SOMETIMES YOU PLAY THIS GAME IN A BAR. You have a few drinks, you run out of conversation, so somebody asks "Who is the most famous person you have met?"
I like to answer with a question: Who is the most famous person you can think of?
I've actually met a lot of famous people, which happens when you live in Hollywood, and happens when you write about the arts, and I have done both. So, whatever name somebody says, it's possible I have met them. I mean, I've met O.J. Simpson, and he's about as famous as anybody has ever been.
But I have somebody specific in mind, and occasionally somebody will guess it: Michael Jackson.
Fame is a little like money, in that you think you know somebody who is wealthy, and then, one day, you meet somebody so extraordinarily wealthy that you can't believe you thought the other guy was rich. They're not yacht wealthy. They're own your own country wealthy.
So O.J. is famous, yes. He's really, really famous. But he's not Michael Jackson famous. It is very possible that the number of people who don't know who Michael Jackson is is so diminishingly small as to be statistically insignificant. It is possible that children are born with an awareness of Michael Jackson, in the way that newborn giraffe already know how to walk. It is possible that Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who hid out in the Philippines and was so disconnected from the news that he didn't find out the war was over until 1974, was nonetheless, in hiding, a fan of Michael Jackson. It is possible that molecules of water could recognize Michael Jackson by some distinctive atomic signature. There are no bounds to how famous Michael Jackson was.
So, despite the fact that I only met him a few times, and my meetings with him were brief and unremarkable, they have stuck with me, in the same way that you might accidentally brush up against a supernova, and, even though all you really have to say is "Well, it exploded really big," it's still a hell of a story.
Michael Jackson did not wish to be recognized. His fame was almost certainly a burden to him, and so, when he came into the video store in Westwood where I worked between 1990 and 1993, he came in costume. It was a very poor costume, consisting of sideburns, buck teeth, and a baseball cap, but it was a costume nonetheless. It fooled nobody. The moment I first saw him enter the store, I thought, oh my God, it is Michael Jackson in costume. Everybody in the store recognized him. They all stopped and gaped. He had a very shy, distracted quality about him, and people left him alone. He was always with little boys, and a bodyguard, and several adults who were, I presume, the little boys parents. He would wander around the video store and pick out videos, and, after an hour of doing so, would press himself up against a far wall in the same sort of way that startled spiders press themselves against walls.
I would then cross to him and ask he was ready to check out. He would nod, terrified, and I would take his videos from him. The selection was always unusual. I remember one time he purchased the entire "That's Dancing" documentary collection and also the entire "Hitler's Home Movies" documentary series. He liked, and purchased, a lot of Warner Brothers cartoons.
This was a video rental place, mind you. But Michael Jackson didn't rent. He and one other regular, a Middle Eastern Prince, were the two who would buy, and buy by the hundreds, even though this was back in the day when a single video tape might sell for $80. (The Prince was in the "rich beyond rich" category; his videos were shipped to Saudi Arabia, or wherever he was from.) Money wasn't an issue for Michael Jackson then; it wasn't even his concern. He didn't pay for the movies. He just signed the paper and we sent it to his people, who paid.
And that's it. Not much of a memory, I know, and probably quite similar to the memories of thousands upon thousands of people who met him very briefly in a business setting. It's not even the best memory I have of Michael Jackson. That memory is from a week ago, when I went to the Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in downtown Minneapolis. This is an organization that provides the opportunity for adults with developmental disabilities to create plays and original works of art. I happened to be there on a night when the artists and performers were throwing themselves a party.
So the performance space of Interact was filled with people in wheelchairs, and people with Down's Syndrome, and people with mental illness, and they were all dancing. And they were dancing to Michael Jackson's "Beat It," and every one of them seemed to know the words, and all were singing along. They danced with an enviable enthusiasm and lack of self-consciousness, and one of the employees of Interact watched on with unfeigned fascination. "Drink it in," he told me, gesturing to the party, "it's a lot to process."
I watched as well, and a few of the performers came over and danced in front of me, smiling at me and singing along with noisy enthusiasm. The song came out in 1982. 1982, for Christ's sakes. The song is 27 years old. But it was driving this group of dancers crazy, as I am sure it has driven people crazy for years, regardless of who or where they are, whether they are members of a wedding party who seemingly spontaneously start dancing to "Thriller" or prisoners in a Thai prison who do the same. That's what real fame is like -- fame beyond fame. We all know his songs. We can all impersonate his voice, or a few of his dance moves. We all know the lyrics to 27-year-old songs, and will leap to dance to it, whoever we are. We've all brushed against the supernova in some way, and none of us are likely to forget it.
I like to answer with a question: Who is the most famous person you can think of?
I've actually met a lot of famous people, which happens when you live in Hollywood, and happens when you write about the arts, and I have done both. So, whatever name somebody says, it's possible I have met them. I mean, I've met O.J. Simpson, and he's about as famous as anybody has ever been.
But I have somebody specific in mind, and occasionally somebody will guess it: Michael Jackson.
