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

In 1996 Michael Jackson had an idea for a short horror film that he wanted to make titled Is It Scary. Jackson brought together a team of great talent to bring the film to life including the Master of Horror Stephen King and he brought on legendary VFX artist Stan Winston to direct. The project made it halfway through production before the project ended up falling apart, but this is the full story of how the movie came together and how it eventually fell apart.

Jackson took on the project after his big Super Bowl halftime show, and he was looking to embrace the weirdness of himself and defend it. Jackson was making an attempt to rebuild his image at a time when people and the media were tearing him down and making fun of him. The idea came out of a promotional deal that Jackson made with Paramount Pictures that would have tied into The Addams Family sequel.

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

For Jackson, this short film was going to be a “spiritual sequel” to his hit music video Thriller. He wanted this movie to be even scarier, though, so he ended up reaching out to the master of horror, Stephen King, to help him deliver the thrills and chills.

During an interview with the Podcast Think Twice: Michael Jackson, Stephen King said: “I was known as the ‘horror guy, the master of horror’ and he said ‘I really want to do this video and I want to do the scariest video that’s ever been done, and you’re just the person to do it.’”

During this time, King was on the set of the TV adaption of The Stand, which he was working on. When Jackson got a hold of King, he pitched him his horror story about a guy who lives in a mansion and comes under suspicion by a mob of townspeople.

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

“He said people in this town felt that this person on the hill was weird and strange and scary, and the kids are kinda like, ‘yeah we sort of dig this guy.’ What he wanted to say was strange isn’t bad and people who think strange is bad are expressing a kind of herd mentality, a mob mentality.”

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

King liked the concept and agreed to write a treatment for the film and in exchange, Jackson said that he would voice one of King’s audiobooks. King couldn’t remember what the audiobook was that Jackson was approached for, but the pop star ended up refusing to do it because he wasn’t comfortable saying any of the swear words in it out loud.

Filming on the Is It Scary project began in the summer of 1993. Jackson had to work on the video in between the time he was spending on his dangerous tour. Everything about the short film project was super secretive.

Troy Evans, a character actor who appeared in ER and Ace Ventura Pet Detective, who was hired to play one of the mob members said: “I don’t believe I’ve ever been in this situation before where during the days we couldn’t leave that set. They’d feed us on set, they didn’t want anything leaking out anywhere about that project.”

Jane Morris (True Lies) was also a part of the project and from what the agent told her, the short was going to be a mix of Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird. “It’s kinda like a Boo Radley character. right? And so the townspeople form a mob to protect their children from this scary man in the castle. And I believe in the end we’re all convinced that he’s not scary… I don’t know how it ended, we never got that far.”

When Jackson was on set, he was apparently super shy and quiet around the adults, but when he was with the kids, he lightened up. Morris explained:

“When he was meeting us he seemed uncomfortable” and he would speak very softly to them. But when introduced to the kid actors he was like “Oh hi! blaa blaa blaa. He was just sort of a relaxed person and it was like he was an eight-year-old. Like he was just one of them, that was my impression of him. He was stuck prepubescent.”

While shooting the film, there was one scene in particular that everyone remembers shooting and it involved Jackson’s character confronting the mob of angry parents. According to the script the parents were supposed to shout insults to Jackson. He, in turn, was supposed to lash out at them.

Shana Mongatall, an extra in Is This Scary? said “The director asked us to just shout mean names to Michael. Just right in his face, just scream them at him.”

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

“Um freaky boy, you freak, you know, things like that and pointing in his face. I felt bad! Because I knew how he felt about the public saying those things about him.”

As you know, lots of people criticized Jackson for a variety of reasons including his skin, his voice, his sexuality, the plastic surgery, and more. In an effort to get the desired reaction from Jackson, the scene was shot in at least two separate occasions. Morris talked about her experience saying:

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

Obviously, she not going to actually say any of that stuff what they are shooting! Instead they stuck to generic insults, but they just weren’t getting the reaction from Jackson that the creative team was looking for. Morris said:

“The point of the exercise was that Micheal wanted something viseral enough that he would react to it. And the camera would catch him being almost physically injured by what I was saying. A preal psychological wound.”

When nothing they were saying was working. Morris said: “It was getting very frustrating for me and for the producers. After every take, they would say, ‘We want you to really really go after him’ so we come around to take 57 or something and I said, ‘you f**kin’ bleached freak stay away from my son!’ And they said cut, and then they came right over to me and said, ‘no no really insult him’ and I’m like holy crap! I had no idea where to go from there.'“

There actually was something said that made Jackson snap while shooting this scene, but it’s not known what it is. Based on footage from the set, which is available to watch online, there’s was one take that actually got Jackson incredibly angry and he snapped, yelling: “You’re a swine, you're a goddamned pig! Go to hell! Every last one of you pigs!” He then proceeds to scream.

He is said to have really lashed out. Mongatall said: “It scared me because I had never heard him be so loud before. I didn’t even know he had that in him. When he said ‘Is this scary!’ I, like coward, I was like oh, I’m afraid of Michael now, you know, he had another side to him that I didn’t know about.”

The movie was supposed to be shot over the course of two weeks, but it all of a sudden did seem like a top priority for Jackson. Mongatall explained that he just stopped showing up to the set. He just stopped coming around to shoot the short film even though the entire cast and crew were there ready to go.

Twelve days into the short film’s production in the summer of 1993, news broke that Michael Jackson was under investigation for allegedly molesting a child. Once that news hit, the production of Is it Scary? was shut down.

No one ever called the cast and told them the project was shut down, they just ended up getting their payment for the time that put into working on the project and that was it. That was the end of it.

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