Agreement with private equity owners of Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch will pay off celebrity photographer's previous $15m loan
Top photographer Annie Leibovitz has struck a deal with a private equity firm that will solve the financial crisis that threatened her with bankruptcy last year.
Under the agreement, Los Angeles-based Colony Capital will become Leibovitz's sole creditor. Colony will provide Leibovitz with a loan to pay off her previous borrowings, and work with her on future projects.
Crucially, the deal means that Leibovitz will retain the rights to more than 100,000 photos taken during a career which includes famous images of Demi Moore, Bruce Springsteen, and John Lennon – taken on the day he died.
Leibovitz's finances hit trouble last year, and by February 2009 she had borrowed $15.5m (£10.3m) from Art Capital Group, a company that lends money to art owners. To secure the loans she put up the rights to all her photographs as collateral, along with several houses she owned. But the deal quickly turned sour. In July, lawyers for Art Capital Group claimed that Leibovitz had reneged on a promise to sell her back catalogue to repay her debts, and sued her for $24m.
Media reports claimed Leibovitz was facing bankruptcy, but the two sides eventually reached an agreement to extend the lifetime of the loans. It appears that the deal with Colony will allow the celebrity snapper to pay off Art Capital Group without losing control of her life's work.
"Colony is a dedicated and creative team," said Leibovitz, according to the Financial Times. "We will be working on new projects and I will have the support and freedom necessary for nurturing my work and preserving my archive."
Colony is more usually involved with property deals. In 2008 it bought a loan on Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch, which left it with the rights to the 2,700-acre California estate.
Tom Barrack, who founded Colony, said his company would be "partners in managing her assets and her business so that Annie can spend her time and focus in pursuing her passion as only she can do".
Was Michael Jackson's son electroshocked by his cousin Jaafar? Or was it Jermajesty?
Attention all units: we have a situation developing in Encino, Los Angeles. Suspect is an armed minor who may have threatened another minor with a stun-gun. Uh, potential victim responds to the name of Blanket . . .
Readers, this week we have it all: 300,000-volt weaponry, bitter family factionalism and the quotidian threat of intra-grandchildren violence. The only possible location could be the Jackson family compound in suburban LA.
By the Jackson compound, of course, I do not mean Neverland, Michael Jackson's sprawling Santa Barbara ranch. That property has long been asset-stripped of fairground rides, giraffes and the miniature railway that constituted its transport infrastructure, while its erstwhile squire looks down from the great wishing tree in the sky, the mantle of weirdo public statements about privacy and comportment now passed anticlimactically to Tiger Woods.
No, we're talking about Hayvenhurst, the Jackson family HQ in Encino, which is occupied primarily by matriarch Katherine, along with various children, their spouses, ex-spouses, and a clutch of grandchildren including Prince Michael, Paris and little Blanket. It's your basic nuclear family (Chernobyl model).
In fact, think of the Jackson compound as a west coast version of that Camelot on Cape Cod, the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. In the role of Joe Kennedy we have Joe Jackson, controversial paterfamilias whose ferocious ambition saw him thrust his significantly more appealing sons upon the world stage, while he controlled things behind the scenes. Katherine is Rose Kennedy, obviously, while Michael could only be JFK. We are one Jackie Bouvier short of a picnic, I grant you, though there will be some suggesting Debbie Rowe. Shame on them. This column is not in the business of comparing the legendarily fragrant former first lady with an ungroomed horse-nut whose signature style appears to be stonewashed denim. Put on a tailored shift and giant shades, Debbie, or accept that passing Greek shipping magnates are going to assume you're crew, not second-wife material.
Anyhow. The week's news is that there is trouble in this earthly paradise. The LA County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has launched an investigation, after one Jaafar Jackson, 13, ordered a stun-gun off the internet. Accounts as to what happened next vary, from the family's official version that "all of the kids are happy, healthy and wonderful", to various insider sources who claim that the family's security team "stopped Jermaine's kids from stunning Blanket".
So who's Jaafar? Well, if you're having trouble keeping your Jackson progeny straight without flashcards, allow me to muddy things further. Jaafar's mother is Alejandra Jackson, who was originally in a relationship with Randy Jackson, with whom she had two children. However, her residence in the Jackson compound has been unbroken for 18 years, because she then went on to marry Randy's older brother Jermaine. With Jermaine she had two sons – Jaafar and Jermajesty.
Jer analysis is correct: the latter is the most brilliant name in showbiz.
Alejandra has since split from her second Jackson brother – Jermaine is now married to Halima Rashid – but she continues to live in the house as part of Jermaine's child support arrangements. However, in court documents filed last year, according to TMZ.com, Alejandra complained that most of the support money she received was from Katherine, often in the form of gift cards for Ralphs supermarket. Now sources are saying that Jaafar paid for the stun-gun online using Ralphs gift cards.
(While you digest that little instance of synchronicity, I should say that despite initial reports, the weapon should be classified as a generic electroshock gun, as Taser have pointed out that it wasn't one of their guns. Remember: Tasers don't stun people, kids do.)
At time of going to press, the LA social workers' investigation was still ongoing, so we can't be sure precisely how this little contretemps will shake down. Possibly unconnected is the suggestion that Michael's kids might cease being home-educated this year, and start attending a normal local school – which sounds as problematic an idea as releasing that SeaWorld orca with behavioural problems into the wild at this stage in its career. I can't help feeling Free Blanket would end on less of an "up" than Free Willy.
Still, we must salute the Jackson family lawyer who, having spent ages insisting there was nothing to see here, rashly announced on Wednesday: "There is no second stun-gun." Aha! Finally the "second stun-gunman" theory makes its debut. Lost in Showbiz just knew Jermajesty's bedroom was this story's grassy knoll, and hereby refuses to accept all future findings of those Earl Warrens at the DCFS. Who Didn't Taser Blanket? is officially this year's conspiracy theory.
