“And I thought that hopefully we could use Michael’s celebrity to bring back theatrical shorts, because I love shorts.”īut Landis discovered that even a Michael Jackson project could hit a road block. “I realized immediately that, gosh, this guy’s celebrity is so gigantic, instead of doing a little needle-drop video, a classic music video, I would much rather make a theatrical short, a ‘two-reeler.’ “He just wanted to turn into a monster,” Landis said. At that time, Jackson’s desire to look grotesque was make-believe, not reality. Jackson was impressed by the werewolf faces created by the film’s Oscar-winning makeup man Rick Baker, and he wanted to do something similar with Landis and Baker. Landis first met Jackson after the pop superstar had seen his 1981 comedy-horror hybrid An American Werewolf in London. The “Thriller” video would go on to win many awards and “best video ever” accolades, including a 2009 admission by the Library of Congress to the National Film Registry, the first music video to be so honoured.Ī 45-minute documentary The Making of Thriller, produced in 1983 by Landis and also co-starring him, would go on to reap sales and awards kudos of its own. The 14-minute musical horror homage, marking its 30th anniversary this year, sees Jackson morph into both a werewolf and zombie.īased on the title track of Jackson’s record-breaking 1982 Thriller album, the video was an immediate smash upon its December 1983 release, despite having a running time far exceeding the three-minute standard for pop tunes and videos.
Our Animal House conversation (watch for a future column) also included discussion of Thriller.
Michael jackson's thriller movie movie#
The 1978 frat-boy comedy, which Landis directed and which made the late John Belushi a movie star, was the first of a string of hits by the Chicago-born filmmaker, who also helmed The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London and Trading Places. Landis, 62, made the Jackson revelations during an interview to advance his July 18 Toronto visit for the reunion at TIFF Bell Lightbox Animal House reunion at TIFF Bell Lightbox. he felt he had done good work with me and he just was desperate.
Jackson tried to persuade Landis to work with him, offering complete creative control, but the plea didn’t work. I liked him, but I was heartbroken and truthfully I couldn’t figure out a way to shoot him (for a new film).” he bleached his skin! He was a black guy when I met him! I found him such a tragic figure. It’s believed that Jackson had a dozen or more nose jobs alone in the decades before his death from cardiac arrest at age 50 on June 25, 2009, although he admitted to just two such procedures. It wasn’t until Landis met him again in 2007 that he realized just how much more damage Jackson had inflicted upon himself through excessive cosmetic surgery. “I still liked him, but he lived on another planet.” Landis said he already knew that Jackson had gone “completely crazy” at some point after they’d teamed for the award-winning 1983 “Thriller” music video, because he’d worked with him again in 1991, directing Jackson’s “Black or White” video. You look at the cover of Off the Wall (his 1979 album): this was a good-looking guy!” “He had no nose! It was like the Phantom of the Opera! He wore a little (nose) piece. “I went and met with him, and he asked me if I would do another film with him and he was so disfigured by then, it was so grotesque what he had done to himself,” Landis said from Los Angeles. The “desperate” request from Jackson came less than two years before his June 2009 death, Landis told the Star, at a time when Jackson was hoping to revive his stagnant career.
Thriller director John Landis rejected Michael Jackson’s plea to make another film together because he was appalled by the pop superstar’s “grotesque” face, ruined by cosmetic surgery.
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