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"Michael Jackson's Thriller" (Short Film / Music Video)

Date assessed from the fact that one of the film schedules states October 12, 1983 as the second day of shooting, making October 11, 1983 the first day of shooting, and this article also confirms it. The date of the last day of shooting (October 27, 1983) is assessed from the facts that October 23, 1983 is confirmed as one of the days of the werewolf shoot; the werewolf scene was one of the last scenes to film. Also, one of the editors in The Making of Thriller states that “it’s Sunday night” and that they “finished shooting three days ago”, making it a Thursday night that they finished shooting. Michael is seen helping him with edits, and the film is “about 80% edited” at that point. The day of their editing session couldn’t have been Sunday, November 6 (a week later) because around that time (“about 2 weeks before the [November 14] premiere”) Michael was ordering Landis to destroy the already completed film.

Michael Jackson, opening disclaimer

Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.

“Moonwalk” (February 1, 1988)

I remember when we were filming “Thriller,” Jackie Onassis and Shaye Areheart came to California to discuss this book. There were photographers in the trees, everywhere. It was not possible for us to do anything without it being noticed and reported.

“The Museum of HIStory” website (July 4, 1995), song commentary audio transcripts (mirror) (archived mirror)

I think the most fun short film or video that I've ever made had to be "Thriller". I just loooooved becoming a monster (laughs) because it gave me a chance to pretty much become someone else. It was just fun hiding behind this mask and just really letting this part of you, your body or your feelings out, but hiding behind a different character. And it was just thrilling for me to make that. And the dance, and all the morphing, and all the fun things that we did...it's so memorable.

Nancy Griffin, Vanity Fair contributor

OCTOBER 13, 1983; EIGHT p.m Downtown Los Angeles.

On a chilly autumn night, gaffers rig motion-picture lights around the entrance to the Palace Theatre, which bears the title “Thriller” on its marquee. A cascade of shrieks—“Michael! Michael!”—drifts on the breeze from a few blocks away, where hundreds of fans strain against police barricades for a glimpse of their idol. Although everyone involved in the production has been sworn to secrecy, word of tonight’s shoot has leaked and been broadcast on local radio. Security guards patrol the set.

Michael Jackson, a shy pixie in a red leather jacket and jeans, stands in shadow in the theater’s entryway, talking with actress Ola Ray and director John Landis. The camera crew is making final preparations for a crane shot that will pan down from the marquee as Jackson and Ray, playing a couple on a date, emerge from the theater. Judging from the saucy looks she is sending his way, Ray is clearly besotted by her leading man, who responds by casually throwing an arm around her shoulders.

I am on set covering the shoot for Life magazine. Landis says that he needs a “ticket girl” in the background and orders me to sit in the booth—a prime spot from which to watch the performances.

Just before calling “Action,” Landis fortifies his actors with boisterous encouragement.

“How are you going to be in this shot?” he shouts.

“Wonderful,” Jackson chirps, barely audibly.

Seconds later Jackson steps into his nimbus of light, and it is as if he flips on an internal switch: he smiles, he glows, he mesmerizes. Landis executes the long crane shot, then moves in for close-ups and dialogue. “It’s only a movie,” Jackson reassures his date. “You were scared, weren’t you?”

Landis calls for another take and coaxes: “Make it sexy this time.”

“How?” asks Jackson.

“You know, as if you want to fuck her.”

The star flinches and licks his lips uncomfortably, then gazes earnestly into Ray’s eyes. Landis gets the shot he wants and calls for the next setup, satisfied. He whispers to me, “I bet it will be sexy.”

The world certainly thought so, and apparently still does. The campy horror-fest with dancing zombies that is “Michael Jackson’s Thriller,” originally conceived as a 14-minute short film, is the most popular and influential music video of all time. In January of this year it was designated a national treasure by the Library of Congress, the first music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry.

Slide show: Michael Jackson in his own words.

Unlike forgotten favorites from MTV’s heyday (Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” anyone?), “Thriller” is thriving on YouTube, where one can view, along with the original, scores of “Thriller” dance tutorials and re-enactments by Bollywood actors and Bar Mitzvah celebrants. The dance has become an annual tribal ritual in major cities around the world, with initiates in ghoul makeup aping Michael’s moves en masse; the current record for largest dance of the undead is 12,937, held by Mexico City. A YouTube 41-million-hit sensation features more than 1,500 inmates in a Philippines prison yard executing the funky footwork as part of a rehab program designed to “turn dregs into human beings”; the prison, in the city of Cebu, has become a T-shirt-selling tourist attraction.

None of this was imaginable back at the Palace Theatre 27 years ago. Jackson then was a naïve, preternaturally gifted 25-year-old “who wanted to be turned into a monster, just for fun,” as Landis recently told me—and had the money to make it happen. “Thriller” marked the most incandescent moment in Jackson’s life, his apex creatively as well as commercially. He would spend the rest of his career trying to surpass it. “In the Off the Wall/Thriller era, Michael was in a constant state of becoming,” says Glen Brunman, then Jackson’s publicist at his record company Epic. “It was all about the music, until it also became about the sales and the awards, and something changed forever.”

It was the “Thriller” video that pushed Jackson over the top, consolidating his position as the King of Pop, a royal title he encouraged and Elizabeth Taylor helped popularize. “Thriller” was the seventh and last single and third video (after “Billie Jean” and “Beat It”) to be released from the album of the same name, which had already been on the charts for almost a year since its release, in November 1982. The video’s frenzied reception, whipped up by round-the-clock showings on MTV, would more than double album sales, driving Thriller into the record books as the No. 1 LP of all time, a distinction it maintains today. But, for anyone paying close attention during the making of the “Thriller” video—and Jackson’s collaborators were—the outlines of subsequent tragedies were already painfully visible.

Read more about the King of Pop in VF.com’s Michael Jackson archive.

Jackson would dominate pop culture for the remainder of the decade, owning the 80s as Elvis had owned the 50s and the Beatles the 60s. To rule the entertainment universe had been his dream since he belted out “I Want You Back” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969 as the precocious lead singer of the Jackson 5. Under the strict, physically and psychologically abusive tutelage of his father, Joseph, he had sacrificed his childhood to make money for the family and Motown Records. He would later describe his boyhood as a blur of tour buses and tutors, and rehearsals that his father supervised with a belt in his hand, ready to whip any son who stepped out of line. Joe reserved especially harsh treatment for his most gifted and defiant son; although extremely sensitive by nature, Michael was also quietly stubborn and frequently clashed with his father. The brief moments Michael spent onstage were when he felt happiest. “I remember singing at the top of my voice and dancing with real joy and working too hard for a child,” he recalled in his autobiography, Moonwalk.

His mother, Katherine, whom he adored, called him “the special one.” A musical savant, young Michael hungrily devoured show-business knowledge and studied favorite entertainers from Fred Astaire to James Brown to the Beatles. Ron Weisner, hired by Joe Jackson in ’76 to co-manage the Jacksons, recalls that on tour Michael—exhibiting the insomnia that plagued him throughout his life (and would be a factor in the drug overdose that killed him)—stayed up late after each show. “We’d be on the bus and we had a little TV and VHS player. He would watch tapes of James Brown and Jackie Wilson over and over until his brothers were screaming and cursing him and throwing things at the TV. The next day they would hide the tape, and Michael would be crying. He would never, never, never stop.”

Obsessive about tracking his sales figures, Jackson compared them constantly with those of Prince and Madonna.

As he grew older he pulled away from his family to venture into solo projects, notably the 1979 funk-disco smash Off the Wall, which he layered with lush grooves and falsetto vocals with the help of producing partner Quincy Jones. The pair teamed up again three years later for Thriller. This time Jackson’s aim was nothing less than a Beatles-like domination of the charts that would lay waste to the divisions between rock, soul, and pop. The strategy was to compile a succession of hit singles that would offer something for everyone: the first release was the ballad “The Girl Is Mine,” a duet with Paul McCartney. Second up was the funky anthem “Billie Jean.” Third was the rocker “Beat It,” which featured a blistering Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. Executives at Epic pushed the LP tirelessly, pressuring a range of radio formats to play it and marketing it as a mainstream disc.

Most serendipitously, Jackson was the ideal video star. Not only did he radiate an epicene glamour that was at once innocent and intensely erotic, but he was also conceptually inventive, a great dancer, and a sartorial trendsetter. He judged the quality of what the fledgling rock network MTV was airing to be poor, and felt he could do better. He hired the best directors and choreographers and applied everything he had soaked up from watching Gene Kelly and Astaire movies. In a black jacket and pink shirt he slid and spun his way down a surreal city street in the “Billie Jean” video—an electrifying, transformative performance. Although the song’s thumping bass line and synthesizers excluded it from MTV’s definition of a rock song, the network knew a hit when it saw one and put the clip into heavy rotation. The “Beat It” video was grittier, an homage to West Side Story, with Jackson strutting and spinning in a red-orange leather jacket in the midst of 20 dancers and genuine recruited gang members.

More than any other artist, Jackson ushered in the heyday of the music video, demonstrating its promotional power, raising the bar creatively, and paving the way for greater acceptance of black musicians on MTV. But the Thriller campaign, concocted by the album’s brain trust—Jackson; his lawyer and closest adviser, John Branca; CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff; and Epic head of promotion Frank DiLeo—did not include plans for a third video, and certainly not a video of the title track, which wasn’t even going to be released as a single. “Who wants a single about monsters?” says Yetnikoff, summing up how the group felt at the time about the song’s potential.

But in June of 1983 the album, after four months as No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, was bumped from the top slot by the Flashdance soundtrack. It briefly regained the top position in July, then was toppled again, this time by Synchronicity, by the Police. The three remaining planned singles—“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” just released in May, “Human Nature,” scheduled for July, and “P.Y.T.” for September—were not expected to drive album sales as “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” had, nor were they suitable for videos.

Jackson was upset. Obsessive about tracking his sales figures, he compared them constantly with those of his competitors in the top echelon, including Prince and Madonna. “He enjoyed being on top,” says Larry Stessel, Epic’s West Coast marketing executive, who worked closely with the star. “He reveled in it. He didn’t like it when it ended.” With his own album making history, Jackson yearned to shatter records held by the Fab Four. “It was all about the Beatles,” says Stessel. “He knew in his heart of hearts that he would never be bigger than the Beatles, but he had such tremendous respect for them, and he certainly wanted to come as close as he could.”

In the summer of ’83, Yetnikoff and Stessel answered calls at all hours of the night from Jackson. “Walter, the record isn’t No. 1 anymore,” Yetnikoff remembers Jackson saying. “What are we going to do about it?” “We’re going to go to sleep and deal with it tomorrow,” Yetnikoff told him. It was DiLeo who first mentioned the idea of making a third video, and pressed Jackson to consider the album’s title track. “It’s simple—all you’ve got to do is dance, sing, and make it scary,” DiLeo recalls telling Jackson.

Jackson had known episodes of real-life terror. His father once put on a fright mask and crawled into Michael’s bedroom, screaming.

In some ways “Thriller,” written by Rod Temperton, is the album’s sore thumb, a semi-novelty song with sound effects of creaking doors and eerie footsteps and bwah-ha-ha narration by Vincent Price. Horror was a genre with which Jackson had an ambivalent relationship. As a child, he had known episodes of real-life terror. Michael’s biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli recounted that Joe Jackson had once put on a fright mask and crawled into Michael’s bedroom through a window at night, screaming; Joe Jackson said his purpose was to teach his son to keep the window closed when he slept. For years afterward Michael suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his room, and said that whenever he saw his father he felt nauseated.

Jackson had reason to be fascinated by scary disguises and things that go bump in the night, but he didn’t want them to seem too real. His tastes generally ran to benign Disney-esque fantasies where people were nice and children were safe. “I never was a horror fan,” he said. “I was too scared.” He would make sure that the tone of his “Thriller” film was creepy-comical, not genuinely terrifying.

In early August, John Landis, whose most successful films had been National Lampoon’s Animal House and Trading Places, picked up the phone and heard Jackson’s wee voice on the line. The star told Landis how much he had enjoyed the director’s horror spoof An American Werewolf in London. Would he be willing to direct Jackson in a music video with a spooky story line that had him transform into a werewolf? At the time, making music videos was not something feature directors did. But Landis was intrigued enough by Jackson’s entreaty to take a meeting.

On the afternoon of August 20, Landis and his producing partner, George Folsey Jr., drove through the gates of Hayvenhurst, the high-walled mock-Tudor estate in Encino where the family had moved when Jackson was 13, and where he still lived with his parents and sisters LaToya and Janet. In 1981, Jackson had purchased the house from his parents and rebuilt it, installing such diversions as an exotic-animal farm stocked with llamas, a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs diorama, and a 32-seat screening room with a popcorn machine. In the corner of his second-story bedroom suite stood his “friends,” five life-size, fully dressed female mannequins.

