Statement from the Estate today:
For any of you who saw the article in the LA Times today which was printed with the image of the virtual Michael Jackson from the 2014 Billboard Music Awards, this is the statement issued to the LA Times by the Estate:
The Los Angeles Times story about Alki David this morning, which was accompanied by a large photo of the Michael Jackson hologram which aired on the 2014 Billboard Music Awards, is misleading.
David’s companies had ZERO to do with the Billboard Music Award’s hologram.
The Estate of Michael Jackson, which has the sole right to license Michael’s name,music and image, has not granted any rights whatsoever to Alki David’s companies.
John Branca, John McClain, Co-executors of the Estate of Michael Jackson.
Copyright © 2017 The Estate of Michael Jackson, All rights reserved.
MJOnline The Official Online Team of The Michael Jackson Estate™
The article in question is here:
Meet the man determined to make celebrity holograms a major Hollywood draw
Alki David was unfazed by the chaos surrounding him on a recent afternoon in Hollywood.
The Greek billionaire was days away from previewing a theater featuring hyper-realistic “hologram concerts” with entertainers both living and dead — but the space was far from complete.
The grinding sounds of a drill echoed through the dusty venue as construction continued more than a year after the venue’s original opening date.
Yet David wasn’t worried. “This is the future of live entertainment,” he said confidently, looking toward the flickering LED marquee promoting the theater’s opening show, a Billie Holiday revue.
“It really, truly will blow everyone’s … mind.”
Nestled in the thick of Hollywood Boulevard’s tourist traps, David’s Hologram USA Theater is finally closer to reality and its Nov.1 opening date.
For $20 a ticket, guests will see entertainers like Holiday, Jackie Wilson and Bernie Mac resurrected by the same technology that brought Tupac Shakur to Coachella in 2012 and saw Michael Jackson moonwalk at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards.
There are plans for an animated Jackson 5 musical, stand-up comedy sets, kids programming, MMA matches and a sexy “freak show” hosted by Ray J.
There are a handful of digital companies that believe the future lies in the holographic celebrity space — L.A.-based Eyellusion is probably David’s closest competitor — but Hologram USA will open the first theater in the country dedicated to holographic entertainment.
An heir of the Leventis-David Group, which made its fortune bottling Coca-Cola, David got into the hologram business in 2014 when he founded Hologram USA and purchased the patent for the technology used for Shakur’s Coachella “performance.”
Since then, he’s invested tens of millions of dollars — and fought several lawsuits — on his quest to dominate the business of resurrecting dead entertainers.
David’s company went viral two summers ago when it turned controversial rapper Chief Keef into a digital avatar and beamed him from a Beverly Hills soundstage to a music festival in Indiana to sidestep Keef’s arrest warrants.
Cops pulled the plug, but the stunt got a lot of press for Hologram USA, which was exactly what David desired. The businessman thrives on media attention of any sort: He paid $1 million for someone to streak nude in front of President Obama; live-streamed a much-hyped assisted suicide (which turned out to be staged); and his TV streaming company FilmOn was sued by multiple networks for infringement (he paid over $1.6 million).
Just last year David announced a world tour based around a hologram of Whitney Houston. Plans crumbled after leaked video of the likeness was met with derision. (He says the avatar was unfinished and he’s taking the singer’s estate to court.)
And the chaos that exists as he preps the theater’s opening is not limited to construction issues. Earlier this year two former employees sued him for sexual harassment, alleging he forced them to watch fetishist videos, wear electric shock collars and view racy photos of him. David claims he’s being extorted.
“He doesn’t really understand what extortion is,” said attorney Lisa Bloom, who is representing both accusers. “He has to face the facts that he’s accused of some very serious acts of sexual harassment.”
“Nobody has ever been compelled to do anything,” countered his attorney Barry K. Rothman, “and nobody was harmed except Alki, who has had to endure the betrayal and greed of people he trusted.”
David, however, isn’t concerned. For him, all press is good press: “I'm used to lawsuits. It's irritating … [but] its gotten me on the front page of TMZ,” he said. “I’ve engineered the villainous image of myself, because it helps. It's a noisy brand.”
Though his style may be his own, David is not the only digital entrepreneur investing in holograms. This fall Eyellusion will launch a tour featuring a digital likeness of rocker Ronnie James Dio performing alongside his living bandmates from Dio. The tour opens in Finland this November and will hit over 80 cities — a first for a show of its kind.
Eyellusion is also readying a high-concept concert experience built around Frank Zappa that will tour next year.
“Our focus is authenticity,” said Jeff Pezzuti, Eyellusion’s founder and chief executive. “When you go to see a live show, you’re seeing a live show. It’s not like seeing a movie. That’s where we differentiate ourselves.”
“A bunch of projects have been announced but there’s really been nothing substantial,” said Pezzuti, throwing a subtle jab at David’s company. “We are actually putting together a tour — rehearsals, staging, lighting. That’s a huge statement in this industry. We can all make press releases, but the fact is you still have to execute.”
