Louis Theroux flies to the United States hoping to sit down with Michael Jackson and spends most of the film failing to. He gets as far as Neverland Ranch and a handful of phone calls and brief, stage-managed encounters, while Jackson's inner circle keeps him at a careful distance. Theroux fills the gap by talking to the people who actually see Jackson day to day: employees, associates, and family members who offer a more ordinary, sometimes unflattering picture than the tabloid version of the man. The result is less a profile of Jackson than a record of what it takes to even try to reach him, with Theroux's deadpan questioning turning the runaround itself into the story. Fame, control, and the strange machinery built around a superstar who can no longer move through the world unguarded all surface through the access he doesn't get rather than the access he does.