Written by Terri Hardin Jackson
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In honor of Michael Jackson’s latest album “Xcape,” and all of you who asked about Captain EO, here’s PART 2 of my three part story.
When last I left you Michael Jackson had just taken his seat next to me. The entourage I mentioned that came in with Michael Jackson consisted of a lot of Disney executives, as well as his personal team.
As we all settled around the table, Francis Ford Coppola explained how things were going to work on his film. First, we were going to go through this table reading and he invited us to share with him any thoughts we might have. Then we’d be in rehearsals for two weeks and in those rehearsals we’d do improvisation.
(For those not familiar with this term, Improvisation is an actors exercise to help them think more on their feet by coming up with their own dialogue at that exact moment.)
“Let’s begin.”
“Francis, may I record this table read?”
Michael’s question carried softly in the now quiet room.
“Of course, Michael.” Francis waited.
A man from the sidelines jumped up and ran toward the table. He inserted himself between Michael and I, placed a tape recorder on the table, pushed a button and disappeared. As I stared in quiet confusion at the device, I realized that this was one of Michael’s guys. Hmmm.
We began. I actually sat there and listened to the reading, as I was a puppeteer, and the suit performers were reading the lines of the creatures.
Suddenly there was a long pause in the reading and I turned to look at Michael, it was his line. There he sat fidgeting with the script. He’d lost his place and was frantically trying to reassemble the script.
Again, out of nowhere came a man. Reaching in and taking the script from Michael Jackson and shuffling it in order better then any card dealer I’d seen in Las Vegas, finished, found the spot, and handed it back to Michael and again was gone.
“What the heck, man? Who the heck was that?” I said, my eyes wide with surprise, as I looked at Michael.
Michael looked at me and smiled, then continued reading where we had left off. I shook my head. I had never seen anything like this before.
We continued to read. Then, Michael began to cough and I looked over at him as he struggled to clear his throat.
A third man came out of nowhere, set down a glass of juice and was gone.
Michael began to drink the juice.
“Now wait just a dog gone minute, how the heck did you do that?”
Michael looked at me over the glass of juice..
“Wait, let me try,” and I closed my eyes and cleared my throat. When I opened my eyes I looked at the table and moving my hands over the table, “Hey! Where’s my juice?”
Michael looked at me and giggled.
“You’re funny” He said and then continued to read.
The table read looked like it was going to finish without further incident, when Anjelica Huston realized that she was not playing the princess but only the wicked queen. . . she wasn’t happy about this.
“I want to play the Princess.”
Francis quipped, “Queen dear, you a bit old to play the princess.” She chuffed at this.
“Okay, the Queen then.” Anjelica conceded.
For the last couple weeks, Disney had cast a young girl to play the princess at the end of the film. Costumes were in production for what Disney hoped would be the love interest for Captain EO. This was a big problem. I think if Francis Ford Coppola had his way, he would’ve told her he was going to go with the younger princess and that would be that.
Disney however, was worried that Anjelica may not do the part if she couldn’t play the Queen as well as the princess. As she was up for an Academy Award, they asked Francis to comply.
So, the young princess and all her clothes were released and new costumes were created for the new queen, Anjelica Huston. This is how show business works.
Once the reading was over, Francis asked us to assemble and get ready for our first improvisation session.
He separated the cast into 3 parts. The first consisted of the puppeteers and suit performers. The second part was Michael Jackson and the third was Anjelica Huston.
The scene was to be in a Day Camp. And in this improvisation, we were told what we would play. Group one became the children at the camp, Michael was the camp counselor and Angelica was the owner of the camp.
Then we were each given a secret. Only the particular group knew their secret. Our secret was that under no circumstances were we to mind Michael no matter what he said. Michael’s secret was that he had to get us to mind him or he could be fired. Anjelica’s secret was that she was to come in to fire Michael.
ACTION!
We jumped around, giggling and pulling on Michael as he pleaded with us to stop.
“Please behave, or I could be fired,” he said in his high-pitched voice.
We ignored him and continued to be difficult.
Anjelica entered and the air seemed to be sucked from the room.
“Michael Jackson!”
Michael stood straight up and turned to face her as she slowly crossed toward him.
Anjelica reached out and took Michael by his shirt, and lifting him up off the floor, her face inches from his she spoke.
READ MORE: http://micechat.com/69034-lets-talk-captain-eo-starring-michael-jackson-part-2/
Source: micechat / Terri Hardin Jackson / MJ-Upbeat.com
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