The 1993 phone call from Michael Jackson that “flummoxed” Stephen King: “We’re going to shock the world”
Few things are capable of surprising the literary world’s master of the macabre, but an unexpected phone call from Michael Jackson is one of them, leaving Stephen King completely and utterly perplexed.
For one thing, he had no idea how the ‘King of Pop’ managed to track him down, but when you’re one of the most famous people on the planet, it probably isn’t that difficult to pull a few strings in the background and find out, even if the chances are always high that King is in his home state of Maine.
In this instance, though, he wasn’t. The author was in Salt Lake City, Colorado, visiting the set of the 1994 miniseries adaptation of The Stand, and the last thing he expected was to receive a call from the bestselling recording artist of their generation, never mind having Jackson pitching a collaboration.
The star never spared any expense when it came to his music videos, and he had an idea. To realise his ambition, he felt that he needed one of horror’s true heavyweights. This being ‘Wacko Jacko’, he still acted like an excitable child before he made his sales pitch for what would become a multi-year ordeal.
“‘Stephen? Stephen King? This is… ummm… Michael? Michael Jackson?'” King recalled. “The voice is high, anxious, hopeful, excited, elfin. ‘I’m, oh my god, I am such a fan!’ I assure him that the feeling’s mutual, but what I’m mostly feeling is flummoxed,” as you’d expect when “out of the blue, someone’s handed me a phone with the self-appointed ‘King of Pop’ on the other end of the line.”
Jackson’s request was simple: he wanted King to write, in his words, “the scariest, the absolute scariest, music video ever, called Ghosts.” Before he even had a chance to answer, it sounded like the pop star had already come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be a no. “Stephen, we must do this,” he was told. “We’re going to shock the world.”
Did they shock the world? No, not really. King developed a story for Ghosts, which began shooting with his frequent collaborator, Sleepwalkers and The Stand director Mick Garris, at the helm. Production began in 1993, but it was quickly shut down before resuming three years later, this time with Stan Winston in the director’s chair and King receiving a story credit alongside Jackson and Garris.
“I gave it my best try,” the scribe explained. “Not because it was Michael Jackson, and not because I thought we were going to shock the world, but because I’m always interested in trying something new, and, for me, writing a mini-musical would be new.” It was certainly a change of pace, but Ghosts was more of a 40-minute vanity project than the latest in his long line of seminal music videos.
King conceded that by the time it was finished, Ghosts “had wandered a far distance from my original script,” but he was hardly bothered. Instead, what mattered to him was that “the video contains some of the best, most inspiring dancing of Jackson’s career.” That’s up for debate, but he remains proud of his contributions, regardless of how bizarre the situation was from beginning to end.
