I Want My MTV

by Craig Marks

  BOB GIRALDI: Everybody says “Beat It” was taken from West Side Story. It’s not true. I had no idea what West Side Story was. My inspiration was the streets of Paterson, New Jersey, where I’m from. I listened to the song over and over, and realized it was about all the Italian hoodlums I grew up with—everybody trying to be tougher than they are, but really, we’re all cowards at heart. The budget was $200,000, which was unprecedented. The art form, if you want to call it that, was not clear yet. It was sort of like, What is this?

  Michael was beautiful. His complexion was stunning. Don’t forget, I knew him as young Michael, not the getting-older, let-me-destroy-myself Michael. He had a gentle way. He didn’t like me using the F word and told me so. “You use the F word too much.” He was a gentle soul who exploded when he performed. Why did he do “Bad”? Why did he grab his crotch? Why did he do “Smooth Criminal”? Most of his stuff was about being macho. This is the psychiatrist in me: I think Michael suffered a bit from being too androgynous. There was always a contradiction going with Michael.

  On the first night, I came this close to walking off the set of “Beat It.” Michael had the idea of getting the Crips and the Bloods for the video. We were shooting the pool-hall scene and the Crips and Bloods got rambunctious. They started smacking each other around. They didn’t love being directed. I lose it when I direct, and they looked at me like they’d never been talked to like that in their lives. Everybody was scared to death. The cops came and they were going to shut us down.

  So I called over Michael Peters, the choreographer. Michael was a legitimate Broadway dancer who’d choreographed major Broadway shows. It was a two-night shoot and we were supposed to dance on the second night. I said, “Let’s shoot the dance scenes right now.” He said, “We’re not ready.” I said, “Get ready.”

  Michael Peters and Vince Patterson, the guy with the toothpick in his mouth, came at each other with a rubber knife. Michael and Vince were living together at the time. They were lovers. On the second take, I gave a real switchblade to my AD and told him to quietly substitute it for the rubber knife. He said, “That’s illegal.” Michael and Vince are backing away from the knives—really backing away—because they were actually afraid. Once they started dancing, I must tell you, it was the most glorious moment of my directing life, as the macho, killer Crips and Bloods watched their brothers, most of them gay, dance in a way they never could.

  “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC: People became intimately familiar with every nuance of a video, which made it easy to do a parody. I could tweak something a bit and people would get the joke. Michael Jackson was the biggest artist in the world, and I thought it would be great to parody “Beat It.” As it turned out, Michael had a great sense of humor and he personally signed off on “Eat It,” which blew my mind. All of a sudden, if a manager gave us static, we could say, “Michael Jackson gave his permission, so I guess you feel like you’re more important than Michael Jackson.” As soon as “Eat It” went into heavy rotation, my life changed. It was overnight fame.

  BOB GIRALDI: I hated that “Weird Al” video. It made fun of something serious and valuable to me. I felt it was a put-down.

  HARVEY LEEDS: Jay Levey, “Weird Al”’s manager, wanted to make a video for “Eat It,” but the president of Epic, Don Dempsey, was scared to ask Michael. Walter Yetnikoff had to call Michael, who thought it was flattering and hilarious. That video cost something like $27,000, and it launched Al’s career. MTV loved Al. Because every time he parodied a video, it only served to reinforce the power of MTV.

  BOB GIRALDI: All of a sudden, I’m a star in the video world. I went to London to work on “Say Say Say.” It was a story about con artists, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. Paul said to me, “Let’s go for a walk.” He took me in the woods of the Santa Inez Valley and got me high. He tried to get me to promise I wouldn’t make him dance next to Michael Jackson, because that would be suicidal.

  While I was doing “Say Say Say,” a reporter calls me and says, “How does it feel to work with Michael and Paul?” I said, “There’s only one star on my set: me.” Brilliant. The next day, Michael calls: “How could you say such a thing?” Paul was pissed. Everybody was pissed. They were going to fire me, they were going to hang me. How many times can you apologize?

