--- description: “He’s got the perfect balance of soul and science,” producer Quincy Jones said of Michael Jackson, at the conclusion of their work on the album... title: 'Bad 25': Spike Lee Brings Michael Jackson Back to Thrilling Life image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfc7cc07ddb81f252/698a8f85929fad9180c023b1/88703601.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # 'Bad 25': Spike Lee Brings Michael Jackson Back to Thrilling Life by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Oct 18, 2012 2:00 PM CUT  Popular American musician Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009) stands in a graffiti-filled subway car during the filming of the long-form music video for his song 'Bad,' directed by Martin Scorsese, New York, New York, November 1986\. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Popular American musician Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009) stands in a graffiti-filled subway car during the filming of the long-form music video for his song 'Bad,' directed by Martin Scorsese, New York, New York, November 1986\. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Getty Images by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Oct 18, 2012 2:00 PM CUT “He’s got the perfect balance of soul and science,” producer Quincy Jones said of Michael Jackson, at the conclusion of their work on the album _Bad_. Spike Lee’s _Bad 2_5 — which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Aug. 31, on the 25th anniversary of the album’s release, and which will play in American movie houses before a Thanksgiving airing on ABC TV — shows the blend of inspiration and acuity that drove these two perfectionists in creating a worthy successor to their epochal 1982 album _Thriller_. Jackson said he meant bad “in all good will,” and in that sense the movie isn’t bad. It’s baaad, and great. On mirrors wherever he went after _Thriller_, Jackson scrawled ”100,000,000″ — the estimated worldwide sales of _Thriller_; still the best-selling album of all time and the winner of a record eight Grammy awards. _Bad_ topped out at about 40 million, but it was the first album to birth five No. 1 singles (a record broken, we’re embarrassed to note, by the six No. 1’s from Katy Perry’s _Teenage Dreams_ CD). The _Bad_ videos — or, as MJ insisted on calling them, “short films” — cemented Jackson’s stature as a movie star who never appeared in a hit movie; thematically adventurous and expertly choreographed, they provided the crucial link between golden-age Hollywood musicals and YouTube. To extend the album’s multimedia reach, Jackson toured for 16 months in 15 countries: 123 shows that displayed his preternatural performance gifts and supernatural footwork. **(READ: TIME’s oral history,** [**The Making of** **_Bad_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/08/29/michael-jackson-bad/?iid=ent-main-mostpop1 "undefined")**)** Covering it all in a galloping 2hr.10min, _Bad 25_ is also a love letter from the often acerbic director, who at his Venice press conference underlined the influence Jackson had on the aspirations of a black kid in Brooklyn. “I was born in 1957, he was born in ’58,”Lee said. “And when I saw the Jackson Five on _The Ed Sullivan Show_, I wanted to be Michael Jackson. I had the Afro, the whole Jackson look. But the singing and dancing — that’s where it stopped.” **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of the Michael Jackson doc** **_This Is It_**](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1933215,00.html "undefined")**)** No matter: Lee, who directed Jackson in the 1996 video for “They Don’t Care About Us,” is a master of slick, sleek propulsion, as both interviewer and assembler of the all-time great making-of documentary. Like _This Is It_, the 2009 film of Jackson’s preparation for the concert tour aborted by his death at the age of 50, this is a demonstration of the backstage agony and artistry. **(LIST: See** [**TIME’s Top 10 Michael Jackson Everything**](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1907249%5F1907255%5F1907270,00.html "undefined")**)** For _Bad_, Jackson wrote or cowrote most of the songs. Jones’s maxim as a producer — “You can’t polish doodoo” — led to an epic wrangle over which songs to include among the final 10 cuts. Engineer Bruce Swedien, the avuncular Wilford Brimley of microphone magic, would arrange the placement of musicians and backup singers, while Jones chose the supporting cast. The ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” was intended as a duet with Whitney Houston or Barbra Streisand; instead it went to the little-known Siedah Garrett, a Jones protégé, with the young Sheryl Crow