Legend has it that, one Friday in 1982, Michael Jackson seen the movie of John Landis, An American werewolf in ParisY it occurred to him to make a horror music video.
In 1983, a year later, he contacted the director and the famous make-up artist, Rick Baker, so that they turned him into a werewolf in the video. The result was the most famous video in history, redefining the genre and proving that a “broadcast promotional tool” can be cinematic.
The expensive filming
Filming started in October 1983. The screenplay was written by John Landis and Michael Jackson and directed by Landis himself. It was shot in a 35mm format, which, together with the real-time werewolf transformation, revolutionized the way music videos were created and marked a before and after in the then incipient video clip industry.
The cost of 800 thousand dollars It was financed by his record company CBS, the MTV channel and Showtime.
Michael Peters was the choreographer in charge of creating and curating every detail of the dance performance for thriller. Long days of rehearsals with the group of dancers and under the gaze of the director of the short film, John Landis, led to perhaps the most imitated, repeated and ballad choreography in history.
This 5+ minute dance, which includes iconic steps, was awarded Best Choreography at the MTV awards.
That choreography was imitated, repeated and performed thousands of times during the last four, and it was in Mexico that the Guinness Book of Records for the most people who danced Thriller was simultaneously achieved: 50,000 people gathered in the Plaza del Monumento a la Revolución in 2009, to do an impressive dance with the steps of the King of Pop.
In addition to the barrier-breaking video, the choreography, the song itself, and record-breaking album sales, thriller He left behind other symbols for history. One of them is the red jacket with a black V on the chest, which Michael wears for most of the video.
The original garment, signed by Jackson himself, it fetched a price of $1.8 million at auction Made from Julien’s Beverly Hills home in 2011.
Also in 2009, the video was declared a Historic Heritage Site by the United States National Congress. And it was the first music video included in its country’s National Film Registry, to be considered “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant”.
The script
The first scene is set like 1950s B-movies: Michael and his girlfriend (Ola Ray) travel by car and run out of gas, at night and in a wooded area. They walk in the woods and Michael starts courting the girl. She formally accepts him as her boyfriend and he gives her a ring.
Suddenly the full moon appears and Michael begins to convulse and transform into a werewolf. His girlfriend screams and runs away, but the werewolf catches up to her, corners her, and pounces on her with his claws.
The scene is cut at that moment, and the same couple appear in a contemporary cinema, surrounded by a frightened audience, watching a film entitled thriller. All of the above story would be typical of the film being shown. Michael smiles, but his frightened girlfriend tells him she wants to leave. Michael walks up to her, exclaiming “It’s just a movie!”.
Michael and his girlfriend go out into the foggy street, and he starts singing her the first bars of the song (“It’s almost midnight and something evil is lurking in the darkness”), making silly faces that make you laugh. girl They continue walking and pass a cemetery where suddenly the corpses begin to rise from their graves. Michael and his girlfriend are surrounded by zombies.
The music stops and zombies attack them. Suddenly, Michael turns into a zombie as well. Michael and the zombies start dancing in front of his frightened girlfriend, who starts running to get away from them. The young woman is chased into an abandoned house, where zombies and Michael approach, breaking everything in their path. Just before she’s captured, she wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
Michael asks him “What’s the matter?” and he offers to drive her home. The video ends with Michael turning towards the camera: he laughs, revealing his devilish yellow eyes as Vincent Price giggles ring out.
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Source: Clarin
