Beetlejuice

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Beetlejuice
Image:BEETLEJUICE.jpg Beetlejuice movie poster
Directed by	Tim Burton
Produced by	Michael Bender Richard Hashimoto Larry Wilson
Written by	Michael McDowell Larry Wilson Warren Skaaren
Starring	Alec Baldwin Geena Davis Jeffrey Jones Catherine O'Hara Winona Ryder Michael Keaton Glenn Shadix Robert Goulet Sylvia Sidney Dick Cavett
Music by	Danny Elfman
Cinematography	Thomas E. Ackerman
Editing by	Jane Kurson
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	March 30, 1988 (USA)
Running time	92 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$15,000,000 (est.)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Beetlejuice is a film directed by Tim Burton, first released in the USA on March 30, 1988, and produced by The Geffen Film Company for Warner Bros. Pictures. It features two recently deceased ghosts, Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) and his wife, Barbara, (Geena Davis), who seek the help of an obnoxious bio-exorcist, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), to remove the Deetz family — metropolitan yuppies who recently moved from New York City and now occupy their old house. The Deetz family consists of Charles (Jeffrey Jones); his second wife, Delia (Catherine O'Hara); and teenage daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder). This marks the first time Keaton and Burton have teamed up, the second and third being Batman and Batman Returns.

Contents 1 The film 2 Portrayal of the afterlife 3 Effects work 4 Critical Reaction 5 TV series 6 Script changes 7 Universal Studios Theme Parks 8 References In Popular Culture 9 Trivia 10 References

The film

The name of the film is Beetlejuice, and the character is called "Beetlejuice" in the credits, but in the film itself the character's name is always spelled "Betelgeuse", like the star. Repeating this name three times is all that is required to summon him and also makes him leave. Adam and Barbara are not his only victims, for scams are his specialty. He used to be an assistant to Juno (Sylvia Sidney), the Maitlands' case worker, before getting into trouble (he tried exorcism on the living instead of the dead, hence his nickname the bio-exorcist). Betelgeuse is rude, vulgar and lecherous, eats insects, and loves to terrify people.

The film was originally titled The Maitlands, as Adam and Barbara are much more the protagonists than Betelgeuse is, and was originally meant to be less humorous than it ultimately became, but Tim Burton decided to go for a more humorous approach after Michael Keaton came on board as Betelgeuse.

In this typically dark and humorous Tim Burton film, most of Keaton's lines were apparently improvised on set. Notable guest appearances include those of Robert Goulet and Dick Cavett (Delia's art agent). Songs from Harry Belafonte are featured quite heavily in the movie, especially in a scene in which Delia starts belting out "Day-O" (The Banana Boat Song) in Belafonte's voice (thanks to some spectral trickery) at a dinner that she and Charles are hosting. The movie paints a picture of the afterlife as stuffy and bureaucratic rather than Dantean, with waiting rooms, oceans of red tape, and required reading (The Handbook for the Recently Deceased). People who commit suicide, for example, have become bored civil servants. Adam and Barbara are trapped in their house. The world outside is a parched nightmare of sand dunes and a sandworm (Betelgeuse calls this place Saturn, but it is clearly a reference to Frank Herbert's Dune). When exorcised, spirits are trapped in the room of lost souls. Lydia is the only living character who sees the couple, and is tapped to help them deal both with her obnoxious parents and with the crass and impetuous Betelgeuse.

When characters die in the world of Beetlejuice, they apparently always return as ghosts. When first appearing as a ghost, characters do not seem to be able to understand what has happened to them. As time goes on, and characters become more and more aware of their ghost nature, they become more and more powerful. (Adam and Barbara make themselves look scary, but are apparently unseen by the new family. Adam and Barbara possess the new family during dinner and cause them to dance. Adam and Barbara allow Lydia to levitate at the end.) Betelgeuse has been dead for a very long time (he claims to have "lived through the Black Plague"), and has almost limitless powers. He is seemingly banished to the model town in the attic of the house, where his powers are greatly reduced. When released, he is able to control inanimate objects to attack people, create or transform objects (which he mostly does with clothes), shrink and enlarge people, imitate other people, summon objects and people at will, and banish people to ‘Saturn’.

Portrayal of the afterlife

Beetlejuice seems to be inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist novel Les jeux sont faits (1952), which prominently features death as meaningless bureaucracy, albeit presented in a much less morbid fashion. Another, although not as extreme, example is the 2004 TV series Dead Like Me, in which the characters need to work as grim reapers before they can leave limbo. Also, in the LucasArts adventure game Grim Fandango, people who commit crimes in life are forced to work off their time at the nightmarishly bureaucratic "Department of Death". An interesting contrast can be made with Burton's later work Corpse Bride, where the afterlife is vibrant and exciting, and the land of the living is grey and boring. All these are examples of Bangsian fantasy. Various esoteric and magical elements, such as exorcism, incantations, and seances, are prevalent in the afterlife as portrayed in this film. Religion occupies almost no identifiable role in the film, aside from fleeting references to Heaven and Hell.

