On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television PEPSI'S HOT NEWS BY MARVIN KITMAN Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson! So go my notes of the Grammy Show on CBS last...
...And what a gimmick it could be for sustaining audience interest...
...I had better stop before you start thinking I am genuinely perverse...
...The 30-minute special starred Michael Jackson and his hair...
...My compliments also to his nose doctor...
...His lips would tremble at the sight of a Pepsi can approaching...
...Koppel treated the Jackson hair story like an obituary, seriously reviewing the performer's career...
...In nei iher Concert nor Street does he drink the product, despite the millions he is getting paid to convince others to do so...
...My authorities on modern music tell me that Gene Simmons, the blood spitting, fire-breathing bass player of Kiss, could clean up doing ads for oral hygiene products: '' You think smokers have trouble keeping their teeth white...
...Michael Jackson has so much charisma and talent and good looks—natural and unnatural—such pizzaz bursting all over the stage, you don't know what product he is trying to promote while he is being himself as only he can be...
...He can do publicity for me the next time my typewriter ignites...
...I couldn't believe myself then, and I can't believe that I'm actually writing about it now...
...If you can't beat it, I always say, join it...
...At least one viewer I know turned the dial to the Grammies just to see Jackson singing and dancing his heart out for soda pop...
...They showed the commercial...
...Viewers would never know when they were going to see the expurgated or the unexpurgated version...
...Maybe the rock star endorsements are not such a great idea after all...
...I'm not a Pepsi man myself...
...Concert is very entertaining, especially in comparison with the shows commercials usually interrupt...
...He has a lovely alto voice and is a smooth dancer...
...I tuned in CBS accidentally and watched for about three hours...
...It seemed to affect him no more adversely than a hot towel...
...The man is truly an artiste...
...Imagine how many millions of them with their unconsciously morbid curiosity would be sitting on the edge of their Bar-ca Loungers for a commercial...
...First they scream about how the commercial cost them $7 million to make, what with the accident, and then they don't show us what could have been the highlight of the piece...
...But the commercials did turn me on to white gloves...
...Not seeing the accident in the final version was like seeing the Statue of Liberty with her torch off...
...I just realized I am part of a "new generation" of consumers...
...That's sick, I know...
...It turned out he wasn't even nominated...
...He doesn't drink "that poison," as my mother used to call all soda...
...He acts happy in the commercial when you know in reality he is trapped in the prison of fame...
...I am ashamed to say my morbid curiosity had been aroused...
...It's the first time...
...Jackson is a good actor, too...
...Or maybe the visual image is closer to that of a UFO, which would be a sure booster of Pepsi sales in the LA area...
...It must have been important because the day it occurred it made Ted Koppel's Nightline...
...I'm excited...
...The Pepsi spot, titled Concert, turned out to be a spectacular musical production...
...Soon we'll see: "That face, that face, that Cover Girl face...
...Director Bob Giraldi, who spent approximately a half hour discussing the making of the famous Pepsi promotion, managed to work in the complete story of his career as the world's most outstanding video director and still have time to show the 60-second commercial in its entirety...
...Eat your heart out...
...In fact, it is even more important culturally than you might think, because it paves the way for other endorsements by rock stars...
...I think Quincy Jones was up for something...
...That makes it hard to know what you should worry about...
...I can say without contradiction that more people knew about Michael Jackson's accident than knew what was going on in the Middle East or the Democratic primary combined...
...They'll sign on someone like Elton John to do their ads...
...As critical as I was of the hyping and all, I have to admit that I was looking forward to seeing the commercial on the Grammies...
...Pepsi could announce that Concert will be shown "in its entirety," as they say, only once a week or every 19 airings, in a random pattern...
...The publicity man for either Pepsi, Michael Jackson's pomade or Jackson's record label, whoever he is, deserves a medal...
...Artistically, it is very stimulating to hear people talking about commercials again...
...Jackson's experience was the bigger event judging by the ink it got compared to the Bible...
...The accident apparently did not hurt Jackson very much...
...Why couldn't they show a little of the accident in the commercial...
...What I would most like to see in a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial, though—what would be a true thriller, so to speak—is Michael actually drinking a Pepsi...
