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Movie Directors Dominate Michael Jackson's Music Video Collection
Monday, August 10, 2009 at 5:07AM 
It appears that Michael Jackson did not want just any music director for his videos. More often than not, Michael Jackson's music videos were directed by people in the movie industry and not music video directors (think...Dave Meyers, Little X, Hype Williams), even long after MTV and related networks came onto the TV scene. When I think about this fact, it does make sense that Michael Jackson would work with movie directors instead of regular music video directors.
Many of his videos were described as short films and had longer running times than the average video released by other music artists. The costumes, scenery and special effects were oftentimes more elaborate than other videos in the music industry. His music videos had characters and a plot, so why not work with the film industry to produce them? An article about one Michael Jackson song led me on a journey of learning how much his music video history lists a Who's Who of the film industry:
I feel the need to mention Billie Jean first because it was the first music video by a black artist that MTV played in heavy rotation. The Billie Jean music video was directed by Steve Barron, who does not seem to have a long filmography in directing but is the man behind the movies Coneheads and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The cable TV network MTV refused to air Michael Jackson's Billie Jean music video on their channel. This decision prompted a heated response from a CBS Records executive who threatened to pull all of their other content from MTV off air and "I’m going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don’t want to play music by a black guy" according to Blender. All of this time, I thought that MTV took a chance on the Billie Jean video because they either liked it or thought Michael Jackson had talent.
Now, it seems that MTV only aired the Billie Jean music video because they didn't want to lose the other content from CBS Records or damage their relationship with a powerful media entity that could help MTV grow to the well known music TV network it has become today. The decision to air Billie Jean was then not based on the merits of the work alone but other underlying factors, in my opinion.
A Wikipedia description of the Billie Jean song, states MTV did not consider black music to be "rock enough. Huh? Let's observe the behavior of radio stations when it comes to black music, for a moment. The popular Hot97 and Power99 FM stations both play predominantly black music but Janet Jackson's "Black Cat" song and nearly every single Lenny Kravitz has EVER released has not received adequate airplay (if any, at all) from these and other "black stations". Therefore, how much more "rock" do we have to be for MTV to put us in heavy rotation (or back then in those "Billie Jean" days of the 80s, at least)? I digress....
Academy Award winner, Martin Scorsese (Departed, Gangs of New York) directed Michael Jackson's "Bad" music video.
Space Jam director Joe Pytka worked on a few Michael Jackson music videos including "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Heal the World" and "Dirty Diana".
The music video for "Speed Demon" was directed by Will Vinton, a filmmaker who specializes in animated movies. Vinton has dozens of short films, TV programs and feature films to his credit.
More on Michael Jackson, his movie director connections and some controversy surrounding one of the popular music video productions tomorrow!
8/11/09 Update: .....had a long day. New posts will be up on Wednesday.
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Reader Comments (5)
"More often than not, Michael Jackson's music videos were directed by people in the movie industry and not music video directors"
Ahhh...that would explain the extended "Who's bad? Who's bad? Who's bad?" ending to the Bad video. I saw that for the first time a few weeks ago. After a few minutes of Michael repeating "Who's bad?" the whole thing began to feel bit awkward. Great video, but that extended ending was strange.
Thanks for pointing that out Herman. I'm going to have to watch the "Bad" video again when I get a chance this week. It's been a few years since I watched it from start to finish.
I have to admit that MJ put together some amazing videos. I find myself glued to the TV whenever I see them. I had never seen the extended version of Bad, and that ending was just a bit unusual. Still, amazing stuff. You'd be a fool not to admit that the man was an amazing talent.
Not 100%. At about the time he was working in Music Videos in the 80's there was no one to keep up with what he wanted. So John Landis was employed for Thriller, and even searching out those that made very amazing commericals (BOB GIRALDI).
But MJ changed music videos, so they had to step it up. And with that MJ saw the talent that was out there, and finally music video directors were creating stories of art of a high brass. There was DAVID FINCHER, for "WHO IS IT?" MARK ROMANEK with "SCREAM." PAUL HUNTER for 2, "BLOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR" & "You Rock My World." HERB RITTS for "In the Closet." Many film-makers, many music video directors, and so that were just creative in other fields but had a chance to lens an MJ video.
As for the incredible HYPE WILLIAMS. He was suppose to direct a video with MJ. A video was planned for MJ's "Butterflies" off of the Invincible Album. Yet due to not a lot of movement for the album the video no more. It was widely known that the album was questionable marketed...
This news report was posted in Feb 2000:
British newspaper The Independent reports that Hype Williams is directing the new Michael Jackson music video!
According to Michael Jackson News International, the The Independent (February 18, 2000; page 11) reported that Hype Williams was in London last week to art direct a fashion show for designer Julien Macdonald at the Millenium Dome.
littlehype, thanks for your input on this Michael Jacskon music video retrospective as it related to film directors.
Much of what you mentioned about who worked on what has either already been listed in an earlier post on this blog (following the one here....you can read "More Michael Jackson Videos with Big Screen Support" if you're interested) OR is included in the final and upcoming post to this series.