Beetlejuice: Everything You Didn't Know

Your two bio-exorcists of big-ticket trivia dive into one of the most idiosyncratic movies of all time. This early Tim Burton joint gave Jordan nightmare as a kid, so they brought in a guest expert — the third member of the TMI triumvirate, beloved producer Mykal Alder June! You’ll learn all about the much darker original script, the perils of building a bridge in Vermont for the film, the gross look they landed on for the titular character and an update on its long-delayed sequel. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows
and more. We are your two nay three bio exorcists
of Big Ticket Trivia. I'm Alex Heigel.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
And I'm Jordan Runtug and today we are joined by
really you know, if there's the fifth Beatle, there's the
third tm.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Tm I trivia. What are we?

Speaker 5 (00:37):
What's a you know, a T word that begins with
stop it?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Titan Taco Titan Titan.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
There we go, yeah, Tan Titans of Talking.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
See, this is why I am so happy to welcome
with open arms and an open heart, our very own producer,
Michael Alder June.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
Hello, oh my god, welcome.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
I'm so happy to be here with you, guys.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
We're so happy to finally.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Have because I feel so bad because June is the
one who makes us sound coherent and so and she'll
be listening through all these episodes and texting us all
these incredible insights that we should have brought up, and
all these great jokes and all these things, and it's like, Okay, well,
you know what. Finally June is visiting New York and
stand with me, and you know what, it's time. I

(01:25):
can't taken this long. And we're talking about one of
her very favorite movies.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
It took a trip through the hell mouth of JFK
to get me on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, a surprising amount of similarities with the Afterlife as
depicted by this movie. This is shockingly the first Tim
Burton project that we've done. Yeah. I will forever be
not a Night Member before Christmas, kid, because I was
exactly the right age for that movie to come out
and break my little heart as a little spooky child.

(01:58):
And I think as an all, I have glombed onto
ed Wood as like the most kind of mature and
least annoying of of the iconic Tim Burton movies.

Speaker 5 (02:10):
I can definitely understand that.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
But I just, well, what are we talking about? I
don't think we actually told folks what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Bio Exercis was the giveaway. You you herb what other's
that's that's not a rec That's another thing I love
about this movie that is not a recognized term in
anything other than the Beetlejuice cinematic universe, What does a
bio exit, although I guess the Ghostbusters have that no,
because the ghosts aren't trying to get rid of the

(02:36):
living in ghost Bud, or at least they're not referred
to that way. Maybe the Frighteners, but Peter Jackson with
Michael J. Fox kind of takes like a similar tack
to it. But I don't really think. I think that
term is entirely unique to that to this movie. Yeah,
I know, I love this movie and I was a kid.
Is so aggressively weird. It has this bizarre mythos that
it doesn't really explain. It's gruesome in soight way. But

(03:00):
as you referred to it earlier in a kind of
haunted house kitch Way.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
Portrait, haunted House, I think it's what I said, Hey.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Hey, yes, hey, ride haunted House. But yeah, I mean,
it's honestly funny to me. It took this long for
this movie to get a sequel, which is the other
reason we're talking about it is that this year news
finally broke that Beetlejuice two is happening, which is very
sad or great for Michael Keaton, depending on how you're
looking at it. Because he has now fully become the
character that he was playing in Birdman, which is an actor,

(03:35):
an actor forced into rehashing his old roles for rent money,
first in as Batman in The Flash, and now is
Beetlejuice in Beetlejuice two beat harder.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I just want to make an observation that I didn't
realize this movie came out in March. I would have
assumed that it was a Halloween movie.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
You know, other than the death. It's not like a
seasonal film either. I mean I can't really even like
it doesn't even have that much of a sense of time.
Like I don't if you were like, what time of
year does Beetles just take place? And I would be like, June, it.

Speaker 5 (04:14):
Takes place in a kitchen, I don't know, there's it's seasonless. Yeah,
it takes place in an afterlife desert and in waiting rooms.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, and and and a farmhouse and
in what is I think it? I think they do
make mention of it being Connecticut anyway, So June, what
you you have a very you were attached to this film?

