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"Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls"

Date confirmed on the movie’s official website FAQ (archived) (“Michael Jackson's scenes were shot in September 2003.”)

Bryan Stoller, director of “Miss Cast Away”, MTV News

When Stoller needed to fill a pivotal role in his latest opus, he simply sent out a request to one of the world's most recognizable creative artists. By fax.

"We don't do e-mail. I don't even think he knows how to use e-mail," Stoller recently revealed while discussing his mega-famous friend. "It's all fax."

And who is Stoller's technology-impaired comrade? None other than Michael Jackson. Jackson co-stars in Stoller's B-movie epic, "Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls," and after two decades of standing by the legendary musician through all of his highs and lows, the director couldn't be more proud of their friendship.

"What makes it funny is, you have the Pope introducing Michael Jackson," Stoller marveled over a typically zany scene from his "Airplane!"-like spoof, recently released on DVD after a year or so of festival screenings (and a TV premiere in Russia). "It's just a silly movie; I didn't plan on [bringing about] world peace with this film. Here's Michael Jackson and Eric Roberts and Joe Millionaire in the same film, with quirky special effects."

"Miss Cast Away" begins with a plane full of beauty contestants crash-landing on a deserted island. Captain Maximus Powers (Roberts) and co-pilot Mike Saunders (Charlie Schlatter, from "Police Academy 7") have to pacify their curvaceous passengers while avoiding such threats as Jurassic Pork (an enormous prehistoric pig) and a collection of surly apes building an ark that would make Noah proud.

The pop superstar, meanwhile, appears as "Agent M.J.," a shadowy figure collaborating with the Vatican — right, the Vatican — to manipulate the shipwrecked crew.

"Michael was excited about it because, as most people know, he did a 30-second cameo in 'Men in Black II' where he wanted to be an agent, and they wouldn't let him, so that was the joke," Stoller said of the idea behind Jackson's sage-like presence, which he describes as an "Obi-Wan Kenobi character."

To shoot Jackson's scenes, Stoller was granted rare access to the Neverland Ranch; the eccentricities of the singer, however, presented challenges for which no film school could have prepared his crew.

"It's his home. It's all normal to him that there's a train running around the property tooting its horn," the director recalled of a noisy interruption that appears among the DVD's bonus features. "[Another time] his staff brought us soup, so we were sipping soup and talking, and these two elephants walk by outside. Michael's continuing to sip his soup like a fly flew by, and I turn to Michael and look at him and he's not even acknowledging the elephants. He looked at me and laughed.

"I didn't think of it until we were actually shooting; I didn't anticipate that we were going to shoot somewhere and there was going to be trains and elephants."

While Jackson's participation in "Cast Away" may come as a surprise to some, the moonwalker has frequently expressed a flirtation with filmmaking, from a performance in "The Wiz" to his groundbreaking mini-movie video for "Thriller."

"If you go to one of the buildings in Neverland Ranch, he's got, like, a miniature Blockbuster; he buys every DVD and VHS copy of every movie that comes out," Stoller said. "He's also a huge film buff; he almost wants to make movies more than he wants to make music now."

During Jackson's recent trial, Stoller comforted his friend with a screening of a classic.

"His favorite movie is 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' " the director said. "He has an actual 35-millimeter print of the movie. We watched it together once and, you know, he was into serious pieces.

"I said to him one day, 'You're living 'To Kill a Mockingbird' right now,' " Stoller remembered. "It was all about a black man who was on trial. And [both Jackson and the character in the film] were innocent. It was just really weird that that was his favorite film even before these allegations happened. The trial was kind of a modern version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'"

When Jackson was acquitted, Stoller once again utilized their preferred means of communication.

"The first thing I did was, I faxed him a piece of paper, and all it had on it was a happy face with a thumbs up," he remembered.

Stoller and Jackson became friends in the mid-1980s, when the director made a short film spoofing one of the singer's Pepsi commercials. "Miss Cast Away" marks the duo's first collaboration after two decades of talking about movies and, according to the director, it's just the beginning.

