15. The “Making Of Michael Jackson’s Thriller” Documentary Actually Raised The Money To Pay For The Video

Jackson and Landis needed $500,000 to make this video happen! CBS/Columbia Records president Walter Yetnikoff was a staunch supporter of Jackson’s music and even got MTV to retire its racist “no black acts” policy by threatening to pull his other videos unless they played Jackson’s now iconic ‘Billie Jean’ video. However, he was livid when he learned how much money the project would cost.

Landis said his producer George Folsey Jr. came up with the brilliant idea of producing a behind the scenes documentary about their video so they could sell it to networks to pay for the project. MTV and Showtime both bought the rights to air the documentary for $250,000, each giving the ‘Thriller’ production team the money they needed to shoot the actual video.