At the time, Jackson was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness who obeyed his religion’s mandate to spread the faith by knocking on doors in his neighborhood, wearing a crude disguise of mustache and glasses. He attended services at the local Kingdom Hall and abstained from drinking, swearing, sex before marriage, and, supposedly, R-rated movies. The gregarious Landis teased Jackson about having watched the R-rated An American Werewolf in London. “I said, ‘Michael, what about the sex?’ He said, ‘I closed my eyes.’”

Landis told Jackson that he would not direct “Thriller” as a music video, proposing instead that they collaborate on a short narrative film that could be released in theaters—reviving that endangered species, the short subject—before it went to video. Landis would write a story line, inspired by the song, about a cute young guy on a date who turns into a monster. The short would be shot on 35-mm. film with feature-film production values, including great locations and an impressive dance number. Landis would call in a favor from Rick Baker, the Oscar-winning makeup wizard who had created the title creature for An American Werewolf in London, and get him to design Jackson’s transformation makeup. Jackson was enthusiastic about Landis’s vision and immediately said, “Let’s do it.”

Although CBS/Epic had ponied up $250,000 for the “Billie Jean” video, Yetnikoff had refused to underwrite “Beat It,” so Jackson had paid $150,000 out of his own pocket. When Folsey and Landis worked up the budget for “Thriller,” they put it at an estimated $900,000. Landis and Jackson placed a call to “Uncle Walter,” as Jackson referred to him, to explain the “Thriller” concept and what it would cost. Landis says that Yetnikoff screamed so loudly that the director had to hold the phone away from his ear. “I’ve only heard three or four people swear like that in my life,” he says. When Landis hung up the phone, Jackson said calmly, “It’s O.K. I’ll pay for it.” Eventually Yetnikoff agreed that the record company would contribute $100,000 to pay for the video, but that left a long way to go and Jackson’s collaborators didn’t want the star to be on the hook.

It was Folsey and John Branca, Jackson’s lawyer, who put their heads together to solve the budget shortfall. Although cable TV was a new phenomenon and the home-video market had yet to explode, they decided to film behind the scenes on 16-mm. for a nearly 45-minute documentary, Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which, bundled with the “Thriller” video, could be sold to cable. MTV agreed to pay $250,000 and Showtime $300,000 for the one-hour package; Jackson would cover some up-front production costs and be reimbursed. Then Vestron came in and offered to distribute Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a $29.95 “sell-through” video on VHS and Betamax, a pioneering deal of its kind. (Most videos were then sold for far higher prices to rental stores, rather than directly to consumers.) “You have to remember, back in those days none of us realized quite what home video was going to become,” says Folsey. “The studios treated it pretty much the way they treated television in the 50s and 60s, with total disdain. They had no idea that the home-video business was going to save Hollywood—it never crossed their minds.”

Landis had the opposite of “I won’t grow up” in mind: he wanted Jackson to satisfy his female fans by showing some virility.

With the financing in place and only six weeks before the first shooting day, October 11, the team moved swiftly into an accelerated pre-production. Landis hired his director of photography from Trading Places, Robert Paynter, and drafted his own wife, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, best known for putting Harrison Ford in a fedora and leather jacket for Raiders of the Lost Ark, as costume designer. “Beat It” choreographer Michael Peters was brought in and began auditioning dancers and developing street-hip dance phrases for the zombie choreography. Folsey crewed up, securing locations and equipment.

Jackson was driven by the pop star’s occupational affliction: the desire to be a movie star. He had met and befriended Steven Spielberg when he narrated the soundtrack album and audiobook for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. (Jackson cried when recording the part where E.T. dies.) He and Spielberg were in discussions about Jackson’s playing the lead in a filmed musical version of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

But Landis had precisely the opposite of “I won’t grow up” in mind: he wanted Jackson to satisfy his young female fans by showing some virility. He wrote a script that loosely spoofed I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Michael would go on a date with a sexy girl in two separate time periods, the 50s and 80s. There would be dialogue interspersed with music. As the 50s guy, Michael would ask his girl to go steady, tell her, “I’m not like other guys,” then transform into a werewolf and terrorize her. As the 80s guy, he would woo her with seductive dance moves before turning into a ghoul. “The big thing was to give him a girl,” says Landis, pointing out that Jackson hadn’t interacted with females in the videos for “Billie Jean” or “Beat It.” “That was the big breakthrough.”

After Jennifer Beals of Flashdance turned down an offer to co-star, Landis cast an unknown 23-year-old former Playboy Playmate named Ola Ray. “I auditioned a lot of girls and this girl Ola Ray—first of all, she was crazy for Michael,” Landis says. “She had such a great smile. I didn’t know she was a Playmate.” Jackson signed off on Ray, then reconsidered the seemliness of cavorting with an ex-Playmate and came close to derailing the casting. According to Landis, “I said, ‘Michael, she’s a Playmate, but so what? She’s not a Playmate in this.’ He went, ‘O.K., whatever you want.’ I have to tell you, I got along great with Michael.”

It was Deborah Landis’s job to play up Jackson’s masculinity while dressing him in hip, casual clothes that were comfortable for dancing. Since the video would be shot at night in a mostly somber palette, she says, “I felt that red would really pop in front of the ghouls.” She chose the same color for both his jacket and jeans to emphasize a vertical line, making his five-foot-seven-inch, 100-pound frame appear taller. “The socks and the shoes were his own,” she says. “He took that directly from Fred Astaire, who always wore soft leather loafers to dance in, and socks. And Michael was elegant. I worked with David Bowie, who was also that same body frame, again very, very slim. Fred Astaire was a 36 regular; Michael was a 36 regular. David and Michael and Fred Astaire—you could literally put them in anything, and they would carry themselves with a distinction and with confidence and with sexuality.”

OCTOBER 13, 1983; 10:30 p.m. Downtown Los Angeles.

On a desolate city street, Jackson lipsynchs to a playback of “Thriller” as he dances and skitters playfully around Ray. Landis has barely rehearsed the scene because he is hoping for some spontaneous sexual energy between his actors and has asked Jackson to improvise. Ray, who looks deliriously smitten, is supposed to keep the beat with each footstep. Landis puts his hand over his eyes and quietly shakes his head as she repeatedly messes up the tempo, necessitating many takes. Jackson remains charmingly frisky in every one, hugging her as he sings, “Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together … ”

Ray has made it clear to Jackson and everyone else that she wants the cuddling to continue after the “Cut!” “Michael is very special, not like any other guy I’ve met,” she says, kicking off her high heels and settling into her set chair after the scene wraps. “Since we’ve been working together we’ve been getting closer. He was a very shy person, but he’s opened up. I think he’s lived a sheltered life. He knows a lot of entertainers, but he needs friends that he can go out and relax and enjoy himself with, instead of talking to his mannequins in his room.”

The congenial atmosphere on “Thriller” seemed to have a salutary effect on Jackson. He delighted the crew by hanging out on the set between shots, and although he didn’t say much, he responded graciously to anyone who approached. Landis frequently got him giggling with horseplay, once lifting him up by the ankles and shaking him upside down while Jackson shrieked, “Put me down, you punk!”

He would also enjoy a secret interlude with Ola Ray. The actress had her makeup done each day at a studio where Jane Fonda happened to be shooting a workout video. Ray engaged in girl talk with Fonda, a friend of Jackson’s, and solicited tips on how to pique Jackson’s romantic interest. As Ray remembers, “Miss Fonda said, ‘Be yourself—just be sweet and talk to him about things he might be interested in or like to do. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness, so you should talk to him about religion. Maybe he will want you to go to church with him one day.’”

Arriving at the set, Ray would sit outside her trailer and finish touching up her makeup. “Every day Michael came and sat and watched me,” she says. “He was in awe of me. He was always in my face trying to learn to do things with makeup like I did.” When he asked her to come give pointers to his own makeup person, saying, “I have a shine on my nose that I can’t get off,” she agreed. “So I’m seriously talking to his makeup artist, trying to explain what to do, and she looked at me and said, ‘Girl, don’t you know that no matter how much powder I put on his nose it’s going to shine? Do you know how many nose jobs he’s had?’ Then Michael started laughing, because I didn’t know he had had nose jobs! I guess the whole world knew.”

“I dealt with Michael as I would have a really gifted child,” says Landis. “He was emotionally damaged, but so sweet and so talented.”

The flirtation progressed. “I had some intimate moments with him in his trailer,” says Ray. How intimate? “Let me see how I can say this without, you know, being too …” She pauses. “I won’t say that I have seen him in his birthday suit but close enough,” she says, laughing. Because he was shy, she tried not to scare him by coming on too strong. “What we had was such like a little kindergarten thing going on. I thought it was important for him to be around someone who would make him feel comfortable, and that was my main objective.” Did they make out? “Kissing and puppy-love make-out sessions,” she confirms, “and a little more than that.” That is all she cares to divulge. “I’ve already told you more than I’ve ever told anyone!”

Ray watched Jackson switch seamlessly from silly to sober for business meetings. When Jacqueline Onassis’s white limousine pulled up, he greeted the Doubleday Books editor, who had flown out from New York to discuss publishing Jackson’s memoir (which eventually became Moonwalk), with courtly professionalism. Landis says that he barged unknowingly into Jackson’s trailer, and the star coolly said, “John, have you met Mrs. Onassis?”

An eclectic assortment of luminaries appeared on the set to see Jackson. Fred Astaire and Rock Hudson both dropped by. Quincy Jones, watching the filming of the zombie dance, mused about Jackson’s ability to maintain his child-like quality: “It takes a lot of maturity to control all that innocence.” Perhaps the most unlikely visitor to appear was Marlon Brando, who, Landis learned, was slipping acting advice to Jackson. One day when Landis admonished him for not knowing his lines, Jackson said, “Marlon told me to always go for the truth, not the words.” When MTV executive Les Garland arrived for a scheduled visit, he waited in the living room of Jackson’s trailer, chatting with a couple of female assistants. Then “a pair of socks came bouncing out from the bedroom and landed by me,” says Garland. “One of the ladies said, ‘That means Michael is up and ready to see you now.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s unique.’”

If his spirit on the set seemed carefree, behind the scenes Jackson was emotionally stressed by long-simmering family and business pressures. As he grew to trust some of his “Thriller” collaborators, including Landis, Baker, and Stessel, he opened up about his loneliness, his perception that he had been robbed of his childhood, and his troubled relationship with his father.

Jackson faced a critical moment in his personal development: would his new mega-success and wealth spur him to grow, becoming more confident and independent, or to withdraw further into his gilded fantasy world? His “Thriller” friends marveled at his paradoxical qualities: simultaneously sophisticated as an artist, canny to the point of ruthlessness in business dealings, and breathtakingly immature about relationships. “I dealt with Michael as I would have a really gifted child,” says Landis, “because that’s what he was at that moment. He was emotionally damaged, but so sweet and so talented.”

More than once Landis found himself caught up in the twisted dynamics of the Jackson family. One night when Joseph and Katherine Jackson visited the set, the director recalls, “Michael asked me to have Joe removed. He said, ‘Would you please ask my father to leave?’ So I go over to Mr. Jackson. ‘Mr. Jackson, I’m sorry, but can you please … ?’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m John Landis. I’m directing this.’ ‘Well, I’m Joe Jackson. I do what I please.’ I said, ‘I’ll have to ask security to remove you if you don’t leave now.’ ” Landis says he had a policeman escort Joe Jackson off the set, which Jackson, through his lawyer, denies.

Distancing himself from his father was a theme in Michael Jackson’s life. He had to approve the reams of promotional materials that Epic generated to support “Thriller,” and one day he called the record label’s art department and asked an art director if she could retouch his nose on a famous photo of him as a child. “I want you to slim the wings of my nose,” Jackson told her. “O.K., but why, Michael?” she asked, and tried to reassure him that his face looked fine just the way it was. “I don’t want to look like my father,” Jackson replied. “Every time I look at that photograph I think I look like my father.”

Although he was no longer Michael’s manager, Joe Jackson remained an intimidating and powerful presence in his life. In the summer of ’83, Jackson relied on his close adviser John Branca to communicate with his father about business matters, avoiding direct confrontation with Joe whenever possible. “Michael was scared to death of Joseph,” says Larry Stessel, who vividly recalls an evening when Joe walked into the room at the Encino house and Michael literally moved behind Stessel to hide, cowering. (Not until a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey would Michael publicly acknowledge how his father had brutalized him as a child.)

