Coreyography: A Memoir (13 page)

Moments later I found myself posing for a picture—someone had arranged for the cast to take a group shot with Michael—and then I reluctantly went back to the school trailer. When I later returned to the set, he was gone.

CHAPTER 8

The phone was ringing.

I had already brushed my teeth, put on my pajamas, and slid between the sheets on my bed when I heard it. I wondered if it could be him. Then I laughed. That was ridiculous. I lay down, tucked my arm behind my head, beneath the pillow, and closed my eyes. Then Boobie opened the door to my bedroom, throwing a wedge of light across the carpet. “Corey?” she whispered. “Michael Jackson is on the phone for you.”

I sat up.
Oh my god, it was happening
. I threw off my blankets and scrambled out of bed, down the hallway, past the kitchen, where my grandfather was finishing his cigarette, smoking it down to the filter. He flashed me a look. I knew this look. This look said, “You’ve got five minutes, kid.” I knew, too, that I had already broken the rules, stayed up way past my bedtime waiting for the phone to ring. I wouldn’t be able to get away with that forever, but there was no way this was going to be a five-minute phone call.

*   *   *

I never got
to say good-bye that day, now more than one month earlier, when Michael visited the
Goonies
set. I felt like I didn’t have closure. Everyone around me, including Steven, was placating me, saying things like, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” or “I’m sure you’ll have another chance.” But I couldn’t understand why everyone was so cavalier. Did nobody realize this was, for most people, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? It’s not like every day you walk down the street and bump into Michael Jackson. How, in their estimation, was this going to turn out fine? How was I supposed to “not worry?” It was terrible advice to give to a twelve-year-old.

I desperately wanted to see him again but, on some level, I had assumed that that was it. I
had
been given the chance to meet him, after all, to take a picture with him, to exchange a few words, to say hello. I did fulfill that goal. So I did the only thing there was to do. I went on with my life. We had recently transitioned from a five- to a six-day workweek. It was a hectic schedule for a kid. I was able to lose myself in the work.

One day I was finishing up lunch in the Warner Brothers commissary, which is divided into two distinct sections: the main, public room, where the food is served cafeteria-style, and the VIP dining room, which has reserved seating, a waitstaff, and a smartly dressed maître d’. Of course, we never ate on that side. That side was for the suits.

When I finished, I began making my way back to stage 16. Suddenly, I noticed a huge swirl of people milling around outside. Someone was standing, alone, in the middle. As I walked closer, I could just see the corner—the sleeve—of a white leather jacket, the coils of someone’s curly black hair. This, I immediately realized, was not just any hair, however. This was
Jackson hair.
That’s when I realized the person I was staring at was actually Michael’s big sister. I ran up alongside Mark Marshall, also making his way back from lunch.

“Is that La Toya?” I asked.

“Yeah. Didn’t I mention they were coming by today?”

“
They?
”

“She’s here with Michael.”

“He came back? What for?”

He looked down at me, a sly smile tugging at the corner of his lip. “Why, to see you, of course.” (This is just one example of the epic kindness of Mark Marshall; he was not above telling little white lies if it meant making a young kid’s day.)

“Nobody told me they were coming!” I called out, already running off, pushing my way through throngs of people until I had made my way to the middle. There was La Toya, and Michael, and Steven. Steven, with a wave of his hand, said, “Come on. Let’s show you guys some stuff.”

We had been working on the scene in the organ chamber, when Andy (Kerri Green) must play a series of chords to unlock a secret door. If she played a chord incorrectly, however, the floor beneath us would crumble, leaving us dangling in the air, holding on for dear life and, perhaps, plummeting to an untimely end. When you looked at the set from the outside it resembled a sort of funnel; wooden boards formed the cone, and the entire structure stood high above the ground.

