At Dinner With Michael Jackson: It's Less Than a Thriller

By Ken Wells

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

1 April 1992

In a billowing tent in the middle of nowhere, Michael Jackson, pop star, is sitting at a table. He is wearing dark glasses. He is munching macrobiotic tortillas. He is surrounded by bodyguards, so his dinner guests watch from a safe distance. Still, they are hanging on every bite.

Brazilian dancing girls gyrate toward Michael. They coax him up, and suddenly all is pandemonium.

"Michael's gonna dance with us!" squeals Debra Chandler, a 30-year-old Chicago housewife. This is unanticipated. Michael is supposed to make a speech. There have been rumors that he might even mingle. Mingle!

But dance? Ms. Chandler, a physically imposing mother of four, finds herself squeezing into a conga line headed by Michael Jackson. She squeezes Michael. She tells Michael how much she admires him. Michael turns to reply.

He has two words for her. Michael says, "Thank you." He seems to mean both of them.

As dinner chitchat goes, this is about as meaningful as it gets. The prince of pop is turning out to be a conversational pauper.

Does anyone here care? Absolutely not.

Mr. Jackson is here at the behest of MTV, the global 24-hour music channel. So are Ms. Chandler and 34 others, some from as far away as Taiwan, who have won an MTV contest. For MTV, this is a bit of strategic marketing. Imagine snagging America's best-known recluse since Howard Hughes and sitting him down to dinner with real people.

Imagine being Ms. Chandler, back in Chicago washing dishes and changing diapers. Suddenly, her name is plucked from a hat of 4.1 million entries. "This is like winning the lottery," she says.

As for the 33-year-old Mr. Jackson, his latest album, "Dangerous," has sold 10 million copies -- part of 120 million albums that have put him in the same league as Elvis Presley and the Beatles. But it wouldn't hurt to sell another 10 million or so if he is to live up to the promise of his well-publicized $50 million recording contract with Sony Corp. The MTV contest, promoted in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Brazil and Australia, has given him, and the album, enormous exposure. It's probably worth the price of dinner.

Invited to tag along to this odd event are a few members of the press. This in itself is unusual since Mr. Jackson rarely gives interviews and is seldom seen outside of stage-managed press conferences. The no-interviews rule is still in force, which means nobody can ask him whether he really sleeps in an oxygen tent or bathes in bottled Evian water. Or why he tried to buy the bones of the Elephant Man for $1 million. Or whether he really dresses his chimp Bubbles in designer clothes. Or why, as widely reported, he has had so much cosmetic surgery and bleaches his skin.

But reporters are assured they will be free to wander about and record any Michael pronouncements. There is a high-level rumor in the MTV camp that Mr. Jackson might be on the verge of a communications glasnost, that he might actually talk about his music and career.

On the other hand, he might not. Avid Michael-watchers say his record for public pronouncements to date is 19 words at a time. Perhaps this statistic explains the small joke among some MTV staffers in the days before the dinner: First prize is dinner with Michael Jackson. Second prize is two dinners with Michael Jackson.

The event last Sunday couldn't begin on a stranger note. The guests -- the 35 winners and a companion each -- are idling away a few hours in Palm Springs, Calif., before departing for the dinner. Mr. Jackson is said to be shooting a new music video somewhere in the deep desert an hour away, and the dinner is to be held in a specially erected tent on the shoot-site.

But as departure time arrives so does a ferocious storm. Thunder rumbles, lightning cracks. Nails of rain are driven horizontally on the wind. "Can you believe this?" laments Sandi Iodice, a 19-year-old Watertown, Mass., college student whose trip to meet Michael is her first airplane ride. "I thought it never rained in the desert."

There are 20 minutes of panic as one of two buses stalls and streets start to flood. Then as abruptly, the storm breaks, the sun pops out and a double rainbow arches across the horizon. The stalled bus mysteriously rumbles to life. The bus driver, clutching a secret map, heads off looking for Michael Jackson. Somebody hums "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

More than an hour later, the tent, along with Mr. Jackson's video set -- crumbling Grecian monuments carved out of Styrofoam -- rises up white in the fading desert light. So does an elephant, a camel, various jungle beasts and a man dressed as Uncle Sam on 12-foot stilts. Mr. Jackson is said to be fond of animals and reportedly keeps a private zoo on his $17 million estate. MTV obviously want to make him feel at home.

Inside the tent, there is more of the same, including a belly dancer dripping with boa constrictors and a barefoot Caribbean dancer who treads on nails and rolls around in broken glass. And suddenly there is a ripple of excitement as Michael Jackson enters, followed by a slight groan of disappointment. It is Darrick Morgan, Mr. Jackson's stand-in and lookalike. He is mobbed anyway and happily signs autographs.

While the wait continues, some guests plot strategy. Among them are Donna Frieden, 37, and her husband, Gary, 39. They are Jackson superfans from Sherman Oaks, Calif. They are carrying a castoff Jackson hat, bought from a memorabilia dealer for $1,400.

One of their life goals has been to get Mr. Jackson to verify the authenticity of his signature on the hat and, if possible, get him to pose for a picture with it. Matthew Ordner, a 10-year-old French boy who is the youngest guest, has more modest ambitions. He is clutching a foot-high plastic replica of the Eiffel Tower that he hopes to present to Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Jackson finally sweeps in, 35 minutes late. He is dressed in black, seems relaxed and slightly smaller than he appears to be on TV. He smiles a lot and has perfect teeth. He has already greeted Matthew Ordner and has accepted the Eiffel Tower.

Soon, Mr. Jackson moves to his table. The Brazilian band starts up. Guests outrubberneck each other watching Mr. Jackson eat from the multinational buffet prepared by his personal macrobiotic chef. Not much else happens until he takes to the dance floor. He spends 10 minutes there. Then he returns to his seat. He later poses in a silent photo session with his guests, then disappears into the desert darkness. There are no speeches.

Is there disappointment?

No. Not for the Friedens, whose hat is authenticated by Mr. Jackson. Not for Patricia Oliver, a 30-something nurse from Kettering, Ohio. Like Ms. Chandler, she was able to snatch her own dance-floor conversation with Michael. "I said, `Do you want to dance with an old lady, now?' He laughed and said, `No thank you, I hurt my knee today.'"

Did she feel bad about being turned down?

She looks incredulous: "Are you kidding? Except for the birth of my two children, this is the happiest day of my life."

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