  JOHN LANDIS, director: Michael Jackson saw my film An American Werewolf in London and was taken with the special effects makeup by Rick Baker, especially the transformation. He contacted me and said he wanted to turn into a monster. That was the inspiration for “Thriller”: “Can I turn into a monster?” I didn’t even want to make a rock video. I felt they were just commercials to sell records. But what was interesting to me was Michael’s ginormous celebrity. I thought, “Shit, I could exploit this, and maybe make a theatrical short.” An old-fashioned two-reeler, fifteen minutes long, like the old Little Rascals or Laurel and Hardy shorts. I wanted to use Michael’s stardom to bring back the theatrical short.

  George Folsey was my partner and editor, and we figured out what it would cost to do a fifteen-minute union shoot. We had expensive ticket items: Up until Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, I think “Thriller” was the largest makeup call in movie history. Rick Baker designed the zombie look—I wanted Michael to look like Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf, but Rick suggested that because of Michael’s features, we make it more catlike. I had Bob Paynter shoot it as we would a movie, as opposed to a down-and-dirty music video. I insisted that the dancers get at least ten days’ rehearsal. The initial budget was about $500,000, which was a lot of money.

  I’ll never forget when Michael called Walter Yetnikoff with the budget. He was still living at his parents’ house in Encino. He said, “Walter, I’m here with John Landis and George Folsey and we want to do this . . . ,” and he explained it and said, “Well, they say it’s gonna cost $500,000.” Pause. “John, Walter wants to talk to you.” And I pick up the phone, and it was like a cartoon, where my ear blows, my hair blows. He was just, “You motherfucker! If you cocksuckers think you’re getting half a million . . .” I never met the guy, but could he scream. He went on and on—“Go fuck yourself,” basically. He said, “The album’s over, anyway. Tell Michael to work on a new album.” He kept screaming. Michael asked, “What did Walter say?” I said, “Well, Walter said no, Mike.” And Michael said, “Well then, I’ll pay for it.” And I said, “No, you’re not putting your own money in.” So George Folsey said, “Why don’t we create an hour-long program, Making Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” with a forty-five-minute documentary on the making of ‘Thriller’ plus the fifteen-minute ‘Thriller’ video, and sell it to a network?” George and I referred to it as The Making of Filler—you’d see us rehearsing a scene, then you’d see the clip from the video; then us rehearsing, then the actual clip. Well, none of the networks wanted it. HBO didn’t want it. Showtime was new, and they paid us something like $250,000 for a short window of exclusivity. When MTV heard that, we got a call from Pittman, screaming. Very upset. We said, “But you turned us down.” Because they said they would never pay for a music video. Well, they ended up paying a little over $250,000 to show it second, which in truth was the real window, because Showtime was in less than a million homes. So that’s how we got our $500,000.

  WALTER YETNIKOFF: Jon Landis and Michael said they wanted to do a video, very expensive, about monsters. That’s the part that made me crazy. I don’t think it was the money. A video about monsters? What are you, nuts?

  BOB PITTMAN: The only video we ever paid for was “Thriller.” CBS had decided they were going to make only two videos per album. We wanted another Michael video after “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” but we didn’t want to set a precedent of paying to produce videos. So we paid to produce The Making of “Thriller,” but the money went to pay for “Thriller.” And it turned out to be the single most successful video in the history of MTV.

  LES GARLAND: I gotta give it to Pittman, he came up with it. I said, “If this thing ends up airing somew
here else, it’s gonna be so embarrassing.” He goes, “Garland, I’ve got an idea. That’s not a video. That’s a short film. We can buy a short film and not change our precedent of paying for music.” I go, “That’s fucking brilliant.”

  JOHN LANDIS: Bob Pittman, Michael’s lawyer John Branca—those guys always claim they made “Thriller.” The reality is, it was a vanity video. Everything that happened on “Thriller” happened because Michael wanted to turn into a monster. None of it was planned. I want to make that clear, because there was a course taught at the Harvard Business School on “Thriller,” and it was complete bullshit.

