John Branca

  This article originally appeared here https://variety.com/2019/music/news/documentary-panel-ucla-usc-michael-jackson-1203234436/  The controversy over HBO’s “ Leaving Neverland ” is part of a bigger debate that goes back a good century. Film scholars have been arguing about the reality, truth and objectivity of the documentary film since at least Robert Flaherty’s pioneering 1922 epic “Nanook of the North,” and probably all the way back to Thomas Edison’s “Sneeze” kinescope, according to International Documentary Association director Carrie Lozano. Lozano was one of the panelists for “Truth Be Told? Documentary Films Today,” a discussion that brought together two rival schools as sponsors; the UCLA School of Law Ziffren Center and USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism combined forces to co-host the event Tuesday night on the UCLA campus. Moderated by UCLA School of Law’s First Amendment expert Dale Cohen (pictured above, left), the panel also included p...

  John Branca Tales of John Branca’s business acumen are plentiful. How he turned  Michael Jackson ’s over-budget “Thriller” music video production into a lucrative behind-the-scenes documentary. How he secured for Jackson the coveted  Beatles  publishing catalog. How he helped Jackson purchase Neverland ranch for $40 million less than the asking price. How 10 years after Jackson’s death, he and the estate’s other executor John McClain — a childhood friend of the Jacksons who went on to manage sister  Janet  ‘s career and was a founding executive at Interscope Records — built the artist’s music catalog into a $570 million asset. Now ,  after HBO’s March airing of filmmaker Dan Reed’s  Leaving Neverland  — with its disturbing and graphic first-person accounts of Jackson’s pedophilia — John Branca, 68, faces a new and arguably much more daunting challenge: protecting Jackson’s legacy and the successful businesses that it fuels from fallout over...