Now that the lawsuit against AEG didn’t end too well, Katherine Jackson is taking matters into her own hands, at least when it comes to the legacy and memory of her son, Michael Jackson. The matriarch, in partnership with co-executive producer, Terry Kunimune, is looking to complete a tribute documentary called “Remembering Michael,” a visual montage filled with heart-warming anecdotes and rare photos from her personal collection, and many untold stories by his friends and family. Due to the high-costs of licensing, the 83-year-old mother of 10 has decided to reach out to Michael’s fans for financial support via a crowd-funding campaign. She’s looking to raise $3.2M on FundAnything.com.
The documentary also sheds light on intimate details about the King of Pop’s personal life through the eyes of his children.
“It took me until I was, like, six years old, to learn that his name was Michael Jackson. He was always ‘daddy’ to me,” Jackson’s oldest son, Prince, 16, says in the documentary.Jackson’s youngest child, 11-year-old Blanket, also speaks publicly for the first time about his future aspirations. “I’m going to try to help, like Africa, because that’s a very poor continent,” Blanket says. “There’s a lot of animals that are being killed from, like, poachers and stuff. So, I want to help, like, endangered species of animals.”Paris, 15, describes the great lengths her father went to protect the children’s privacy. Their secluded upbringing included wearing veils and masks in public. “We didn’t know a lot of kids, like, our age,” she says. “We were more secluded. We never really left the ranch that often.”
“[Katherine] really wanted to fund this without asking any of the people around her, including the Michael Jackson estate, for funding,” Kirk Schenck, producer of “Remembering Michael,” told ABC News.
The children believe, sometimes, that Jackson’s eccentric lifestyle and behavior were misunderstood. “It’s not right to invade someone’s privacy like that,” Blanket says. In one scene from the preview, Prince talks about how his father pushed the children to be great. “He wanted us to always … be greater at it than anybody else had ever been,” Prince said.
A sneak peek from “Remembering Michael”:
