MR ORANGEPRINT 🟧

Michael Jackson tried to destroy the Thriller video before anyone could watch it. He was a Jehovah's Witness, and his church told him he'd be kicked out for making a film about zombies and werewolves. So he called his lawyer, John Branca, and told him to destroy the tapes. Branca instead locked them in his office. Every morning, Michael phoned to ask if it was done. After many days of these calls, Branca told him a lie he made up on the spot: Bela Lugosi, the actor who played Dracula in the famous old movie, was deeply religious too, and nobody held it against him. That bought enough time to negotiate. Michael agreed to leave the tapes alone, as long as he could put a written warning at the start of the video saying he didn't personally believe in the occult. That was just the religious problem. The money problem was worse. CBS Records, his label, had already refused to pay for the video. The Thriller album had been out for a year and they figured it had peaked. But director John Landis wanted to make a 14-minute mini horror film for $900,000, when the average music video in 1983 cost around $50,000. CBS gave him $100,000 and told him to find the rest himself. Landis came up with another plan. He went to MTV and Showtime and sold them the rights to a behind-the-scenes documentary about how the video was being made. MTV paid $250,000. Showtime paid another $250,000. The most expensive music video ever made got funded by a TV channel that had a strict rule against paying for music videos. It worked. After the December 1983 premiere, the Thriller album started selling a million copies a week all over again. The behind-the-scenes documentary sold 10 million VHS tapes, becoming the bestselling home video of its time. Album sales now total over 70 million. It's still the bestselling album ever made. Horror movie star Vincent Price recorded that famous creepy narration at the end of the song in just two takes. The songwriter, Rod Temperton, originally called it "Starlight" before changing it to "Thriller" because he thought the new name would sell better on T-shirts and posters. They shot the whole thing in four days. In 2009, the U.S. Library of Congress added it to its permanent preservation list, the first music video ever to make the cut. It hit one billion YouTube views in 2024.