Is this scary 1993

wonderouzdj2

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Here is the full 1993 version of ghost titled "Is This Scary"

According to screenwriter Paul Rudnick, the original concept was for Jackson to record a horror-themed song for Addams Family Values and film a music video to promote it, but when allegations of child molestation were made against Jackson the summer before the film was set to be released, plans changed.

“It was just a little too risky to include [the song] in the final movie at that point,” Rudnick recalls of the situation.

According to actress Shana Mangatal, the song that was set to play during the closing credits of Addams Family Values was not actually titled “Is This Scary.” Jackson’s longform music video was to be called Is This Scary, but not song, Mangatal told me.

“He dictated the lyrics of the song that was going to be used as the theme song for Addams Family Values to me, but the song was never recorded,” Mangatal explains. “It’s a completely different (to ‘Is It Scary’ – released years later) and never-before heard song.”

The song was also to be released as a brand new Michael Jackson single accompanied by a long-form music video – funded and issued independently by Jackson – to support both the single and Addams Family film.

Mangatal, who was cast in the film and was also working for Jackson’s manager at the time, vividly remembers the experience of being on set during the 1993 filming, explaining that Jackson was excited and enthusiastic going into the project and revealing that Addams Family characters were to have made cameos in Jackson’s short film.

“What is not included in this (leaked) snippet are the scenes with the Addams Family kids,” explains Mangatal. “Christina Ricci and the other two kids were in this too. It included creepy live animals as well. There was an armadillo that the director had crawl right over my feet. We filmed at the CBS/MTM Studios in Studio City, California.”

“Michael was very excited to film this,” she adds. “His goal was for it to be ‘scarier than Thriller.’ We filmed for about 2 weeks. But, after a few days of filming, Michael learned of the allegations, and he was devastated. He stopped showing up to the set. We filmed as much as we could without him, and we did get a lot of footage, but the main piece that we did not get was Michael’s dance sequence.”

Despite not finishing or releasing the song or film in 1993, Jackson wasn’t about to let the project fall by the wayside.

“He was determined to finish Is This Scary,” recalls Mangatal, “mainly because of the reason we had to stop. It became his passion project and he really wanted everyone to see it and understand its meaning.”

Jackson would ultimately revisit the project three years later, in 1996, completing and releasing the film under the title Ghosts – a 40-minute re-written version of what he started in 1993 featuring three songs; “Is It Scary,” “2Bad,” and title track “Ghosts.”

“Ghosts is his view of how people perceived him, so it’s very autobiographical,” says Mangatal. “Finishing it was all Michael talked about for three years.”

“Ghosts is similar to how Is This Scary would have been, but different,” recalls Mangatal. “Is This Scary had that same theme, about people being afraid to have Michael around their children, which is ironic being that the allegations hadn’t even hit at the time it was written, cast, and filming had begun.”

“For Ghosts he changed directors (to Stan Winston) and re-wrote the script. He also re-cast the entire thing because all of the original kids had grown up,” adds Mangatal, who was the only member of the original 1993 cast that was re-cast for the 1996 version. “There was an actual actor who played ‘The Mayor’ in Is This Scary. Michael only played himself in it.”

The completed Ghosts film, in which Jackson plays a grand total of five characters, stands as one of the most significant artistic feats of his entire career, and is widely considered to be the magnum opus of his unparalleled catalog of short films.

Jackson adored the Ghosts film so much, and was so passionate about having audiences see it, that he was planning on showcasing it in a Halloween TV special on CBS in October 2009 – between the first and second legs of his This Is It residency at London’s O2 Arena.

I've always wanted to see this but now after seeing it...i didn't miss anything, i like the final version 100% better. 1 thing I've always noticed even at a very young age was his hair was very different/thin in certain scenes just like i did with bad with long hair short hair shots. But the parts where he makes the "real" scary faces (special effects) are used in the final product & his hair is very very thin & after seeing this, a lot of special effects scenes from 1993 are in the 1996 version, even slamming down the hands & face is in the final product from the 1st version. But this is very rare & also includes the addams kids. Lol don't take me for being naive but as a kid i also noticed & said to myself that house always reminded me of the addams family not knowing the background about it at the time but if you look at both footage u can clearly see what was kept & what was taken out
https://youtu.be/-ayAKKus4YM
 
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Thank god it was abandoned in 93. Absolutely cringeworthy dialogue and acting.

Way too cartoonish.
 
Wow i've been waiting for this for ages!

If it's blocked in your country try the "proxtube" plugin for mozilla firefox. It works!
 
It doesn't specify it's blocked in my country, Mexico in this case. Sometimes in my iPhone it says it's not available, I play it on the computer or laptop and it works there. In case it appears it's blocked, I'll try your suggestion Electro, thanks.
 
