I Love the 80s: Thriller
Billy Crystal played a suicidal homosexual who at point almost got a sex change to be with his lover, who never appeared on the show. At one point, Crystal's character is confronted by an incredulous woman who seeing him dressed as fairly normal man says "You're the suicidal homosexual?" Crystal responds, "What you expected me to be wearing a noose and a dress?"

Before he was a bleached, surgery addicted, elephant man skeleton owning, pedophile, Michael Jackson produced the best selling album of ALL TIME on November 30th, 1982.It reached number one in the US and the UK simultaneously and became the first album to do so. Seven of the nine songs on the album were released as singles and all reached the top 10.

In December 2, 1983 the video was released. Jackson showed amazing insight as an artist by hiring a film director, a very popular one, to direct his video.1 Another legendary great provided some additional voice work on the song. Finally, the special effects were done by an Academy Award winner. Who are these three horror greats who worked on Thriller? Special points if you can name the idiosyncratic detail included in Thriller that is the signature of the director.

Jackson was one of the great superstars of the 80s and imitations of his Thriller dance as well as his fashion are still to be found in popular movies like the Wedding Singer and 13 Going on 30. I have it on good authority that there was even a porn imitation.

1Mtv and VH1 had just begun broadcasting and thus music videos were a very new phenomena. Even popular musicians were quite running to embrace videos until artists like Jackson and Madonna revealed what a popular and effective tool they could be. Jackson's conceptualization of Thriller as a short film, however, was truly unique and very VERY risky.

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