Shooting this scene became the height of our do-your-own-stunts experience. Steven had been positioned below us, his camera angled straight up, while we stood on a ledge above him, tethered to the organ by heavy cables and a harness fastened underneath our clothes. When the floor fell out, we were supposed to cling to the walls of the cave and try not to fall into the abyss. This was actually sort of terrifying. If you looked down, you could see Steven, his crew, and a sea of expensive lighting equipment. Not exactly a soft landing if one of those cables were to snap.

This was all terribly fascinating to Michael, who started asking if he could walk up the exterior stairs and stand inside the moveable set. The special effects team sort of stared at each other—this was not exactly something the production was insured for. What would happen if Michael Jackson fell and seriously injured himself? The kids, however, immediately started begging, and eventually Steven decided it would be fine.

I positioned myself right next to Michael, told him I’d help him navigate through safely, that he just had to “follow me.” Once I saw that it was working, that he was comfortable chatting, I realized now was the time. I summoned every bit of strength in my preteen body, took a breath, and said, “You know, I was really sad last time you left. I thought I would never see you again.”

“You should have known I was going to come back,” he said. “Of course I would come back and visit you guys.”

“Well, right … but…” I thought of all those pictures I had seen of Michael with kids like Emmanuel Lewis. I wanted to be one of those kids. “I don’t know why,” I said, “but I feel like we’re supposed to be friends. I know you’re friends with kids … Do you think that, if I gave you my phone number, maybe you could call me sometime?”

“Sure.”

Well, that was easy. “Really?” I asked, making sure I’d heard him right.

“Sure, yeah. No problem.”

I was emboldened. “So, if I give you my number, you
promise
you’ll call me?”

“I promise.”

“When?” I asked.

“I’ll call you tonight.”

*   *   *

By the time
I got back to my grandparents’ house, I was wired, bouncing around the house, drunk with anticipation. But when I told my grandmother that Michael Jackson was going to call me, she gave me a quizzical look.

“Don’t you think he has better things to do with his time?”

She had a point. Still, I sat by that phone for hours. I refused to come to the dinner table. I refused to move out of the living room. I was going to wait all night for that phone to ring, or at least until 11:00
P.M.
, when my grandparents finally forced me to go to bed. As I trudged down the hallway to my room, my grandmother laid her hand on my shoulder. “He’s a very busy man, Corey. You can’t expect him to just drop everything, you know.”

I did know. Which is why, when he finally called, I nearly passed out.

We talked for two-and-a-half hours, until a little after one in the morning. What I remember most is that it was like talking to another kid. He did speak a little about Paul McCartney, and though I loved “Say, Say, Say,” that was really the extent of my Beatles knowledge. Then he told me that McCartney had written another song for him, back in the late 1970s.

“It’s called ‘Girlfriend,’” he said. “Do you know it?”

“Uh, I’m not sure.” I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “How does it go?”

Then he sang the hook for me. My God, I thought, Michael Jackson is singing to me on the phone.

When the conversation ended, around the time I could no longer hold my eyes open, I asked him if we would stay friends.

“Of course we’re going to stay friends,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have your phone number now. I just added you to my little black book.”

That’s something that sticks out in my mind, too.

*   *   *

Befriending an already
legendary entertainer was improbable enough. Staying in contact with him was a whole other matter. These were the days before cell phones and the Internet, after all, and Michael was a person who traveled the world, lived in a sort of self-imposed (if also necessary) bubble, and was something of a paranoid. He had his phone number changed every few months.

The first time I figured this out was when I called him and got an automated recording telling me the number I had dialed had been disconnected.
That’s it!
I thought.
We’re never going to talk again!
Eventually he explained this was just a matter of course.

“No, silly. I’m not changing my number because of
you,
” he said. But I soon learned that when Michael changed his number, he changed
all of his numbers
.