I actually liked it. Yes the dialogue was cringeworthy but I liked the visuals. Odd that they abandoned the project and then basically shot it again 3 years late.

Here is the video embedded
 
Well, the final version turned out way better of course.
But it's still fascinating for the pure rarity factor. It's like a look into a parallel universe.

I like the key-scene :D
 
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What I liked was watching most of the characters that are main part of The Addams. I was just expecting to see Wednesday and Pugsley but even baby Pubert was included. Also Lurch and Thing appeared in the begining. I'm so glad the majority was changed for the better, MUCH BETTER; in this one the acting was exaggerated, maybe I'm overreacting and I adore Michael to death but he was made to act like an unballanced character. His acting in Ghosts was more believable and natural despite the amount of characters he performed. What I found amazingly sad and heartbraking is that even before the allegations hit, people were afriad of Michael being around children. :(
 
What I liked was watching most of the characters that are main part of The Addams. I was just expecting to see Wednesday and Pugsley but even baby Pubert was included. Also Lurch and Thing appeared in the begining. I'm so glad the majority was changed for the better, MUCH BETTER; in this one the acting was exaggerated, maybe I'm overreacting and I adore Michael to death but he was made to act like an unballanced character. His acting in Ghosts was more believable and natural despite the amount of characters he performed. What I found amazingly sad and heartbraking is that even before the allegations hit, people were afriad of Michael being around children. :(
Yea...i find it very coincidental they happened at that time & also didn't know that pubert was in this as well but i was also sure that the addams interacted with Michael at 1 point & i wonder what the song & dance parts was gonna be before it became what it became
 
I could imagine a Ghosts DVD/Blue-ray with Ghosts 1996 and Making of and this one and interviews with people who were involved, for example Mick Garris. That would put it into a perspective.

Contributors || By: Michael Adams || July 14, 2009 07:35 AM EST
The Cold Case: Director Mick Garris on Michael Jackson's Forgotten Ghosts


Exhausted by endless replays of
Thriller? Fed up with CNN treating Michael Jacksons's "ghost" as actual news ? This week, a special edition of The Cold Case talks to Mick Garris about 1997's Ghosts, the all-but-forgotten 38-minute film he created with Michael Jackson, the late Stan Winston and horror legend Stephen King.

In the 24/7 media meltdown that surrounded Michael Jackson's untimely death, it appeared that every clip of the superstar was unearthed, dusted off and replayed over and over. Even so, somehow, every story or tribute package led to 1983's Thriller, that game-changing 14-minute horror short that remains the highest-selling music video of all time. We should probably be grateful that the networks didn't have a working VCR and a copy of 1997's Ghosts, lest we be subject to an immediate overload of TV talking heads' endless analysis of what it meant and, God forbid, what it predicted.


To be fair, this 38-minute short film, not so much a sequel to Thriller than an operatic bookend, lends itself to such discussion. In it, Michael Jackson depicts himself as a misunderstood monster who's persecuted by those who love and hate him -- led by himself. The singer messes with his face, turns white, dies, is resurrected and moonwalks as a skeleton. Most poignantly, Jackson asks his fans and followers whether they've been scared and whether they've had fun. The answers are yes and yes.


Early in his career, Mick Garris, creator of the Masters Of Horror TV series and director of Stephen King adaptations such as The Shining and The Stand, and his wife Cynthia donned zombie make-up for Thriller. A decade later, Garris became part of the team that put Ghosts together. He spoke with Movieline recently about developing the project, working with his formidable creative partners and how Jackson battled monsterdom both onscreen and in real life.


First things first: How did you come to be a zombie in Thriller?
John Landis had already been a friend for several years. We actually met when I was a receptionist for the original Star Wars at an off-lot office at Universal. John's office was next door to mine when he was prepping Animal House. And Rick and his wife at the time, Elaine, had been very close friends and neighbors to me and Cynthia. So when they invited us, we came running. I was a hopeful writer then, doing publicity for studios and the like, just starting to get screenwriting jobs.


Was there the sense that you were seeing pop-culture history being made?
We knew we were doing something special, but had no idea just how special. We knew it was a much bigger scale than music videos at the time had been, and so much different than the usual 1980s performance things. But watching Michael come alive on that first night I was there was electrifying. I became a fan right there.


Did you become friends with Michael Jackson then?
We did not become friends at that point. Later on, when I was shooting The Stand, Stephen King and Michael put together a script for another scary music video -- one with huge scale, even compared to Thriller. King recommended me for it, and that's where I really met Michael on a one-to-one basis. We became friends through that experience.


What did you think Michael wanted to achieve with Ghosts?
Michael wanted to make the biggest, scariest music film ever. Well, I don't know that that's what happened; you can't really be scary in this context, but it's huge, the music and dancing are great, and it's quite the spectacle. And it definitely got its point across. That theme of the outcast stranger that he and King created was important, and stayed the focus through various incarnations.


