Everybody knows “Thriller.” The red jacket, the graveyard, the dance that millions of people still try to copy every October. It’s probably the most famous music video ever made. So you’d think it started as some big plan to sell records.
The man who directed it says it was nothing like that.
His name is John Landis. Back then he was a Hollywood director known for comedies and for one horror film in particular, “An American Werewolf in London,” which came out in 1981. That movie was famous for a jaw-dropping transformation scene, where a man slowly turns into a beast right in front of you. The makeup was done by an artist named Rick Baker, and people had never seen anything like it.
Michael saw that film. And then he picked up the phone.
In this interview, Landis sits down and tells the whole story himself, calm and funny, the way only someone who was in the room can.
John Landis tells the real story of how “Thriller” came together
Here’s how Landis remembered that first call, speaking to NPR in 2011. “He had seen ‘An American Werewolf in London,’ a movie I made that had remarkable makeup effects by Rick Baker. Michael contacted me and he just wanted to turn into a monster.”
That was the whole idea. Michael wanted to become a monster on screen, like the man in the werewolf movie. He wasn’t thinking about charts or sales.
Landis almost said no. He didn’t want to make a music video at all. “I don’t want to do a rock video. They’re just commercials for records,” he told NPR. Then he had a better thought. “But then I thought, you know what, Mike? How about a theatrical short? And he said, sure.” That’s why “Thriller” plays like a little movie, with a story and an ending, instead of just a song.
Michael became the King of Halloween. His video is the one the whole world watches every year when the nights get dark. But Michael himself had barely seen a horror movie in his life. They scared him too much. Landis said it plainly at a film festival in 2017, as reported by Reuters: “Turns out he hasn’t seen many horror films, they were too scary.”
Think about that. The man who wanted to turn into a monster could hardly sit through a scary film.
Landis also told Reuters that the video “was nobody’s good idea, it was no brilliant business plan.” It just happened because Michael wanted it.
The two of them became friends too. Landis once remembered Michael coming over and the two of them staying up “till 4:00 a.m. watching cartoons.” Not horror. Cartoons.
Watch the short film below and you’ll see exactly what Michael was chasing when he called Landis. That moment when the sweet young man starts to change into something else.
The full “Thriller” short film, start to finish
People have watched it for more than forty years now, and it only happened because Michael wanted to be a monster for a few minutes. Landis just gave him a way to do it.