At the time he was living at Hayvenhurst, the Jackson family compound in Encino, which by then had been outfitted with a recording studio, production facilities, and multiple offices, including space for his personal assistant. All of these “departments” had their own private telephone lines, but the numbers themselves were sequential. So, if Michael’s private number was, say, 788-8234, it stood to reason that the other numbers—to the main house, to the recording studio, to his production offices, and to the security gate—would be 788-8235; 8236; 8237; and so on. If I hadn’t yet been given his new private line, I could usually figure it out. I’d just punch the numbers on the keypad—each time someone would answer “MJJ Productions” or sometimes just “MJJ”—until I found the one that rang in his bedroom.

The thing about Michael is that, once you were
in,
he was just like anyone else. He didn’t have his personal assistant answer his private line. He didn’t have some sort of elaborate screening process. What he had was a great sense of humor.

Michael had many voices. One of his favorites was an imitation of what sounded like an uptight, conservative Caucasian; not unlike the way comedian Dave Chappelle sounds when, during some of stand-up routines, he pretends to be white. Sometimes Michael answered the phone that way. If you didn’t know this game and you asked to speak to Michael, he might say, “There’s no Michael Jackson here. I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.” But for those on the inside, you’d recognize this voice and introduce yourself accordingly. Then he would immediately switch back into that familiar, high-pitched falsetto. “Oh, hi, Corey,” he’d croon. “How are you?” I figured it was a clever way to avoid talking to people he didn’t want to.

Sometimes he would answer the phone but he wouldn’t say anything at all. You could hear the receiver pick up, and you’d call out, “Hello? Hello, Michael? Are you there?” but there would be no one at the other end of the line. This used to drive me nuts. Usually, after quite a long pause, he would eventually start talking. But sometimes that silence would drag on for, literally, ten or fifteen straight minutes. Most people, of course, would have hung up the phone. Not a tenacious twelve-year-old.

Occasionally, I would hear this strange tapping, as though someone were banging the receiver against some hard surface. When I finally asked him about it, he told me it was probably Bubbles. “If he gets out of his cage, he sometimes tries to answer the phone.” This, however, didn’t sit right with me. I felt like he was toying with me, and I didn’t appreciate it. It made me wonder who the
real
Michael might be, behind those dark glasses and all the glitter.

By the time production of
The Goonies
was drawing to a close, Michael and I were speaking regularly, about once every two weeks. Around that time, I decided that I wanted to invite him back to the set, this time as my personal guest. “There’s so much more for you to see,” I told him. “You still haven’t been through the full adventure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to take you on a private tour. Show you inside the pirate ship, all of the secret places. I want to show you how everything works.” I also wanted to show him my dressing room. I guess, when you’re a kid and you have a friend over, you can’t wait to show him or her your room. My dressing room at Warner Brothers was a close second to that.

There was a long silence. I started to get nervous. Had I overstepped? Had I said something I shouldn’t have? Finally, he spoke.

“What should I wear?”

It would be years before I realized that part of Michael’s magic, part of the reason he was such a genius performer, was that he was always, always
on.
Between the glasses and the costumes and the sparkles, even the way he smelled, he was completely devoted to his craft. He was never out of character. He was never not “Michael Jackson.” It wasn’t until later that I started really paying attention to those details. It’s sort of natural to want to emulate your idol. Everything he did would become a mold for me to try and fit into. But back then, I just didn’t get it. I thought it would be cool to see him in normal clothes.

“Don’t you have just jeans and a T-shirt?” I asked him.

“Oh, sure, I’ve got that,” he said.

The plan was for him to visit on a Saturday, when things on a Hollywood lot aren’t quite so hectic as usual. I took it upon myself to make all the arrangements; I informed Steven’s office at Amblin of Michael’s impending visit. I spoke with Richard Donner. I made sure there was a drive-on pass waiting for him at the main Warner Brothers gate. But when he showed up, in a black Mercedes with heavily tinted windows, he had on the whole getup—the black penny loafers, white socks, black pants, and some ridiculous jacket with all the rhinestones and sparkle. His hair was perfectly curled, his sunglasses were in place.

“What happened to the jeans?” I asked him.