In early 1992, Michael released a short film that played a lot more like a mini movie than a music video. Remember the Time ran almost nine minutes, set in ancient Egypt, and it was absolutely packed with stars.
Eddie Murphy played the pharaoh. Magic Johnson turned up in the royal court. And as the bored, beautiful queen sat up on her throne, the supermodel Iman watched a mysterious stranger appear to entertain her. That stranger, of course, was Michael. And the whole thing builds, slowly and playfully, toward a kiss.
Director John Singleton on making Remember the Time
The man behind the camera was John Singleton, fresh off Boyz n the Hood. Hearing him talk about pulling that cast together, in that setting, with that budget, tells you just how big a swing this little film really was. This wasn’t a video. It was an event.
Here’s the fun wrinkle. While they were shooting that romantic scene, Iman was engaged to David Bowie. She married him only a couple of months later. So pop’s shyest prince was sharing a screen kiss with a woman who was very much spoken for, and everybody on that set knew it.
The stories that have floated out of that shoot over the years paint Michael as anything but the aloof, distant figure people imagined. By those accounts he was shy but quick to laugh, perfectly happy to run the scene one more time and easy, warm company between takes.
The full Remember the Time short film
Watch the scene itself and you can almost see it on his face. There’s a shyness in how he plays it, and a sweetness too, the sense of two people half in character and half just enjoying the whole silly, glorious thing.
It’s one of the most watched kisses in pop history, built by a hit director, a pharaoh played by Eddie Murphy and a queen already promised to a rock star. Only Michael could pull a cast like that together and still somehow end up the shyest person in the room.