Fame is a little like money, in that you think you know somebody who is wealthy, and then, one day, you meet somebody so extraordinarily wealthy that you can't believe you thought the other guy was rich. They're not yacht wealthy. They're own your own country wealthy.
So O.J. is famous, yes. He's really, really famous. But he's not Michael Jackson famous. It is very possible that the number of people who don't know who Michael Jackson is is so diminishingly small as to be statistically insignificant. It is possible that children are born with an awareness of Michael Jackson, in the way that newborn giraffe already know how to walk. It is possible that Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who hid out in the Philippines and was so disconnected from the news that he didn't find out the war was over until 1974, was nonetheless, in hiding, a fan of Michael Jackson. It is possible that molecules of water could recognize Michael Jackson by some distinctive atomic signature. There are no bounds to how famous Michael Jackson was.
So, despite the fact that I only met him a few times, and my meetings with him were brief and unremarkable, they have stuck with me, in the same way that you might accidentally brush up against a supernova, and, even though all you really have to say is "Well, it exploded really big," it's still a hell of a story.
Michael Jackson did not wish to be recognized. His fame was almost certainly a burden to him, and so, when he came into the video store in Westwood where I worked between 1990 and 1993, he came in costume. It was a very poor costume, consisting of sideburns, buck teeth, and a baseball cap, but it was a costume nonetheless. It fooled nobody. The moment I first saw him enter the store, I thought, oh my God, it is Michael Jackson in costume. Everybody in the store recognized him. They all stopped and gaped. He had a very shy, distracted quality about him, and people left him alone. He was always with little boys, and a bodyguard, and several adults who were, I presume, the little boys parents. He would wander around the video store and pick out videos, and, after an hour of doing so, would press himself up against a far wall in the same sort of way that startled spiders press themselves against walls.
I would then cross to him and ask he was ready to check out. He would nod, terrified, and I would take his videos from him. The selection was always unusual. I remember one time he purchased the entire "That's Dancing" documentary collection and also the entire "Hitler's Home Movies" documentary series. He liked, and purchased, a lot of Warner Brothers cartoons.
This was a video rental place, mind you. But Michael Jackson didn't rent. He and one other regular, a Middle Eastern Prince, were the two who would buy, and buy by the hundreds, even though this was back in the day when a single video tape might sell for $80. (The Prince was in the "rich beyond rich" category; his videos were shipped to Saudi Arabia, or wherever he was from.) Money wasn't an issue for Michael Jackson then; it wasn't even his concern. He didn't pay for the movies. He just signed the paper and we sent it to his people, who paid.
And that's it. Not much of a memory, I know, and probably quite similar to the memories of thousands upon thousands of people who met him very briefly in a business setting. It's not even the best memory I have of Michael Jackson. That memory is from a week ago, when I went to the Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in downtown Minneapolis. This is an organization that provides the opportunity for adults with developmental disabilities to create plays and original works of art. I happened to be there on a night when the artists and performers were throwing themselves a party.
So the performance space of Interact was filled with people in wheelchairs, and people with Down's Syndrome, and people with mental illness, and they were all dancing. And they were dancing to Michael Jackson's "Beat It," and every one of them seemed to know the words, and all were singing along. They danced with an enviable enthusiasm and lack of self-consciousness, and one of the employees of Interact watched on with unfeigned fascination. "Drink it in," he told me, gesturing to the party, "it's a lot to process."
I watched as well, and a few of the performers came over and danced in front of me, smiling at me and singing along with noisy enthusiasm. The song came out in 1982. 1982, for Christ's sakes. The song is 27 years old. But it was driving this group of dancers crazy, as I am sure it has driven people crazy for years, regardless of who or where they are, whether they are members of a wedding party who seemingly spontaneously start dancing to "Thriller" or prisoners in a Thai prison who do the same. That's what real fame is like -- fame beyond fame. We all know his songs. We can all impersonate his voice, or a few of his dance moves. We all know the lyrics to 27-year-old songs, and will leap to dance to it, whoever we are. We've all brushed against the supernova in some way, and none of us are likely to forget it.
Jessica R. Said,
Pretty much. I don't overlook what he did but at the same time I can't stay in my chair when I hear "Blame it on the Boogie", or "Smooth Criminal" or "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" or...
Posted on June 25, 2009 6:48 PM
Andrea Said,
Beautifully written. Thank you.
Posted on June 25, 2009 7:00 PM
Paul G. Hunt Said,
This is terrific, Max. Thank you.
--Paul (gnfti)
Posted on June 25, 2009 8:45 PM
jtron Said,
This post has been removed by the author.
Posted on June 25, 2009 11:28 PM
jtron Said,
Just dropping by to congratulate you on getting picked up by the Grauniad - now, can you get Charlie Brooker to start posting on Metafilter?
Posted on June 25, 2009 11:29 PM
Aron D Said,
One correction: that prison remake of the Thriller video happened at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines, not Thailand.
Posted on June 27, 2009 12:24 AM