“What’s most amazing about it to me is that Michael was moved to make this film before anyone had ever accused him of sexually molesting children,” says Leon Neyfakh, who co-hosts “Think Twice” with Jay Smooth.
The project was originally part of a promotional deal that Jackson had struck with Paramount Pictures for 1993’s “Addams Family Values.” Stephen King was enlisted by Michael Jackson to write a treatment for a short film tentatively titled “Is This Scary?”“I was known as the horror guy, the master of horror,” says King, “and he said … ‘I want to do the scariest video that’s ever been done. And you’re just the person to do it.’ ”— as Smooth describes it — earlier in 1993, he was now embracing it.
To that end, actors in the “Is This Scary?” mob hurled insults at Jackson to get him riled up in the confrontation scene, calling him names such as “freak” and “freaky boy.”