Given Edgar Allan Poe's well-known fear of being buried alive, the claim that the horror writer and poet "must be rolling over in his grave" at the prospect of Sylvester Stallone writing and directing the biopic Poe is more than rote recitation of cliché. It's definitely a curious way for 61-year-old Sly to follow-up the cinematic Cialis he recently gave to both the Rocky and Rambo franchises.

It's also yet another bizarre turn in the trajectory of Poe's pop-culture legacy. First an NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens, takes its name from his poem (its raven mascots are named Edgar, Allan, and Poe). Then Poe's great-great nephew, actor-musician Edgar Allan Poe IV, appeared as the ghost of his great-great uncle on the sitcom Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. A fictionalized Poe was also found sleuthing murders with King of the Wild Frontier Davey Crockett in The Alienist-ish novel Nevermore.

Yet it's not the idea that the star of arm-wrestling epic Over The Top or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is doing a Poe movie that bothers me (the man did write his own ticket with his script the original Rocky; let's show him some respect).

Even Stallone's rumored casting notions (Robert Downey Jr., Viggo Mortenson) seem on target—if too buff—for his portrait of the tortured genius. So what's the problem? It's just that prospect of any Poe movie being made renders Michael Jackson's long-dormant dream of starring as Edgar Allan Poe even more unlikely-and that's a problem for me. Could Wacko Jacko fall in the footsteps of Apollo Creed and Clubber Lang, and become yet another black man knocked out by the Italian Stallion? That's no way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Thriller.

Some background: In 2000, USA Today reported that the King Of Pop had finally seen the "very scary" script for his European-funded vanity project The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe and was gearing up to "devote himself full-time to preparing for the role" of the author.

It was mind-blowing news, even by the (high? low?) standards of tabloid staple Wacko Jacko, one that lends itself to jokes: Will he instruct "The Tell-Tale Heart" to "just beat it?" Could we next expect Jacko's opportunistic sister Latoya to star as Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own? Would Emmanuel "Webster" Lewis be cast as Poe's child-bride Virginia? Would "The Raven" be replaced by Bubbles The Chimp? Would we quoth The Raven "Mama-Say-Mama-Sa Mama-Tu Sa?"

And yes, the racial angle of the MJ casting also raised questions, among them: How confused would've the late playwright August Wilson been? But, let's be honest -- casting MJ as Poe is not as problematic as, say, casting El DeBarge as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Whether it's because of the skin disease vitiligo, cosmetic bleaching or a combination of both, Jackson's pallid complexion looks even more Goth than portraits of Poe's pale visage. The issue here is not casting a black man to play a white man; it's casting an alien mannequin drag queen apparently sculpted out of soap to play a white man.

Nonetheless, the King of Pop insists that he feels connected to Poe, and maybe—DEFINITELY—because of the fact that I was obsessed with both Jacko and Poe in elementary school, I believe him. Before we give Michael's movie a premature burial, let us consider the connections between these two eerie American icons, "thrillers" both—and implore Sylvester Stallone to do the same.

Both Jackson and Poe are arguably the most popular American export in their respective fields, and major influences on those who followed. Baudelaire was said to make his morning prayers to God and Edgar Allen Poe, and Justin Timberlake and Usher are obviously both Michael Jackson impersonators trying to moonwalk in MJ's fleet footsteps.

There is also symmetry to their scandals. They both have been accused of pedophilia; at the very least, they share a penchant for PYTs (Pretty Young Things): Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia, and Jackson has hosted many a sleepover with 13-year-old boys. Thus, their sexuality has been wildly speculated about. In a posthumous psychoanalysis of Poe, Dr. Maria Bonaparte theorized that Poe was celibate, entertained thoughts of necrophilia and suffered from a castration complex (her mentor, Dr. Sigmund Freud provided the preface for this study).

Despite vehement assertions to Diane Sawyer, many said the same (well, minus the necrophilia and castration stuff) of Jackson's marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and later, to his plastic surgeon's nurse, Debbie Rowe, even though they had two children together. (I'd also bet that the paternity suit of a certain Billie Jean would get thrown out of court in a hurry.)

They both struggled with financial difficulties despite being among the best at what they did. Many historians say Poe was an opium addict; Jackson revealed he had an addiction to the painkiller Demerol in court papers. They both explored the pull of drugs in their work. Here's Poe's narrator from "Ligeia," seeing visions of his dead lover: "In the excitement of my opium dream (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call aloud her name ..."

Here's Jackson, from Blood On The Dance Floor's "Morphine":

Demerol Demerol Oh God he's taking Demerol
Hee-hee-hee Demerol Demerol Oh my oh God it's Demerol
Hee Oooh

Then there's the Vincent Price connection. Price, of course, was the on-screen embodiment of Poe's work in such Roger Corman films as The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque Of The Red Death, and The Cask Of Amontillado. He also provided the rap and maniacal cackle on the title track of Jackson's Thriller.

That's not all. They both had a less-talented, oft-maligned brother named Tito. Yep, that's right -- Tito Allan Poe. They both (except Jackson) are widely credited with inventing the modern detective story. They both (except Poe) were known for wearing a single white sequined glove, allegedly wanting to buy the Elephant Man's bones, and getting their scalp burned by a pyrotechnic mishap while shooting a Pepsi commercial.

Sure, skeptics may assert that Poe has a better chance of writing a sequel to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym before The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe would take any Oscars, or even Golden Globes. Then there's always the camp that will insist that Prince does and will always do everything better than Jackson. But those people obviously haven't seen Under The Cherry Moon lately, and I think Michael's turn as The Scarecrow in 1978's The Wiz proves he can update classic material,) These maybe nonexistent critics are also forgetting that Jackson has worked with both Francis Ford Coppola (Disney's 3-D Captain Eo, to these eyes, a primary influence on The Matrix and Neo) and Martin Scorsese (MJ's "Bad" video, which featured Wesley Snipes as a gang-banger challenging prep-schooler MJ's manhood) back when that meant really something.

Whether Jackson as Poe is bad meaning bad, or bad meaning good, or so bad it's good, who knows? But even if you don't take into account movie's off-the-scale camp genius potential (R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet" would be rendered a trifle by comparison); think of Jackson as an ambassador of American literature. I don't know how big Poe's work is in Filipino prisons, but I bet he'll be huge there after this movie. So it is with this argument that I must ask Sylvester Stallone resurrect another ‘80s icon, and cast Michael Jackson as Poe. C'mon Rock, make a nightmare come true.