Producer (3 page)

I don’t know if you know this, but Deepak was very close to Michael.

This was news to me. I shot out a thank-you e-mail to Lisa and got Deepak Chopra on the phone. I knew Deepak well, I respected
him and his opinions, and he agreed to appear on the show the very next day. During that call, he stated to me in no uncertain
terms, by the way, that he believed that drugs administered by licensed medical doctors had killed Michael. I scribbled down
some of his comments as he told me that Michael had been taking a drug called Diprivan that was so powerful, it was only used
in operating rooms. It created an effect that was about as close to dying as a person could get, and when someone was on the
drug, they needed to be closely monitored in case they needed to be brought back from the throes of death. Deepak was furious
at the doctors who he
said he believed had administered such dangerous medications to Michael in his home without proper monitoring. He told me
that Michael liked getting dangerously close to death and then brought back.

In a few minutes, Jonathan Klein, president of CNN, called me to confirm tonight’s show and ask if we could run for a straight
two hours with reruns at midnight and at 3 a.m. We agreed. This was a rare evening when I did not have dinner with my children.
I stayed in my office and when Larry was ready to go on the air, we had booked enough star-studded guests, all stunned and
upset by the death, to fill the show.

We started with Dr. Prediman K. Shah, Director of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Then we went on to singer-musicians
Smokey Robinson, Céline Dion, Cher, Aaron Neville, Donna Summer, and J. C. Chasez. We had Tommy Mottola, former Sony music
executive, Suzanne de Passe from Motown who had discovered the Jackson Five, and Shelly Berger, former manager of the Jackson
Five. Larry also interviewed Kara Finnstrom, Ted Rowlands, and Richard Roth, all CNN correspondents, and Carlos Diaz, correspondent
for
Extra
. Everyone had something to say.

We also had Thea Andrews from
Entertainment Tonight.

KING:
At the UCLA Medical Center, which is, by the way, a two-billion-dollar edifice, much of it named in honor of the late Ronald
Reagan, Thea Andrews stands by. She’s an
Entertainment Tonight
correspondent. Still crowds there?

ANDREWS:
Many crowds, Larry. There are thousands of people here on all sides of the medical center. As you said, it’s a huge facility.
It takes up more than a whole city block. Getting here, trying to find your cameras was hard, because there are so many news
people out here, thousands
of crowds, helicopters buzzing overhead, and, of course, many supporters of Michael Jackson, many people devastated by this
loss.

KING:
What has the hospital said?

ANDREWS:
The hospital has been mum. They haven’t released a statement yet. What I can tell you is that
ET
has exclusively obtained the last photos of Michael Jackson, as he was being removed by paramedics from his home. As you
heard earlier, it’s very close to here, about six minutes away.

He was in full cardiac arrest. Paramedics attempted to revive him during transport here to the hospital, and they continued
to attempt to revive him inside the emergency room. Obviously, they were not successful. But as you see the photo—I don’t
know if you have the photo up there, Larry. They’re attempting to revive Michael. His eyes are closed.

KING:
How did you get that photograph?

ANDREWS:
I don’t know, Larry. You’ll have to ask my executive producer.

KING:
That’s a heck of a job of reporting. We’ll be checking back with you.

Also that night, Larry interviewed Randy Jackson from
American Idol
, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and actor Corey Feldman. Two Jackson fans named Cheryl and Melvin came on the air,
and musicians Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Sheryl Crow, and Kenny Rogers called in. It was an impressive lineup as we checked in
with people from all over the country and the world who were devastated and shocked by the sudden death of the self-declared
King of Pop.

Cher called in and said, “You know, I was just sitting here listening to you talk. And I’m having a million different reactions.
Things that I didn’t expect I would feel. When I think of him, I think of this young boy, that teenager that I first met.
This adorable boy that I met who, you know, loved to look at my beaded socks. Yes, he was a great singer. You know, it’s like
God gives you certain gifts. And some people he gives different gifts, and some people he gives more gifts. And this child
was just an extraordinary child, touched by this ability to have people feel him and feel people. And he just had that sense
that you get, and you don’t get it from a living person. You get it from someplace else. He had it.”

Céline told Larry on the phone, “I am shocked like the rest of the world. It doesn’t sink in right now. I’m overwhelmed by
this tragedy. I have to say that Michael Jackson’s been an idol for me all my life. I remember being in my house when I was
very, very young and having his posters above my bed. He’s been my idol all my life, I looked up to him, and my goal was to
be maybe doing the same show business world as him.”

And Liza Minnelli called in and said, “Oh, Larry, I couldn’t believe it, honey. I got a call at two o’clock in the morning
from a lawyer telling me that he’s gone into cardiac arrest. They said he had been complaining of chest pains, you know? He
changed show business. He hit with a force that was spectacular as he started to grow up. And then he grew and grew and grew.
All the time. He grew all the time.”

Talk about flying by the seat of our pants, we were actually booking guests while the show was on the air. Larry would say,
“We just got this person on the phone,” and he would launch into an interview with no preparation whatsoever. Michael’s death
finally felt real to me when I saw the live picture of the helicopter that was transporting his body to the morgue. And the
news just kept on coming.

As the story unfolded, I noticed a rhythm that is often
present when we are dealing with breaking news. It actually takes on a whole different feel than a prepared show has when
you know exactly what you are covering and with whom. With breaking news, you are constantly getting new information and an
energy takes over as the story unfolds in a natural way. That was the case with the Michael Jackson story as we began to let
the incoming news items guide us.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I went to tuck my kids into bed. Then it was back to my office, but now I was using
my large office in another portion of the house that had been converted into a state-of-the-art newsroom with a dozen screens
that allowed me to check breaking news on all the cable and broadcast networks, national and international. The news about
Michael was spreading fast all over the world, and global reactions were pouring in about the shocking and untimely death
of this musical icon.