Post-Glee, it's not unusual for two versions of the same song to duke it out. But, asks Priya Elan, who remembers the other Blame It On The Boogie?
There's a chequered history of different artists releasing the same song and battling it out for chart supremacy. Most recently, Don't Stop Believin' gut-punched the zeitgeist thanks to geordie Joe McElderry doing it on The X Factor, before scoring a British chart double with the Glee cast's buffed-to-perfection rendition, and Journey's resurrected original. And who could forget 1987's When I Fall In Love battle when Nat King Cole's velvet-voiced original was re-released at the same time as a virtual karaoke take unleashed by Stock Aitken & Waterman teaboy-done-good Rick Astley? Similar scenes have happened with Hallelujah, Where Did Our Love Go?, You've Lost That Loving Feeling, not to mention 1964's bloody bun fight between Dionne Warwick and Cilla Black over Anyone Who Had A Heart.
For the most part, we only remember the victors, and that's certainly the case with the so-called "Battle Of The Boogie", the story of which is documented in a new Channel 4 film. It's the story of the two Blame It On The Boogies which fought it out in 1978, one by the Jacksons and the other by the co-author of the song, who was called, rather confusingly, "Mick" Jackson.
In The Other Michael Jackson, rent-a-gurner Pete Waterman tells us (in typical OTT style) that Mick's story is "what can go wrong in the music industry". That and the Reynolds Girls, Pete.
Yorkshire-born Mick had had some minor chart success, but Blame It On The Boogie was poised to be his big breakthrough. Unbeknown to him, though, his publisher sold the rights to the song to Joe Jackson, who was in search of edgier material for his boys. In terms of where the song fell in the Jacksons' own narrative, they'd just left Motown and needed to shake off the stench of Michael's cheesy smash Ben ("A song about a dead rat," an A&R helpfully points out), in order to make a splash at new label CBS. And what could be better than the disco-tastic Blame It On The Boogie?
The two versions were released a week apart, dividing press and radio; London's Capital sided with Mick, Radio 1 with Jacko; Tony Blackburn ungallantly says Mick looked "like one of the Wurzels'" as the film cuts to a clip of a hirsute Mick bopping about with a sad tambourine on Top Of The Pops. And when we're played Mick's version – the absolute embodiment of the late-70s "honky does disco" genre; Leo Sayer by way of the Muppets' Rowlf The Dog – it's clearly no match for the Jacksons' masterful take.
Anyone who's watched VH1's Behind The Music will be familiar with the next part of the tale; Mick never saw any royalties despite the track's success. He was caught up in litigation with his publisher for two years while the Jacksons rode the disco boom. "It felt like being in prison," he says.
Today he's seemingly regret-free, writing songs that are "big in Russia, China and Japan", which he says with a laugh, bless him. He's "fortunate to not have had any family tragedies or health problems" which, he concedes, is a bigger deal than any "silly pop song". Clearly he's reached a level of contentment that his one-time chart rival never could, which is some sort of victory in itself.
Be it the zombie flick Colin at £40 or Avatar at £280m plus, we are always informed of a film's budget these days and required to somehow factor it into our appreciation – although the tickets always cost the same. Here, at least, the price tag is relevant. Reading's Peter Strickland funded this with £25,000 of his inheritance – a truly independent feature film. His plans for this grim, atmospheric revenge tale included shooting it in Transylvania in Hungarian/Romanian languages that he didn't even speak at the time. It starts off with the titular character and her son being thrown out of town by her husband, who has found out something mysterious and apparently unforgivable about her past. As they set off for Katalin's mother's house, which may or may not even exist, pursued by men who may or may not be the police, secrets are gradually revealed. There's nothing in the film to indicate it was the work of a first-time director with little money and no actual experience. What it does have is a great story, plus it's full of memorable images and well acted; you know, the things money can't buy.
Hindsight being 20/20, it's easy to assume the painfully thin Jackson seen here wouldn't have made it through the 50 London dates he was planning. All that's left of his "comeback" is this film of his rehearsals, stitched together with interviews with the director (High School Musical's Kenny Ortega), the band and dancers. Jackson may be conserving his energy, but seeing him hit all his marks and moves without even really trying just highlights his natural grace and talent. Although this is only "accidentally" a film, it's nonetheless a fascinating look at the assembly of a world-class live music production, and a candid portrait of a working megastar calmly and politely in control. Despite the whole exercise being a sort of extended DVD extra – a Making Of for a show that was never actually made – there are also extras, or extra extras if you like. Obviously, there's only a finite pool of footage to draw from, and this particular barrel is scraped clean. Unused background CGI vignettes and unfinished rehearsal footage are shown, and you get a couple of hours of all the gushing tributes that were largely absent from the main feature. Everyone gets a chance to say a) how much they've loved Jackson all their life, and b) what a shame it was their hard work never saw the light of day. Only the musicians, who were perhaps privy to more unguarded moments with their boss, have anything interesting to say, but it's hard not to begrudge all of those involved for grabbing a little glory after Jackson's death proved the ultimate showstopper.
Jennifer's Body
Megan Fox releases her man-eating inner demon in this erratic but articulate teen horror.
DVD & Blu-ray, Fox
The Beaches Of Agnès
Agnès Varda's freeform autobiographical work, full of archive clips and imaginative flourishes.
DVD, Artificial Eye
City Girl
Murnau's little-known companion piece to Sunrise, a pastoral romance set in Minnesota.
Blu-ray, Eureka
The Yes Men Fix The World
The pranksters take on corporate evildoers.
DVD, Dogwoof
Up
Pixar's latest, lovable treat, a balloon adventure that's also a sentimental journey.
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