agreements. Rowe testified that she signed one after her divorce from the singer, while Jones, his publicist of 16 years, testified last month that he never signed one. In some of the Neverland security logs shown to the jury (which reveals a visit by Al Sharpton and quite a few by Marlon Brando's son Miko, a sometime Jackson employee), there was a column indicating who needed to sign confidentiality agreements and who didn't. It was often left blank.
Did everyone want something out of Michael Jackson? The defense would have us think so. While lead prosecutor Tom Sneddon argues that Jackson masterminded everything, shuffling his accuser and the boy's family around like chess pieces, the defense suggests that whatever Jackson's associates did or didn't do, the pop star was out of the loop. From this perspective, Jackson is a sort of lonely, brilliant king, victimized by the people around him, who takes walks late at night and perches in a tree for inspiration.
Still, the prosecution has numbers on its side. As legal analysts point out, the jury would have to believe an awful lot of witnesses are lying in a rather coordinated fashion in order to believe that Jackson is telling the truth.
"Just because somebody's got possibly some sort of ulterior motive doesn't mean they're lying," says Jean Rosenbluth, a law professor at the University of Southern California.
Whatever Jackson's employees did or didn't sign is beside the point right now. Entertainment lawyers say a subpoena to testify in a criminal trial most likely takes precedence over a confidentiality agreement.
This is why there's so much we know now that we wish we didn't. That Michael Jackson keeps bare-breasted S&M-themed female dolls on a desk in his office.
That he supposedly wears tighty-whities.
"Michael's coming," a fan in the courtroom whispers one morning. The defendant floats toward his seat, his feet seeming barely to touch the ground, his arms not moving, as if he's afraid of disturbing the air. Everything about him seems fragile, especially since he reported hurting his back in March. Sometimes he leans on a bodyguard to walk. Sometimes he sits with a back cushion. Often, he wears sandals or shiny satin pants, as if normal clothes are too abrasive for such a sensitive man.
Sometimes his parents sit behind him, though of everyone in the courtroom, the person Jackson most resembles is the defense attorney to his right, Susan Yu, a petite Asian woman. They have a similar pallor and cheekbones and haircut. She is slender. He is skeletal. He wears brighter lipstick.
We look for clues to his guilt or innocence in his demeanor, but he gives none. We ask questions when he leaves, but he's under a gag order and says things like "I love my mother."
We wonder what sort of damage this trial is doing to his image, or if the damage was done years ago.
At the heart of the trial are serious questions: Did Jackson molest a 13-year-old former cancer patient? Did he and his associates conspire to imprison the boy's family, to force them to participate in his image-enhancement campaign, and then to make preparations to shuttle them off to Brazil?
But on a day-to-day basis in court, what has come through most during the prosecution's portion of the trial is a monumental pettiness. Did a maid steal some of Michael Jackson's Super Soaker guns, or did she not? Did another maid send a photo of Jackson's tiger to "Hard Copy"?
Why does one of Jackson's aides, a guy named Frank Tyson, talk in the same whispery falsetto as his boss? Is he borrowing a little of that celebrity magic for himself?
There is the matter of a waxing appointment. The accuser's mother went to a salon during the period she claims she was imprisoned by the Jackson camp. Lead defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. claims she had a "body wax." He says the phrase over and over in a dry, emphatic voice, as if holding a dead animal at arm's length. Body wax. What sort of a prisoner gets a body wax? Could it be the sort who's not really a prisoner, who's eager to hang around a celebrity and experience a little of the lifestyle herself? Could there be anything more frivolous, more vaguely seamy than a body wax?
"He keeps continuously saying 'body wax,' " the mother tells the jury in a huffy voice. "It was only a leg wax."