Pulse Evolution Corp. is another player in the outlier art form. For years, Hologram USA was embroiled in a legal battle with Pulse over which company owned the right to the technology after it was auctioned off in 2013. David eventually bought it but not before Pulse obtained a license of the patent, using the technology for Jackson’s Billboard appearance. The suit between the companies turned into a public feud between owners, with David being accused of cyberstalking former Pulse chairman John Textor. The men settled out of court last year.
Ironically, none of the companies produce true holograms — that would be far too expensive. Hologram USA employs a derivation of a 19th century technique called Pepper’s Ghost, which projects a reflection of an image through angled glass (or in the company’s case, a flexible translucent foil) resulting in a two-dimensional image appearing 3-D. Universal Studios employs the same technology for its “Fast & Furious” attraction.
Eyellusion is tight-lipped about its technology but says it doesn’t require the use of bulky equipment, instead building a mobile stage that easily installs in preexisting venues, while David has spent the last year retrofitting venues across the country to support the required equipment.
A year ago, David proudly showed off Hologram USA’s technology at the company’s Beverly Hills showroom, and true hologram or not, the results were impressive.
With the touch of a button, Jackie Wilson emerged onstage. The soul crooner spun and dipped in a sleek suit — the likeness so lifelike, even the wrinkles in his socks popped. David hit another button and out came the Black Eyed Peas. And then Dita Von Teese arrived, dancing seductively.
Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Kimmel were all beamed in — as was a vicious shark, stampeding elephants, bumbling Minions and two nude women.
But will it sustain an industry, or even a museum?
“It’s all a gimmick,” said V. Michael Bove, a scientist at the MIT Media Lab and an expert in holography. “Sure, it’s fun to see once, but are you going to see it again?”
Ahmet Zappa would, and is hoping he can finally “resurrect” his father Frank.
“It wasn’t until I saw the technology of Eyellusion that I believed it could be done,” Zappa said. “The goal is to utilize the holographic technology to its maximum.”
Zappa said he’s most excited about being able to reimagine his father to take on tour.
“It reduces me to tears knowing what’s possible,” he continued. “But I don’t want this be like Frankenstein, trying to reanimate something.”
Bove says all of the creators have an uphill battle ahead of them.
“I’m not going to say it has no future … what it really boils down to is people will pay to see this once because it’s a novelty,” he said. “For it to be an ongoing, sustainable thing, it needs to be about more than the technology.”
Despite the skepticism, David’s ambitions for the museum and beyond remain lofty.
In the next year he hopes to have his “holograms” in 150 locations around the country and has content deals with the Laugh Factory, Black House MMA and Universal Music Group.
David believes that it’s only a matter of time before his company disrupts the market, and A-list living talents come knocking.
“Imagine being Beyoncé and being able to play in front of 200,000 seats from one location. This is really a major paradigm shift in entertainment,” he said. “Live performers will see a huge opportunity.”
gerrick.kennedy@latimes.com
Michael Jackson Hologram Conjures Billionaire's Patent Lawsu
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Re: Michael Jackson Hologram Conjures Billionaire's Patent L
Looks like he is up to his old tricks again.
Billionaire Hollywood bad boy Alki David is resurrecting the dead with holograms
There’s a rather bonkers Russian chap named Dmitry Itskov who claims that by the year 2045 his team of scientists will have achieved human immortality by uploading brains onto a computer.
That’s a little way off, though. In the meantime, if Frankenstein’s monster meeting Blade Runner doesn’t tickle your fancy, one can achieve a rather less sentient immortality through hologram technology.
Tupac Shakur appeared alongside Snoop Dogg at Coachella a few years ago, followed by a not-long-dead Michael Jackson thrilling fans from beyond the grave.
Julian Assange, who is not dead, but shares the pallid complexion and gravitas of a corpse, appeared from the Ecuadorian Embassy to speak at the Nantucket Project, via hologram.
One man digitally resurrecting the dead is Alki David, the Greek billionaire heir to the Leventis Coca Cola bottling fortune.
Once number 47 on The Times Rich List, David has made a name for himself as a “Hollywood Bad Boy” and prankster. From offering $1m to anyone who dared streak in front of Barack Obama, to broadcasting a spoof assisted suicide as a publicity stunt, he has certainly ruffled a few feathers.
Few can claim to have sued and been sued quite as many times as he, but his hologram firm is, he says, no laughing matter.
It might all seem a bit Star Trek, but this time, he’s serious.
Seeing is believing
“Seeing is really believing it right?” says David, on the phone to London from Hollywood. “It is a truly mind-blowing experience to see a life-sized 3D image walking and talking, performing on the stage with a light show – it is revolutionary.”
The firm presently owns the rights to more than a handful of deceased celebrities. David has invested $12m of his estimated $2bn fortune into securing rights, and more still in refining the technology.
His digital graveyard contains some 27 celebrities, ready to be reanimated at any point.
But, clearly, sensitivities around raising the dead bring ethical implications – has it brought him any trouble?
“Look, the controversy is great, it generates conversation. Very often dealing with an estate of a deceased celebrity... usually you’ll get one member of the family that brings in an issue for the sake of bringing in an issue.”
David’s view on the celebrities he is reviving reflects that of the eternal showman – that these are the sorts of people who want to live forever through their work, and posthumous performances enable that.