Michael was the Jackson family’s golden goose, and ever since he emancipated himself, at the age of 21, Joe had been hostile to his solo endeavors. Now, with millions of Thriller dollars flowing in Michael’s direction, Joe and Katherine and the brothers—all of whom needed money, thanks partly to extravagant spending habits—felt entitled to cash in. They set about organizing a Jacksons “Victory” reunion tour to take place the following summer, railroading Michael into serving as the star attraction. Joseph sent his secret weapon, Katherine, to implore her “special one” to do right by the family, knowing that Michael could not say no to his mother. “Michael did not want to tour,” says Stessel. “He said to them, ‘I will do this for you this once, but don’t come and ask me for money again. After this I have to do my own projects.’ ”

At Hayvenhurst, Jackson led a strange, cocooned existence. A round-the-clock security team kept the ever increasing swarms of fans outside from breaching the walls. Inside, the family’s interactions were gothic and tense. While Katherine had filed for divorce the previous year following revelations of her husband’s infidelity (he had fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter, Joh’Vonnie, whom he visited regularly), Joe had simply moved into a bedroom down the hall rather than move out. Michael tried to make his mother’s life more pleasant and avoid colliding with his father. “Michael would lock his bedroom door,” remembers Branca, “and Joe would threaten to bang it in.” (Joe Jackson, through his lawyer, denies this account.)

Michael transcended the oppressive atmosphere with bursts of musical creativity. He once described his songwriting process as “a gestation, almost like a pregnancy or something. It’s an explosion of something so beautiful, you go, Wow!” When a song was ready to be birthed, he drafted siblings to help him record demos in his home studio; Janet sang backup on the first version of “Billie Jean.” The night before his now legendary appearance on the Motown 25th-anniversary TV special on NBC, where he introduced the Moonwalk, he had choreographed and rehearsed his performance in the kitchen.

On Sundays, Jackson observed the Sabbath with fasting and hours of cathartic ritual dancing. “It was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me,” he later said. Sometimes he invited young street dancers to come show him the latest moves; that was how he learned the Moonwalk.

Jackson would ask startlingly ignorant questions about sex—“simple, biological, stupid 12-year-old questions.”

Jackson also reveled in the company of children at Hayvenhurst, which was like a warm-up for Neverland, a kids’ paradise, which he loved sharing. He had struck up a friendship with the four-foot-three-inch television star Emmanuel Lewis, 12, with whom he would invent games and roll around on the grass, laughing. When George Folsey’s son, Ryan, 13, accompanied his father to meetings at the Jackson home, Michael behaved like a kid who was bored hanging out with the adults, jumping up to show Ryan around. They would feed the llamas, play the video game Frogger, and drive toy Model T’s around the grounds. “Michael was 25, but I’d say that he was 13,” says Ryan. “Mentally, he was 12 to 15 years behind. He could relate to me because he was my age.”

Ryan hung out with Michael in his bedroom, which had a mattress on the floor, toys everywhere, and illustrations of Peter Pan on the walls. They talked about music—“I was amazed that Michael didn’t know who U2 was”—and the girls they had crushes on. Jackson revealed how discombobulated he had been by Ola Ray’s sexual allure after a dance rehearsal with her. “He started getting all nervous and stuff,” says Ryan. “He said, ‘She’s adorable, she’s adorable. She’s so hot!’ It was just so funny seeing him that way.”

No one knew if Jackson, who told Landis he was a virgin, was practicing abstinence for religious reasons, or because he had gotten spooked about women by the obsessed fan who accused him of fathering her child (inspiring “Billie Jean,” according to some reports), or because he was simply too shy to date. Vince Paterson, who helped with the choreography in “Thriller,” says that Jackson would ask him startlingly ignorant questions about sex—“simple, biological, stupid 12-year-old questions.” He adds, “I never saw Michael as a sexual creature. He was always sort of asexual to me—some people are like that. I never had one vibe, as dynamic and electric and powerful as he was. He was like nobody I had ever met in my life. On the one hand he was so socially retarded, and on the other hand he was a creative genius.”

Paterson remembers Jackson asked him once after a dance rehearsal, “ ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m just going to a party with some friends. Do you want to come?’ ‘No, I’ve never been to a party. If I ever went to a party I would just want to go stand behind the curtain and be able to peek out and watch what people do.’ ”

“Friendship is a thing I am just beginning to learn about,” Jackson told Ebony magazine in 1982. “I was raised on the stage and that is where I am comfortable. And everything else is, like, foreign to me.” Jackson had high-profile showbiz buddies such as Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diana Ross, whom he could gossip with on the phone or invite to be his date for a public function. But when “Thriller” colleagues invited him for dinner and suggested that he bring a friend, he showed up alone. He frequently hung out at John and Deborah Landis’s house. “I liked Mike,” says John. “He used to come over to our house all the time and just stay there. I think he was so lonely. He and I got along fine, watching television until three or four in the morning, or looking at books. Deborah [called me into] the kitchen once, and she said to me, ‘John, the most famous human being on the planet is in the library, and I want you to get him the fuck out. Tell him he has to go home!’ ”

OCTOBER 23, 1983; 9:45 a.m. Rick Baker’s studio, North Hollywood.

‘He’s completely unreliable,” sputters Landis, fuming and pacing as Baker, the makeup creator, arranges werewolf ears, paws, and teeth on his worktable. (Actually, given Jackson’s delicate features, Baker has created a look that is more along the lines of a werecat.) Jackson was scheduled to arrive 45 minutes ago to be made up for his grisly metamorphosis sequence. Finally the star’s black Rolls pulls up outside. Jackson trots in and plunks himself down in the chair. He is wearing a yellow T-shirt, black pants short enough to show his argyle socks, and black loafers with one sole flapping loose. He is carrying the book How to Be a Jewish Mother with a copy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses magazine, The Watchtower, inside.

As Baker hovers over him, working meticulously, Jackson sits silently with his hands folded in his lap. An assistant arrives carrying a yellow pillowcase with something lumpy inside and puts it down in the outer room. “Say Say Say” comes on the radio, the latest Jackson hit single, another duet with Paul McCartney, this one appearing on McCartney’s album Pipes of Peace. Jackson yawns. “I have to tinkle,” he says, and gets up for a bathroom break.

He returns carrying an eight-foot boa constrictor—retrieved from that yellow pillowcase—which he has named Muscles. He wraps the snake around my neck. “Don’t be afraid—Muscles won’t hurt you,” he says in a feathery voice.

When shooting was finished, Landis and Folsey worked every night in an editing room on the Universal Studios lot; after the original editor departed for another project, Folsey took over cutting. Jackson liked to hang out with Landis and Folsey while they worked, driving himself and arriving in the editing room at about nine P.M. They’d bring in his preferred dinner of salad and brown rice and vegetables. “We’d look at cut footage and talk about things, and it was always fun,” says Folsey. “He was very appreciative and had good ideas.” All three were pleased with the way the short film was shaping up, and looked forward to the premiere at the Crest Theatre, in Westwood, on November 14. When Jackson departed at one or two in the morning, he’d find mash notes on the windshield of his Rolls.

About two weeks before the premiere, Jackson called Branca and, hyperventilating and speaking in a halting voice, ordered him to destroy the negative of “Thriller.” After much cajoling he revealed the reason for his decision. “He said the Jehovah’s Witnesses heard he was doing a werewolf video,” Branca recalls. “They told him that it promoted demonology and they were going to excommunicate him.” Branca conferred with Folsey and Landis, and all agreed that the “Thriller” negative had to be safeguarded. Landis immediately removed the film canisters from the lab and delivered them to Branca’s office, where they were locked up.

Next, according to Landis, he got a call from Jackson’s security chief, Bill Bray, who reported that the singer had been in his room with the door locked for three days, refusing to come out. Landis drove to the Encino estate. “Bill and I kicked in the door, knocked it down, and Michael was lying there. He said, ‘I feel so bad.’ I said, ‘Michael, have you eaten?’ He hadn’t eaten. It was weird. I just said, ‘Look, I want you to see a doctor right now.’ ”

Landis returned to see Jackson the next day and found him at Frank DiLeo’s house, a few blocks from the Encino estate, in a more cheerful state. He apologized for issuing the order to destroy “Thriller”: “I’m sorry, John. I’m embarrassed.” Landis then informed the star that his directive had been ignored. “I said, ‘Michael, I wouldn’t let it be destroyed.’ He went, ‘Really? Because I think it’s really good.’ I go, ‘Michael, it’s great and you’re great.’ ”

Still, Jackson was concerned about the video’s content. Branca, desperate to mollify his client, invented a ruse. “I said, ‘Mike, did you ever watch Bela Lugosi in Dracula?’ He goes, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Do you know that he was a devout Christian?’ I was just making it up. And I said, ‘Did you ever notice there were, like, disclaimers on those movies?’ He goes, ‘No.’ ‘So, Michael, before we destroy this film, let’s put a disclaimer on it saying that this does not reflect the personal convictions of Michael Jackson.’ ‘Oh!’ He liked it.” Problem solved. Says Landis, “You know, what’s wonderful about Michael—this is where genius comes in. No matter how wacky something was, it always had some amazing benefit. That disclaimer caused a lot of talk, and it generated a lot of interest.”

The A-list turned out for the premiere at the 500-seat historic Crest Theatre: Diana Ross, Warren Beatty, Prince, Eddie Murphy. “I’ve been to the Oscars, the BAFTAs, the Emmys, and the Golden Globes, and I had never seen anything like this,” remembers Landis. Ola Ray looked for Jackson before the lights went down and found him in the projection booth. He told her that she looked beautiful, but refused her entreaty to come sit in the audience. “This is your night,” he told her. “You go enjoy yourself.” Landis warmed up the audience with a new print of the Mickey Mouse cartoon “The Band Concert.” Then came “Thriller,” with its sound mix cranked up to top volume. Fourteen minutes later the crowd was on its feet, applauding and crying, “Encore! Encore!” Eddie Murphy shouted, “Show the goddamn thing again!” And they did.

As the December 2 MTV debut of “Thriller” approached, there was massive audience anticipation. Former MTV executive Les Garland says the network settled on a saturation strategy he describes as “ ‘Every time we play “Thriller,” let’s tell them when we are going to play it again.’ We played it three to five times a day. We were getting audience ratings 10 times the usual when we popped ‘Thriller.’ ”

Showtime aired Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller six times in February. Within months the Vestron release had sold a million copies, making it at the time the biggest-selling home-video release ever.

Landis’s dream for “Thriller” to have an international theatrical run, like the short films from Hollywood’s golden age, would not be fulfilled. In a sense, he became a victim of his own success: Yetnikoff and DiLeo killed any chance of that when they realized that the video was a spectacular marketing tool. “Epic gave away the video free all over the world, to every television station that wanted it,” says Landis. “There was a month when you couldn’t turn the television on and not see ‘Thriller.’ ” Since Landis and Folsey together owned 50 percent of both “Thriller” and Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, they had the legal right to be consulted. “I don’t think it was very kosher,” says Landis, “but it was the right thing for CBS Records to do.”

Having transformed a fun but marginal song into a heroic and historic video, Michael Jackson rode “Thriller” to the mountaintop. The video sent the album’s sales back into the stratosphere, with Epic shipping a million copies a week; by the end of 1984, the album had sold 33 million copies in the U.S. Since then, Thriller has remained unchallenged as the No. 1 album of all time (current sales worldwide: an estimated 110 million).

Jackson grew accustomed to shattering records, collecting spoils and statuettes. On February 28, 1984, he dressed like American royalty in a spangled military jacket to escort Brooke Shields to the Grammy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium, where he picked up an unprecedented eight trophies for Thriller. By this time he was a fabulously wealthy man, thanks to the industry’s highest royalty rate, more than $2 per record, which Branca had negotiated for him.

Thriller had profound consequences on Jackson’s life and subsequent career: it was both a source of his greatest pride, and his curse. Like most entertainers, he was happiest during the heady days of the upward trajectory, and hated the downward journey; his story became uniquely tragic because he viewed everything that came afterward as a failure, and the satisfactions of his private life were not sufficient to compensate. “Michael didn’t see Thriller as a phenomenon,” says Brunman. “He saw it as a stepping-stone to even greater things. We were ecstatic when [his next album] Bad shot past the 20 million mark. Michael was disappointed.”

“To me what happened with Michael is he felt like he needed to top himself,” says Branca, who represented Jackson on and off for the rest of the star’s life and has been named a co-executor of his estate. “That was a lot of pressure. I remember we were in Hong Kong on vacation after Thriller, and I said to him, ‘Mike, you should think about doing an album of the songs that inspired you.’ He said, ‘Why would I do that?’ ‘Well, it would take the pressure off you. Nobody would expect you to have to top Thriller.’ And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, ‘Branca, the next album is going to sell 100 million.’ ”

In January 2009, six months before the star’s death, John Landis and George Folsey filed suit against Michael Jackson and his company Optimum Productions for breach of contract, alleging that they had not been paid their 50 percent of royalties in many years, and accusing Jackson of “fraudulent, malicious and oppressive conduct.” Landis says that over the years he had spoken with Jackson many times to complain that he, Landis, was not receiving the royalties due him, and that Jackson promised to correct the matter. But the entertainer’s financial affairs were chaotic for the last decade of his life as he continually shuffled his business managers. Branca and his own attorney Howard Weitzman report that the “Thriller” video’s accounting records are currently being audited as part of the executor’s obligation to settle the Jackson estate’s debts. “From our perspective Landis and Folsey are priorities,” says Weitzman. “They will definitely get paid what they are owed.”