Effects work

Beetlejuice was not granted an extravagant budget, particularly after Little Shop of Horrors ended up costing more than expected. As a result of this—and of the director's improvisational style—some of the effects work may seem cheap and old-fashioned, especially by today's standards. Sometimes, however, the need to produce effects quickly and cheaply added to their quality. Scenes like the sand worm scene were shot in stop motion animation. And the shot of Barbara lifting up a toy horse in front of a mirror (demonstrating that while it cast a reflection, she did not) was achieved entirely in-camera, using an empty mirror frame, a partial set built beyond and two toy horses bolted together. The resulting shot is an illusion with no matte work or consequent loss of image definition.

Maybe because of the limited budget, the film features some notable inconsistencies and bloopers, some more obvious than others. One remarkable example is a scene where the deceased character draws a door on the wall with chalk.

Critical Reaction

Time Out London was massively impressed by the film, declaring that "the off-the wall humour and some sensational sight gags make the movie, maddeningly disjointed though it sometimes is, a truly astonishing piece of work."^[1] Roger Ebert took a different view, wishing the film had been more character-driven and had "cut back on the slapstick."^[2]

TV series

Main article: Beetlejuice (TV series)

An animated television series called Beetlejuice, ran on ABC from March 9, 1988 to December 6, 1991, featuring the voices of Stephen Ouimette, Alyson Court, and Tara Strong. Lydia and Beetlejuice are friends, and she frequently visits him at home in the Netherworld (called the Neitherworld in the cartoon). Many of the jokes revolve around toilet humor and visual puns. Beetlejuice had a cast of wacky neighbors: Jacques, a French skeleton fitness buff; Ginger, a tap-dancing spider; The Monster across the Street, a boisterous Texas redneck; and a nasty clown named Scuzzo, who is his arch-nemesis. Notably missing are the characters of Adam and Barbara Maitland.

Script changes

• In the original script by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson, the scenes and characters are much darker and more morbid; the waiting room scenes are particularly ghoulish. At that stage in the project's development, Wes Craven was in talks to direct the film.

• The character of "Lydia" was originally one of two Dietz daughters; her younger sister Cathy would have been the girl who befriended the Maitlands. Eventually the two characters were merged into Lydia.

• Warren Skaaren was the only writer credited for the extensive re-writes requested by Tim Burton. Other writers who were uncredited for their work on the film are Charles McKeown and Jonathan Gems.

Universal Studios Theme Parks

The Beetlejuice character was made the host of a live musical attraction at various Universal Studios Theme parks. The show is called "Beetlejuice's Rock 'N Roll Graveyard Revue." Although shows are different at various parks, the plot follows the story of Beetlejuice taking possession of the Universal Studios monsters and turning them into rock stars. Various incarnations of the show include The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Dracula,The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Phantom of the Opera. In the Orlando version, Beetlejuice has two gothic cheerleaders known as Hip and Hop.

References In Popular Culture

• The band AFI quotes Lydia's line "My whole life is a dark room. One...big...dark...room" in the song The Despair Factor.
• Tyson Ritter, the lead singer of the band The All-American Rejects has stated that his favorite movie is Beetlejuice, and sometimes plays the Danny Elfman-composed theme during live performances.
• The band Avenged Sevenfold always has the Beetlejuice theme song played at their concerts. They enter the stage during the finale of the song and play their opening song right when it ends.

Trivia

• The studio disliked the title "Beetlejuice" and wanted to call the film "House Ghosts." As a joke, Tim Burton suggested the name "Scared Sheetless" and was horrified when the studio actually considered using it.^[3]

• Though he plays the title character, Michael Keaton spent only two weeks filming his scenes and only appears in 17.5 minutes of the film's entire 92-minute running time.

• Although the Maitland/Deetz home is in Connecticut according to the script, the film was actually shot in East Corinth, Vermont. Many of the town's buildings were painted and changed for the movie. A complete facade was built over the library and a cover to the bridge was added for the film.

• Originally planned as a supernatural drama entitled "The Maitlands", about a deceased couple dealing with the troubles of the afterlife. The scenes were scripted much more morbidly than they appear (most notably the waiting room scenes, which were supposed to be particularly ghoulish), and most of the characters were much darker. Only when Michael Keaton began filming his scenes and asked for creative freedom did Tim Burton realize the potential of a dark comedy.

• The receptionist in the waiting room is Miss Argentina.

• Tim Burton originally wanted Sammy Davis Jr., a favorite star of his since childhood, to play the role of Betelgeuse but studio executives didn't like that idea at all.

• When Betelgeuse comes through the table at the end of the film, Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), can be seen at the top of his hat.

• During the sequence where Adam and Barbara enter Juno's office and see her speaking to a recently deceased football team, a room full of ghosts can be seen through Juno's office window. Among the ghosts in the audience are a red skeleton and a green skeleton (identical to the ones seen in Tim Burton's later movie, Mars Attacks! (1996)), a woman with red hair, and two men in suits and Ray-Ban style sunglasses.

• Over the door in the waiting room, the sign reads "No Exit" in the same lettering as the standard "Exit" signs over most doorways, a reference to a play with that title by Jean-Paul Sartre. The play deals with three people who find themselves trapped with one another in a room shortly after they die.

• Wes Craven was set to direct the film at one time, when it was still more of a horror film. When things fell apart he went on to write Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, A (1987) (but not direct).

• Juliette Lewis auditioned for the role of Lydia.

References

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