DETROIT — In "Michael," the new Michael Jackson biopic, Detroit's presence is reduced to a T-shirt.

Yes, a T-shirt. One of Jackson's brothers is seen wearing a Detroit T-shirt in a pair of scenes, perhaps as the filmmakers' way of acknowledging that yes, Detroit plays an important role in the Michael Jackson story, but they didn't have time to tell that part of the story.

In the movie, which has public previews starting Wednesday and opens wide on Thursday, the Jackson 5 is seen performing at a showcase in Chicago, where they're spotted side stage by an interested party.

That interested party is Suzanne de Passe, the Motown talent exec who is played in the movie by Laura Harrier. She hands a Motown business card to Joe Jackson (Colman Domingo), and the next thing you know, the Jacksons are off to meet with label — in Los Angeles, not Detroit.

It's not that if you blink you miss Detroit, it's that it's not even there.

The real story is that the Jacksons were spotted by Bobby Taylor, of Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, at a showcase in Chicago, and he in turn brought the group to the the attention of Motown execs.

Narrative shortcuts are a part of Hollywood, especially in the biopic game. So it's no surprise that the Jacksons' 1968 trip to Detroit, where the group (then the Jackson 6, they had a cousin playing with them) auditioned for Motown and a young Michael Jackson slid effortlessly across the floor in a small room with a radiator against the wall, is not a part of this particular story.

In the movie, a young Michael (played by Juliano Krue Valdi) is brought to Motown's L.A. offices and is in the studio singing "Who's Lovin' You," and Motown president Berry Gordy Jr. (Larenz Tate) is recording him outside the booth. He tells Michael to stop dancing while he's singing, but Michael can't. And that's when Gordy learns he's a special talent.

Gordy — who was indeed in L.A. at the time, as he was in the process of moving the label to the West Coast — plays a mentor to Jackson, showing him around the mixing board, but their interaction is cut short by the domineering Joe.

Tate appears in one more scene as Gordy, greeting Michael backstage after his legendary performance of "Billie Jean" at the Motown 25 special, which in "Michael" is rendered in full.

So, back to that Detroit T-shirt. In the movie, during a scene where Michael is meeting his pet chimp Bubbles for the first time, one of his brothers is in the background wearing a navy blue Detroit T-shirt. He wears it in another scene, too, where the Jackson brothers are playing basketball in their driveway.

And that's the most Detroit is seen, referenced or acknowledged in "Michael" — save for one Easter egg.

At that Chicago showcase, the Jacksons follow Gladys Knight (Liv Symone), who is on stage performing "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." The version that is heard over the soundtrack is Knight's performance of the song from Detroit's Fox Theatre in 1969 — which, technically, didn't happen until a year after the scene portrayed in the movie.

But that's a little bit of movie magic that happened to work out in Detroit's favor.

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