Ola Ray also sued Jackson, on May 5, 2009, for nonpayment of royalties. “I got the fame” from “Thriller,” she says, “but I didn’t get the fortune.” (The suit is ongoing.) In 1998 she fled Los Angeles and the casting-couch syndrome she says plagued her during the years following “Thriller.” “There were so many big-name directors who told me that if I wanted to do films I had to sleep with them,” she says. She moved to Sacramento to be closer to her family, and is today a stay-at-home mom to her 15-year-old daughter. Ray enjoys hearing from Michael Jackson fans on Facebook and Twitter. “I can’t walk down the street without people recognizing me,” she says.

Ray thinks about Jackson every day, with considerable regret. “I just wish I would have had the opportunity to be a little bit more in his life. I bet he would have been happy with me. It would have taken someone like me who would not put pressure on him or play him for his money or anything other than that I wanted to be with him for who he was,” she says. “I had no other agenda than that.”

Ola Ray and I strongly agree on one thing: we both like to remember Michael Jackson the way he was on the night of October 13, 1983. I can’t forget the way he looked as I peered at him through the glass of the ticket booth at the Palace Theatre: elfin, radiant, ascendant. To me, Thriller seems like the last time that everyone on the planet got excited at the same time by the same thing: no matter where you went in the world, they were playing those songs, and you could dance to them. Since then, the fragmentation of pop culture has destroyed our sense of collective exhilaration, and I miss that.

For Ray, the scene with Jackson later that evening, as he scampered adoringly around her, was a defining experience. “That walk with Michael, when he was dancing around me and singing, I felt like I was the most, I don’t know, blessed girl in the world. Being able to do that and being able to play with Michael, and having him play around me. I felt so in love that night. You can see it in my eyes. You can see it for sure.”

"HorrorHound" magazine (September/October 2008)

"I'm constantly being approached by people saying: 'I saw "Thriller" when I was five-years-old...'", quipped the director John Landis when I sat down with him recently in London, "it's funny how many people watched both 'Thriller' and 'The Making of' over and over. I don't know why that is, but it's amazing to me."

...So, whose bright idea was it to put the world's biggest star and recording artist in a horror themed music video? "It was nobody's idea", says Landis. "Michael just wanted to transform into a monster!"

The Beginning...

"It's weird, because as I say this, I hear myself saying it in 'The Making of Thriller'. It's like I'm quoting myself!", said Landis as he began the story. At the time, John was on holiday in London with his wife Deborah and their newborn daughter shortly after completing his new (at the time) comedy "Trading Places". "I got a call in the middle of the night at like two or three o'clock in the morning. It woke me up, and I heard, 'Hello, is this John Landis?' 'Yes.' 'This is Michael Jackson.' And I'm thinking, 'Okay...' Because I literally only knew Michael Jackson as 'little' Michael Jackson from The Jackson 5." Enamored with the transformation sequence from Landis' monster masterpiece "An American Werewolf in London" (made only two years previous in 1981), Jackson asked Landis if he would direct a music video for his song "Thriller", the title track for what was already the biggest selling album of all time. Landis suggested that Michael call his agent and leave the request with him, so that they could discuss it at a more appropriate time. "...so my agent calls me back an hour later and says, "John, that was Michael Jackson! He's the biggest star in the world!" A detail that Landis was not aware of, "so I just said that I'd be back in LA in two weeks, and I'd go see him."

With Jackson's first request stating that he wanted to change into a monster, Landis turned to his good friend and Academy Award winning "American Werewolf" special effects make-up artist Rick Baker. "John sent me a copy of the song 'Thriller' and asked me to come up with some ideas we could use", recalls Baker. Unsure of exactly what it was Jackson wanted to do, both Landis and Baker visited Michael at his family home behind a supermarket in Encino, Los Angeles with an illustrated guide to horror movie monsters in hand. "We showed him some monsters, and he was screaming and covering his eyes--he was really freaked out by them", recalled Landis. "So, I asked Mike what he wanted, and he said that he didn't care, he just wanted to turn into a monster." With Jackson so obviously drawing his inspiration from both Landis and Baker's work on "An American Werewolf in London", it seemed plain to them that he wanted to go in the direction of a wolf creature. "I personally wanted to do something a little more interesting than a werewolf, like a big cat thing", said Baker. As seen in "The Making of Thriller", Baker simply took a photo of Michael from the cover of the February 1983 issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine, and painted new layers of transparencies to represent the progressive make-up stages. "I pitched the idea to John that it should be a cat, and he seemed to like it, and Michael seemed to like it too", said the make-up artist.

While Rick Baker worked on monster designs, Landis was having second thoughts about JUST making a music video, "however, at this time, I now knew that Michael was the biggest star in the world, so I thought that maybe I could exploit his celebrity to bring back the theatrical short." Landis returned to Michael Jackson with his new idea, and the two instantly agreed on the fifteen minute project. After writing the script, which revolved around a couple who are attacked by zombies after seeing a scary movie, Jackson called the head of CBS Records (now owned by Sony) Walter Yetnikoff to discuss the idea with him. Stating that the album was already the biggest thing in the world, and that they did not have to spend any more money on a "vanity video" for Jackson, Yetnikoff asked Landis for a budget, and they would make a decision from there. Bringin in his trusted producing partner George Folsey Jr., the two prepared a budget for the Jackson video, which Landis already knew would be far more expensive than your average music video of the day ($50,000 max!). "It was almost half a million dollars--because it was Union and we would be shooting in LA for four or five days", explained Landis. "I called back Walter Yetnikoff back, and he's screaming at me and spewing obscenities down the phone [laughs]. 'WHAT!? You tell Michael to go fuck himself..."

Refusing to allow Jackson to pay for the video himself, Landis set about shopping the project to various television networks in the United States in order to raise the $500,000 it would take to make the video. With little to no interest from the networks, Landis turned to cable television (which had only been around for two years at this point) and more specifically the Showtime network. "They desperately wanted it and would pay a quarter of a million dollars for it, which wasn't enough money", Landis said. "What we ended up doing was making a deal with them, but it was a VERY limited window, something like ten days exclusive rights." With another quarter of a million dollars to find, fortunately the deal with Showtime made MTV take notice, prompting them to contact Landis for their slice of the pie. "Bob Pittman at MTV was VERY upset! 'We're MTV! We made Michael Jackson! How do we get this?' And I said, 'Give me money!' So, they up the rest of the money, got their own two week exclusivity window, and that was our costs covered."

Making History

Production on the theatrical short began in May 1983, with Michael Jackson entering Rick Baker's make-up shop to have molds taken for his big transformation. "He came in for his life cast and he turns up real quiet with these big sunglasses on, and the first thing he asks is where the bathrooms are, and he went and hid away for about half an hour or so [laughs]. When he finally got the nerve to come out, he was incredibly cooperative", remembered Baker.

Whilst Michael was busy having molds taken by Rick Baker for the cat monster he would become in the film, director John Landis set about casting a young female actress to play Jackson's on-screen girlfriend. "In Michael's videos, he tended to be completely isolated", explained Landis, "so I wanted to give him some sex! I wanted him to relate directly with a woman." Landis auditioned a whole host of young African American women for the chance to play alongside Michael in the video, and was totally charmed by a twenty-two-year-old model named Ola Ray. Without hesitation, the director cast Ola as Michael's love interest, despite the fact that she was a Playboy centerfold in June 1980--a credit that both Michael's management and family, who were Jehovah's Witnesses, were none too pleased about.

The highlight of the short for Michael, of course, was the metamorphosis from man to beast, a process that would take hours of professionalism and patience as Rick Baker and his crew applied the prosthetics to turn the biggest pop star in the world into a bi-ped cat monster. Enduring the full make-up on two occasions, Jackson is said to have enjoyed being covered in appliances. "Michael was fine with the makeup, but... even I'd hate wearing those lenses. They hurt him", mentioned Landis.

The sequence was cleverly timed in two places. The actual shots of Michael changing into the monster were shot in front of a large backdrop at Rick Baker's make-up shop. "We just shot it in the same spot with all these bladders glued on to his face, and then we added appliances to advance the different stages of the make-up", said Baker. For John Landis, shooting Michael's transformation was a joy compared to what he and Baker endured with "An American Werewolf in London". "Because the transformation in 'American Werewolf' was shot in bright light, with no cutaways and to the song 'Blue Moon'; in 'Thriller', I cut EVERY corner possible", joked Landis. "We constantly cut to Ola screaming while Michael is changing. We reused (and painted Michael's color), the claw and the ears from 'American Werewolf'. Also, aiding the scene was the scary music provided by Elmer Bernstein (who had worked on four previous Landis features). "I needed it to get scary in moments and 'Thriller' isn't scary music, so Elmer did the score as a favor." The rest of Michael's cat capers were shot on location at Griffith Park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles. "I remember John did this thing where they had the camera on a tripod", recalls Baker. "...and Michael just ran in circles around the camera to make it looks like it was panning through the forest with him, which I thought was cool, and certainly looks great in the movie."

"One of the reasons 'Thriller' is so good is because we have the dancers a week's rehearsal", explained the director. "Michael Peters (the choreographer who also did 'Beat It') first worked with the eighteen professional dancers, and then he worked with Michael separately before they all did it together." Also along for the ride to take care of cinematography duties was Landis' director of photography on both "An American Werewolf" and "Trading Places" (and later "Into the Night" and "Spies Like Us"), Robert Paynter B.S.C. "A couple of days before the shoot, I went with John to the studios where the dancers had been rehearsing", recalled Paynter. "Michael Jackson turned up on the second day that I was there, which I think was the last day of the rehearsals. John introduced him to me and he sat down and chatted with me about myself and other cameramen he'd worked with--Ozzie Morris being one who he worked with on "The Wiz". The veteran cameraman continued, "...and it was then that the choreographer asked Michael to join in with the dancers, and from what I understand he'd only done the routine a few times all the way through at this point, and he got in there amongst them all and was brilliant, so talented. I was very impressed with him." The director was also very quick to compliment Jackson's work ethic and dedication to the task at hand, stating that despite Michael's eccentric behavior ("like directing an extremely gifted thirteen-year-old"), he was a complete professional and extremely hardworking. "He's like a neutron bomb!", says Landis. "The amount of energy coming from this skinny kid when he's dancing and singing is incredible... in real life, he's so quiet you wouldn't notice him in a room." It was shortly after Jackson had his life cast taken for "Thriller" that his now legendary performance of "Billie Jean" was broadcast on the television special, "Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever." While Rick Baker missed Jackson doing the moonwalk for the first time himself, one of his crew showed him a video tape of it, "...it was like watching a completely different person. He was so dynamic and such an amazing performer. It was so unbelievable to all of us that it was the same kid who days before was in our shop hiding in the bathroom [laughs]."

The big dance sequence itself was shot at three o'clock in the morning in the meat packing district of Los Angeles on Union Pacific Avenue. "It took only one night to shoot it", remembered Lands. "One of my favorite shots is just as the dance begins because we stay on it for a long time. It took me back to the days of the old head-to-toe shots of Fred and Ginger dancing, because they could really move like that... and so could Michael!" Rick Baker also fondly remembers watching Jackson perform the renowned dance routine as the cameras rolled, "We got all the dancers made up, and then it was amazing, you were sitting there watching these amazing dancers AND Michael Jackson doing the "Thriller" dance. Everybody knows it now, but even at the time, it felt like you were watching history being made, and it was certainly exciting to see it all unfold that way."

Grisly Ghouls from Every Tomb...

One of the stimulating factors of the huge dance number in "Thriller", of course, is zombies and lots of them! "That was a huge make-up night!", recalled Baker. "My biggest concern when the production started was that I needed a certain amount of time to prepare all of the prosthetics we would need for the zombies." As it turned out, John Landis and Michael Peters did not cast the dancers until a week before the shoot, forcing Baker to leave the more elaborate looking zombie designs for his crew members, and to build generic face appliances for the dance troupe. "These appliances for the dancers would fit the brow, eye socket, and cheekbone area." Baker continued, "...sort of like your basic bandit mask because there was no way we could take life casts and get the molds done in time to make them look cool." Rick Baker had a crew of twenty make-up artists (the largest crew he had worked with at that point) creating and putting appliances on over thirty extras and dancers who were performing as zombies. "These were make-up artists who were just brought in for the night and had never seen these make-ups before. It was simply a case of, 'These go here, these are colors we've got for you, glue them here.'"