How did you get involved, and how did the collaboration between you, Michael, Stan Winston and Stephen King work?
I was actually the original director. It was begun in 1993, and I worked with him throughout pre-production and two weeks of production. It shut down for three years before resuming under Stan Winston, who was doing the effects work when I was directing. I recommended him to finish shooting when it resumed, as I was about to shoot The Shining. So yeah, I was on set a lot. But I was not there when the production continued in 1996. I'd get midnight calls from Michael, who was so passionate about finishing it, making it special. He and Stan had become friends way back when they did The Wiz together.
In the beginning, he and Steve did the script together, and I wasn't really privy to what went on then. It was when it was greenlit that Michael and I and Stan would get together for hours on end, planning the complicated effects as well as the music and storytelling. But it started as something completely different. Nobody knows this, but it was originally going to be a video to promote Addams Family Values. In fact, Christina Ricci and the boy who played Pugsley were both in it. We shot for two weeks and never got to the musical numbers. It was very expensive and ambitious. And when the first so-called scandal happened, it was when we were shooting. Suddenly, Michael was out of the country, and the studio no longer wanted him to help promote that film.


What does it mean to you now that Stan and Michael are both gone?
It's incredibly sad, of course, and really tragic. Stan was a very talented and funny and friendly man. But I was closer to Michael, spent more time with him. It really breaks my heart to see what happened to him. He was always very fragile, had lots of trouble sleeping. He reminded me a lot of Don McLean's song about Vincent Van Gogh. The world can be mean, and Michael didn't have a mean bone in him. Very vulnerable and sweet. And what most people don't realize is how smart he was and especially how funny he could be. A very witty, explosively talented guy.


Did Michael hope Ghosts would break out as big as Thriller?
Michael always seemed to hope to make something that would be huge. He thought big, because his whole life seemed to be surrounded by magnitude. I don't know what his hopes were in terms of comparing it with Thriller, but I know he thought it would be very special.


Ghosts and Thriller see him as a charismatic, playful "monster". Do you think he kept having fun with that reputation, even when the media turned on him?
He was very playful with that image, though as the press got meaner, he was definitely hurt by it, and pulled back and became more reclusive. But though we were friends, it wasn't like I saw him all the time. A couple years could go by without seeing or speaking with one another, but when we did, we always had a good time.


Where were you when you heard he'd died? What did you immediately think and feel?
I was driving in my car when I heard on the radio that he'd been found unconscious and had been rushed to the hospital. I was stunned, of course, like everyone. Then, about an hour or so later, when I heard it rumored that he had died, I just couldn't believe it. It took a couple of days for it to sink in. Maybe it was inevitable, I don't know. I just know that he was fragile, sensitive, and an incredibly sweet and generous guy. It broke my heart, just like it broke the world's. And I really felt for his kids, who are terrific and unspoiled in a way you wouldn't imagine. At least, they were when I last saw them a couple of years ago.


As someone who knew him, what's your reaction to the 24/7 speculation and media coverage?
I don't know, I hate to speculate. I know he had his demons, fears, fragility. I really wasn't exposed to the drug usage or any of that stuff. It was not that intimate a relationship. All I know is that he was someone I liked a lot, and was privileged to know and work with, and I miss him. Even though I hadn't seen him in a couple of years, it always seemed like we'd be getting together again soon to talk about movies, and laugh and joke and have fun. It makes me so sad that it won't ever happen again.


Did you see the loneliness and sadness claimed to have been his constant companion?
One of my earliest meetings with him was in New York, where he had a penthouse apartment in the Trump Towers. He was so very lonely. He'd take me to the window and point down at Fifth Avenue below and tell me he'd give anything to be able to just walk down there and go into the shops, but he couldn't. I went out to visit him in Orlando, and was surprised to find that I was the only one, other than staff, that was around with him. There was nobody but us for a couple of days. I don't think he had a lot of close friends, people who didn't want something from him.


Your enduring memory of him will be...?
Making him laugh. When Michael laughed, when you got to him for more than just that giggle behind the hand, it was a sight to see. He just loved to laugh, and it was fun to tease him gently. Maybe one of my favorite memories was on the set of Ghosts; we'd finish a take, and if I wanted another, I'd put on Bullwinkle's voice and say, "This time for sure!" The first time, he just laughed and laughed and laughed. Then he'd keep asking, even after the good takes: "Mick, do Bullwinkle!" That's how I like to remember him.