"We were sitting in his theater — this was probably '99 or 2000," Stoller said. "He handed me this book, 'They Cage the Animals at Night,' and said he'd been wanting to turn it into a movie and thought I'd be the perfect co-director for it.

"I submitted the book to Mel Gibson's Icon Productions, and Gibson actually liked the book a lot," he continued, saying that the threesome almost made the film in 2002. "I spoke with Mel and he wanted to meet Michael. They had never met personally; I set up a meeting between the three of us. It was pretty interesting: Here I am, a country boy from Canada, introducing Mel Gibson to Michael Jackson. We sat for three hours."

Although Gibson's company has since severed ties with the project, Jackson recently informed Stoller that he intends to make the film now that the trial is behind him.

"It's a true story of ['Cage' author Jennings Michael Burch] in the late '40s, growing up in orphanages, and how rough a time he had. He had no real friends — all he had was stuffed animals. Michael really relates to it because Michael feels that he grew up like an orphan; he wasn't imprisoned in an orphanage, but he was pretty much imprisoned in hotel rooms by his father, and Michael said he used to stare outside at the kids playing basketball or doing normal kid things."

Thus, perhaps the most famous pop-culture figure of the last quarter-century and his B-moviemaking partner are currently shopping "Cage" around Hollywood, and have even discussed financing the film independently. With Stoller insisting that he will continue to stand by his controversial friend, there might just be more thumbs-up faxes yet to come. Providing, of course, that they can convince the elephants to stay out of frame.

The Hollywood Reporter, 2009 (Archived, click “Print” for full text, or read below)

He may be known for his music, but few knew Michael Jackson also enjoyed another artistic outlet: the movies.

The King of Pop's long association with a small-time filmmaker led to a featured role in a campy 2007 film unknown to many of his fans, and may well have led to another project he was developing (see video at left).

"He was very excited about making movies and wanted his hands on everything, from working on screenplays to producing, to writing the music," said B-movie producer, writer and director Bryan Michael Stoller of Jackson, who starred in the 1978 pic "The Wiz." "However, he never showed any interest in acting,"

Three months before his death, Stoller says Jackson committed to co-directing and financing a movie -- a poignant drama about foster children -- and planned to get started as soon as he completed his London concerts.

It's a small indie project that might not have exactly been getting a big studio rollout or a prime spot at Sundance. But like other posthumous revelations, the news sheds light on the wide-ranging, if often quirky, excursions the singer made when he wasn't cultivating his career as a pop star.

Stoller said he had a 23-year friendship with the pop star and was his partner in the film company Magic Shadows. He was to have co-directed the movie, called "They Cage the Animals at Night," which Stoller said they had been developing for seven years.

The project was based on a 1985 book about the real-life experiences of author Jennings Michael Burch, who bounced around foster homes as a child. Jackson showed the book to Stoller in 2002 at his Neverland estate and asked if he wanted to produce and co-direct a movie version.

"Michael told me often he felt like he grew up as an orphan, like a foster kid, because he never was in one home," Stoller said. "To him every hotel was like a different foster home. He said he used to sit in the window and see kids playing outside and cry because he couldn't be part of that."

But insiders in the Jackson camp said there was no formal deal in place for any Jackson involvement in "Cage"; discussions between the artist and Stoller occurred when Jackson was without management, which may have frowned on any distractions as he prepared for the London shows.

Stoller optioned the book for $1 -- initially without telling Burch about Jackson's involvement. When he did tell him, Stoller said the author was excited to work with the singer.

Jackson, meanwhile, was concerned that Burch, then 67 and suffering from cancer, might not survive to see the movie made. So Stoller suggested bringing Burch to Neverland in 2003, where Jackson turned the tables and interviewed him for what was to be a TV special and for the eventual DVD.

Stoller recorded their meeting, which added to a collection of videos he made with Jackson over the years, and to hours of audio recordings from their meetings.