When it came down to Jackson's zombie costume, John Landis expressed concern about Rick's original design for the undead pop star. "They were neat, but they were too ugly, with these huge grotesque teeth", recalled Landis, "...it always had to look like Michael in there." Joining Jackson among the army of darkness were John's long time friend Mick Garris (director and later producer of "Masters of Horror") and also Rick Baker and various members of his make-up team. "Oh, I had to be a zombie!", laughed Baker. "Most of the other guys like Kevin Brennan (floor board zombie) and Tom Hester (skeletal crypt zombie) had a few weeks to work on their costumes, I was so busy sculpting Michael's appliances for both the cat monster and his zombie that I didn't have a lot of time to do something for msyelf." Utilizing the fact that he had a beard, and therefore not a lot of face to cover, Baker customized one of the dancers' masks and used that for his cameo as the zombie that slowly lets himself out of the walk-in crypt. "It wasn't as critical as some of the other stuff we had done", said Tom Hester of the ten weeks spent making zombie appliances. "We could really go to town and have fun with the designs."

"The whole thing was a lot of fun to do. The stuff we shot on location in the street was great; the graveyard sequence, of course, was in a studio--as was the house", cinematographer Bob Paynter continued, "It was great for me, because I was in my element making things look weird, ghostly, and lots of low key lighting." Despite finding it difficult to adapt to the laidback approach of shooting in Los Angeles, as opposed to the energetic and frantic pace of film production in New York and Great Britain, the British cameramen fondly recalls his time working with John Landis on "Thriller", more specifically on the sequence that was shot at the Avalon Theater (formerly The Palace), near the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. "It was the scene where Michael Jackson is sat with his girlfriend eating popcorn, and everything is happening on screen while you're watching the audience. After one take, John said, 'We'll do that one again, except this time, Bob, you go and sit next to her, and for God's sake, make her REACT! Pinch her, grab her, do something.' So, I'm sitting there in the frame, pretending to watch what's on screen, nudging her every time there was supposed to be a scare, and then John yelled cut. The joke was on me, however, because the camera kept running, and everyone knew except me, and then Ola got up and leapt on to my lap, put her arms around me, and smothered me with kisses. John then said, 'Okay, NOW cut', and he turned to me and said, 'that's the one we're going to print and send to your wife!'[laughs]".

Making the Video's Music

"The music in the video, and this is so interesting to me that no one has ever figured this out, but "Thriller", the song is just over five minutes long and the song in the movie is about twelve minutes long." Landis explains of the differences. "Quincy Jones, the producer of the album, and Bruce Swedien, the mixer, said that we couldn't get the original tracks, so Michael, George, and I went to the studio in the Valley and we stole the tracks. There were only about 38 tracks; it was that complicated a song. We mixed it down, and then re-cut it completely--they're TOTALLY different songs. Really different! And people don't hear it. Even the Vincent Price rap was re-recorded for the video. What happened was the original takes were tied in with a synthesizer track and I couldn't separate it. I asked Vincent Price to come back and re-record, and he did." Earlier in the year, a 25th anniversary "Thriller" CD/DVD two-disc set was released, which included the entire original album all music videos (including "Thriller"), and bonus audio tracks. One such track even included an interesting outtake of the Vincent Price recordings.

The Making of Making History...

While Landis was thinking of ways in which to raise money for the project, George Folsey had the idea of shooting a "making of" "Thriller" documentary, so that they would have a better shot of seeing the whole thing as a television special. The initiative being that the video would be fifteen minutes and packaged with a forty-five minute documentary rounding it up to a full hour. "We jokingly referred to it as 'The Making of Filler', because we didn't know how to make forty-five minutes out of it." Intent on filling the run time with whatever they could, John Landis and George Folsey searched through garages and closets to find whatever excess footage the Jacksons may have to bulk up the documentary to the desired length. "That home movie of Michael dancing as a kid, I found it in their closet! they didn't know they had it. Anything we could get for free, clips from "American Werewolf", Michael's videos, etc.... we stuck in there", the director added. As for the actual "making of" footage itself, Landis and Folset had a 16mm film crew, led by producer/director Jerry Kramer, literally follow them around shooting every aspect of the making-of the "Thriller" short. Rick Baker only found out about the side project when he turned up to do Jackson's life cast. "They really got in the way on a couple of occasions; we literally had to push them aside at times, just so we could do our jobs [laughs]", joked Baker. Feeling similarly irked by the "making of" crew, John Landis had his own issues with the guys he had asked to film them in the first place. "When you have someone filming you all the time, it drives you nuts!", joked Landis, "...there are thousands of feet of me going, 'Get that fucking camera out of my face! I don't want to see you! Get out of the way!' You notice none of that was in there [laughs]."

Thrilling the World

Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was released theatrically at the AVCO Theatre in Los Angeles in November 1983 as the opening attraction for the Disney re-issue of Walt Disney's masterpiece "Fantastia". "...it was HUGE!!!!! They were setting out the house all the time, it was absolutely amazing", remembers Landis. "The only thing was, and it was kind of heartbreaking, the audience would come and scream and be happy through 'Thriller' then they'd get up and LEAVE!!! They wouldn't watch 'Fantasia'! The 'Thriller' short played at the AVCO for just over two weeks before Walter Yetnikoff at CBS Records took notice and called Landis in a hysterical frenzy, demanding that the movie and documentary be shown worldwide on television. Landis outright refused to comply with Yetnikoff considering the film had a theatrical life, and it was about to have exclusive television windows at the two networks who paid for the video in the first place. Showtime first aired "Thriller" and "The Making of Thriller" on December 2, 1983, and ten days later, aired on MTV where it had a much wider audience. After repeated screenings on MTV, the album (which had already been at number one, but had dropped to number eight in the charts) shot straight back to the number one spot, prompting Yetnikoff to do something that would jeopardize the worldwide theatrical distribution deals that Landis had already set up. "Because CBS owned the music that gave them access to the video (not 'The Making Of')", explained Landis. "...he had a master made and gave it for FREE to every fucking television station in the world. All of my distribution deals were then void because they were furious that it was suddenly everywhere--so I got fucked!" The move by Walter Yetnikoff, however, sent album sales through the roof, with receipts not only doubling, but tripling the amounts it was seeing just weeks prior.

In the wake of CBS Records delivering copies of the "Thriller" video to every network the world over, John Landis received a call from Austin Furst who ran a video distribution company out of Texas called "Vestron Video". "He wanted to release 'Thriller' and 'The Making of Thriller' on video, and I said, 'Who is going to want to pay for that when it's on television for free CONSTANTLY??", recalls Landis. The idea of releasing "Thriller" on home video seemed senseless to the director because in its infancy, the home video was very expensive to buy (anywhere between $80 - $100) which is why the video rental business began in the first place. Introducing a new idea to Landis, Furst proposed that he would release "Thriller" and "The Making of Thriller" as a "sell-through" cassette (a term that Landis was not familiar with at the time) at the affordable price of $29.95. Landis agreed to the deal making "Thriller" not only the first ever video cassette affordably priced for the public, but one of the most successful of the 1980s, selling near nine million copies worldwide.

The Biggest Music Video... Since Sliced Bread!

"'Thriller' was interesting for a couple of reasons because it made MTV, it made the rock video business, and it also turned out to create the 'making of' business!", says Landis. It is funny that the worldwide impact of "Thriller" is something that seemingly no one expected, yet no one can ever dare deny. Not only did it smash open the racial barrier that allegedly kept networks from playing videos from African-American artists (MTV would play it twice an hour to meet demand), but it completely revolutionized music videos as we seem them today. "It's crazy, isn't it?", says Rick Baker of the video's influence. "I remember John saying to me while we were shooting it, 'you're probably going to be remembered for this over anything else', and I was like, 'Yeah, right... some rock video.' [laughs]; and often when people ask ne what I've done and I list credits, I'll tell the obvious movies that I got the Oscars for, and then say, 'Oh, and "Thriller"', and they go, 'OH MY GOD, "THRILLER"? REALLY?' [laughs] Maybe John was right."

..."It's extremely gratifying that people still love it", says Landis. "I'm just extremely grateful to Michael for giving me the opportunity to do it."

Transcribe Making of Thriller / 4 Days Photo Book for Douglas Kirkland’s accounts

Vincent Paterson, assistant choreographer and dancer, The MJCast, Episode 064, “Vincent Paterson Special” (August 28, 2017)

After we did the first run-through of "Thriller", I remember that everybody was shocked beyond belief that, after just spending two days with Michael and teaching him "Thriller" with Michael Peters, we came in and we brought the rest of the cast, and after we just did the first rehearsal of it, people were just screaming and freaking out and I remember Michael--MJ being so embarrassed, like a little kid, because everybody was going like, "Yes! Yes! Oh my God! Yes!" And he was just so shy and awkward, and I was going up and punching him and hugging him, and--[laughs] That's a fun story. I haven't thought about that for a while.

Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

Michael Peters just wanted great dancers. He was a wonderful choreographer and I think he captured the zombie aspects of the movement really well. His choreography had eclectic rhythms, a sense of humour and a finger on the pulse of what was coming ahead in the world of dance.

Ola Ray, actress, “KCRA” (November 30, 2007) (archived)

Today Ola Ray is a stay-at-home mom in Sacramento, but 25 years ago she did a famous walk for the video 'Thriller'.

"I remember that day like it was yesterday," Ray said. "I am so excited that people are still talking about it, still remembering it."

She has a lot of respect for the man she said made her a part of history.

"I didn't know that I was going to be a part of history, but that is the way it turned out. I'm thankful," she said.

Ray said she wanted to apologize to Jackson because for a long time she thought he failed to pay her for her role in the thriller video.

She said she's since discovered someone else was holding back her money.

Ray plans to come out with a book and start a music career of her own.

“Sunday Mirror” (February 3, 2008) (archived)

The former Playboy centrefold was a huge fan of the singer and says she was always confident of landing the role. "The minute I walked into the audition I knew it was mine," she says. "I read a few lines, danced to some music and the rest is history."

Ola still had to wait two weeks until she got the good news. But she'll never forget her first meeting with Jackson.

"I was getting changed, so I was crouched down half-naked on the dressing room floor and he came in and giggled," she recalls.

"I was used to taking my clothes off in front of strangers. Michael seemed very relaxed about it." Ola, 47 and a full-time mum living in California, knew Thriller was going to be no ordinary video. "It helped that I was crazy about Michael and he seemed taken by the fact I was a Playboy model," she says.

Ola and Michael became good friends during the two-week shoot. She says she loved to flirt with the star, who was then dating actress Brooke Shields.

"I teased him, saying I wanted to be his girl," she says.

"After we shared a limo, I sprayed my perfume around so he'd remember me. He was cute but childlike. Michael then was nothing like the Michael of today. He loved chasing me or jumping out from behind a wall."

"Everyone thinks I made millions but I don't care... I wouldn't change anything." She saw Jackson a few years later but lost touch.

“I'm just so proud to have been part of something that's still so special."

Rick Baker, make-up effects, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

John told me about the idea but I was reluctant. I got a call from John and he was like, 'You know who Michael Jackson is?' and I was like, 'Yeah, kinda. He's the guy from the Jackson 5, right?' And he said, 'Well he's got this song called Thriller and he wants to do this short film.' At first I said I didn't want to do it. It's not the most popular job - it's like being a dentist in a way: they have to sit still in a chair for hours while you work on them, it's uncomfortable - it's not something actors look forward to.

...You start with the casting of the actor's face, then the latex, the contact lenses... Michael's make-up started more as a werewolf and then became more cat-like. Normally you would make a cast of every actor's face, but we'd only have three days from meeting the dancers to finishing their faces, so we couldn't do it that way. I wasn't too happy about that, but in the end we made three sizes of zombie mask.We couldn't do the teeth how we normally would, either. I suggested that myself and the crew be zombies, so that we could have a few that were done properly - because we could have more time to work on the make-up.

...Michael was great and very shy. I remember the first time John came over to shoot us working on Michael's make-up for his behind-the-scenes stuff - which I wasn't too happy about and Michael wasn't too happy about - Michael was so nervous that, as soon as the cameras came in, he ran off and hid in the bathroom. So different to when he was performing - Thriller was happening during the making of the Motown Anniversary Special, when Michael first did the moonwalk, and one of the guys bought a tape of the show in and said, 'Watch this.' That was him, when he was performing; that was when he came alive.