“Usually the card that people play is that it’s far too spooky, or it’s emotionally distressing,” he says. “But the reality of it is that these are entertainers, who lived to be in the limelight, and that desire to continue to be in the limelight after death is their dream.”
Going Hollywood
David recently opened the first Hologram USA Theatre on the Hollywood Boulevard, one of seven, with 150 in total planned to roll out across the States. The conditions couldn’t be better for a new entrant to the market, he says, citing a 16 per cent drop in theatre attendances from last year. There are, apparently, “enormous amounts of empty real estate around Western Europe and the United States”.
To achieve his vision, David is going to raise capital for the firm through what is known as a “Reg A+” listing – or a “mini IPO”. Born from the Obama era JOBS Act, it lowers regulatory hurdles for companies trying to go public and allows firms to have more private shareholders.
“This mini IPO makes a float available to the everyman,” he tells me, “whereas normally an IPO is only really available to institutional investors, who buy up the stock before it’s available. In selling these securities of the hologram company, we’re using targeted advertising techniques. We’re able to market individual shows as securities, or market to localised theatre installations on a regional basis.”
David’s plans don’t stop in the cinema though. While “owning” Whitney Houston and the Jackson Five is all very well, David says the technology has seemingly endless applications, from retail to corporate communications, military training to education.
He adds that he’s been “chatting with [his] mate Paul McIntyre about bringing the technology to the West End,” reportedly for a holographic revitalisation of We Will Rock You.
But will it ever be better than the real thing?
“Listen. It’s better than the real thing. First of all you don’t have to feed them, and you don’t have the headache of the talent,” chuckles David, sardonically. “But really, the experience is better – not only because it’s lifelike, but now you can incorporate extraordinary effects with flames and dragons and exploding peacocks – all kinds of crazy stuff.”
Paradigm shift
David compares his technology with Hatsune Miku, one of the biggest pop stars in Japan, who happens to be a hologram. He says by comparison, the Japanese tech is “hokey”.
His tech is the most-widely used, and while imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, having invested so much time and money into it, David is relentlessly combative over protecting what is his. “I have sued everybody who has infringed on my patents. From Fox to Cirque de Soleil – I’ve been 100 per cent successful in my lawsuits. I’m very, very litigious over protecting this patent.”
To declare holograms as representing the future of entertainment may seem brazen. It certainly has its critics, who see it is a passing fad, with ephemeral appeal. Naturally, David disagrees.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about. They haven’t lived and experienced the repeat performance of this technology over and over to venues and customers as we have.
“Who is to say there is no paradigm shift in entertainment? This is what this is. This truly is a tried and tested paradigm shift in the way entertainment is done.”
http://www.cityam.com/275125/billion...urrecting-dead
Billionaire Hollywood bad boy Alki David is resurrecting the dead with holograms
There’s a rather bonkers Russian chap named Dmitry Itskov who claims that by the year 2045 his team of scientists will have achieved human immortality by uploading brains onto a computer.
That’s a little way off, though. In the meantime, if Frankenstein’s monster meeting Blade Runner doesn’t tickle your fancy, one can achieve a rather less sentient immortality through hologram technology.
Tupac Shakur appeared alongside Snoop Dogg at Coachella a few years ago, followed by a not-long-dead Michael Jackson thrilling fans from beyond the grave.
Julian Assange, who is not dead, but shares the pallid complexion and gravitas of a corpse, appeared from the Ecuadorian Embassy to speak at the Nantucket Project, via hologram.
One man digitally resurrecting the dead is Alki David, the Greek billionaire heir to the Leventis Coca Cola bottling fortune.
Once number 47 on The Times Rich List, David has made a name for himself as a “Hollywood Bad Boy” and prankster. From offering $1m to anyone who dared streak in front of Barack Obama, to broadcasting a spoof assisted suicide as a publicity stunt, he has certainly ruffled a few feathers.
Few can claim to have sued and been sued quite as many times as he, but his hologram firm is, he says, no laughing matter.
It might all seem a bit Star Trek, but this time, he’s serious.
Seeing is believing
“Seeing is really believing it right?” says David, on the phone to London from Hollywood. “It is a truly mind-blowing experience to see a life-sized 3D image walking and talking, performing on the stage with a light show – it is revolutionary.”
The firm presently owns the rights to more than a handful of deceased celebrities. David has invested $12m of his estimated $2bn fortune into securing rights, and more still in refining the technology.
His digital graveyard contains some 27 celebrities, ready to be reanimated at any point.
But, clearly, sensitivities around raising the dead bring ethical implications – has it brought him any trouble?
“Look, the controversy is great, it generates conversation. Very often dealing with an estate of a deceased celebrity... usually you’ll get one member of the family that brings in an issue for the sake of bringing in an issue.”
David’s view on the celebrities he is reviving reflects that of the eternal showman – that these are the sorts of people who want to live forever through their work, and posthumous performances enable that.
“Usually the card that people play is that it’s far too spooky, or it’s emotionally distressing,” he says. “But the reality of it is that these are entertainers, who lived to be in the limelight, and that desire to continue to be in the limelight after death is their dream.”
