If you've seen Beetlejuice about a hundred and sixty-seven times, then once you finish
this video, you're going to want to see it a hundred and sixty-eighth time.
Keep watching so it'll be even funnier the next time you see it!
While Beetlejuice is all about ghosts, monsters, death, and other objectively spooky stuff,
it's actually not all that scary.
This is thanks to Michael Keaton's delightfully hammy work and the nonstop bits of comedy
to keep things from tipping into full-bore horror.
As it turns out, all that stuff happened during rewrites and filming.
In its earliest conceptions, Beetlejuice was a very different movie.
In Michael McDowell's script, the Maitlands' death scene is quite graphic and traumatic.
After that, they enlist the help of Beetlejuice, who isn't so much an edgy clown in stripes
as he is an evil demon with wings.
While he attempts to simply scare away the new residents of the Maitlands' old house
in the movie, he pretty much tries to kill them in the original draft.
His relationship with Lydia Deetz is especially predatory, as the ghost tries to get with
her in a way that's even more inappropriate than the final film... before he tears her
apart.
Portraying Beetlejuice was a surprising departure for Michael Keaton — a star who was at that
point previously known for his "regular guy" roles in comedies like Gung Ho and Mr. Mom.
His performance here showed he was more than capable of pulling off horror, gonzo comedy,
and, well, just about anything.
To reinforce that, immediately after Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton cast him as Bruce Wayne
in Batman.
"You're working with a professional here!"
Burton is a quirky filmmaker who often makes off-the-wall casting decisions.
While Keaton might have been a somewhat surprising choice, he actually wasn't even Burton's first
pick for the title role: He initially wanted beloved actor, crooner, "Candy Man," and all-around
entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. for the part.
Up to that point, the script called for the character to be a bit more evil with a Las
Vegas lounge singer kind of vibe.
Since Davis was a former Rat Packer, he fit the bill in that last regard.
Credit for Keaton's casting goes to producer David Geffen, who talked Burton out of his
pick and suggested he check out the future Dark Knight instead.
"Ya like it?!"
During Burton and Keaton's first meeting, the former tried his best to explain Beetlejuice's
far-out concept to his eventual star — and apparently, he didn't do such a great job
of communicating his admittedly outlandish ideas.
In a conversation with Charlie Rose in 2014, Keaton said,
"I didn't understand what he was talking about.
[...] "But I liked him.
I went, 'Oh, well, this guy's something.'"
"And so I said, 'I wish I could do it, you seem like a really nice guy, I know you're
creative, but I don't get it.'"
Burton was able to convince Keaton to meet again, and that time he went into more detail
about the project.
The actor still didn't understand and politely declined Beetlejuice once more.
Undeterred, Burton persuaded him to take a third meeting, and this time he rattled off
some ideas that Keaton said "just logged" in his brain.
He asked Burton for some time to think it over ... which he spent building the character
so he could wrap his mind around it.
"So, say it once, say it twice, third time's the charm…"
Keaton called up some associates at the production studio's wardrobe house and asked for various
clothing choices from different time periods.
He also requested some help in creating the character's appearance; he wanted his hair
to look like he was shocked by an electrical outlet and his face to have mold on it.
All that stuff wound up in the character's final design.
Tim Burton wanted to call the movie Beetlejuice, but he had to put up a bit of a fight to make
it happen.
As a young filmmaker at the time, Burton had to deal with a certain amount of studio interference,
and executives initially planned to give the movie the bland and forgettable title House
Ghosts.
He hated that idea, so he tried to play a little game with his bosses; he suggested
the title Scared Sheetless instead, thinking the powers that be would relent and let him
go for Beetlejuice.
But the plan backfired.
The studio actually liked Scared Sheetless and seriously considered releasing the movie
under that title.
Ultimately, Burton got his way after threatening to hurl himself out a window.
Over thirty years later, the role of awkward teenage goth Lydia Deetz still ranks among
Winona Ryder's most definitive and popular performances.
Beetlejuice launched the young actor into megastardom and marked her first collaboration
with Tim Burton, with whom she'd work again on Edward Scissorhands and Frankenweenie.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that Ryder just barely landed the part — and only landed
it after beating out an actor who doesn't seem very Burtonesque at all: Who's the Boss?
teen sensation Alyssa Milano.
"I myself am, strange and unusual"
In a 2016 interview with HuffPost Live, Milano revealed that casting for the part of Lydia
came down to two choices: Ryder and herself.
When reflecting on how badly she wanted the part, she said,
"You always wonder what would have happened differently in my life had that worked out,
not that I would want it to be any different, but it's just an interesting thought game."
