11 Things We Learned From Tim Burton’s ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Commentary
36 years after Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton is back as the Ghost with the Most in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
The juice is loose on home video, complete with a director’s commentary from Tim Burton.
Here are 11 things I learned from the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice commentaries…
1. The film’s title was almost derived from a ’70s horror sequel.
Several other titles were considered for the long-awaited sequel, including call-backs to two 1970s horror sequels. Burton explains:
“There was a lot of talk about what to call [the movie]. One idea was Beetlejuice Rises Again; that was based on Dr. Phibes Rises Again. And then I thought of Beetlejuice A.D., which is a reference to Dracula [A.D 1972], which I love. That’s in there a little bit.
“The thought of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just sounded mirror-like and simple, so we just landed like that.”
2. The Deetz women compelled Burton to want to make the sequel.
Following the unexpected success of Beetlejuice, there were several attempts to make a follow-up in the years since, but Burton wasn’t compelled to do one until now.
“This movie took 35 years in the making. There was a lot of talk about sequels early on, but nothing ever really felt right for me. There was something that I couldn’t quite relate to. Part of the reason I think is because I never really understood the success of the first one anyway. It was a surprise to me,” Burton notes.
“Somebody said, ‘Do a sequel,’ but I didn’t really have a vibe of what it would be. Not until now basically did it really hit me. It really stemmed from the fact that I connected with the Lydia character as a teenager, so I just thought, ‘Well, what happened to her 35 years later?’ Somebody you thought was cool or interesting, what happened to them? Where are they now?”
It wasn’t until Burton began exploring the dynamic between the Deetz women — Catherine O’Hara as Delia, Winona Ryder as Lydia, and Jenna Ortega as Astrid — that he found his personal anchor to the story.
“The idea of seeing three generations of Deetz women — mother, daughter, granddaughter — that was the anchor for me. That was the thing that made me really interested. It made it personal for me. It’s not a sequel I could have done in 1989 or something. This only could happen after time, after you go through your own journey.”
3. Burton cast Danny DeVito to make the movie more personal to him.
Burton cast frequent collaborator Danny DeVito — with whom he previously worked on Batman Returns, Mars Attacks, Big Fish, and Dumbo — in a small role as an afterlife janitor to make the movie more personal.
“I asked Danny DeVito to do this because he’s my friend. It’s not a big thing. ‘Hey, Danny, will you play the janitor? It’s not Shakespeare or anything. But because this movie’s so special to me, having people around me — when it works, when it’s right — was very important. It was just another element for me to make it feel like a personal movie for me.”
DeVito’s character listens to Jimmy Buffet‘s “Margaritaville” while working, which came straight from Burton’s jukebox.
“I put ‘Margaritaville’ in ’cause it’s my jukebox, and I just trolled my jukebox. I’m a big fan of certain kinds of songs. That just felt appropriate. It’s a janitor, he’s working all the time, he’s kind of living in his head, he’s gotta let the hours go by by listening to cheesy music just to get through the day.”
4. Practical effects were important to Burton and Keaton.
It was important to both Burton and Keaton for the sequel to maintain the spirit of the original production.
“Mike and I talked about it on and off over the years, and I don’t think he ever had any burning desire to do another one, only if it felt right. It just felt right for me and then for him. Doing practical effects, keeping it like we did, shooting in the spirit, shooting it quickly, keeping that energy going, that was all very important. Those are the kinds of things we talked about.”
They tried to utilize practical effects as much as possible.
“One thing that both Michael and I talked about, and to the studio, I said, ‘Look, you can do anything with CG, but we don’t want to do anything.’ Practical effects were important, so we did it with everything. We really did, except for the sandworms which were stop-motion.”
He later remarks, “I wouldn’t have done this movie if Michael or Catherine or Winona had said no to it. It wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t want to recast it or redo it; this was the story that was important for me.”
5. Joey Chestnut almost made a cameo.
One of the first afterlife waiting room patrons Burton conceived for the sequel was a hot dog eating contestant that ate himself to death, and he wanted to cast a real competitive eating champion in the role
“I was inspired by Joey Chestnut and his annual 4th of July hot dog eating contest and his wins,” Burton reveals. “I actually wanted to get him to play that character, but he was in training for another big 4th of July, so in respect and love I still did the character.”
