The Story Behind Michael Jackson and Stephen King’s Short Film Collaboration IS IT SCARY?

In 1996 Michael Jackson he had an idea for a short horror film he wanted to call Is it scary?. Jackson assembled a very talented team to bring the film to life, including the Master of Horror Stephen King and involved the legendary VFX artist Stan Winston direct. The project made it halfway through production before it ended up falling apart, but that’s the full story of how the film came to be and how it ultimately fell apart.

Jackson took on the project after his big Super Bowl halftime show, and was trying to embrace the weirdness of himself and champion it. Jackson was trying to rebuild his image at a time when people and the media were tearing him down and making fun of him. The idea came from a promotional agreement that Jackson made with Paramount Pictures to which he would be attached The Addams Family Continuation.

Jackson’s idea was to shoot the short film in the Addams Family mansion and would feature cameos from some of the film’s characters. The plan was to screen the short film in theaters as a pre-entertainment show.

For Jackson, this short film would be a “spiritual sequel” to his hit music video Thriller. He wanted this film to be even scarier, so he decided to turn to the master of horror, Stephen King, to help him convey thrills and chills.

During an interview with the Think Twice: Michael Jackson Podcast, Stephen King said: “I was known as the ‘horror guy, the horror master’ and he said ‘I really want to make this video and I want to make the biggest video frightening'”. it’s never been done and you’re the right person to do it.’”

During this time, King was on the set of the television adaptation of The position, which he was working on. When Jackson contacted King, he told him his horror story about a boy who lives in a mansion and is suspected by a crowd of citizens.

King liked the idea, so he accepted the challenge! He said it seemed like a “feasible project.” In Jackson’s vision of the video, he would play the man in the mansion who feels forced to defend himself when a crowd of citizens marches on his door and accuses him of scaring their children. King said:

“He said that people in this town thought this person on the hill was weird and weird and scary, and kids were like, ‘yeah, we kind of like this guy.’ What he meant was that weird isn’t bad and people who think weird is bad express a kind of herd mentality, a mob mentality.”

King explains that he remembers Michael describing the dynamic he wanted to capture between the man, the mansion and the children. “He pointed out that they didn’t like the fact that boys liked him. it was a way of saying, “Look, I am who I am and kids like it, so what does it matter if you don’t understand it?” You don’t understand what I’m doing at all.

King liked the idea and agreed to write a treatment for the film and in exchange Jackson said he would dub one of King’s audiobooks. King couldn’t remember which audiobook Jackson was approached about, but the pop star ended up refusing to do it because she didn’t feel comfortable saying any of the swear words in it out loud.

Filming on Is it scary? the project began in the summer of 1993. Jackson had to work on the video while he was on his perilous tour. Everything about the short film project was super secret.

Troy Evansa character actor who appeared in ER AND Pet Detective Ace Ventura, who was hired to play one of the mafia members, said: “I don’t think I’ve ever been in this situation before where we couldn’t leave the set during the days. They fed us on set, they didn’t want anything to leak out anywhere about that project.

Jane Morris (Real lies) was part of the project and from what the agent told her, the short would be a mix of Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird. “It’s a bit like the Boo Radley character. Right? And so the citizens form a mob to protect their children from this scary man in the castle. And I think in the end we are all convinced that he is not scary… I don’t know how it ended, we never got that far.”

When Jackson was on set, he was apparently very shy and quiet around adults, but when he was around children, he lightened up. Morris explained:

“When he met us he seemed uncomfortable” and spoke to them in a very low voice. But when she was introduced to the child actors she said “Oh hi! blah blah blah. He was just a laid back person and it was like he was eight years old. Like he was just one of them, that was my impression of him. He was stuck in prepubescence.

During the filming of the movie, there was one scene in particular that everyone remembers shooting that involved Jackson’s character facing down the crowd of angry parents. According to the script, the parents were supposed to shout insults at Jackson. He, in turn, should have lashed out at them.

Shana Mongatall, an extra in Is This Scary? said: “The director asked us to just shout mean names at Michael. Right in his face, just yell at him.

She had a crush on Jackson, but now she had to yell horrible things at him, which, as you can imagine, was uncomfortable. When she was asked what she remembered her screaming, she said:

“Um, weird guy, monster, you know, stuff like that and pointing the finger in his face. I felt sick! Because I knew how he felt about the public saying those things about him.

As you know, many people have criticized Jackson for a variety of reasons including his skin, his voice, his sexuality, plastic surgery and more. In an attempt to get the desired reaction from Jackson, the scene was filmed on at least two separate occasions. Morris spoke about his experience saying:

“We just looked at each other, I can think of many things to shout that would make him angry, like what happened to your nose? Why do you have a completely different face than you did four years ago? Two years ago? One year ago? How come your voice never really changed?”

Of course, he won’t say anything about whatever they’re shooting! Instead they stuck to generic insults, but they simply didn’t get the reaction from Jackson that the creative team was looking for. Morris said:

“The point of the exercise was that Micheal wanted something with enough visors that he could react. And the camera showed him almost physically hurt by what I was saying. A previous psychological wound.”

When nothing they said worked. Morris said: “She was becoming very frustrating for me and the producers. After every take, they’d say, ‘We want you to actually chase him,’ so we came to get 57 or something and I said, ‘you fucking bleached monster, stay away from my son!’ And they said cut, and then they came right to me and said, ‘no, no, really insult him’ and I said holy shit! I had no idea where to go from there.’“

Something was actually said that made Jackson angry while filming this scene, but it’s unknown what it is. Based on footage from the set, which is available to watch online, there was one shot that made Jackson incredibly angry and he snapped, screaming, “You’re a pig, you’re a damn pig! Go to hell! Until the last one, pigs! Then he proceeds to scream.

It is said that he got really angry. Mongatall said: “He scared me because I had never heard him so strongly before. I didn’t even know he had that in him. When he said “he IS scary!” I, as a coward, thought: oh, now I’m afraid of Michael, you know, he had another side to him that I knew nothing about.

The film was supposed to be shot over the course of two weeks, but suddenly it seemed like a top priority for Jackson. Mongatall explained that she just stopped showing up on set. She simply stopped coming to shoot the short film even though the entire cast and crew were there ready to go.

Twelve days after the short film began production in the summer of 1993, news broke that Michael Jackson was under investigation for allegedly molesting a child. Once the news arrived, the production of Is it scary? It has been closed.

No one ever called the cast to tell them the project was closed, in the end they just received payment for their time working on the project and that was it. That was the end.

You can watch existing footage from the film below. Is it scary? it ended up serving as the inspiration for a short film Jackson later made titled Ghosts. I’ve included the videos below for you to watch.