‘Thriller’ chills and disco thrills

张小龙

‘Thriller’ chills and disco thrillsTwenty-five years later, the dead are still alive and shakin’ in John Landis’ landmark video

• Metromix.com
• April 23, 2008
• By 张小龙
  

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”video, this year’s Tribeca Drive-In—part of the Tribeca Film Festival’soutdoor-screening series—will feature ghosts, ghouls and Solid Golddancers at what’s being billed as “the world’s largest zombie disco.” We caught up with director John Landis—the man behind the “BluesBrothers,” “Coming to America,” “Animal House” and countless otherclassics—for the scoop on what went into the making of this epic musicvideo. How did the whole project get off the ground? Well, Michael Jackson called me out of the blue. He had seen RickBaker’s work, transforming a man to a wolf in “An American Werewolf inLondon.” Michael was fascinated by the transformation and said hewanted to make a film in which he turned into a monster onscreen. Rockvideos at that time were commonly made to sell records, and I wasn’tinterested in that. But I was definitely interested in doing atheatrical short, and because [Michael] was so big, we knew there’d beinterest in showing it. And it was a chance to do a dance number withreally good dancers and shoot it correctly. Was it difficult to get the financial backing for it? We figured it would cost half a million, which was a lot since people were spending fifty to seventy thousand back then. CBSand Sony video told us to go f**k ourselves. There were already twosuccessful videos that had been made [from the album]:“Beat it” and“Billie Jean.” Plus, the album was already No. 1 and had sold morerecords than any other in history when the video premiered. So Michaelsaid, “Well, I’ll pay for it”, and I said, “Absolutely not.” He wasstill living with his parents then. He said, “Why don’t you film usmaking it? We can do ‘The Making of Thriller’ and that would be 45minutes and the actual video would be 15, and it could be an hour[program] on Showtime.” When MTV heard we were going to show it on Showtime first, then they wanted it and they gave us money. And the rest is history? Well, it played [as a short] with “Fantasia” for two weeks in L.A. and was such a sensation. But then CBS f**ked me because they gave the video free to every TV station in the world. Once “Thriller” got to MTV and was on international TV, like, 24 hours a day, the album went back to No. 1 and doubled its sales. It totally established MTV, and established the power of the medium. Then I got a call from Austin Furst at Vestron who said, “I’d like to put ‘Thriller’ and ‘The Making of Thriller’ on VHSfor home video.” I said, “It’s on TV for free. Who’d buy it?” He said,“I intend to put it out on sell-through for $24.95.” I thought,nobody’s going to buy this, but over a million sold. It created thehome-video business. How has the horror genre changed in the last 25 years? The genre hasn’t changed; the budgets have changed—now they’re A moviesand not B movies. Every decade has horror movies and monster movies.The truth is, horror movies have been the only really consistent genre.The major difference is that horror, even though it’s trulyexploitation, it’s no longer considered B product. What’s coming up for you now? I have a book coming out, called “John Landis,” by Italian authorGiulia D’Agnolo Vallan. It has interviews and articles by manycollaborators of mine. We’ll be doing two book signings in New York.Also, I’m in the cutting room right now. I was one [of severaldirectors] to shoot a show for NBCcalled “Fear Itself.” It’s like the son of “Family,” which I did forthe “Masters of Horror” series. I’m most famous for my comedies—I thinkit’s a riot that I am a “master of horror.”

上帝名叫MJ

能给翻译一下吗

wanshangdi

啊哦~只能瞎看了，个人水平太次了`

celincal

我也还想学啊······

celincal

now all i have have to do is learn english