Why Beetlejuice can quite never be replicated: “You show up on the set and just go fuckin’ nuts”
Beetlejuice – or “Betelgeuse” as he is known to his prospective ghostly clients – is a weird character. That much is obvious. Amazingly, though, Michael Keaton’s performance as the striped suit-wearing, green mould-encrusted “Bio-exorcist” is so thoroughly bizarre, so wonderfully macabre, and so downright hilarious that audiences couldn’t help loving him. So much so that they waited patiently(ish) for 36 years to see his pale, grinning face again – and then piled into cinemas in their droves.
Why does the world love Beetlejuice so much, though? What is it about his character that is so appealing? Well, I reckon it’s got something to do with the very nature of his creation. Basically, Beetlejuice isn’t a character – he’s a collection of random improvisations that add up to an almost unlimited canvas. You can try to apply conventional character analysis to Beetlejuice, but it won’t do you any good – because he defies traditional wisdom at every turn. He can also never be replicated – because he was just made up as Keaton and Burton went along.
Before we go any further, it’s worth explaining where Beetlejuice got his start. In Larry Wilson and Michael McDowell’s original screenplay, he was a demon with wings who adopted the form of a vertically challenged Middle Eastern man. When Tim Burton came on board to direct the film, he had a different vision of Beetlejuice – the 62-year-old song and dance legend Sammy Davis Jr. Obviously, neither of these visions is anything like where the character ended up – and that’s why Keaton was so confused when Burton first pitched him the film.
“I had no idea what he was talking about,” admitted Keaton in 2014 to Charlie Rose, “But I liked him.” It took three meetings to convince Keaton to give the mischievous spook some thought – and then it all clicked for him. He realised that Beetlejuice being this nebulous thing – with no one really able to put their finger on what he should look or sound like – was actually an incredible gift. Essentially, he could do whatever he wanted with the character, as there were no established boundaries.
Keaton revealed: “I called the wardrobe department at the studio and said, ‘Send me a bunch of wardrobes from different time periods, randomly. Just pick a rack.’ And then I thought of an idea of teeth and an idea of a walk.” He got on the phone with Burton and ran through some of his wild notions, which included “hair that looks like I stuck my finger in an electrical socket” and mould on his face and neck because “he lives under rocks”.
By the time Keaton turned up to shoot, he and Burton had talked about Beetlejuice’s look a lot – but Burton hadn’t actually seen it. He chuckled, “I walked on the stage and said, ‘This is either going to be way off the mark, or he’s going to — I don’t know what he’s going to do!'” Thankfully, Burton immediately got what Keaton was going for, and they were off to the races.
This “make it up as you go along” approach to the character’s look also extended to what Beetlejuice did and said in the movie. As Keaton told Rolling Stone, Burton was keen for him to adlib and improvise at all times. He marvelled: “You show up on the set and just go fuckin’ nuts. It was rave acting. You rage for 12 or 14 hours; then you go home tired and beat and exhausted. It was pretty damned cathartic.”
The best example of this process yielding gold is in Beetlejuice’s iconic speech – or rant – when questioned about his exorcism “qualifications”. Keaton insists he just riffed for the entire scene, making everything up on the spot, and that’s nothing short of incredible. By the end of it, the audience is given a backstory of sorts for the character: he attended the Harvard Business School, lived through the Black Plague, and watched The Exorcist 167 times. Of course, all of this could be true – or none of it could – and that’s the fun of Beetlejuice as a character. Absolutely anything is possible because his characterisation is entirely driven by “What would be the funniest thing Keaton could say at any given moment?”
In truth, by the end of the first film, all we know about Beetlejuice is that he is a ghost who can be hired to scare the living out of their homes. He is a bit of a pervert and is – super problematically – obsessed with marrying teenager Lydia Deetz because that will enable him to get back to the real world to wreak havoc again. Oh, and he hates sandworms – the absurd monsters who burrow under a particular area of the spirit world.
In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – the long-awaited sequel – the audience learns some more intriguing things about Beetlejuice’s past. In the end, though, is it important that we know he was once married to a death cultist who poisoned him in an immortality ritual? Or that he chopped this wife up before he expired, leading to her vengeful Frankenstein’s Monster-esque ghost hunting him down in the afterlife?
I’d argue that, no, it’s not important at all. Because all that matters is whether this lore leads to opportunities for Keaton to riff and make hilarious shit up. It’s one of his greatest talents. And hey, Burton and company can change or add to Beetlejuice’s backstory anytime they want because nothing is ever off the table with that beautiful sicko. He truly is “The Ghost with the Most”.