  LES GARLAND: I was on the set for “Thriller.” Michael was so pure and lovable. I got there and was invited into his trailer. So I’m sitting in the living room section, talking to two women who work for Michael. Pretty soon, from the back of the trailer, a pair of socks come bouncing across the room and land right by me. One of the women said, “That means Michael is ready to see you.” I go, “That’s unique.”

  I walk back, and it’s pitch dark. And I’m like, “Michael?” He says, “Come over here.” I go, “You’re gonna need to smile or open your eyes real wide.” And that got a little chuckle. He was laying down resting and I sat in a chair. He goes, “Garland, I can’t thank you enough for everything you and MTV have done for me.” I said, “Michael, this is backwards. It’s me who should be thanking you.”

  JOHN LANDIS: One of the reasons people liked “Thriller” so much is because it’s a little movie. When I say a little movie, I mean it was made like a motion picture as opposed to a commercial. It’s a funny story with “Thriller”: The song was five minutes long, and I needed it to be twelve minutes long for the video. Bruce Swedien, who engineered Thriller, and Quincy Jones, who produced it, would not let me have the master tracks. So Michael and I went to the recording studio at three in the morning. We walked past the guard—“Hi, Michael.” “Hi”—put the tracks in a big suitcase and walked out with them. Then we drove across Hollywood, duped them, and put them back. And if you listen to “Thriller” on the video and on record, they’re very different. I really cut it up and changed things. One of my guilty pleasures is that when I see a group of people try to do the “Thriller” dance using the record, they have to wander around like zombies waiting for the goddamn music to start, because the recorded version begins with all these sound effects that aren’t in the video.

  LARRY STESSEL: I saw “Thriller” for the first time at Michael’s house, in his screening room, with his brothers Tito, Jackie, and Randy. When Michael said, “I’m not like other boys” in the video, Jackie and Randy started laughing. Jackie put his mouth to my ear and repeated the line: “He’s not like other boys.” Michael said, “Shut up, Jackie, that’s not nice.”

  HARVEY LEEDS: Michael had a little movie theater upstairs in his house, with all these people watching an Elizabeth Taylor movie. I was being really quiet, and then I realized those weren’t people—they were mannequins.

  RALPH TRESVANT: The first time we saw “Thriller” was at Michael’s house. We played with his llama, spent the whole day with him. Michael’s mom was there, both his sisters were there, all the animals.

  BOBBY BROWN: His sisters was running around and everybody was slapping asses. That was their thing. They would slap each other on the ass all the time. Michael would smack Janet and LaToya on the ass. They’d say, “You bad, you stop it!” And I was sitting there, thinking, “Oh boy, I would love to slap that ass, too.”

  CEE LO GREEN, artist: I was terrified of “Thriller” when I was a kid. I ran from the room when it was on. Michael Jackson was someone we all held dear—we lived vicariously through his ability, his light, his love. So you could associate with becoming a monster. If he could be possessed, then I damn sure could be possessed, because Michael was so much stronger than I.

  ROZONDA “CHILLI” THOMAS, TLC: Oh my god, I loved Michael Jackson. When his videos came on, I’d run over and kiss the TV. Remember the close-ups in “Beat It”? There was one in the beginning when he was lying down on the bed, then he sat up and turned his head, and the camera came closer. I kissed him there. And when he was walking through the pool tables in the bar, and he did that heavy breathing? He went “HUH-HUH-HUH”? Ooh, I was all over the TV. I loved that heavy breathing.

  JOHN LANDIS: Michael wanted “Thriller” to have a proper theatrical premiere. So we had a premiere at the Crest Theater on Westwood Boulevard in LA. I’ve been to the Oscars and the Golden Globes and BAFTA. I’ve been to Cannes. But I’ve never been to anything as star-studded as that. Everyone from Diana Ross to Warren Beatty. Mike had an insane range of acquaintances. He was a passionate Hollywood film buff. Everyone knows about his friendship with Liz Taylor, but he was also close to people like Spanky McFarland, from Our Gang. We had the strangest people visiting the set of “Thriller.” Walt Disney’s widow, Lillian. Fred Astaire came to a rehearsal. Gene Kelly came to a screening, and so did Fayard Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers. Jackie Kennedy came to the set. It was three in the morning in East LA—which is not a very nice place—and Michael’s Japanese assistant said, “Michael would like to see you.” I knocked on the door of his Winnebago, and as I stepped up into it, Michael goes, “John, do you know Mrs. Onassis?” And there’s Jackie fucking Kennedy.

