Michael Jackson's Thriller, interview with director John Landis
Twenty five years ago, a Michael Jackson music video transformed the face of
pop. Here the director of Thriller, John Landis, talks about his
involvement.
Film director John Landis is as boisterous and garrulous a character as you're
likely to meet. An unstoppable raconteur, he has an endless fund of
anecdotes ("Let me tell you this joke I heard from Fellini"), and
much of his expletive-strewn conversation is shouted, as if he's addressing
someone in the next room.
Perhaps it's his irrepressible good humour that accounts for the equanimity
with which he reveals the sorry aftermath of Thriller, the groundbreaking
video he shot starring the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
"Listen," he says smiling, "Michael probably owes me $10
million because he's in hock to Sony so deeply. All the monies from the
Thriller video, which I own 50 per cent, are collected by Sony. My deal is
with Michael's company, and he owes Sony so much that they keep the money.
So I will never get the money, and if I want to sue Michael, it's like, 'Get
in line.' "
Landis bears no resentment towards Jackson. Indeed, he still has the highest
regard for the troubled singer, and they remain friends. Their collaboration
on Thriller marked the high point of both their careers.
Although Jackson was only 24 when he released his fourth solo album in 1982,
he'd been a star for more than a decade. None of what had gone before,
though, could have prepared him for what was about to happen. Thriller
changed the course of pop music and catapulted him into global superstardom.
It sold more than 50 million copies and spent 37 weeks at number one in the
American charts, where it remained for more than two years. All but two of
its nine tracks were hit singles.
And it wasn't just the singing. Soon after the LP's release, he perfected his "moonwalk"
dance: the worldwide hysteria that ensued was barely containable. Then, as
if driven by an obsession to reinvent, he made himself the star of the promo
video that would transform the way pop music was marketed.
Jackson had already smashed MTV's extraordinary musical apartheid: Billie Jean
(a track from the album) was the first song by a black artist to be played
by the channel. But the 14-minute mini-film inspired by Thriller's title
track rewrote the rules for the music video, opening up undreamed-of
creative possibilities - and, in the process, helping MTV on its way to
world domination.
It became the bestselling music video ever, and, a quarter of a century later,
it has staked a place in the digital new world, nestling confidently in the
iTunes video chart (number two at the time of writing) among tracks by
whippersnappers who hadn't even been born when it was shot. It has also been
viewed more than three million times since it was added to the YouTube
website just nine months ago.
The shoot was rumoured to have cost $1 million. The true figure was half that
but still vastly more than the usual budget of $50,000 to $75,000 for a pop
video of the period.
Today, Thriller still thrills as much as it did all those years ago, and that
is thanks in large measure to its director. For, although the song and
Jackson's dance moves are the irresistible ingredients, it was Landis who
whipped them into such a satisfying feast.
The young filmmaker was at the peak of his career in Hollywood. He was about
to release Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy, having, in the previous
four years made Animal House, The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in
London. And it was after seeing the last of these that Jackson called Landis
and said: "I want to turn into a monster. Can I do that?"
The release of the video and the accompanying making-of film marked the point
at which, according to Landis, Jackson became "a god".
"It created MTV really," he says. "And it created the whole
making-of business. It had a huge impact on the business. And all of it was
accidental. All that happened was that Michael called me up after watching
American Werewolf.
"So I went to see him with Rick Baker, who had done the special effects
make-up on that film, and we took along a big book of monsters for him to
look at. He hadn't seen many horror films: he was scared of that stuff.
"After The Blues Brothers, I wanted to do a good musical number with real
dancers and shoot it correctly. And I tried to exploit Michael's celebrity
to reinvent the theatrical short. That's why it's 14 minutes: it's a
two-reeler, the same length as a Laurel and Hardy short or a Bugs Bunny
cartoon."
Landis's ambitious script did not go down well at Jackson's record label CBS,
who refused to pay for it on the grounds - entirely erroneous - that the
album had slipped down the charts and wasn't going to sell many more copies.
So Landis did a deal with the new cable network Showtime, who handed over
$300,000 for the video and the making-of feature that Landis would oversee,
too. The rest of the budget came from MTV.
The 45-minute Making of Thriller established the genre, anticipating the "extras"
that now accompany almost every DVD release. However, at the time, says
Landis, "we used to call it 'The Making of Filler'. It turned out very
well, but the truth is that it's filled with scenes from American Werewolf
because I owned them, and anything else we could find to fill up the time.
"When we found we were still six minutes short, we decided to put in
pieces of the video itself. In fact, it's very effective, but at the time I
thought, 'This is shameless.' "
When the video hit the small screen, the album went straight back to number
one and tripled its sales, while MTV increased its viewership a
thousand-fold.
"Michael was terrific to work with," says Landis. "He was in
his mid-twenties, but he was like a gifted 10-year-old. He was emotionally
damaged but so sweet and so talented."
The purpose of Thriller, in Landis's mind, was "to give Michael some balls".
The female presence in Jackson's two previous videos was virtually zero, "so
I said I want to get a pretty girl, and I want you to relate to each other
sexually. And he went, 'OK.'
"He was agreeable to everything, even when I wrote that line where he
says to the girl, 'I'm not like other guys.' I warned him, 'Mike, this is a
laugh line.' He said, 'Why?' And I said, 'Because, Michael, you are...
unusual, and people will laugh and interpret it any way they want to.'"
The next potential problem arose with Ola Ray, the actress Landis wanted to
play Jackson's girlfriend. "We found out she had been a Playboy
playmate. Oh, Jesus Christ! I went to Michael and told him and said, 'Can I
hire her?' He said, 'Sure', though I don't think he even knew what I was
talking about."
A bigger difficulty emerged after the video's star-studded theatrical première
("Marlon Brando was there, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Cher - I'd
never seen anything like it"), when members of the Jehovah's Witnesses
church, of which Jackson was a member, started to kick up a fuss.
Landis recalls: "Michael was told, 'This is evil. It endorses Satanism.
You can't release it.' So I had to negotiate this bullshit statement and put
it on the beginning of the video." The disclaimer ("Due to my
strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way
endorses a belief in the occult - Michael Jackson") probably had the
opposite effect to the one intended.
"It was such a bizarre opening, but it actually had a positive influence
because it created so much talk, so much controversy. And, by the way,
Michael didn't write it; I did."
Landis last spoke to Jackson a few months ago. What, I wondered, is his mood
like these days? "When I talk to him, he's very friendly and funny. I'm
upset at what he's done to himself physically; it's quite creepy. But he's
still a gigantic talent, and I really believe he'll make a comeback. There's
talk of him doing one of those big shows in Las Vegas, like Elton John or
Celine Dion. Why not - he still has millions of fans."
And, of course, it's conceivable that a big-bucks Vegas residency might mean
Landis finally gets his hands on those missing $10 million.
- John Landis presents an evening of films on the new Sky Movies Sci-Fi &
Horror channel on Tuesday.
[telegraph.co.uk]
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