Burton helped Catherine O'Hara's career with Beetlejuice, and the movie had a major effect
on her offscreen life, too.
Brooding, mysterious, odd — these are words one would use to describe Tim Burton.
But probably not "romantic" or "matchmaker."
Still, according to O'Hara, he exercised that part of his personality on the set of Beetlejuice.
Bo Welch served as the movie's set designer, so he was very much responsible for giving
the film its sensational and original postmodern horror look.
And Burton thought that he and O'Hara two would make a very cute couple...
so he tried to make it happen.
O'Hara told Digital Spy that,
"Tim actually set us up to date."
"If you don't let me gut out this house, and make it my own, I will go insane, and I will
TAKE YOU WITH ME!"
They hit it off, and a couple of years later, Welch and O'Hara got married and had two children.
Those kids owe their lives to a casting switcheroo — their parents may never have met if O'Hara
hadn't replaced Anjelica Huston, who won the role of Delia but had to drop out of the project
after she fell ill.
One unexpected ripple effect of Beetlejuice: It made calypso cool again, which hadn't been
in the pop consciousness much since Harry Belafonte topped the charts in the 1950s and
early '60s.
"I didn't even know I could do the calypso."
During a dinner party, new haunted house residents Delia and Charlies Deetz and their guests
become compelled by ghostly forces to perform a musical number set to "Day-O." That's just
one of multiple Belafonte songs in the movie: in the opening minutes, Alec Baldwin's Adam
Maitland listens to "Sweetheart from Venezuela"; later, Lydia joyfully dances and floats to
"Jump in the Line (Shake, Señora)"; and "Day-O" also plays earlier in the film when Geena
Davis's Barbara Maitland peruses the "Handbook for the Recently Deceased" while Adam works
on his model.
None of that appeared in the first version of Michael McDowell's screenplay.
When writer Warren Skaaren took a pass, his draft included classic R&B; the haunted dinner
party scene involved the humans dancing to the Ink Spots' "If I Didn't Care" and suggested
that Lydia would provide a rendition of "When a Man Loves a Woman."
Where did the calypso come from?
Catherine O'Hara.
According to her onscreen husband Jeffrey Jones, O'Hara suggested that the musical form
would liven up the dinner party scene.
Tim Burton and the rest of the filmmaking team dug the idea, so they set about getting
the rights to old calypso tunes and threading them throughout the movie.
He's gone on to log numerous hits and cult classics, but Beetlejuice might be Tim Burton's
signature movie.
All his calling cards are present — a ghoulish protagonist, a mixture of high comedy and
spooky darkness, and quaint puppet-and-model-based special effects.
In Beetlejuice, our title character attempts to terrify the Deetz family out of the former
Maitland home by rising up out of a town model.
Michael Keaton appears ghostly white, mouth agape, and wearing a mobile on his head that's
comprised of little dragons and hideous sea monsters.
This mobile comes in the form of a black-and-white-striped tube hat to match his primary costume.
And the top of the umbrella-like contraption is overseen by a little model of some kind
of undead creature.
That creature is a dead ringer for Jack Skellington, the main character in Burton's A Nightmare
Before Christmas, which wasn't released until five years after Beetlejuice.
Given how popular it remains, the absence of a sequel to Beetlejuice is surprising,
but it isn't for a lack of effort.
Shortly after the first film, Burton created an outline that writer Jonathan Gems turned
into a script titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.
As Gems told Fangoria,
"Tim thought it would be funny to match the surfing backdrop of a beach movie with some
sort of German Expressionism, because they're totally wrong together."
Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian was publicly announced in 1990, with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder,
Catherine O'Hara, and Jeffrey Jones all agreeing to reprise their roles.
The story found the characters heading to Hawaii to check up on a Deetz construction
project: a casino built on top of a sacred Hawaiian burial ground.
Along the way, Lydia visits the worlds of the undead, and Beetlejuice wins a surfing
contest.
But then Warner Bros. offered Burton total creative control on Batman Returns, so he
— and Keaton — went off to do that.
Interest died, the actors moved on, and the script was never filmed — nor was a subsequent
effort by Beetlejuice co-writer Warren Skaaren called Beetlejuice in Love, in which the "Ghost
with the Most" offers up his services to some new characters.
In 2011, Warner Bros. decided to explore a sequel once more with a script potentially
written by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith.
That never turned into cinematic gold, either, however, the Beetlejuice sequel has yet to
find itself in the Lost Souls Room.
Efforts to bring a second film to life continued, and in February of 2022, Plan B — a production
company founded by Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Brad Grey — became involved.
Will Beetlejuice 2 finally be resurrected?
Only time will tell.
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