By 2 a.m. it was all over—at least for the day. This was a story that would not end with a single day of coverage or even
a week. I knew it would go on and on as accusations of drug overdoses and finger-pointing at so-called unscrupulous doctors
began to dominate the conversations, along with relentless reports of Michael’s bizarre and unhealthy lifestyle. And then
there were rumors about Debbie Rowe, one of Michael’s ex-wives, the mother of his two oldest children.

I dropped into bed exhausted and amazed that, once again, I had made it through a day that dealt me so many dips and turns
I should have gotten seasick. After all, I had awakened with one show in mind and had booked three more before Larry went
on the air. I’d answered thousands of e-mails, much more than my usual number, I had taken care of my kids, and we had all
done our jobs. And the show had gone on.

The next night Deepak was among our guests. Here is a
segment of his interview, staggering in its directness and in Deepak’s commitment to be the first person who dared to speak
about this.

CHOPRA:
In 1988, he [Michael] called me out of the blue and asked me to teach him meditation. I went to Neverland and we had a weekend
together and became friends since that.

KING:
What was he like?

CHOPRA:
Magical. First time I met him, he was magic. He had a jukebox in his studio, with the traditional coins. So, we threw in a
few coins and he said, choose the music. And I chose “Saturday Night Fever” and he started to dance…

KING:
You complained, though, today about people around him. You’ve been very open and been critical of what?

CHOPRA:
Well, in 2005, after the trial, Michael came and spent a week with me. And out of the blue he asked me for a prescription,
knowing that I’m a doctor and I have a license, too. It was a prescription for a narcotic. I said, wait, why would you want
a prescription for a narcotic? It suddenly dawned on me that he was getting a lot of prescriptions from a lot of people.

KING:
Was he an addict?

CHOPRA:
Yes, he was.

KING:
Did people around him encourage that addiction?

CHOPRA:
Yes, more so his doctors.

KING:
Didn’t he have migraine headaches, though? Wasn’t he in a lot of pain?

CHOPRA:
He was in pain. But there are many ways to manage pain. Even if you’re on narcotics, there’s a way to manage narcotics.

KING:
Did he take a lot of pills and stuff?

CHOPRA:
I know for a fact that he did. I saw bottles of OxyContin. I knew he was getting shots. I knew his doctors were enablers. What can I say? I confronted him many times with it. When I did, he would stop returning my calls until we changed the topic.

KING:
Lisa Marie Presley, his ex-wife, writes on her MySpace blog that Michael once told her he was afraid he would end up lik her father. Did he talk about that?

CHOPRA:
He did… I’m discussing the problems in the medical profession which enables this kind of addiction. It’s become a tradition in Hollywood.

KING:
You’re blaming the medical profession.

CHOPRA:
Of course. There’s a coterie of doctors right here in Hollywood that like to hang around celebrities. They perpetuate their habit. They make them drug addicts. We’ve got to really investigate this.

Deepak was the first to tell it like he believed it to be. When he went on the air and said what he did about the medical
profession, people were enraged at him and they wanted to kill the messenger. But it came out later that Michael had had countless
interventions that clearly did no good at all. And in the end, when Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael’s primary doctor, was arrested
for involuntary manslaughter, everyone had to admit that Deepak’s suspicions may not have been unfounded.

Over the next few weeks, while we continued to cover this monumental death, it seemed as if a never-ending flurry of celebrities
were dying. The list includes: David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite, Ed McMahon, Robert Novak,
Ted Kennedy, Dominick Dunne, DJ AM, and Patrick Swayze. We covered these deaths as best we could on
Larry King Live
, making sure we were honoring most of the
people on this long list. In fact, the viewing audience tuned in to our show for that very reason. With so many deaths occurring
and so much public grieving, they needed a place where they knew their favorite personalities would be given their due. That
was how people looked at our show.

And yet, a piece appeared in
Vanity Fair
magazine, in September 2009, written by James Wolcott, criticizing Larry. In a snarky, critical tone, this writer called
the show “the funeral parlor for the gods.” He called Larry “America’s chief mourner and grief counselor,” and criticized
him for “assuming the indispensable role of designated mourner to the stars, tollbooth collector at the last stop before the
Hereafter, pallbearer beyond compare.”

By the end, the author conceded that we needed Larry to help us get through these things. I suppose it was a backhanded compliment
to have an entire article devoted to us in
Vanity Fair
, but the nature of the article was so negative, it implied we were doing it incorrectly. And then, this writer only referred
to the deaths of Farrah, Michael, David Carradine, and Ed McMahon. What if he had waited until all ten celebrities were gone?
What would he have said then? While we honored the rest of the people who had passed, should we have left out Teddy Kennedy?
Or what about Walter Cronkite?

The truth is that millions of viewers have their eyes and ears trained on our show every single evening. When someone of importance
in this country dies, the public assumes that Larry will have something to say about it. I take it as a compliment and a responsibility.
These deaths were very important to the general public.

No matter what occurs and when, there is no crystal ball to tell us which direction we should take. There is no instruction
book to turn to or anyone who has the answers. It’s basically
up to me and my staff, so we have to keep up with everything all the time to make the best decisions we can. We try not to
second-guess ourselves. I go with my gut (it’s usually all I have), I depend on my staff, and we book the best show we can
produce. When it all looks impossible, I try to be the calm in the midst of the storm. Our reward is that each day, whether
last night’s show was great or mediocre, the palette is clean and we get to start all over again, a little wiser for what
we learned yesterday. And a little bit more trusting of ourselves.