The story behind Michael Jackson's Ghosts

Michael loved songs with a spooky theme, including his most famous one of all, ‘Thriller'. But in 1996 he also created another scary music video, the lesser knownGhosts, featuring the hits ‘Ghosts’ and ‘Is It Scary’. Here is the story behind the project.It was early 1996. Although the campaign to promote theHIStoryalbum was in full swing, Michael was still thinking about the scary themed short-film he began shooting in mid-1993 to promote theAddams Family Valuesmovie. He had invested a large amount of money in the project, which was shelved in the wake of the child molestation allegations. Michael’s love of film and directing meant he adopted the project for himself, and at 12–15 minutes it became an extension of the original idea. Initially titledIs This Scary, Michael renamed itMichael Jackson’s Ghosts(shortened toGhosts).None of the original footage was retained when filming resumed in the spring of 1996 in a hangar at Van Nuys airport in Los Angeles. Michael had now lost his original director, Mick Garris, who was about to begin shooting the TV mini-seriesThe Shining. Garris recommended Stan Winston, who did the special effects for the 1993 production, to take over the reins. Apart from some minor details, the new concept barely changed from the original. “That theme of the outcast stranger that he and [Stephen] King created was important, and stayed the focus,” Garris said. “I was not there when the production continued in 1996, [but] I’d get midnight calls from Michael, who was so passionate about finishing it, making it special.”Read next:Michael Jackson's HIStory in the making, PART ONEIn the light of the events of 1993, which stopped production of the original in the first place, finishingGhostsbecame even more important to Michael. The most significant script change saw the introduction of a town mayor, likely based on the figure of Santa Barbara district attorney Tom Sneddon. Originally a regular resident – played by actor Ken Jenkins – led the townspeople to the mansion of the maestro, but the mayor took over the role. “There’s some pathos in this and I insisted on it,” Michael said. “Well here’s a guy, he doesn’t really like to hurt anyone or offend anyone, but they find him to be strange and eccentric and weird, the older people do, the grownups because they’re kind of bigoted.” The film ends with the maestro scaring the mayor out of the mansion and winning over the people of the town. “When they start to challenge me, they make me territorial, and I start to challenge them back,” Michael explained.The dance choreography was the biggest change from the original. ForGhosts, Michael chose ‘2 Bad’ fromHIStoryfor a dance routine his character performs with his family of ghouls. Although the song was already finished and recorded in 1995, it still had to be edited to fit into the film in the way Michael wanted, so a version that he could dance to was chopped up by Brad Buxer and engineer Eddie Delena. Buxer saidGhostswasn’t designed to promote ‘2 Bad’, which was never released as a single. “Michael just always envisioned all of the dance scenes in the short-film to be centred around the groove in that song,” Buxer said.A special video featuring rare footage of the making of Michael Jackson's Ghosts:Michael, Buxer, Delena and fellow engineers Andrew Scheps, Matt Forger and Rob Hoffman camped out at Record One studio in Los Angeles to develop the film music; Michael split his time between the studio and theGhostsset. “I worked onGhostsfor quite a while,” Hoffman said. “Michael would have ideas, much the way he makes a record, and he would dictate to one of the crew what he wanted – singing, and beatboxing. As the film progressed those ideas would be refined, often while filming was taking place. We would get video from the set and need to edit and make changes, sometimes with Michael there, sometimes without.”Michael also resumed work on ‘Ghosts’, a track which developed from theAddams Family Valuessessions in 1993 and was pulled up briefly during theHIStorysessions. Unlike ‘2 Bad’, there were no plans to incorporate the song into the actualGhostsdance routines. Instead, it would be played in its entirety over the end credits in a promotional format. “The song ‘Ghosts’ was never meant for theGhostsshort-film, Michael wanted to develop the song for future album release,” Buxer said.Read next:Author Mike Smallcombe discusses his book Making MichaelGhostswas completed in the summer of 1996 after six weeks of production. Originally it was only supposed to run for 12–15 minutes, but in true Michael style it grew and grew during filming and ended up being over 39 minutes long. Although Michael saw it more as a film, in 2002 the Guinness Book of World Records honoured it as the longest music video ever, a record that was broken by Pharrell Williams in 2013. The entire project cost Michael a reported $15 million, but he wouldn’t see much of a financial return. Television stations were offered the film as part of an hour-long special, but were put off by the high price.Given the issues raised in the film it was very important to Michael, but for his record label, it was an idea that didn’t serve a purpose. “It wasn’t connected to theHIStoryalbum, and it wasn’t a film, and it wasn’t a music video, it was kind of in the middle,” Dan Beck said. “Sometimes we needed to ask him, ‘Why are we doing this’, and sometimes it allowed him to refocus, but this was a situation where Michael rolled on with something and we couldn’t stop him, it was happening.”Ghostspremiered at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts in Beverly Hills in October 1996, alongside Stephen King’s horror movieThinner, although Michael didn’t attend as he was away touring. His new track ‘Ghosts’, which was completed in studios in Amsterdam and London during the tour, debuted during the end credits.​By the time Michael attended a screening ofGhostsat the Cannes Film Festival on May 9, 1997, the film had changed from the one released in the fall of 1996. Michael revealed that director Stan Winston thought the dance sequences should contain more music. As a result a short segment of ‘Ghosts’, originally played only over the end credits, was edited into one of the sequences. A portion of ‘Is It Scary’, a song with a similar theme which was mostly recorded during theHIStorysessions with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis producing, was also used.Read next:The making of Michael Jackson's Dangerous“We needed more music and neither me, Stan Winston or anyone else could understand why we were not using ‘Ghosts’ or ‘Is It Scary’ in the short-film,” Brad Buxer said. “We talked Michael into what seemed an obvious choice – why not use ‘Is It Scary’ and ‘Ghosts’ in a film about… ghosts?”But as the dance scenes had already been filmed, incorporating the songs wouldn’t be an easy task. “No dance scenes were ever shot to the music of ‘Ghosts’ or ‘Is It Scary’ during the entire course of making the film,” Buxer said. “The work we did was before all the plugs were available that make work like this easier these days.”Read next:Inside the Bad sessions and the split with Quincy JonesAt the last minute, over a course of three days – a Friday through to a Sunday – Buxer, Matt Forger and programmer Matt Carpenter had to change the tempo of ‘Ghosts’ and ‘Is It Scary’ to fit the pre-shot dance segments. “We made new music work with pre-existing Michael Jackson choreography that was much slower than the original music, and it worked beautifully,” Buxer said. “We did all the work at my house and when Stan Winston came over to view and listen to the work we had done, he loved it.”Michael, however, was satisfied with the original version, which featured only ‘2 Bad’. “Stan thought we should put more songs in the film, so we did, but I thought that the first version was good, I was satisfied,” he said.Making Michael also includes the story behind the shelvedAddams Family Valuesproject from 1993, which becameGhoststhree years later.Find out more aboutMaking MichaelhereTo return to the blog page clickhere