Michael Jackson and MTV: M Once Stood For Michael

With its length, Vincent Price voice-over, choreography and zombie makeup, "Thriller" was a terror and a delight. Former Epic Records president Dave Glew, who came to the label a year after "Bad" arrived and later became chairman before retiring in 2003, remembers Jackson saying, "'These are not video[s]; I make short films.' Every time our marketing guys would say 'video,' he would say, 'No, short films. You tell your team they're short films.' The video was almost as important to him as the record. And if it were up to him, he would have made a video of every track on the record."

Mark Goodman, an early MTV VJ, says that attitude redefined the medium for artists and the nascent music video channel. "It was the ultimate symbiotic relationship—we made him, he made us. He, with the help of CBS Records [the corporate parent of Epic and Columbia], kind of forced us to realize there was a change going on in music."

Flattery recalls MTV was interested in "Beat It," given its rock sound and Eddie Van Halen's participation. But "Billie Jean" was the first video from "Thriller" because it catered to Jackson's core audience. "I don't think it was, 'We don't want to play this urban artist or this black artist or this dance artist,' " says Harvey Leeds, former VP of promotion at Epic and now owner of the management company Headquarters. "It would be like going to [a rock station] and asking, 'Will you play this Luther Vandross record?' There was no denying that they thought it was great, but they were a rock'n'roll channel at the time. It just didn't fit the format."

"Thriller" was a different story—greeted, like nearly every Jackson video that came afterward, as an event. The key to Jackson's "event" videos was his drive to showcase something that hadn't been done before, whether it was a 14-minute running time, celebrity cameos or the morphing technology used for "Black or White." There was also creative thinking about where to showcase his videos; Landis told Fangoria that the "Thriller" video was financed by selling it and the making-of documentary to Showtime and MTV for broadcast.

"Making Michael Jackson's Thriller" spent eight weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Video sales chart; "Moonwalker," a collection of long-form videos released in 1989, has been certified eight times platinum by the RIAA.