Speaker 5 (04:35):
Yes, this was one of the few movies that I
watched over and over and over again. When I was
a kid, my parents adhered to the outdated, already medium
of the Betamax onto which they recorded all sorts of
movies from HBO's free weekends. So I watched a lot

(04:58):
of Goodies, a lot of of Indiana Jones, and Beetlejuice
was maybe the top of that holy trinity. And yeah,
so between the movie and the Saturday Morning cartoon that
later followed it, and my secretly wanting to be Lydiadiades,

(05:18):
I was very inabord with this movie when I was
like seven through ten years old.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, and I believe you dressed up as uh oh.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, I see that for Halloween.

Speaker 5 (05:28):
When I was nine, I really wanted to be Beetlejuice
for Halloween. This was two or three years after the
movie came out. There was no way to pull together
like a Beetlejuice costume. And Halloween night, my mom took
me out to a mire like in our suburban Michigan town.

(05:53):
It's kind of like Kroger our target, and we were
going through the racks of children clearance pajama aisle and
those telltale white and black stripes jumped out and there
was like this old Saturday Morning cartoon pajama like merchandising

(06:14):
tie in. So I got to be Beetlejuice for Halloween,
wearing pajamas around my neighborhood. And then immediately after Halloween
we moved down to Georgia. So I woke up at
dawn still dressed, still dressed as Beetle Juice, somewhere driving
through Kentucky.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Yeah, it's kind of like the lost like level of
Orgon Trail.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, you can so looking at this picture, and first
of all, the makeup is incredible, but looking at this picture, paint, yeah,
the corpse paint. Looking at this picture, you can tell
it immediately it's from the animated series because in the
movie he wears a white shirt with it, and then
the and the series had him had him with the
pink undergarment. You know, his pink ensemble is his wedding

(07:00):
look in the in the in the movie.

Speaker 5 (07:03):
Yeah, we should say for the listeners at home that
I have sent out a photograph of me dressed as
Beetlejuice at nine years old, and it is perfect.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
We will definitely be sharing that when we post this.
Put that in the in the show notes. Okay, I
don't have that level of attachment to this is. You know,
I feel bad because after all these wonderful things that
both of you said about you know how much this
movie means to you, and you know, unlike Youkigel, I
take no pleasure in denigrating stuff that you actually like.

(07:34):
I didn't really engage with this movie much as a kid. Spooky, scary,
creepy stuff. It really was never my thing, and just
so the general tenor of this movie just kind of
freaked me out. And that plus I took the title literally,
so I thought for a time that this movie had
something to do with juice made from beetles, which just

(07:57):
grossed me out a lot.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
So that was another part of the reason why I
didn't really watch it.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
So I don't have much to share from the childhood perspective,
but I would like to say that the husband of
my first boss wrote the Broadway musical.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Version of Beatlejuice from a few years back.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
His name is Anthony King, and his wife is the
incredibly talented writer and podcaster Kate Spencer, who is the
co host of the very popular podcast Forever thirty five
and the author of the New York Times best selling
book In a New York Minute, although I don't know
if it was best selling it. If it's not, it
should be. If it's not, it will be after this
shout out. But yeah, she was my first boss and

(08:36):
editor at VH one dot com a long time ago,
and she's awesome.

Speaker 5 (08:40):
So she's going to go to a publisher, Like where
did all these sales come?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
F Oh you got the TMI bum Buddy.

Speaker 5 (08:49):
June.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Out of the three of us, does the best cigar
shopping executive.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh, I mean the cigar chomping executive in this story
is David Geffit, which is like more of a like
little little Boy, because a a small boy, but.

Speaker 5 (09:08):
Please, I'd like small Baitel Juice.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Well, from the much darker original shooting script to the
perils of building a bridge in Vermont for the film
and that's not a setup to a joke, to the gross,
gross look that they landed on for the titular character,
and an update on its long delayed sequel. Here's everything
you didn't know about Beetlejuice. Goth Icon, Tim Burton, or

(09:42):
at least at least mainstream goth icon, sort of goth
for dummies icon. I like Tim Burton. I just you know,
he's not like it's so easy to give him. He's
not eiter zende neubouten, you know, or like the birthday party.
He's not like legit God. He's like, you know, your
mom's idea of goth Anyways, hot topic. Yeah, he was