...They didn't show the accident...
...Still, at his prices I think Jackson should swallow his pride, along with whatever is in Pepsi, and live dangerously...
...it gives me gas...
...D jl.j ut I would be less than honest if I did not add that Concert had its disappointing moments, particularly at the end when Michael didn't go up in flames...
...Soon the Coke people will realize the truth as well...
...You have to like a lyricist who has given us the immortal line, "Mama say mama sa ma ca coo sa...
...He spoke very gravely, as if Nightline's audience wanted to be enlightened about what had happened...
...In that case, Nightline could easily have devoted a whole week to Michael Jackson's cultural significance...
...It's hard to imagine a commercial being treated as if it were Gone With the Wind...
...He could make the first of the snuff commercials—passing out from an allergic reaction right on stage, in front of the Pepsi Generation...
...a commercial is expected to bolster CBS ratings," Ad Age had written, and indeed it was a rare audience builder...
...So go my notes of the Grammy Show on CBS last February 28, the night of the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential primary...
...He himself has the hair of a Greek god...
...Maybe it really was important...
...On hand for the occasion are 5,000 screaming, adoring fans, all presumably members of the Pepsi Generation...
...Deep down, there was this sense of being had...
...We members of the Pepsi Generation have style...
...The plot, as explained to me personally by Bob Giraldi on the MTV special, begins with Jackson in concert at the Los Angeles Shrine Theater...
...Michael sings "Billie Jean" with special Pepsi lyrics...
...In Philadelphia, the 11 o'clock edition of the Action News ran footage of it the previous night...
...This would be the theater of the unexpected, showmanship...
...Will these sell soda pop...
...But Jackson wasn't dead...
...One thing about Ted Koppel, he can speak of Henry Kissinger and Michael Jackson in the same grave voice...
...The only surprise of the evening was that Jackson didn't win the primary...
...Yet the feeling probably stems from the same human trait that makes you rubberneck at fenderbenders on the highway...
...That's what I call either the level of excitement in Philadelphia or where the news is at today...
...Not since the burning bush in biblical days had so many been talking about anything bursting into flames...
...But, heck, I even think we should be shown the Twilight Zone scene where Vic Morrow got killed, the snuff movie...
...I also accidentally saw an MTV special earlier that evening where the excited VJ, Alan Hunter, sitting in for Martha Quinn, claimed they were showing the commercial "for the first time in the world...
...This may be the first review written for The New Leader by acritic wearing one white glove...
...He is the only man on television with Achilles Hair...
...Yes, it's Boy George for that Cover Girl Clean Makeup...
...Yet he looks like he is so sad inside that you want to cry for him, since he doesn't have the time...
...The Grammies broke new ground in TV advertising as the backdrop for the official premiere of a commercial, Michael Jackson's Pepsi spot...
...There are really two Jackson commercials: Another less widely anticipated one, titled Street, has substantially the same plot but takes place in an urban outdoor setting...
...Koppel must empathize with hair, a personal weakness no doubt...
...The Pepsi spot was the major cultural event on TV this year...
...The Pepsi people knew it all along...
...There was a halo-like glow around Jackson' s head that reminded me of some of the religious paintings I saw in the Uffi-zi last summer...
...Then, we will need to hold a "Battle of the Bands" to know what to drink...
...This should not bother anybody except the sponsor...
...According to Rolling Stone, Jackson is a dedicated health food person...
...Michael Jackson sings and dances for the full 60 seconds, a multi-talented talent...
...You know, the one where he inadvertently went up in smoke during the filming...
...Judging by the clips Giraldi aired on the MTV special—the whole scene was taped by five cameras—it wasn't even especially gory...
...Despite Ted Koppel's reporting, Jackson's hair is not a national treasure: Michael Jackson is a national treasure, and will be until he slips off the charts...
...Concert is a triumph for commercial theater...
...If he had died, he would have been a James Dean or a Rudolph Valentino and I would have understood...
...I felt kind of flat afterward, as if I were a glass of Pepsi left out overnight...
Vol. 67 • April 1984 • No. 7