Going Hollywood
David recently opened the first Hologram USA Theatre on the Hollywood Boulevard, one of seven, with 150 in total planned to roll out across the States. The conditions couldn’t be better for a new entrant to the market, he says, citing a 16 per cent drop in theatre attendances from last year. There are, apparently, “enormous amounts of empty real estate around Western Europe and the United States”.
To achieve his vision, David is going to raise capital for the firm through what is known as a “Reg A+” listing – or a “mini IPO”. Born from the Obama era JOBS Act, it lowers regulatory hurdles for companies trying to go public and allows firms to have more private shareholders.
“This mini IPO makes a float available to the everyman,” he tells me, “whereas normally an IPO is only really available to institutional investors, who buy up the stock before it’s available. In selling these securities of the hologram company, we’re using targeted advertising techniques. We’re able to market individual shows as securities, or market to localised theatre installations on a regional basis.”
David’s plans don’t stop in the cinema though. While “owning” Whitney Houston and the Jackson Five is all very well, David says the technology has seemingly endless applications, from retail to corporate communications, military training to education.
He adds that he’s been “chatting with [his] mate Paul McIntyre about bringing the technology to the West End,” reportedly for a holographic revitalisation of We Will Rock You.
But will it ever be better than the real thing?
“Listen. It’s better than the real thing. First of all you don’t have to feed them, and you don’t have the headache of the talent,” chuckles David, sardonically. “But really, the experience is better – not only because it’s lifelike, but now you can incorporate extraordinary effects with flames and dragons and exploding peacocks – all kinds of crazy stuff.”
Paradigm shift
David compares his technology with Hatsune Miku, one of the biggest pop stars in Japan, who happens to be a hologram. He says by comparison, the Japanese tech is “hokey”.
His tech is the most-widely used, and while imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, having invested so much time and money into it, David is relentlessly combative over protecting what is his. “I have sued everybody who has infringed on my patents. From Fox to Cirque de Soleil – I’ve been 100 per cent successful in my lawsuits. I’m very, very litigious over protecting this patent.”
To declare holograms as representing the future of entertainment may seem brazen. It certainly has its critics, who see it is a passing fad, with ephemeral appeal. Naturally, David disagrees.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about. They haven’t lived and experienced the repeat performance of this technology over and over to venues and customers as we have.
“Who is to say there is no paradigm shift in entertainment? This is what this is. This truly is a tried and tested paradigm shift in the way entertainment is done.”
http://www.cityam.com/275125/billion...urrecting-dead
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Re: Michael Jackson Hologram Conjures Billionaire's Patent L
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/tupac...rity-holograms
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Today, both parties see the result of their court battle (Pulse reached a confidential settlement in March 2016) as a form of vindication. “We won the initial ruling [where] he tried to stop the show [without] any evidence,” says Textor, evenly. “But where [Hologram USA] ultimately won was that it looked like a case that might go for a century, so we decided to settle.”
“We caught them red-handed, they settled, we won,” says David with relish. “Pulse doesn’t do what we do. Apart from Michael Jackson, which was a fiasco, they haven’t produced a single ****ing thing.” Equally, David dismisses the notion that the court battle may have had an adverse effect on Hologram USA’s planned rollout of shows.
Now, when David is not reeling off potential subjects for resurrection – “We’ve got Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, the Jackson 5, Bernie Mac. Hendrix I had to walk away from because the estate is a mess…” – he’s also talking up Hologram USA’s potential for expansion. “We’re rolling this technology and the shows we’re creating into 150 North American theatres right now,” he says. “We’ve got a couple of things in the works to open up with some large theatre chains as well. So it may go from 150 to 2,000 or 3,000 in a very short time.”
David appears unfazed by Pulse’s own agreements with high-profile acts – it is working on an Elvis Presley show and, as part of a deal with Simon Fuller, an ABBA hologram show set to tour in 2019. The reason soon becomes apparent. “John Textor got kicked out of his own company,” he tells me, with a smile. “He’s gone, he’s out.”
Six weeks after David’s revelation, in summer 2017, I pin down Textor for another conversation. “I’m still a shareholder but I resigned,” he admits. It transpires that, in July 2017, Textor quietly stepped aside from his role as Pulse’s chairman, in part so Jordan Fiksenbaum, a former VP of marketing for Cirque du Soleil, could become Pulse’s CEO. “Since I’m a technology guy, it’s the right thing to bring in somebody who knows how to put butts on seats.” There may well be more to Textor’s departure than he’s willing to admit. But he still advises Pulse and is openly disparaging about Hologram USA’s Pepper’s Ghost-focused vision for the future of digital humans.
“Yeah, there’s that moment when you get that holographic feel of, OK, he’s floating in space, somebody is dancing in front and behind,” he says. “But after a couple of those gags? You can’t make a show out of that.”
Undeterred, there are plenty of other resurrectionists hoping that live performances by holograms can attract large audiences. Roy Orbison: In Dreams is touring the UK this month. Eyellusion, a rival Pepper’s Ghost startup headquartered a 20-minute drive from Hologram USA’s office, is planning a tour that will bring back Frank Zappa.