Will Ghosts get a DVD release now?
I hope so. It was hugely expensive, and never released in the United States. He paid for it out of his own pocket, too. So I don't know who owns it. But I think people would love it. It changed a lot from the time that I worked on it to the time it was finished, but it's quite an accomplishment. I'd love to see it available. The only copy of it I have was one I came across in a music store in Hong Kong, on the old VCD format. It deserves better. ?

http://movieline.com/2009/07/14/the...-garris-on-michael-jacksons-forgotten-ghosts/
 
I actually liked it. Yes the dialogue was cringeworthy but I liked the visuals. Odd that they abandoned the project and then basically shot it again 3 years late.

Here is the video embedded

Except for the fact that I've always thought Michael excelled at playing the Mayor, I actually like this version better. The dialogue is still kinda bad, BUT the kids come off much more natural and look like they're genuinely having fun here. (Don't care for the ending with kids playing in electric chairs, but then, I haven't seen the Addams Family movie-don't know why).

What I found amazingly sad and heartbraking is that even before the allegations hit, people were afriad of Michael being around children. :(
I don't remember ever hearing even a whisper of that before Chandler-ever.
 
Except for the fact that I've always thought Michael excelled at playing the Mayor, I actually like this version better. The dialogue is still kinda bad, BUT the kids come off much more natural and look like they're genuinely having fun here. (Don't care for the ending with kids playing in electric chairs, but then, I haven't seen the Addams Family movie-don't know why).

I don't remember ever hearing even a whisper of that before Chandler-ever.
You've never seen the addams family?? How old are you or what planet have you been on or have you been to a place with no name? ghost is almost manly the addams family theme. U should watch it asap
 
You've never seen the addams family?? How old are you or what planet have you been on or have you been to a place with no name? ghost is almost manly the addams family theme. U should watch it asap
haha-old enough to be a little kid who loved the ORIGINAL TV show back in the day.

I don't know why I didn't go to it-I love Angelica Huston and really had a bad crush on Raul Julia too.
 
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Haha actually i found the cracked skeleton head scene a bit funnier in this version lol. The way he threw his face(mask) at the mayor and he just kinda threw it up in the air lol.

All in all, he really improved the concept later on. Glad this one was shelved for later
 
Haha actually i found the cracked skeleton head scene a bit funnier in this version lol. The way he threw his face(mask) at the mayor and he just kinda threw it up in the air lol.
:lol: I laughed so hard at that, that was hilarious :hysterical:
 
I could imagine a Ghosts DVD/Blue-ray with Ghosts 1996 and Making of and this one and interviews with people who were involved, for example Mick Garris. That would put it into a perspective.

There is so much potential for quality releases. I really hope after this current 10~project (or however many it was) ends, a new phase of releasing in-depth sets for the FANS, not joe-public who's MJ enjoyment consists of the Thriller album or Number Ones. Hopefully as we begin to move a little further away from MJ's passing and this whole franchising cash-in calms down they'll begin to realize that we are the ones who will still be here. I've got to watch this.
 
I don't remember ever hearing even a whisper of that before Chandler-ever.

It's said the casting and filming began before that BS mess of the allegations were made. When they were made public he stopped showing up and continued the shooting for a week without him and then the Addams Family Values executives no longer required him.
 
It's said the casting and filming began before that BS mess of the allegations were made. When they were made public he stopped showing up and continued the shooting for a week without him and then the Addams Family Values executives no longer required him.
Very true-people started showing their distance right away-Sony stood by him, but that was probably because of the tour and so much at stake. Bif film and studio plans were dropped faster than hot potatoes-like a hurricane hit.

But this script was written and filming started before the Chandler accusations were made public so I was surprised when you wrote this here:

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Originally Posted by Snow White luvs Peter Pan

What I found amazingly sad and heartbraking is that even before the allegations hit, people were afriad of Michael being around children. :sad:



I just don't recall anybody ever inferring anything about Michael and children in a negative sense up to that point-being afraid, etc. I could be totally wrong-I'm going by memory of those days.
 
But it was portraid in Is This Scary before the allegations, that's what I found sad and heartbraking! :sigh:
I see-like a premonition.
I'm not sure what they meant by that originally-I thought it had a lot to do with the tabloid press and the "freak" stuff that was being written-Michael had been held up as a role model for kids since he was 11 yrs. old-and he welcomed that-and that kind of press had really start to kill him at that point-and he had been really worried about what kids were thinking about him too.

(It's also like a premonition that they cast that guy in Scrubs as the Mayor-he looks a heck of a lot like Sneddon too).
 
Your right. This version is more a reference to the junk being put out by the rags and the press. People believing it and being afraid of something they don't understand just because it's different.
 
I kinda like this edit.

Can anyone explain why Danny Elfman's Edward Scissorhands score plays throughout?
 
I kinda like this edit.

Can anyone explain why Danny Elfman's Edward Scissorhands score plays throughout?

When you think of it, there's a good few parallels. Maybe MJ's original inspiration. Apparently he was in the running for the lead role too.

Maybe told the producers to use it as inspiration for the final product.
 
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