From ‘Bad’ to Worse?

Producers of “Motown on Showtime: Michael Jackson,” the Buckled One’s retrospective from Motown Productions, are scrambling to make the special’s March 12 air date--expecting to deliver a final tape just four days before broadcast. Exec producer Jackson’s indecisiveness about the format has put the cable special--now two years in the making and without a definite title at this writing--through four creative teams and over its $1 million budget, according to supervising producer Burl Hechtman.

Anson Williams, who wrote one of the many abandoned scripts and was to co-produce, told us, “They couldn’t figure out how to make the show work.” Williams wanted to look at Jackson’s career through the eyes of three fans--each aged 10 years apart--who would talk about how Jackson’s music had inspired them. “Showtime and Motown loved it, but all of a sudden, he decided to change direction,” Williams said without rancor. “Michael decided to go back to a slicker format. It turned back into a clip show and that is not very creative. I had to bow out.”

The one-hour retrospective will now recount Jackson’s career through film and videotape footage, from the discovery of the Jackson Five to the present. Jackson decided not to be interviewed for the special, causing more limitations.

“He wanted the special to be looking at his career, not his life,” Hechtman explained. “It’ll be looking at his life historically, not personally.”