Stoller told THR he has now come forward because he believes this material humanizes his friend at a time when much myth-making about Jackson is taking place. The producer also is marketing his video, audio and photos either for outright sale or as a project he would produce and direct.

He said he already has had interest from NBC, CBS and E!

Jackson's last film foray was a 2005 comedic farce, "Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls," produced, written and directed by Stoller. Jackson is briefly in the movie as Agent M.J., who comes to the rescue of various characters on a beam of light. The movie was a direct-to-DVD release sold briefly at Blockbuster stores.

When Jackson was indicted on child molestation charges shortly after its release, Blockbuster pulled the film from its shelves. "Miss Castaway" has been sold overseas by Showcase Entertainment, and Stoller said he has offers for a new domestic video release for Jackson's last movie appearance.

"They Cage the Animals" also was impacted by the molestation charges, Stoller said. In 2003 the producer arranged a three-hour meeting in a Universal City hotel between Jackson and Mel Gibson, who besides being an actor is a producer and partner in Icon Prods. "They got along great," Stoller said. "It was kind of funny. Mel was a little nervous. He was hugging a pillow the whole time, kind of playing with it. Michael was kind of shy."

Icon signed a deal to develop the project with a budget of $12 million-$20 million, according to Stoller, who was paid by Icon to write the screenplay. A couple months later, when Jackson was indicted in Santa Barbara, Icon put the project in turnaround, and Gibson stopped returning Stoller's phone calls. There were news reports in 2005 that Icon had dropped the project. A spokesman for Icon said the company briefly was involved in developing it in 1995 but had lost interest by 1997. Stoller has a copy of his contract with Icon dated 2002.

Stoller said Icon still owns the screenplay, but an Icon rep rebutted that, saying the company has had no involvement or ownership for 10 years. Gibson declined comment for this report.

Jackson did meet with Burch, and during their highly charged conversation he asked the author if he had ever considered suicide. Burch said he had, and Jackson said he too had considered it during his darkest days.

Jackson lost contact with Stoller for about two years during the period when the singer was on trial. But after his acquittal, Jackson reached out to him. They had watched dozens of movies in the Neverland theater; Stoller said Jackson's favorite was "To Kill a Mockingbird," and that they also discussed doing a remake of the comedy musical "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."

"When Jackson called in 2007, he still had movies on his mind," Stoller said. "He had begun to purchase movie production equipment. He was always asking how things work, but I never saw him really work things. But he wanted all the toys. He bought a dolly and wanted me to show the kids how to use it because they were using it as a play toy, riding around on it."

Jackson wasn't interested in making a blockbuster. "He wanted to do movies the Academy would like," Stoller recalled.

Three months before his death, Stoller said he and Jackson had "a pretty serious meeting" about reviving "They Cage the Animals" as an indie feature.

"Michael was going to put up $8 million and not have to deal with any studios or producers and then take it to the studios afterward," Stoller said. "He was very passionate about being a director. He was determined to make this movie."

The Hollywood Reporter, 2002, Various Quotes taken from articles who reference this source

Michael said he wanted to direct, that he liked my style and that we would complement each other as co-directors. He was the one who brought this book to me. It deals with orphans, and Michael always felt that he grew up as an orphan because, in a way, he missed out on his childhood. The boy in the book had a tough time, and Michael related a lot to that. Michael and I have similar sensibilities. We're both big kids, and we feel that when it comes to their emotions, we'd be able to draw that out for the big screen.

I joke with Michael that this time we're going to earn an Academy Award - he won't have to buy it. The material in the book is touchy. I'm not saying we will get an Academy Award but the material is the kind that if done the right way it should get attention in that direction."

Jackson said: "I feel we have a wonderful team and this is a perfect marriage with Icon. I'm looking forward to all of us working together."

Ottawa Citizen, December 2000

Stoller: “Boy’s Town is one of his favourite pictures. He didn’t have a childhood, and I guess he feels like an orphan himself.”