Yahoo Entertainment (October 31, 2018)

John Landis said to me, “Michael Jackson saw American Werewolf and loved it. He wants to do a music video where he wants to turn into a werewolf. I’m going to send you a cassette tape — get some ideas.” So I listen to the tape, and I thought, “I don’t see making up this pop star. He’s going to be a pain in the ass.” I was completely wrong! First of all, Michael was incredibly shy; I worked in a funky, dirty workshop full of long-haired guys, and on the day he came in to do the life mask [a mold of the person’s face to use in the makeup design process], the first thing he did was hide in the bathroom. He just went in there and acclimatized himself.

But after that, he was great to make up. He was very patient and loved the process. Unfortunately, I found out on the day that John was going to do a making-of film, and I was like, “What are all these camera people doing here?” Now I’m thankful, because so many people come up to me and go, “The Making of ‘Thriller’ video inspired me to become a makeup artist.”

Early on, I decided that Michael shouldn’t be a werewolf; I said he should be more feline, and made him more of a fantasy cat creature thing. The scariest thing for me in that experience was the size of it, and the [limited] amount of time that we had. I said to John, “I’m assuming you’re going to cast these dancers immediately because it takes us time to do the life masks and all that stuff,” and he goes, “Eh?”

The dancers were cast three days before filming, so I couldn’t do the makeup the right way. I had some generic things that I could use, but I felt we should have cooler stuff. My crew and I all have our own life masks already, so I told John, “How about if we have zombies featured more, and it’s me and my crew?” So the zombies that come out of the graves are my crew and my friends, while the dancers are generic pieces that we made [quickly]. It was like, “These are your teeth, and you’re going to be this color.”

Michael and I became fairly close after “Thriller.” He came to my house a couple of times to watch movies and have dinner, and I went to his place with my wife to have dinner with Michael and Bubbles the chimp. And Michael actually dedicated a song to me! It’s called “Threatened,” and I think he was trying to make it another “Thriller,” because they cut in a Rod Serling rap. He dedicated the song to me, and then said, “I want to do a video of this song, and I want you to direct it.” I was like, “Uhhhh…”

“Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller” documentary (1983)

I actually tried to talk him out of it. I told him how horrible an experience it’s going to be, and that he’s going to have to do this every day.”

John Landis, director, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived)

Michael saw [Landis's film] An American Werewolf in London and he contacted me and asked me if I would make a video with him. And I said 'No,' actually - because they were basically commercials, right? But he persisted and said, 'No, no, no - I really wanna make it.' So when I returned to LA I called Rick Baker, who had done the make-up effects for American Werewolf? and said, 'Rick, Michael Jackson wants to become a monster.'

...Basically, I thought about it and my intention was to exploit Michael's unbelievable celebrity at that point to make a theatrical short, a 14-minute short. George Folsey Jr, my producer and editor on a lot of things, and I, worked up the budget. I insisted it would be a union shoot - almost all videos at that time were non-union - and I also insisted the dancers have at least 10 days of rehearsal, which is also never done because it's so expensive, and we put it all down and the bottom line was that we worked out it would cost about half-a-million dollars. Which was a huge amount of money, because at that time the most a video had been was, I think, $100, 000.

[Jackson] called Walter Yetnikoff and he talked to him for a couple of minutes, telling him what I wanted to do, and then he handed me the phone. I said, 'Hello?' And then this, this blast of flaming - 'You motherf---er! What the f---'s the matter with you?' The one conversation I ever had with Walter Yetnikoff - you know in movies where they hold the phone away? It was like that. He was screaming.

The essence of Yetnikoff's rant was: the album had already become the most successful album, it's had a year at Number 1, it's now going down and it's still selling respectably, and f--- your video and f--- you. I handed Michael the phone back and he said, 'Oh that's OK, I'll pay.' And I said, 'Mike, I can't spend your money...'

George [Folsey Jr]'s idea was: why don't we film us filming it, and then we can make a 45-minute documentary called The Making of Thriller, then in total that's an hour. And then sell that [to cable television] to get the money to make Thriller. [In the end they initiated a bidding war between cable companies.] The record company had no money in it, Michael had no money in it; and MTV and Showtime each put up $250k, so now we had the money, and it was fun.

...It was amazing working with Michael at the time because it was at the height - it was like working with The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania or something, it was extraordinary being with him, because he was just ridiculously famous. It was like being with Jesus I used to say, because people used to see him and go into hysterics. Also, Michael's friends - it was so nuts. It used to be like, 'Michael, William [son of Walt] Disney's on the phone,' or Fred Astaire, who Michael had known very well since he was a kid. 'Mike, Henry Kissinger's on the phone'; 'Mike, President Reagan's calling.' Bizarro shit all the time.

My favourite moment during the making of Thriller, and one of the few times in my life I've ever been speechless, was when we were shooting the graveyard set in a meatpacking plant in East LA, a dodgy neighbourhood, by a freightyard. And we're shooting away and Michael's assistant comes to me and he says, 'Michael would like to see you in his trailer.' And I was like, 'OK, I'll be out in 20 minutes.'

So I go out - and it's like 3.30 in the morning - and there's a Winnebago out there and there's loads of security there, so I step up and I knock, and Michael's like, 'John, do you know Mrs Onassis?' and it was Jackie Kennedy…

...We put all the footage together and we saw it was, like, only 26 minutes long. Oh shit... I said, 'Do you have any other footage you own? What do you own? I literally went into the closet at Mike's house. I said, 'Mrs Jackson, where do you keep all your home movies?' 'I don't know.' And I found a box of home movies - and now everyone's seen it, that amazing 8mm footage of Mike dancing at five years old. I found that in a closet so I said, 'OK, we own this too...' We called it 'The Making of Filler'.

Vincent [Price] called me about a year later and he said, 'Look, the kid made the most successful record of all time and I made less than $1,000 dollars... Michael won't take my calls... I'm very upset about it.'

...We had a première - which was a riot - because Michael wanted a première. I've been to the Oscars and I've been to the Baftas, I've been to the Emmys, I've been to the Golden Globes, and I've never been anywhere like this première. It was incredible. There was everyone from Diana Ross and Warren Beatty to Prince. It was nuts. Amazing... got a standing ovation and all that stuff and they're shouting, 'Encore, encore,' and I said 'Encore? There is no f---ing encore!'

Then Eddie Murphy got up and shouted, 'Show the goddamn thing again!' So they sat and they watched Thriller again. Why not? It was just amazing, it was just amazing...

[Afterwards] Walter Yetnikoff said, 'OK, we own this music,' and I understand why he did it for his company - they had technically fulfilled their obligation to me with the theatrical release - so it went on Showtime, and two weeks later it went on MTV - and they showed Thriller and The Making of Thriller, like, 24 f---ing hours a day. [Yetnikoff] then took Thriller and gave it to every TV station in the world...

And so that was so extraordinary that it made MTV, and it made the video business become a real business. They priced video very high then - to buy a movie then was like $85, and that is what created the video rental market. The way it worked then, video stores, Blockbuster and Broadway video - they'd buy thousands of copies and then they would rent them, so the studio got nothing from the renting but they got their money up-front.

A guy name Walter Furst, he ran this company called Vestron Video, he called me and said, 'I want to put it out on VHS.' I said, 'We can't sell it for $90, it's on TV for free every five seconds.' He said 'No, no, no - we'll price it for sell-through' - the first time I ever heard that expression - 'We'll sell it for $24.95.' I thought, who's gonna buy it for $24.95?' But they shipped a million of them just in the United States. And what Thriller did, it created the sell-through video. It changed everything.

Today (News) (April 25, 2008)

There were no grand schemes of creating new genres or markets, no dreams of making history. It was just an exciting young singer with a song and a desire to be a monster in his own video.

“It was nobody’s brilliant idea,” said John Landis, who 25 years ago directed Michael Jackson’s landmark music video “Thriller.”

Landis spoke to TODAY as the American Film Institute commemorated the landmark video this week and ahead of the opening of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival with a free public screening of his “Thriller” documentary Friday.

Landis said Jackson had seen his then-new film, “An American Werewolf in London,” and liked it so much he called Landis out of the blue and asked the director to turn him into a monster.

Landis, who had made his directorial debut with “Animal House,” took the job because he saw it as a chance to resurrect a genre that had once been a Hollywood staple. “It was a great opportunity to bring back the theatrical short,” he said.

Music videos were new and evolving in 1983, and MTV, where most of them got their play, was just 2 years old. Jackson had done a couple of videos himself, including “Beat It.” But the videos were made to sell records, and when Jackson decided he wanted to do “Thriller,” the album by that name had already been out for nearly a year, and it had already become the biggest-selling album of all time.

The video Landis envisioned was going to be nearly 15 minutes long — and expensive.

“It’s always exaggerated,” Landis said of the video’s cost. The Wikipedia article on “Thriller” claims it cost $800,000. Elsewhere, sums as high as $1 million have been cited.

“It ended up costing $500,000 — still enormous money at that time for that kind of thing,” Landis said. The average music video in those days ran about $50,000 to produce, and Jackson’s would cost 10 times that.

But because the album had already sold so many copies, neither CBS, Jackson’s record label, nor anyone else wanted to pay for what they saw as a “vanity video.”

What was the point?

“Nobody would give us the money, because the album had already been so successful,” Landis said.

“Michael said he would pay for it,” he continued. “But I wouldn’t let him. He was still living with his parents in Encino behind a supermarket.”

‘A brand-new thing called cable television’

George Folsey, Landis’ partner in the venture, then suggested that while doing “Thriller” they also film a 45-minute documentary, “The Making of Thriller.” They could package it and sell it as a one-hour theatrical feature.

Landis and Folsey approached Disney Studios, which agreed to release it for a limited engagement in Los Angeles theaters. At the same time, they decided to take it to a venue no one else had ever considered as a market for a music video.

“We sold that hour to a brand-new thing called cable television and the Showtime network, which at that time had only 3 million homes,” Landis said. It was actually an option that Showtime took, and when the Los Angeles theater release was a huge success, Showtime anted up.

“They paid a quarter of a million dollars for the rights to show it exclusively for, I think, 10 days,” Landis said. When MTV saw it, they called Landis. “MTV went crazy — ‘How can you do that?’ We said, ‘OK, you give us money.’ And they gave us another quarter of a million to show it for two weeks, and that was our costs.”

It was such a hit that CBS decided that it was the most brilliant idea ever, distributing the video for all of its affiliates to air for free. “For a while there, you couldn’t turn on the television without seeing ‘Thriller,’ ” Landis told TODAY.

The album that had supposedly sold every copy it could shot back to the top of the charts, nearly tripling its previous sales.

Landis and Folsey had already produced the first theatrical music video, and had been the first to sell a video to a cable movie network. But that was just the beginning.

Again from out of the blue, Landis got a call from Austin Furst, who had a video business called Vestron, who said he wanted to buy the rights to put “Thriller” out as a “sell-through video.” Landis had never heard the term before, and Furst explained that he would sell it directly to consumers at a relatively affordable price: $24.95.

At the time, home videos were shown on the still-new technology of video tape. There were two formats, VHS and Sony’s Beta. But a movie typically cost between $80 and $100. Consumers weren’t going to pay that much, so mom-and-pop operations sprang up to buy the videos and then rent them out. Furst’s idea was to produce large quantities of the film and sell it directly.

‘The critics just damned me’

Landis said he couldn’t imagine many people wanting to buy a video that had gotten such extensive play on television. It would turn out that more than 10 million people just had to own it.

It’s never ended.

The most famous recent incarnation of “Thriller” is the Filipino prison production that has been a huge hit on YouTube, but if you search “Thriller” on YouTube, you come up with hundreds if not thousands of amateurs who have made the video their own.

“The Filipino prison is wonderfully crazy,” Landis said. “But people all over the world perform the ‘Thriller’ dance at weddings, at quinceaneros, at funerals, at bar mitzvahs. It blows me away.”

Landis went on to make many more films, including “Coming to America,” “Beverly Hills Cop III,” “The Blues Brothers” and “Trading Places.” He finds it ironic that the two that have become cultural icons — “Thriller” and “Animal House” — were the two that nobody at first wanted.

With “Thriller,” it was a question of who was going to buy it. With “Animal House,” he said, “The critics just damned me. They beat the crap out of me. Then it became this commercial hit. Over the years, it’s in the Library of Congress, and it’s this great American movie.”

Another great movie director, John Huston, had an explanation for it, said Landis: “He said movie directors, prostitutes and buildings grow respectable with age. I’m actually experiencing that.”

Newsweek, “Making the Greatest Music Video of All Time” (April 7, 2014)

The six Top 10 singles preceding “Thriller”—“The Girl Is Mine,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Human Nature” and “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”—were record-setting. No other album in the history of pop music had produced so many individually successful tracks. Though it might be surprising to modern fans of the classic video, according to John Landis, who directed the music video Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the success of the previous singles made Michael’s record label less, not more, likely to foot the bill for a “Thriller” video. “What’s important to remember,” says Landis, “is Thriller had already become the most successful album of all time. So this is what was called a vanity video... They don’t sell records; they’re there to make the artist happy.”