And, of course, there’s David, exploring new uses for his hard-won patent. And he is ready for a fight with anyone who encroaches on what he feels is his turf. “I’ve got seven years left on my patent and Pepper’s Ghost is not public ****ing domain,” he says. “[They’re] going to get sued the moment [their] feet hit the ground.”
It’s September 2017, two months after our first meeting, and David steps from the interior of his company’s Hollywood theatre into the California sunshine. Striding quickly down the Walk of Fame, he barrels past an employee’s attempts to placate him and catches up with his target: a stage rigger called Kyle who he has just fired. Fingers are jabbed and words are traded but, ultimately, an agreement is reached. David rehires Kyle and the pair troop back underneath the throbbing screens of the video marquee, back into the darkness.
The venue is a 200-seater former adult cinema on Hollywood Boulevard that’s envisioned as the flagship for Hologram USA’s global chain. In just over 24 hours, David is due to host a gala opening. But they are behind schedule: huge boxed UHD screens clog the lobby, wires dangle from the ceiling and inside the seatless auditorium the buzz of power tools can still be heard.
When David re-emerges, he smiles and invites me to hop in his car so we can talk further. “Everything in my life is dust at the moment,” he jokes, brushing remnants of terracotta powder from the interior of his convertible Rolls-Royce.
“We don’t have an army of bodies, so I need to lead by example,” he adds. Plugging in his iPhone, he makes a series of calls relating to tomorrow’s planned premiere. “‘Try’ doesn’t mean anything to me,” he says to one worker. “What will it take to have this ready?”
The whole affair finally peaks as David threatens an underling with both a termination and a lawsuit, then stumbles upon a solution to the production conundrum they had been discussing, and eventually signs off the call with a cheery, “OK, brother.”
“There’s definitely a creep factor to Pepper’s Ghost,” says Jeff Jampol from behind the desk in his West Hollywood office, his 2011 Grammy Award for Best Music Film glinting on a nearby shelf. “Whenever you screw with nature and create something – whether it’s GMO food or talking sex dolls – you’re going to get a reaction.” He rocks his chair from side to side. “But we want a reaction.”
Two metres tall with tightly bundled curly hair, Jampol, 59, looked after punk bands in the late 70s, survived heroin addiction in the 80s, and went on to set up Jam Inc, his “legacy management” company, in the 90s. With a client list that includes The Doors, Janis Joplin, the Ramones and Otis Redding, Jampol is one of a number of handlers who have carved out a thriving sub-industry that uses licensing, social media, documentaries, exhibitions and more to boost the earning potential of dead celebrities. (Michael Jackson’s estate – the exemplar in this world – has made nearly $1 billion since his death in 2009.)
But, while Jampol looked after Tupac’s estate at the time of the Coachella performance and has met David, he has misgivings about holograms as an alternative to live performance.
“The potential that a digital human holds is fascinating,” he says. “But Pepper’s Ghost is what I consider to be the lowest iteration of the technology. You can’t move around it, it can’t interact with you other than from a distance. It’s the equivalent of a used VHS tape.”
Not all estate handlers share Jampol’s reservations. But, as long as deceased stars continue to be the focus of virtual shows, brand managers and their estates hold all the cards.
“We’re a hyper-realistic human animation company, which is why we have these relationships with Elvis, with Marilyn, with Michael Jackson,” says Textor. “There has only been one company that has demonstrated the ability to make major estates comfortable that they can protect the likeness of the celebrity. And Pulse is a company that does not talk about these shows until they happen.”
One example of how things can go wrong is Hologram USA’s widely publicised Whitney Houston global tour. Announced in 2015, the resurrection was scuppered after preview footage – a duet between Christina Aguilera and a revived Houston set to feature in the 2016 finale of The Voice – leaked.
“We hadn’t digitally composited the face yet and NBC freaked out,” says David, acknowledging the widely disseminated clip of Aguilera gamely performing alongside a projection of a somewhat fuzzy Houston lookalike. The clip faced widespread derision and prompted the late singer’s estate to pull the deal. Continuing the holography industry’s theme of near-constant litigation, Hologram USA issued the Houston estate with a breach of contract lawsuit in July 2017.
The ethics of posthumous recreations are, like a flickering hologram, fuzzy. In 2013, a Johnnie Walker advert starring a digitally recreated version of Bruce Lee – a lifelong teetotaller – showed how resurrections can distort the sense of who someone was. And the CGI-wary stipulations in a deed filed by Robin Williams before his 2015 death (his image cannot be inserted into a new film, used commercially or as a hologram, until 2039) perhaps show that more celebrities are considering the implications of this new immortality.
“It’s very complex,” says Tim Webber, Oscar-winning chief creative officer of Framestore, the British VFX house that created a CGI Audrey Hepburn for a 2013 commercial. “I certainly think that if I was an actor like Peter Cushing I’d like the chance to reappear in a global franchise after my death [a virtual Cushing appeared in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story]. But having said that, it all depends on the circumstances, how it’s executed and for what reason.”
