I was going to pick another heavy metal video for today but then Lisa told me that today is Martin Scorsese’s birthday and I realized which video I had to pick.  I was actually surprised to see that no one had ever picked Bad for music video of the day in the past.  This is one of those videos that epitomized an era and it was directed by Martin Scorsese.

Here’s the long version, which was rarely played on MTV.

Here’s the shorter version for the Too Long, Didn’t Watch crowd.

You can’t fault Scorsese’s gritty direction, especially in the early black-and-white half of the video.  Michael Jackson is not really convincing as someone who was ever considered to be “bad,” especially when he’s going up against Wesley Snipes, but there’s not much Scorsese could have done about that.  Snipes is not the only familiar actor to appear in this video.  The drug dealer is played by Paul Calderon, who played the bartender in Pulp Fiction.  The voice of Michael Jackson’s mother is supplied by Roberta Flack.  Cinematographer Michael Chapman and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, two regular Scorsese collaborators, also worked on this video.  The script was written by novelist Richard Price.

I can’t hear this song without thinking about Weird Al Yankovic.

Enjoy!