Michael’s idea for the video was simple: He wanted to turn into a monster. An admirer of Landis’ film An American Werewolf in London, especially Rick Baker’s masterful makeup work, Jackson approached the filmmaker. “Michael loved the idea of the transformation [in American Werewolf]. Obviously he was a guy who was fascinated by metamorphosis,” muses Landis. “ All he cared about was turning into a monster on screen. That was our marching order.” So great was Michael’s desire to transform into a singing, dancing mutant monstrosity that he was willing to front the film’s budget himself, an idea Landis flatly turned down. By brokering a deal with then-nascent cable network Showtime, and later with MTV, the film’s budget was secured in exchange for airtime.

Landis enlisted makeup genius Rick Baker, and the two men showed up at Michael’s family home in Encino, Calif., with books of movie monster photos. “Michael really wanted to be a werewolf, but I felt that was too much like American Werewolf,” Landis adds with a laugh. Eventually, on Michael’s insistence, Baker designed the unique werewolf-cat creature that helped make Michael Jackson’s Thriller an icon emulated by fans across the world, from Philippine prisons to the Grammy stage.

Once the monster was designed, the script written and the players signed, the epic work of condensing an entire musical horror film into 13 minutes began. The budget eventually ballooned to nearly $500,000, at that time the most expensive music video ever by a substantial margin. “Most rock videos at that time averaged $30,000 to $35,000, and a really expensive one was $50,000, to give you an idea,” says Landis. Despite the film’s ambitious use of effects, sets and makeup, a sizeable portion of the budget went into preparation for the even more ambitious dance numbers. “The one thing I insisted on,” continues Landis, “and one of the reasons it was expensive, was I wanted the dancers to have real rehearsal time.”

Michael Peters, who had worked with Michael on the video for “Beat It,” choreographed the soon-to-be-famous “Thriller” dance with Michael’s help. “Michael Peters and I talked about what we wanted,” says Landis, “and he came back to Michael Jackson, who made everything his own.” The short film was even able to secure an unofficial mascot in the person of horror legend Vincent Price. In the video, the film Michael and his date see is a fictional Vincent Price movie called Thriller. At the video’s conclusion, Price appears in full zombie makeup, and his eerie cackle closes the video.

When Michael Jackson’s Thriller was completed, Landis set a plan in motion that would ideally have given the short film a countrywide theatrical release, even putting together a red carpet premiere in Los Angeles. “We had our premiere at the Crest Theatre, and it was one of the most star-studded things, including AFI dinners and the Academy Awards and anything that I’ve ever been to,” says Landis with a chuckle. “I’ve seldom been anywhere with more stars.” Landis felt so guilty about the grand scale of the premiere in contrast to the film’s length that he asked Walt Disney Studios to produce a new Silly Symphony cartoon called “The Band Concert” to play before the film “so I could at least show two things.  Michael and John Landis take a break from the Thriller set to hit Disney World. A few years later, Michael would team with Disney to create the Captain EO experience.

“It was incredible who was there!” says Landis, who still seems surprised by the turnout more than 30 years later. “We had a wonderful screening and, famously, at the end, a huge ovation. It was very exciting, and then Eddie Murphy stood up and shouted, ‘Show it again!’ So we did! And they all watched it again.” Even though Landis’ dream of a theatrical release didn’t come to pass, Michael Jackson’s Thriller leveraged television to sear itself into the cultural zeitgeist. The big-budget music video was born, and Michael and Landis had irrevocably changed the art of the video, proving cinematic devices like the idea of a film within a film could be used in music videos as successfully as in full-length features.

Though the story behind the making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller is more than enough to make it memorable, the most interesting thing about the short film as far as Landis is concerned is its longevity. “It was a very pleasurable experience. It was fun, and we made it, but the truth is no one had any idea what would happen, that it would be this extraordinary success,” says Landis, who credits Michael Peters’ and Michael Jackson’s dance moves for the continuing success of the film. “I think it’s partially the choreography by Michael and Michael,” he continues. “It’s not a hard dance to do. It’s economically choreographed; there’s, like, four moves that anybody can do. You’d make that gesture with your arms and everyone would know that’s the ‘Thriller’ dance.” More than 30 years later, nothing has changed. Two arms in the air like a light-on-the-feet zombie still only means one thing: “Thriller.”

The "Thriller" Jacket

Deborah Nadoolman Landis, the designer who crafted Michael’s most unforgettable piece of outerwear and wife of John Landis, ranks the Thriller jacket as one of her finest creations, a bold statement considering she is also the genius behind Indiana Jones’ jacket and fedora and Bluto’s “College” sweatshirt from Animal House. “I had the red leather on the cutting table in front of me. I had the straight edge, and I drew those Vs myself,” says Landis. “I gave the jacket to Michael, and he gave his performance to the world.” Part of the reason the jacket was such a success, according to Landis, is that it enhanced Michael’s slim silhouette. “What do you think of when you think of the ideal male body? A small waist and big shoulders,” says Landis. “So I quilted the shoulders of the jacket, and I created that V.” The design of the jacket also helped support the narrative of Michael transforming into a demonic dancer. “In the history of fashion, there’s something about the chevron and the V that’s associated with the Devil,” says Landis. “And the fact that it’s red!” The bold hue of Michael’s jacket and jeans also help throw the superstar into contrast with his surroundings. “We created these fabulous ghouls and zombies and covered them in dust,” says Landis. “And here is Michael looking perfect! When he was dancing, you couldn’t look at anything else.”

Rolling Stone (June 24, 2014)

"Thriller" was the most important moment in music television since the Beatles rocked Ed Sullivan. "After Michael Jackson, when American artists got a sense of the potency of a well-thought-out video," said Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, "everything became more expensive." Director John Landis remembered CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff screaming and swearing when he heard the proposed budget. But its lofty aspirations came with vision: "Thriller" had the gloss of Hollywood; special-effects genius Rick Baker transformed a shy superstar into a beast; and co-choreographer Michael Peters helped create a historically iconic dance sequence. "He's not a trained dancer," said Peters. "He would say to me . . . 'I want something that's hot and angry.' He would describe it in emotional terms." "Thriller" turned a suburban street into a horror flick and helped make video a new kind of art. As Michael says in the clip: "I'm not like other guys."

“Billboard” (December 2, 2018)

Sunday (Dec. 2) marks 35 years since the debut of Michael Jackson’s ground-breaking “Thriller” music video, which premiered on MTV and launched a dance craze, a red-jacket fashion favorite, and more pricey and ambitious videos by other top-tier artists.

The 14-minute “short film,” as the late singer preferred to call it, was shot on 35mm in downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night. It was directed John Landis (National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London), and written by Landis and Jackson.

The title-track from Jackson’s 1982 album was written by Rod Temperton and produced by Quincy Jones, and became the seventh single after such hits as “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.” The landmark film went on to win three MTV Awards, two American Music Awards and a Grammy, and is the first and only music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

The 3D version of the music video and restored documentary Making Michael Jackson’s Thriller, directed by Jerry Kramer, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. This September, it became the first music video released in IMAX 3D. The song re-entered the Hot 100 on Nov. 10, 2018 at No. 31, the highest it has been since April 7, 1984.

Billboard spoke with John Landis, and entertainment lawyer John Branca, who brokered the deal with MTV and Showtime and is now co-executor of Michael Jackson’s Estate, about getting the $1 million to make the music video, its impact on the business, stealing the tracks from Quincy Jones without his knowledge and more.

Billboard: That was pretty ballsy to go to a television station to try and cover the costs of making a music video.

John Branca: At the time, most music videos cost about $50,000 [to make], and Michael and John Landis had a budget of $1.2 [million] for this project, and the record company refused to pay for it, for good reason [laughs]. So I said to Michael, “You know, it’s a million two?” and he basically said, “Branca, figure it out.” So I came up with the idea for a “making of,” a long-form, 60-minute piece. It was the first time MTV ever paid for a video, and Showtime paid for it, their sister station, and then we put it out with Vestron [Video] and we actually ended up making a profit.

Billboard: What do you remember about the time on set and the amazing masks and prosthetics?

Branca: At that time, I was Michael’s main business advisor/manager and so I really focused on the business. Now, when running the estate, I have to do the creative also, but at that time Michael and Landis did all the creative. The one thing that I did do -- because growing up as a boy, I loved monster movies, so Werewolf, Lon Chaney, Dracula, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Frankenstein -- when Michael felt pressure from the church, from Jehovah’s Witnesses, he told me to get the film canisters and destroy them, before the “Thriller” video was ever released. So I held them in my office for many, many days and he would call everyday.

Billboard: To destroy the whole thing?

Branca: Yes. So the world would never have seen it. Finally I said to him, “You know Michael, Bela Lugosi played Dracula" -- I kinda made it up, I said, “He was very religious.”

Billboard: He wasn’t religious?

Branca: No. Who knows? So I said, “We’ll put a disclaimer on it.” That’s why you’ll see the disclaimer [at the start of the music video] that due to his personal convictions it doesn’t reflect Michael’s personal views.

Billboard: John, Michael called you because he was a fan of your film An American Werewolf In London?

John Landis: Everything in Making Michael Jackson's Thriller is accurate.

Billboard: Good thing he wasn’t a fan of Animal House or we’d be having a much different conversation.

Landis: He wanted to turn into a monster, and the first discussion with [special effects make-up creator] Rick Baker, he wanted to turn into the werewolf from An American Werewolf in London, and it took me a while to talk him out of it because I was saying it’d be really hard to dance with four legs, you know. That’s why he became that Werecat thing, because I suggested the werewolf from I Was a Teenage Werewolf, [starring] Michael Landon, in the letterman’s jacket. Rick’s first design, which was great, was too ugly. I said, “Look, it’s Michael. He can’t be ugly.” I think what he made was very elegant, that sort of cat creature.

Branca: It’s scary, though.

Landis: Oh, it’s scary. It’s meant to be scary.

Billboard: Right from the start you weren’t interested in making a music video. You wanted it to be elaborate.

Landis: Music videos at that time were always just needle drop. Some were pretty good, but most were not, and they were commercials.  Michael’s such a huge star that I said, “Maybe I can bring back the theatrical short.” I pitched him the idea, and he totally went for it. Michael was extremely enthusiastic because he wanted to make movies.

Branca: He came to refer to his music videos as short films, and he instructed everybody, “These are not music videos; these are short films.”

Billboard: What did you both notice after “Thriller” came out? Record companies probably weren’t very “thrilled” with you because all the other big artists probably wanted to make million dollar videos.

Landis: Absolutely the opposite.

Branca: They were thrilled, actually.

Landis: You have to remember, nobody wanted it. We had to figure out a way to finance it because it was a union shoot in Los Angeles. I demanded the dancers had at least a week’s rehearsal, all that make-up, so it was expensive. CBS Records basically said, “[The album has] been No. 1 for over a year. We made 'Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It,’ with [directors] Steve Barron and Bob Giraldi [respectively] -- hugely influential important videos, which cost very little, and you’re coming to us? You already have the most successful album of all time, and now you want to do this vanity video so you can turn him into a monster? Go f--k yourselves," was essentially what they said it to me. They didn’t say it to Michael, but that was the same thing. So we had to figure out a way to make it, which is why Making Michael Jackson's Thriller was done, so we’d have an hour and we could sell the hour. Do you know what happened when the video “Thriller” came out on TV? The No. 1 selling album in the world, already out for a year, tripled its sales. So everybody jumped on the bandwagon.

Branca: It changed the way people make music videos.

Landis: It raised the standard. Everybody became much more ambitious, and tons of big directors came out of music videos.

Branca: “Thriller” remains the most influential and most important video of all time. Everybody’s acknowledged it, so kudos to John.

Landis: It’s always called those things and I don’t make those claims, but it certainly had a huge impact not only on the music business -- and it made MTV. Their viewership went nuts.

Billboard: As a filmmaker and someone who’s just had the sound quality and visual presentation of the “Thriller” video upped [in 3D and Dolby Atmos], how does it make you feel that people today watch videos on YouTube, on computer and phone screens?

Landis: I’m not crazy about it.

Branca: You should talk about the sound.