“I have to be careful,” admits Jampol. “Janis [Joplin] and Jim [Morrison] aren’t here to speak for themselves, so I stand in their stead, with their families, and speak for them.” Textor says Pulse takes a case-by-case approach. “Jackson already had a 3D scan of his body so he was exploring his likeness in ways other celebrities weren’t,” he says. “We, and his estate, were comfortable that it was something he was trending towards. It’s always a delicate thing, done with the family. We’re not going to have, like, Elvis hawking marshmallows or something.”
Back in Los Angeles, it’s the night of Hologram USA’s ribbon-cutting. Everything is running at least an hour late and reality star Janice Dickinson is shivering by the hastily gaffer-taped red carpet, but the show is finally about to start. Invited guests, who will hopefully soon be replaced by customers paying $29.95 a ticket, spill out on to the street. Inside, the air is thick with the skunky scent of hemp-oil-topped vegan popcorn. Billy Zane, a friend of David’s, mills around the foyer, resplendent in flat cap, sailor stripes and a shoulder-draped sweater. The lights go down.
The short preview flits from the magical (a revived Jackie Wilson dancing; comedian Jon Lovitz shooting lasers from his fingers; eerily realistic puffs of smoke from a chain-smoking magician) and the baffling (a prolonged MMA fight broadcast from within an oval frame that kills the illusion).
There are unfortunate technical problems too, and it also appears that the revived performers – who lack the visible animation of Tupac or Michael Jackson – are VFX-free lookalikes. (When asked later to clarify this, David replied: “Our experts use all the tools at their disposal, including CGI, in our celebrity resurrection holograms.”) More than anything, it begs the question: why, beyond the initial novelty, people would stump up to see a projected image of a working stand-up comedian when a living, breathing comedian telling jokes is no more than a taxi ride away?
After the show, David lingers near the exit. Four hours earlier, he had seemed a man possessed as he barked orders into a walkie-talkie and even commandeered a scissor lift to install speakers himself. Now, he appears muted and wrung out by the adrenalin rush of the evening. There are curses aimed at malfunctioning equipment (“The satellite link-up didn’t work, we only had one projector so we couldn’t do Billie Holiday”) but there’s also optimism about the future.
And the mix of entertainment planned for Hologram USA’s first screenings, a 40-minute Billie Holiday performance augmented by live comedy and the burlesque-heavy Sexy Hollywood Freakshow, perhaps indicates that, through accident or design, David’s plan for the future has shifted. Many of the shows he has discussed – Bernie Mac, the Jackson 5, Liberace – are either billed as “coming soon” on Hologram USA’s website or completely absent.
“The lowest hanging fruit is resurrections,” he explained to me in London. “The controversy of bringing somebody back from the dead sparks conversation, but the future is Wimbledon live in Times Square, the latest greatest boxing match live at your local cinema.”
Textor, David’s old nemesis, also sees an application for holograms that isn’t tethered to the IP of a celebrity estate. “We used Michael Jackson to teach the world more about the utility of digital humans than I could do at a thousand trade shows,” he says. “Digital humans delivering information, a maths teacher that travels on a flash drive and never gets an answer wrong. Some really big things came out of that night.”
However, it’s the Jackson show that people talk about. Jackson, leaping from the frame of a shimmering picture. In the 19th century, Dircks and Pepper’s invention was applied to many things, but it was ghosts people wanted and ghosts they got. Their 15-month Pepper’s Ghost installation at the London Polytechnic made the modern-day equivalent of more than £1 million.
Whether it’s Pulse, Hologram USA or some other hologram startup that eventually prospers, the urge to bring people back has always predated the technology to do it.
Nostalgia is big business. But immortality? As Jeff Jampol said back in his office, where the late Rick James’s guitar sits propped up by his open door: “I don’t think this technology meets the test yet, but there’s an old Jim Morrison quote that I’ll leave you with,” he smiles and permits himself a showman’s pause, “‘Money beats soul, every time.’”
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Today, both parties see the result of their court battle (Pulse reached a confidential settlement in March 2016) as a form of vindication. “We won the initial ruling [where] he tried to stop the show [without] any evidence,” says Textor, evenly. “But where [Hologram USA] ultimately won was that it looked like a case that might go for a century, so we decided to settle.”
“We caught them red-handed, they settled, we won,” says David with relish. “Pulse doesn’t do what we do. Apart from Michael Jackson, which was a fiasco, they haven’t produced a single ****ing thing.” Equally, David dismisses the notion that the court battle may have had an adverse effect on Hologram USA’s planned rollout of shows.
Now, when David is not reeling off potential subjects for resurrection – “We’ve got Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, the Jackson 5, Bernie Mac. Hendrix I had to walk away from because the estate is a mess…” – he’s also talking up Hologram USA’s potential for expansion. “We’re rolling this technology and the shows we’re creating into 150 North American theatres right now,” he says. “We’ve got a couple of things in the works to open up with some large theatre chains as well. So it may go from 150 to 2,000 or 3,000 in a very short time.”