(10:05):
born in Burbank. Made some shorts well. He was a
student at the California Institute of the Arts where he
was studying animation, and one of them, called stock of
the Cellary Monster, which I have not seen, managed to
get in the eyes of the House of Mouse and
they offered him an apprenticeship at its animation division, where
he picked up work as an animator, storyboard artist, graphic designer,

(10:27):
art director, and concept artist on films like The Fox
and the Hound, Tron and even The Black Cauldron, although
you would be hard pressed to identify his touch on
any of those except for possibly The Black Cauldron and so.
While at Disney in nineteen eighty two, Burton made his
first short, Vincent, which is a six minute black and
white stop motion film based on a poem written by

(10:47):
him which depicts a young boy who fantasizes that he
is his hero, Vincent Price, and it was narrated by
Vincent Price.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
That was an animated version of the Don McLean song Vincent,
you would start starring night?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, yeah, you would, wouldn't you.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Uh. June's head is literally in her hands right now.
And Vince too disapproving golf adjacent friends.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Vincent, Vincent, I can only lighten so much. Vincent Price
is in his last role is in Edward Scissorhands, right,
Oh that's wrong. Yeah, So that's a friendship that's very adorable.
And then so two years later, Tim Burton's next short,
franken Weeny, which is about a young boy's attempt to
resurrect his beloved dog after it's hit by a car,

(11:34):
comes out well, sort of doesn't. Despite the film starring
Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern. Disney fired fired him for
using company resources to make his weird little goth German
expressionist passion projects, which.

Speaker 4 (11:53):
Is such a great premise for a movie.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Though sad and hilarious. Well, I think they did. They
see this just proves I haven't kept up with him
in like a decade and change. Didn't they make a CGI,
a live or a live action franken Weenie. I think
you're right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was twenty twelve.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
I believe they showed it in front of some Disney feature.
I can't remember, though.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
It might've even been as in Wonderland.

Speaker 5 (12:18):
It may have been.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Did you ever see The Family Dog? His short lived
sitcom animated sitcom.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Tim Burton's Family What? Yeah? Oh, look this up.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
It's so interesting. I think they only aired. I want
to say, like.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Oh, Brad Bird he exec produced this, but this was
It was the first collaboration between Spielberg and and Burton
and created by Brad Bird. It is wild. One critic
called it one of the biggest fiascos in television animation history,
on both a creative and commercial commercial level. In spite

(12:54):
but in many ways because of the high powered talent
behind the project. Savage put that on my tombstone.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
So while nobody at Disney liked him, the film and
Burton did have one prominent fan, and that was Paul Rubins. Naturally,
pee wee Herman himself. Rubens chose Burton to direct the
cinematic spin off of his show, the film Peebe's Big Adventure,
which was made on a budget of eight million dollars.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Jesus, that's like nothing.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
Right, it's it's that's pocket change, that's lint from from
some executive's couch compared to other films, but it managed
to gross more than forty million dollars at the North
American box office. So Burton was all of a sudden,
very bankable off of a Peewee Herman movie, which I love,

(13:52):
that had perhaps the most terrifying moment of my child.
Of course.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, I was large March was a couple's costume, and
my girlfriend she was pee wee. I was large March,
and I took glasses and we cut like two styrofoam
spheres and hot glued them to you know, where the
eyes would be, and just put a dot in the
middle of each one and walked around with my mouth
open and these huge eyes.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
It's pretty horrifying. That's put that in the show notes
too along if you're all.

Speaker 5 (14:22):
See that's way scarier than mine. The Britain is all
of a sudden a hot property, and so he's pulled
into script development for the movie Batman. But while Warner
Brothers was happy to pay him to tinker on the script,
they were a lot less willing to greenlight the film,
so he still didn't have a next project. He said

(14:45):
to The Independent in twenty eighteen. I was being offered
any bad comedy. It was a case of you do
a bad comedy, you get offered all of the bad comedies.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
He's Batman?

