Jackson fans hit theaters for film on King of Pop's final days

VIRGINIA BEACH

“Michael Jackson’s This Is It” is the name of the new documentary about the King of Pop’s final days.

Looking at the small group of people scattered across this movie theater, the flickering light flirting with their faces, you couldn’t help but also think: This is it. 

While the movie played to sold-out audiences in Los Angeles and elsewhere on Tuesday, that wasn’t the case at Lynnhaven Mall’s AMC Theatres, where only around 40 people braved bad weather and uncertainty to attend a midnight screening in one of at least two theaters showing the film.

At 11:24 p.m., Dustin Hoppel of Virginia Beach sucked on a cigarette and lamented on why he needed to come.

“I never got to see him live,” said Hoppel, 26, blowing out a funnel of nicotine into the moist air. “It’s the one thing I’ll probably regret for the rest of my life.”

That would be a tie that bound many late Tuesday night.

When Jackson died, he was on the cusp of beginning a 50-show comeback tour in London.

Now, rehearsal footage for those performances is all fans have left.

“I’m going to get emotional right now thinking about it,” said Starbucks barista Nolan Cleary, 28, as she waited for her ticket.

For Virginia Beach’s Thomas Wilson, he spent his emotions on Jackson some time ago -- the June day he died. Here, now, he just needs “closure.”

“When he announced his London concerts, I was one of those people online trying to get tickets,” the 23-year-old lifelong fan said. “When he died, it was one of those things that didn’t set in until I saw the memorial -- and they rolled out the casket.”

A few feet away, 8-year-old Mikayla Jemison huddled with her dad and thought about beginnings, not endings. Like the first time she fished. Or went to the circus.

Seeing “This Is It” would rank right up there -- if she could stay awake. The Landstown Elementary student clutched a blanket. Just in case.

“I just woke her up,” admitted dad Keith Jemison, a 43-year-old flight attendant from Virginia Beach. “I felt like if she really likes him and wants to go – she’s an A/B student – it’s something she’ll remember.”

She did. And she wasn’t alone.

Just before 2 a.m., the movie ended. But fans wouldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until the last credit rolled. Not until the lights came up.

Eventually, Mikayla exited with her dad, a radiant smile on her face. The kind of smile only a kid can have at that hour.

Cleary was right behind them, off to grab what little sleep she could get before making mochas for the masses at 7 a.m. She may need a few herself.

Wilson was one of the last to exit, solemn in his appreciation of what the movie revealed about the man, the music and the last moments of his life.

“He still had it.”

Mike Kernels, (757) 446-2732, mike.kernels@pilotonline