David appears unfazed by Pulse’s own agreements with high-profile acts – it is working on an Elvis Presley show and, as part of a deal with Simon Fuller, an ABBA hologram show set to tour in 2019. The reason soon becomes apparent. “John Textor got kicked out of his own company,” he tells me, with a smile. “He’s gone, he’s out.”
Six weeks after David’s revelation, in summer 2017, I pin down Textor for another conversation. “I’m still a shareholder but I resigned,” he admits. It transpires that, in July 2017, Textor quietly stepped aside from his role as Pulse’s chairman, in part so Jordan Fiksenbaum, a former VP of marketing for Cirque du Soleil, could become Pulse’s CEO. “Since I’m a technology guy, it’s the right thing to bring in somebody who knows how to put butts on seats.” There may well be more to Textor’s departure than he’s willing to admit. But he still advises Pulse and is openly disparaging about Hologram USA’s Pepper’s Ghost-focused vision for the future of digital humans.
“Yeah, there’s that moment when you get that holographic feel of, OK, he’s floating in space, somebody is dancing in front and behind,” he says. “But after a couple of those gags? You can’t make a show out of that.”
Undeterred, there are plenty of other resurrectionists hoping that live performances by holograms can attract large audiences. Roy Orbison: In Dreams is touring the UK this month. Eyellusion, a rival Pepper’s Ghost startup headquartered a 20-minute drive from Hologram USA’s office, is planning a tour that will bring back Frank Zappa.
And, of course, there’s David, exploring new uses for his hard-won patent. And he is ready for a fight with anyone who encroaches on what he feels is his turf. “I’ve got seven years left on my patent and Pepper’s Ghost is not public ****ing domain,” he says. “[They’re] going to get sued the moment [their] feet hit the ground.”
It’s September 2017, two months after our first meeting, and David steps from the interior of his company’s Hollywood theatre into the California sunshine. Striding quickly down the Walk of Fame, he barrels past an employee’s attempts to placate him and catches up with his target: a stage rigger called Kyle who he has just fired. Fingers are jabbed and words are traded but, ultimately, an agreement is reached. David rehires Kyle and the pair troop back underneath the throbbing screens of the video marquee, back into the darkness.
The venue is a 200-seater former adult cinema on Hollywood Boulevard that’s envisioned as the flagship for Hologram USA’s global chain. In just over 24 hours, David is due to host a gala opening. But they are behind schedule: huge boxed UHD screens clog the lobby, wires dangle from the ceiling and inside the seatless auditorium the buzz of power tools can still be heard.
When David re-emerges, he smiles and invites me to hop in his car so we can talk further. “Everything in my life is dust at the moment,” he jokes, brushing remnants of terracotta powder from the interior of his convertible Rolls-Royce.
“We don’t have an army of bodies, so I need to lead by example,” he adds. Plugging in his iPhone, he makes a series of calls relating to tomorrow’s planned premiere. “‘Try’ doesn’t mean anything to me,” he says to one worker. “What will it take to have this ready?”
The whole affair finally peaks as David threatens an underling with both a termination and a lawsuit, then stumbles upon a solution to the production conundrum they had been discussing, and eventually signs off the call with a cheery, “OK, brother.”
“There’s definitely a creep factor to Pepper’s Ghost,” says Jeff Jampol from behind the desk in his West Hollywood office, his 2011 Grammy Award for Best Music Film glinting on a nearby shelf. “Whenever you screw with nature and create something – whether it’s GMO food or talking sex dolls – you’re going to get a reaction.” He rocks his chair from side to side. “But we want a reaction.”
Two metres tall with tightly bundled curly hair, Jampol, 59, looked after punk bands in the late 70s, survived heroin addiction in the 80s, and went on to set up Jam Inc, his “legacy management” company, in the 90s. With a client list that includes The Doors, Janis Joplin, the Ramones and Otis Redding, Jampol is one of a number of handlers who have carved out a thriving sub-industry that uses licensing, social media, documentaries, exhibitions and more to boost the earning potential of dead celebrities. (Michael Jackson’s estate – the exemplar in this world – has made nearly $1 billion since his death in 2009.)
But, while Jampol looked after Tupac’s estate at the time of the Coachella performance and has met David, he has misgivings about holograms as an alternative to live performance.
“The potential that a digital human holds is fascinating,” he says. “But Pepper’s Ghost is what I consider to be the lowest iteration of the technology. You can’t move around it, it can’t interact with you other than from a distance. It’s the equivalent of a used VHS tape.”
Not all estate handlers share Jampol’s reservations. But, as long as deceased stars continue to be the focus of virtual shows, brand managers and their estates hold all the cards.
“We’re a hyper-realistic human animation company, which is why we have these relationships with Elvis, with Marilyn, with Michael Jackson,” says Textor. “There has only been one company that has demonstrated the ability to make major estates comfortable that they can protect the likeness of the celebrity. And Pulse is a company that does not talk about these shows until they happen.”
One example of how things can go wrong is Hologram USA’s widely publicised Whitney Houston global tour. Announced in 2015, the resurrection was scuppered after preview footage – a duet between Christina Aguilera and a revived Houston set to feature in the 2016 finale of The Voice – leaked.
