Michael Jackson, a Mouse, a Snake
Peter Guber, president and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, has written a new book titled Tell To Win.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Guber was the CEO of Sony Pictures. In his new book, he recounts a meeting with Michael. A memory that became a lesson for him.
What is it that enchants us and makes us want more? Michael Jackson taught me that it’s excitement.
In 1991, Michael Jackson was a force. After renewing his $65 million contract with Sony, he released his eighth album, Dangerous. Its singles, Black or White and Remember the Time, dominated the pop charts. As the CEO, I was sitting in the recording studio for that album, and I was impressed by the breadth of Michael’s creativity and his perfectionism.
His ambitions knew no limits. But when the biggest musical asset of Sony invited me to his home in Encino to talk with me about his ideas for film and television, I was truly astonished. Michael had proven that he knew everything there was to know about pop music. But filmmaking was different. He wanted to make films alongside acting and tell a story. But could he?
I didn’t even need to ask, because Michael said:
“In both film and music, you have to know what excitement is—and how to show it.”
He gave me a strong, long stare and suddenly stood up.
“Let me show you.”
He led me up the stairs and into the hallway outside his bedroom. He stopped in front of a large glass enclosure and said:
“The Muscles are in here.”
Inside, a big snake was wrapped around a tree branch. Its head was facing the opposite direction from us. Michael pointed with his finger at something that had caught Muscles’ attention. A small white mouse was trying to hide behind a pile of wood shavings. I said hopefully:
“Are they friends?”
“Does it look like that?”
“No, the mouse is shaking with fear.”
“We have to give Muscles live mice. Otherwise it won’t eat anything. Dead things don’t attract him.”
“So why doesn’t it just go and eat it?”
“Because it wants to play with it. First, it uses fear to get the mouse’s attention. Then it waits until tension builds. After that, when the mouse can’t move because of the fear, Muscles gets closer to it.”
The snake had caught the mouse’s attention—and the mouse had caught the snake’s attention. Michael had also caught my attention. He said:
“That’s excitement.”
“Of course it is! This story has everything inside it—risk, doubt, power, death, good and evil, innocence, and danger. I can’t stand it, but I also can’t look away.”
“Exactly! What’s going to happen? Even if you know what will happen, you don’t know when or how.”
“Maybe the mouse will escape.”
Michael let out one of his loud, strange laughs: “Maybe!”
If I had any doubts about Michael’s ability to pay off a story by that time, they disappeared.
He taught me, deeply and clearly, that nothing grabs our attention more than knowing, “What happens next?”
In the U.S., I asked a neuroscientist, Dan Siegel, to help me understand why people are fascinated by excitement. He said emotions don’t happen automatically. And just like actors know, they aren’t summoned by will alone. Emotions must be triggered. When you think to yourself, “I don’t know if a lion lives in the mountains. I don’t know if a spaceship will come here. I don’t know if he will win the race.” In a state between waiting and uncertainty, you feel tension. That tension makes you think that this will happen, or that will happen—and you start wondering what will happen later. The more you ask yourself this question, the more your attention is drawn to it. And the more you pay attention, the more you hear, see, and remember.
One of the reasons I was captivated—almost helplessly—by the story of Michael Jackson’s mouse and snake was that they were staging instinct and fear. Somewhere on the DNA of life, such a story is written. In a stage of our evolutionary period, we lived this way. We were weak people, trembling in caves from the claws of wild fear.
Source: eMJey.com / peterguber.com