  BOB PITTMAN: We were playing it every hour, and announcing when it would air: “‘Thriller’ is one hour away,” “fifty minutes away,” “thirty minutes away.” Ironically, we probably would not have gone that far, nor would we have gotten that involved, had it not been for Rick James’s criticism that we didn’t play black artists. “Thriller” brought people to MTV for the first time, and it made them stay and watch it again and again. Now everybody was into MTV.

  ED LOVER, Yo! MTV Raps host: MTV didn’t play black videos. So why would I watch? When “Thriller” got on MTV, we started checking it out. It was like whoever you knew had MTV, however you could you get to MTV, you had to see it. Movie theaters showed “Thriller.” Any nightclub, any spot you went to, if they had “Thriller,” they showed it.

  LES GARLAND: We were averaging a 1.2 ratings share, but the rating would spike when “Thriller” aired.

  DAVE HOLMES: My family went on a ski vacation to Breckenridge, Colorado, and I skied for forty-five minutes a day, just to get my folks off my back. MTV was showing “Thriller” every hour—so twenty minutes of every hour was devoted to “Thriller.” And I watched it every time.

  TOM FRESTON: “Thriller” was the Jersey Shore of its day.

  FREDDY DeMANN: I was blessed to manage two of the biggest and best artists of the twentieth century—Michael Jackson and Madonna. The camera was kind to both of them, and they loved the camera. Did MTV make them or did they make MTV? I think it was a happy combination. I owned the ’80s.

  CLIFF BURNSTEIN: Things started to turn around in 1983. A more positive spirit enveloped the country, and that was reflected on MTV. The videos were flamboyant, over-the-top, happy, bright, colorful. 1983 was the year of Pyromania, Michael Jackson, the Police. These were all ten-million sellers. I think 1983 was really the beginning of the ’80s, in many ways.

  JOHN LANDIS: “Thriller” made MTV. “Thriller” created the home video business. “Thriller” created so many things.

  LEE MASTERS: Bob Pittman came from a radio background, and radio formats tend to be very specific. One thing we learned, one thing Michael Jackson did teach us, was that MTV is not a radio station.

  DONNA SUMMER: Michael tended to be outside the box, and he was not going to allow anybody to constrain his creativity. He saw himself as more of an actor, in some ways. A musician, but also an actor. I mean, until today I don’t think I’ve seen any more intensely passionate, well-directed videos.

  USHER, artist: His dancing was his magic. He was able to comingle current movement with a classic understanding of choreography. Michael Jackson made three different dance styles—jazz, hip-hop, and show—all work together. He wanted to know what the kids were doing i
n the street, but he also kept it theatrical, out of respect for dance tradition.

  TONI BASIL: When he danced, he looked like he walked on water. He took Fred Astaire footage and steps taught to him by street dancers like Casper and Cooley from Soul Train, who taught him the moonwalk, and made it into his own quilt. He’s the greatest dancing pop star ever. Only Tina Turner and James Brown came close to the rank of equals.

  MC HAMMER, artist: “Thriller” blew the roof off. When Michael is dancing in the middle of the street, that was West Side Story, and then we had a horror film going on, too. That went beyond the song and gave a bigger vision than what we would have seen in our heads.

  LIONEL RICHIE, artist: When MTV started, it wanted nothing to do with black artists. They told me that my music didn’t fit. I admit I was a little offended. MTV was such an innovative company, and I thought, Wow, are we gonna miss out on this? But then I gave them “All Night Long,” after Michael had broken down the door. And from then on I was on MTV.

  JOHN TAYLOR: For our first two albums, Duran Duran shot on video and worked very cheaply. After Michael Jackson, when American artists got a sense of the potency of a well-thought-out video, they started shooting on film, and everything became much more expensive.