Landis: The sound. Okay. “Thriller” was just stereo, left and right. The soundtrack for Thriller, I said, “This is a movie; this is not a rock video.” Rock videos are always needle drop. A record at that time was mixed to sound good on your car radio, so, I said, “This is a movie.” So I asked Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien, “Can I have the tracks to ‘Thriller’?” They both said no. I explained to Michael we needed them. So George Folsey and I and Michael, at like 2 in the morning, went to the recording studio, walked in the lobby, the guard, said, “Hello Mr. Jackson.” “Hello.” We went in the back, found the tracks on the racks, took all of them -- there were a lot -- put them in two big duffel bags, put them in the trunk in a car, drove them over the hill [to the engineer], where they [duplicated] them all. We put them back in the duffle bags, went back with Michael over the hill, and put them back [laughs]. I’ve always been amazed that Bruce Swedien and Quincy have never said anything because "Thriller" is very different than the record. I only used a third of the lyrics. It’s a 3-minute song; in the film, it plays for 11 minutes. Well now, through new technology called Atmos, you can put sound anywhere in the house. It’s amazing: I had to relearn that because music is always left-right-center, and suddenly how the f--k do you mix this because it's everywhere. But we were able to bring it up and it’s astounding.

Billboard: That story should have been in the documentary.

Landis: I discussed it with Quincy. Do you know that they didn’t notice? And Quincy was at the premiere [of the 3D version] and I said, “What did you think? “I loved it. It was great,” and everything and I just thought to myself, “You motherf--ker, you said ‘No,’ you bastard.” [laughs]

Branca: Quincy said you’re not allowed to remix his tracks ever without his permission, so be careful.

Landis: Too late.

Chris Cadman’s “Michael Jackson the Maestro”

“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.”

Kim Blank, dancer, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

I think Michael Peters, the choreographer, called me directly about Thriller... I remember Michael had already done Beat It and I remember him calling me about it and me being really thrilled about it, but that he said something to me to the effect of, 'This isn't going to be a glamour job.'

...I was in make-up, dancing in the street, all night, all night, for two nights in a row. I remember it took, like, two hours to put the make-up on and it took a long time to get it off. And I remember the next night, coming to get that make-up off again, my face was literally swollen at least 50 per cent. I wasn't expecting to look cute...

Michele Simmons, dancer, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

We rehearsed it in Debbie Reynolds's dance studio [in North Hollywood]. Michael Peters called me up and said, 'I'm getting ready to do Thriller with Michael and I want you and Lorraine [Fields] to flank him, to be on either side of him' - because Michael Jackson knew us. We worked on television with him all through the Seventies and early Eighties.

...They took moulds of our teeth for the dentures that they put in our mouths. When they made the extra dentures, you put those in your mouth and now you can't close your mouth, and when you can't close your mouth, the saliva falls out. And they just said, 'This is great! Let's just put some food colour and dye in there and that'll make it really nasty-looking!' That was part of the deal.

...I knew it was gonna be fabulous, but I was also of that mindset that we shouldn't have done it as a video [contractually speaking]... they show Thriller, still, all the time, and we're not paid a dime because it was considered publicity for the record company. So it was a huge rip-off. For the amount of people that were in Thriller and the amount of money that was made from it, they could have easily paid us.

Mick Garris, zombie, Movieline interview

Movieline: First things first: How did you come to be a zombie in Thriller?

Mick Garris: John Landis had already been a friend for several years. We actually met when I was a receptionist for the original Star Wars at an off-lot office at Universal. John's office was next door to mine when he was prepping Animal House. And Rick and his wife at the time, Elaine, had been very close friends and neighbors to me and Cynthia. So when they invited us, we came running. I was a hopeful writer then, doing publicity for studios and the like, just starting to get screenwriting jobs.

Movieline: Was there the sense that you were seeing pop-culture history being made?

Mick Garris: We knew we were doing something special, but had no idea just how special. We knew it was a much bigger scale than music videos at the time had been, and so much different than the usual 1980s performance things. But watching Michael come alive on that first night I was there was electrifying. I became a fan right there.

Entertainment Weekly / PeopleTV (October 16, 2017)

I am really fortunate to have been able to work with and become friends with Michael Jackson. I was a hopeful screenwriter at the time, and John Landis and I became friends. It was right after American Werewolf. Michael had seen that, and had been blown away by it. And so, he wanted to do something on film like that. Michael was very frightened of horror films, and he was fascinated by the makeup of it, and with Rick Baker and the whole process of transformation, which was something that was always a theme that Michael would return to in his music, in his life, and in the videos. So, when Thriller came along, the invitation came out to me and my wife if we would like to be zombies. So, we actually got to be zombies in the most phenomenal, successful music video of all time. I'm the last zombie to come out of the ground in the graveyard sequence, and then I'm to Michael's side as he breaks into the house. We come in together and I'm right behind him there. And that's my golden moments in Thriller.

Vincent Peters, dancer/choreographer's assistant

Michael Peters just wanted great dancers. He was a wonderful choreographer and I think he captured the zombie aspects of the movement really well. His choreography had eclectic rhythms, a sense of humour and a finger on the pulse of what was coming ahead in the world of dance.

Deborah Landis (née Nadoolman), costume designer, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

It was a dance that took place in a graveyard setting, it was dark, foggy, and I needed Michael to pop out of that picture. The shoulders of that jacket gave him some virility - this man, Michael, only about 99lb, he's 5ft 6in or 7in - and then he wore the red jeans and his trademark white socks and black shoes... I can look at my career and know that I designed Indiana Jones and know that I designed the Michael Jackson Thriller look. Those two things just seemed to become part of the fabric of the culture.

Frocktalk (June 27, 2009)

I don’t know about Billie Jean or Beat It but Thriller was all mine. As a motion picture costume designer, my role is to make characters come to life. The Thriller jacket had to work in the story and pop in the dance number. I got the script and talked about the first part – Michael’s letterman jacket and the dance jacket – and by the way – the rest of the costumes.

We were making a little movie that was written and directed by John Landis. This short film was made for theatrical release and we made it as a movie. I brought the sketches for the Thriller jacket to Michael at midnight while he was recording his following album. As a mother of two small kids, I slept on the sofa across from the receptionist until he could meet with me at 2am! When I got into the studio we sat around a big table and talked ideas. I like a clean look with a big silhouette – nice virile shoulders to add some bulk to this 99 pound dynamo. Michael loved it – he could have pushed for the studs and metal of the old videos but he really let me be the designer. I had already designed Indiana Jones – perhaps he knew his leather jacket was in good hands!!!

I picked RED because the jacket would POP in front of the graveyard Ghouls and the big V was a design element to evoke the DEVIL – chevrons are traditionally a fashion signature of evil! I designed the jeans and dyed them red – and of course the look was finished with Fred Astaire’s classic white socks and black loafers. I wish I had a nickel for every copy!

Newsy (January 24, 2018)

"There are moments when I say to someone, 'Oh yeah, I designed Michael Jackson's "Thriller,"' and I don't believe it," costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis said. "I feel like I'm lying!"

...She attributes the look of Jackson's red leather jacket to reductive design.

"It's not, 'What is reductive design?' The right question is, 'What do you mean by reductive?'" Landis said. "Where the word reductive comes in is, what cannot the costume be?

"Michael was in a movie theater; he was on a date. Then he left the movie theater. He danced in a dark alley. What was a color that really captured that moment, that captured the spirit of a horror film? Surrounded by zombies, what would really, really make sense. And that's the — making sense is the criteria that we use the most narratively and visually," she explained. "That's reductive design. ... I came up with that red, and that red look, I think it just works on every level.

"It was the '80s, and I really felt like I wanted to build out his body," she said. "He was not a very big person. I like to say he was 99 pounds ringing wet. He had a 27-28 inch waist; his shoulders were extremely narrow; he weighed practically nothing.

"There was some deliberate bodybuilding on my part," Landis said.

She added: "When they've first left the theater and he's flirting with her and dancing around her and she's dancing forward and they're by that chain link fence, I love that part of the video. He's so appealing and attractive. The silhouette and the mass, especially up top, really work in the dance. He's the tip of the arrowhead, for that triangle pushing forward on that street in the back alley by the cemetery with all the ghouls. The fact that he has that V, the fact that his body is a V from his navel out to the edge of his shoulders, all of that is graphic! It's active! There's a tension there! That combined with the color just pulls him forward. Even the camera movements in that moment in the dance. When it goes BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP. Everything combined. The look, the style, the shape, the silhouette and the music, and the talent were combined, and the choreography is bringing Michael absolutely right at the tip of your nose."

Landis admits she doesn't feel that enthused about all of her creations.

"I cringe when I see a lot of my work. Oh my goodness! There were times during 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' where I had my eyes closed where I was like, 'Ooh, I would've done that differently,'" she said.

But when it comes to the "Thriller" jacket, she wouldn't change a thing.

"I made those choices intuitively. I made those choices instinctively. ... Through the fullness of time, I've been able to see what I did and why," she said.

"When something's not right, the designer can't sleep. ... I've slept well for these past many years," Landis said.

Brian Greenberg, cameraman, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

This was a much bigger production than Beat It had been. It had a definite beginning, middle and end to it. Beat It was done by a commercial director, Thriller was done by John Landis, who'd directed all these movies. He really covered it, like, Old Hollywood style - we had all the toys we needed to do it with.

Marty Thomas, props assistant, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

It was a long job and it was secret, you know? I remember we had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and not to tell anybody what we were filming, not to tell family or anything... very, very rare for music videos back then. What they would do is print up maps to the location and leave them around, but they were false locations. Somebody from the press would sneak on set and steal these maps and they were just sort of locations of the shopping mall that's closed, way way out in the Valley.

...We couldn't believe it was just for one music video. It was a small city everywhere we went. There was a lot of police, a lot of security. And Landis, he would let people who made it there get pretty close, but behind a barrier. They had third and fourth and fifth assistant directors handling the crowd, which would be in numbers of two, three to four hundred, who had figured out where to go or had heard from one of the film crew or whatever, there watching on the set.

...I was having lunch and Michael came and sat at the head of our table to talk to somebody else. It was just a crew table, and usually he was pretty separated - in fact, they told us at the start of the shoot, if anybody talks to Michael, you're fired. So he sat down and we're like, 'Oh, God,' and he started talking with us, and he had with him a mayonnaise and beansprout sandwich, and he said, 'Anyone wanna finish this?' and I said, 'I'll finish it!' So he gave me half of his mayonnaise and beansprout sandwich.

I ate a few bites and after he left I didn't finish it, and one of the guys said, 'Why'd you take that?' I said, 'Actually, I just want to be able to say when I'm 80, I just want to say, I ate half of Michael Jackson's sandwich.' Like, mayonnaise is supposed to be so bad for you now - he won't eat meat, but he'll eat all that lard.

...One day, they were yelling, 'No flash pictures, Michael is very, very sensitive to light.' And I was like, that's so funny, you know? He's more sensitive than I am? He's standing in front of these 10 kilowatt lights all night long, man - but he can't handle a flashbulb? So we're all set - everybody ready? - and 'OK Mike'; 'No flashbulbs when Michael comes out.'

Michael comes out and he's got this gigantic bodyguard walking with him. And as he walks out, somebody flashes a shot, 'Snap!' And Michael, you might as well have hit him with a whip. He cowers down and he's like 'Uh... I just... that was right in my eye' and he's talking and he's leaning on the bodyguard and the guard's holding him up because he might fall down in a pile and melt... and he's saying 'Uh... I just... I just' and he turns around, and he starts being helped back into the motorhome. We're like, what?

The bodyguard looks around, he opens the door and helps him in, and somebody else comes out of the motorhome and helps him up the stairs, and the bodyguard looks at everyone with a look of death: how dare you? And he goes in and he turns around and he slams the door - at which the entire crew burst out laughing... I think he was really tired and he was punchy and he didn't like it that the set wasn't controlled - and he didn't like his picture being taken, so he was making a point.

...In one day I made over $1,000, which back then was a lot of money.

Lorraine Fields, dancer, Telegraph (November 25, 2007) (archived) (mirror) (archived mirror)

This was before the internet, so I don't know how people found out. It was like dancing on stage, it was like doing a concert. We didn't start taping until the middle of the night. Every night it was like, he came out and people were screaming. It was like being in concert with Michael Jackson - it was very exciting.

...I remember at one point they got some dirt on the floor and stuck it on my face - 'This looks good.'

Mike Wilhoit, sound editor

They didn't have sound when they shot it, just the song and some dialogue. We had some of the dancers come into the recording studio [afterwards] and record the sound of their feet... The biggest thing was the sound of the monsters and the zombies, to get them to sound all scary and weird: voices were changed around, reversed, played slower…

Gerri Hershey, "Rolling Stone" (1986)

Michael had shown me drawings he'd made of the monsters in his head, talking with great glee about all the monster movies he'd watch to research "Thriller". One he hadn't seen but wanted for his collection was "Forbidden Planet".

Walter Yetnikoff, unknown report/documentary

When people saw the video, it was really a groundbreaker. This choreographed dance and I saw it sitting with Diana Ross actually the first time and even someone as jaded as I had become by then, I said, “Wow, you know this is really something else.”