Okay, stop tape! Here we have a 44-year-old man sitting there in full glamour face -- lipstick, eyeliner, wig -- surrounded by blow-up photos of Michael and oil paintings of Michael, including one in which his face has been superimposed on the body of Apollo and he is being mobbed by cupids with the faces of -- no, not the usual generic putti -- but the specific, well-observed features of real freaking children, and the man is saying:

He...Never...Looks...In...A...Mirror!

It's moments like these, more than any of Bashir's ominous voiceovers, that make me understand the lines, "You've got to climb to the top of Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls."

When Michael claims a total of two -- repeat -- two surgeries, both of them nosejobs "so I could sing higher;" when he confides that his favorite thing is "climbing trees...water balloon fights" ("Not making love!" cries Bashir, scandalized); when he says he wants to adopt "two children from every continent" (a bizarre and Biblical idea, worthy of Noah) -- when he says these things and I see the moist conviction in his eyes I get a hit of the thin, mercurial air that's up there in Neverland, the giddy lightheadedness you must feel when you're surrounded exclusively by people who never say no to you.

Many a fabuloso turn is taken in the documentary thanks to this high-altitude snowblindness. There comes that moment, for instance, when Bashir becomes unexpectedly tough: "But -- don't you think your children should have their mother around?"

The pop-star is suddenly bewildered. "No... Why?"

"Well, because..."

"Oh, you don't understand," Michael now speaks confidently, about to settle the matter. "Their mother gave them to me. As a present."

It is on this same aerial plateau, where the passing vapors are few, that we come upon my favorite scene in the documentary: The dizzy shopping spree in Las Vegas. Michael, we learn, goes shopping in casinos for -- of all things -- objects d'art: Sky-blue urns festooned in garlands of solid-gold acanthus, Apollos being bathed by nymphs, chess sets in Napoleonic attire, replicas of Tutankhamen's sarcophagus in hammered bronze. And it's pandemonium in the store as the owner races about, clipboard in hand, while Michael shoots out his forefingers this way and that. "I want these...these...these... yoohoo, is this on the list? Well, then I want it...and this desk...these..." In under 20 minutes, he spends one million very silly dollars.

Actually, the whole Vegas section is pretty breathtaking. An image I can not get out of my mind takes place outside his hotel, in an alley. Michael appears under the black umbrella that he always carries now to shield his fragile skin from the sun. He is being tugged along by his children, Prince Michael the First and Paris Michael, the girl child. The children are particularly fantastical this day. In their big, black butterfly masks, they look like two purgatorial demons pulling Michael through a Bosch landscape of Nevada glare. The only thing missing is Vincent Price's cackle from the Thriller video.

The pop star is now met by two fans, whom we see reflected in his mirrored aviators. They babble on about All Things Michael as he beams down from his umbrella.

We have seen this sort of fan rapture before, in the documentary's Berlin passage:

In Berlin, girls run up to him with photos of German babies that make him squeal like a delighted piglet; a handsome man of about 24 sticks his head in the window of the limousine and pleads "Michael, take me back to your hotel room...I came all the way from Israel to meet you!"; another man (not a boy but a grown man) jumps in front of the swerving limousine and does the Michael moves -- crotch-grab, snarl, kung-fu kick -- (more squealing from the backseat). And then there are the many lost souls who collapse into sobs and professions of love when -- simply to be obliging -- Michael agrees to hug them.

Some fans give him paintings; some, poems. Others ask about Bubbles, the chimp Michael used to dress in outfits to match his own, usually General Kaddafi numbers with military braid and red side sashes. The boys and girls are relieved to learn that Michael, who has real babies to dress now, has shipped the chimp off to an animal sanctuary.

How their simple joy might be magnified if only they knew that Bubbles has been immortalized by the Pop Artist Jeff Koons. Koons has recreated the beloved simian in life-size ceramic, seated on Michael's knee, the two of them dolled up in makeup and gold paint, as part of the artist's Banality series.

such good value over the years, and so much fun! Who knows that he is not as he says, a gentle soul who gives his bed to sick boys and sleeps on the floor -- a gesture reminiscent of certain French legends, of St. Vincent de Paul, who was said to take off his shoes in the snow and give them to beggars.

In Michael, the mystery of sex -- the little that remains of it -- gets fused with the more colonial mystery of race, and he confounds us anew, being neither fish nor fowl, but all things at once. In a wonderful American way, he has willed into being an entirely novel identity that has nothing to do with the details of his birth.

The rest of us, like Martin Bashir, are reduced to irrelevant commentary.

But, hey, I won't let that stop me.

Let's end with a prediction. Or is it simply an observation?: Michael Jackson has become a sort of Judy Garland. The way she was at the end. Bigger than Life, Scarier than Death. I see him performing on a stark stage eventually, in front of fans who, having stuck with him this far, will only grow more proprietary. Like Judy, he will give his all, nightly, in front of banked light bulbs that spell out his name -- except his JUDY lights will say JACKO. Yes, in the end, he will actually develop a sense of humor. He will turn his bad rep into a merit badge.

Memo to Paris Michael:
Sweetheart, what ever happens to Dad, we don't need another Liza Minnelli. Go into Law. Go into Real Estate.

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John Calendo is a frequent contributor to Nightcharm and our new Pop Critic @ Large. His work has appeared in Playboy, Blueboy and boy oh boy everything in between. 

© 2003 Nightcharm, Inc. and John Caliendo.
All photography by John Calendo. © 2003 John Calendo.