“We hadn’t digitally composited the face yet and NBC freaked out,” says David, acknowledging the widely disseminated clip of Aguilera gamely performing alongside a projection of a somewhat fuzzy Houston lookalike. The clip faced widespread derision and prompted the late singer’s estate to pull the deal. Continuing the holography industry’s theme of near-constant litigation, Hologram USA issued the Houston estate with a breach of contract lawsuit in July 2017.
The ethics of posthumous recreations are, like a flickering hologram, fuzzy. In 2013, a Johnnie Walker advert starring a digitally recreated version of Bruce Lee – a lifelong teetotaller – showed how resurrections can distort the sense of who someone was. And the CGI-wary stipulations in a deed filed by Robin Williams before his 2015 death (his image cannot be inserted into a new film, used commercially or as a hologram, until 2039) perhaps show that more celebrities are considering the implications of this new immortality.
“It’s very complex,” says Tim Webber, Oscar-winning chief creative officer of Framestore, the British VFX house that created a CGI Audrey Hepburn for a 2013 commercial. “I certainly think that if I was an actor like Peter Cushing I’d like the chance to reappear in a global franchise after my death [a virtual Cushing appeared in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story]. But having said that, it all depends on the circumstances, how it’s executed and for what reason.”
“I have to be careful,” admits Jampol. “Janis [Joplin] and Jim [Morrison] aren’t here to speak for themselves, so I stand in their stead, with their families, and speak for them.” Textor says Pulse takes a case-by-case approach. “Jackson already had a 3D scan of his body so he was exploring his likeness in ways other celebrities weren’t,” he says. “We, and his estate, were comfortable that it was something he was trending towards. It’s always a delicate thing, done with the family. We’re not going to have, like, Elvis hawking marshmallows or something.”
Back in Los Angeles, it’s the night of Hologram USA’s ribbon-cutting. Everything is running at least an hour late and reality star Janice Dickinson is shivering by the hastily gaffer-taped red carpet, but the show is finally about to start. Invited guests, who will hopefully soon be replaced by customers paying $29.95 a ticket, spill out on to the street. Inside, the air is thick with the skunky scent of hemp-oil-topped vegan popcorn. Billy Zane, a friend of David’s, mills around the foyer, resplendent in flat cap, sailor stripes and a shoulder-draped sweater. The lights go down.
The short preview flits from the magical (a revived Jackie Wilson dancing; comedian Jon Lovitz shooting lasers from his fingers; eerily realistic puffs of smoke from a chain-smoking magician) and the baffling (a prolonged MMA fight broadcast from within an oval frame that kills the illusion).
There are unfortunate technical problems too, and it also appears that the revived performers – who lack the visible animation of Tupac or Michael Jackson – are VFX-free lookalikes. (When asked later to clarify this, David replied: “Our experts use all the tools at their disposal, including CGI, in our celebrity resurrection holograms.”) More than anything, it begs the question: why, beyond the initial novelty, people would stump up to see a projected image of a working stand-up comedian when a living, breathing comedian telling jokes is no more than a taxi ride away?
After the show, David lingers near the exit. Four hours earlier, he had seemed a man possessed as he barked orders into a walkie-talkie and even commandeered a scissor lift to install speakers himself. Now, he appears muted and wrung out by the adrenalin rush of the evening. There are curses aimed at malfunctioning equipment (“The satellite link-up didn’t work, we only had one projector so we couldn’t do Billie Holiday”) but there’s also optimism about the future.
And the mix of entertainment planned for Hologram USA’s first screenings, a 40-minute Billie Holiday performance augmented by live comedy and the burlesque-heavy Sexy Hollywood Freakshow, perhaps indicates that, through accident or design, David’s plan for the future has shifted. Many of the shows he has discussed – Bernie Mac, the Jackson 5, Liberace – are either billed as “coming soon” on Hologram USA’s website or completely absent.
“The lowest hanging fruit is resurrections,” he explained to me in London. “The controversy of bringing somebody back from the dead sparks conversation, but the future is Wimbledon live in Times Square, the latest greatest boxing match live at your local cinema.”
Textor, David’s old nemesis, also sees an application for holograms that isn’t tethered to the IP of a celebrity estate. “We used Michael Jackson to teach the world more about the utility of digital humans than I could do at a thousand trade shows,” he says. “Digital humans delivering information, a maths teacher that travels on a flash drive and never gets an answer wrong. Some really big things came out of that night.”
However, it’s the Jackson show that people talk about. Jackson, leaping from the frame of a shimmering picture. In the 19th century, Dircks and Pepper’s invention was applied to many things, but it was ghosts people wanted and ghosts they got. Their 15-month Pepper’s Ghost installation at the London Polytechnic made the modern-day equivalent of more than £1 million.
Whether it’s Pulse, Hologram USA or some other hologram startup that eventually prospers, the urge to bring people back has always predated the technology to do it.
Nostalgia is big business. But immortality? As Jeff Jampol said back in his office, where the late Rick James’s guitar sits propped up by his open door: “I don’t think this technology meets the test yet, but there’s an old Jim Morrison quote that I’ll leave you with,” he smiles and permits himself a showman’s pause, “‘Money beats soul, every time.’”