6. “Wednesday” revitalized Burton’s interest in directing.
In addition to Ortega, Burton worked with screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar on “Wednesday.”
“I remember when I first read ‘Wednesday,’ I thought they’d sort of written it for me. I just love the Wednesday character. I like ‘The Addams Family,’ I like Charles Addams’ drawings, but I never had a desire to make an Addams Family thing. But the way they wrote ‘Wednesday’ and that character, I just felt connected to it.”
It was “Wednesday” that revitalized Burton’s interest in directing.
“The character and working with [Jenna], trying to shoot a movie but on a TV schedule, there’s quite a lot of work into it, but the energy was good. That kind of restoked my interest in making things again, because I didn’t really feel it after taking my own little path in Hollywood, left turn. It was a way for me to get back to things that I feel strongly about.”
7. Exteriors were shot in the same location as the original film.
While most of the film was shot in England, Burton and crew returned to East Corinth, Vermont to shoot exteriors at the same locations as the original film.
“It was interesting going back to East Corinth and shooting there, and it was interesting seeing Jenna ride through the streets. It gave it a certain kind of old-and-new quality that made it feel very interesting. We shot it very simply, certain small camera mounts on the bars and next to the bikes. We shot this very quickly, so everything we did we tried to do like a low budget movie. It wasn’t low budget, but it felt like one.”
The Deetz house was a facade that had to be rebuilt, but the rest of the small town remained largely unchanged.
“I was shocked when we went back there, because it really hadn’t changed at all. It didn’t haven’t any new buildings. In fact, it was pretty much the same, which was a bit strange. It was kind of haunting in a way to go back and see it pretty much the same way it was… For me, it made it all really weird and special and haunting, in a good way, in the spirit of the film.”
8. Beetlejuice’s backstory pays homage to Italian horror.
Burton wears his love of Italian horror on his sleeve in the film. In addition to giallo pioneer Mario Bava and his film Kill, Baby, Kill being name dropped, Beetlejuice and Delores’s backstory flashback is a stylized homage to Bava’s Black Sunday.
“Beetlejuice’s backstory all stems from desire and love of wanting to make an Italian horror film, so I tick that box off,” Burton says. “Maybe it’s ’cause Monica [Bellucci]’s Italian and I always wanted to make an Italian horror film that it took on this tact. This came very late in terms of Micahel and I’s conversation about not wanting too much Beetlejuice.”
He continues “I grew up watching dubbed movies, which is a part of my DNA, so for me it was a special, personal approach to telling the backstory.
“Trying to recreate the vibe of a ’60s Italian horror film was important, so Haris [Zambarloukos, cinematographer] and I tried different filters and things to achieve it live. We built sets. We shot the whole thing in a day. It was shooting it quickly, shooting it with sets, probably not far off from how those films were shot.”
9. Burton did not re-watch the original Beetlejuice.
Burton purposely did not re-watch the original Beetlejuice prior to making the sequel.
“I didn’t even watch the first movie before I did this one, because it didn’t feel like it was going to help me. I just wanted to make this movie, In terms of the set design, I didn’t go back and study everything.”
He adds, “I wanted to make sure it felt new to me and more expanded without over-expanding. It’s an important balance to try to mix.”
10. Burton has a hidden cameo.
Burton makes an uncredited voice cameo as Baby Beetlejuice, drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: “Teletubbies.”
“I used to scare my children by doing the baby sun from ‘Teletubbies,’” Burton explains. “I said to Michael, ‘Could you do this?’ And I did it for him, and he goes, ‘No, you’ve gotta do it.’ So I did it.”
The filmmaker previously made cameos in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
11. Beetlejuice’s tuxedo is from the original film.
The red tuxedo that Beetlejuice wears at the wedding is not only the same style as the one Keaton donned for the original film; it’s the exact same piece of wardrobe from 1988.
“The tuxedo in the wedding scene was his original tuxedo. Michael, I think he called Warner Bros., asked for it, and they had it, which is interesting. For Michael, it was a big deal.”
“It still fit, which is incredible,” Burton adds.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is available now on SteelBook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD.