duetting with MJ on the tour. At the end of the six-month recording process, Garrett got another call: to write a ballad for the album’s last track. She and Glen Ballard created the soaring “Man in the Mirror,” with choral work by The Winans and Andrae Crouch. After the session wrapped, Crouch suggested one last hymnal “Change!” The departing singers were called back from the parking lot to provide the song’s spiritual capper. **(SEE: a TIME** [**video on Michael Jackson’s movie career**](http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,46743566001%5F1933136,00.html "undefined")**)** Jackson’s videos for _Thriller_ had employed John Landis (for the title tune), Bob Giraldi (“Beat It”) and Steve Barron (“Billie Jean”), setting the standard for the MTV minimovie. The “Bad” track would be helmed by Martin Scorsese, who had just directed _The Color of Money_ from a Richard Price script. Price offered Jackson an inner-city faceoff scenario; as he says in Bad 25, “Here’s this asthmatic Italian and an asthmatic Jew” helping the sheltered, showbiz black kid “to show the brothers that he’s down with them.” The video, which costars a young Wesley Snipes (soon to be the star of Lee’s _Mo’ Better Blues_ and _Jungle Fever_), was shot on the streets of Harlem. As Scorsese recalls, Michael “looked around and said, ‘Do people really live here?’” **(READ: Jay Cocks on** [**the Michael Jackson video era**](http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,926425,00.html "undefined")**)** _Bad 25_ documents the conception and shooting of most of the album’s videos, with testimony from their directors: Joe Pytka (“The Way You Make Me Feel” and “Dirty Diana”), Colin Chilvers (“Smooth Criminal”) and California Raisins stop-motion auteur Will Vinton (“Speed Demon”). Tatiana Thombtzen, the slim model who could have been Michael Jackson as a female, recalls that Pytka advised her not to kiss Michael at the climax of “The Way You Make Me Feel.” A kiss would have been redundant: the two were such visual twins that romance approached narcissism. “A lot of people misunderstand me,” the singer said. “That’s ’cause they don’t know me at all.” The image a lot of people had of the star in the two decades after _Bad_ was of a weird, sad soul who dated a chimp, disfigured his face, dangled his young son from a hotel window and pursued unusual liaisons with boys. Another Jackson is revealed here: the obsessed professional who worked for months in Jones’s recording studio and at home with a “B team” of top musicians laying down demo tracks. He practiced his gliding, lurching dance steps with _Soul Train_ alumnus Jeffrey Daniel and _A Chorus Line_ cast member Gregg Burge. He pored over the dance films of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Bob Fosse, writing in a note to himself, “Study the greats and become greater.” A record- and rule-breaker, Jackson also built on and improved on a century of American song and dance. **(READ: Corliss on** [**The Death of Peter Pan**](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1907344,00.html "undefined")**)** “I feel rejuvenated,” Michael Jackson said of his _Bad_ album, “a jubilation.” Bad 25 is an intimate view of a performer at his peak in the intense splendor of creativity. The movie ends with a magnificent rendition of “The Man in the Mirror” at Wembley Stadium in June 1988\. Exhausted and exhausting, he gives his fans his unique all as singer, dancer, charismatic showman. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7120924/bad-25-spike-lee-brings-michael-jackson-back-to-thrilling-life/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7120924/bad-25-spike-lee-brings-michael-jackson-back-to-thrilling-life/"},"headline":"'Bad 25': Spike Lee Brings Michael Jackson Back to Thrilling Life","datePublished":"2012-10-18T14:00:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:57:14.764Z","description":"“He’s got the perfect balance of soul and science,” producer Quincy Jones said of Michael Jackson, at the conclusion of their work on the album...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7120924/bad-25-spike-lee-brings-michael-jackson-back-to-thrilling-life/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfc7cc07ddb81f252/698a8f85929fad9180c023b1/88703601.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfc7cc07ddb81f252/698a8f85929fad9180c023b1/88703601.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Michael Jackson In 'Bad'","caption":"Michael Jackson In 'Bad'","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7120924/bad-25-spike-lee-brings-michael-jackson-back-to-thrilling-life/","name":"'Bad 25': Spike Lee Brings Michael Jackson Back to Thrilling Life"}}]}] ```