My Michael Jackson Story

It was 1985 and the song “We Are the World” written by Michael Jackson & Lionel Ritchie was already a hit.  I was visiting my sister in Los Angeles; I was living in Taos, New Mexico then.
It was a Saturday evening and I really felt like going out.  My sister was invited to a guest list only VIP party in the Hollywood Hills, and for some reason she didn’t think she could extend the invitation to
me.  So I surrendered to just hanging out at her house, maybe a little TV and raid her refrigerator.

Then one of my best friends, Kathy, called me and asked if I wanted to go see Leonard Bernstein in concert.  Michael Jackson was going to be there because Leonard was a big fan of Michael and Michael was a big fan of Leonard.

Of course I went.  The concert was great, but I did spend some time looking around to see if I could spot Michael Jackson.   After the concert, my friend Kathy and I met up with some other friends because we were all invited to have dinner with Leonard, Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Alex
Bernstein (Leonard’s son).

It was some restaurant in the valley.  It was totally unexpected and exciting.  We were seated in a private room.  I kept  looking at Michael who was seated at the end of the table, he was very shy
and was playing patty cake with a little girl that was sitting next to  him (didn’t know who the little girl was).  He giggled a lot.

Leonard made a toast to Michael and said how much he loved him and his music. Quincy Jones also made a toast and said a few words. But Michael was too shy to stand up.

I will never forget that evening.  I went back to my sister’s house, and the next morning we talked about
our evening.  She told me her party “sucked” big time and I told her about my Michael Jackson
evening.

Goes to show you just never know what may come up that can take your breath away.

RIP MJ

Wanda

Michael Jackson was the quintessential dandy and so a movie script entitled STREETDANDY could only have been performed by the King of Pop.

And there was such a script, a dance musical, written especially for Michael Jackson by Tom Hedley of Flashdance fame.   It was around 1984 when I went to work for Tom and he was writing a script already entitled STREETDANDY.

I was jazzed at the prospect of working with the screen writer who wrote FLASHDANCE and was now writing a film for Michael Jackson.    How cool was that?  My girlfriend Martha was moving forward with her career in stand-up comedy and she recommended me to Tom.  Amazing luck.

With the untimely death of Michael Jackson, I am sad that this movie was never made and I don’t know the politics or reason why the project was never completed.  The cinematography and style of a Michael Jackson movie would have been a coveted treasure today.  There were several revisions of the script, but I always felt the original script was the most visually exciting in a suspended reality.

Imagine a gravity defying Michael Jackson in his entire sparkling splendor moonwalking along the side of a shiny skyscraper building against a starry night in New York City.  The script was chuck full of songs and dance scenes set in the Columbus Circle district of New York City in the 1980’s where struggling young artists of various kinds lived and worked to fulfill their dreams.

I have written to Tom and have asked him to post on this site.  I hope that he will share with us his vision of Michael Jackson’s STREETDANDY.

If that movie had been made then, his fans would have exploded in ecstasy watching Michael on the big screen singing and dancing like only the King of Pop can deliver.

Rest in Peace Michael Jackson.

Elena

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