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Is Tim Burns Batman rather the one that Prince did
the soundtrack for her? Yes, I just learned because I
was working on something about Prince. Uh. The only reason
he took that job was because he had a crush
on Compassenger.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think I didn't.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
He tried to record an album with him, yeah, and
it was terrible and he shelved it because she is
not a singer.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
She's active.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
I was just reading on about Tim Burton's time at Disney.
He was such a square peg in a round hole
there that he became visibly depressed at work.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
He slept in a closet while he was there, and
another new animator, Andreas Dea, was teamed with him to
essentially try and get it to speed. That's the guy
who did the concept art for Beast.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
I was gonna say, I thought I thought he also
did the the chest hair for guests.

Speaker 6 (15:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, so you worked on Beauty and the Beast, But yeah, imagine,
imagine you're you're you're like a young upstart at Disney,
and you get this Robert Smith looking guy who's been
falling asleep in closets because he's so depressed, and they're like, yeah, ah,
make it, make it work. So anyway, the original script
for Beetlejuice was written by a guy named Michael McDowell,

(16:07):
who is quite has a bit of a career as
like a horror author. I didn't read too much about
everything that he's done, but among this, he wrote the
script for The Jar, which was an episode of Alfred
Hitchcock Presents that was directed by Burton. Funnily enough, the
original draft for this was out there. Beetlejuice was a
winged demon and his human appearance was that of a

(16:31):
Middle Eastern man. He avowedly wanted to just kill the
Deats family and not just scare him. And the accident,
you know, spoilers for a thirty year old film. The
Maitlands die in the in like the opening minutes of
the film, and that was I think they died in
a house fire. Their death was very graphic. Oh no,

(16:52):
I'm sorry. Lydia was going to die in a fire
and and be a dead ghost daughter to the Maitlands
and Beetlejuice wanted to rape her. So that was the
original script that they were working with, and it was
so bad or so whatever that Larry Wilson, who's the
guy who has a story by credit on it, has
talked to in an interview about bringing this first draft

(17:14):
to an executive at Universal who told him, you're developing
into a very good executive. You've got grace, taste and material.
Why are you going to squander all that for this
piece of shit.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
This is reminding me of the fact that, like the
movie Cool Runnings, the Jamaican Bob Sledding movie had a
way darker original script that had I didn't know, yeah
one of them was going to get hooked on smack
or something, Oh yeah, Oh no, it was the screenwriter

(17:48):
who was hooked on smack while he was writing it,
and the original script was way darker as a result. So,
oh my god, I cannot even imagine this movie. We
could have gone this guy or could never have got
this guy. Michael McDowell was once blurbed by Stephen King
is the finest writer of paperback originals in America today

(18:10):
and one of his last His unfinished novel was finished
by Stephen King's wife, Tabitha King.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
So go Figure. He also wrote Okay, So Good Bone.
He also wrote the novelization of the film Clue.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
I love how much you love your novelization?

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Oh Man, I was a big novelization kid ground Lade. Yeah,
that book taught me how to curse.

Speaker 5 (18:37):
So.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Larry Wilson's other gig was teaching extension courses at UCLA
and they had like a script he was in. He
ran like a script development class and through a young
woman taking that class, whose name is Marjorie Lewis. She
was a development executive at the Geffen Film Company and
in early eighty five Wilson Larry Wilson brought Marjorie Lewis

(18:58):
the script for Beetlejuice and asked her to read it,
and she said she was blown away, she said to
the ringer in twenty eighteen, and so much so that
she dropped it on the desk of the then Geffen
president Eric Eisner and told told him that she would
quit if they didn't buy it, and they did. Just

(19:19):
as Burton was wrapping production on Pee's Big Adventure for
Warner Brothers, The Geffen Film Division's parent company. So it's
a case of a lot of the timelines converging. And
Burton told Rolling Stone in nineteen eighty eight and a
feature for the making of Beetlejuice. The things that interest
me most are the things that potentially won't work. A
lot of people have ragged on the story of Beetlejuice,

(19:41):
but when I read it, I thought, Wow, this is
sort of interesting. It's very random. It doesn't follow what
I would consider the Spielberg story structure. I guess I
have to watch it more because I'm intrigued by things
that are perverse, Like I was intrigued that there was
no story Jordan take the next ones.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
Burton like the bone of the story, but he jettison
McDowell and Wilson, and he brought on a famed script
doctor named Warren Scarin to bring things more into lineup
with He envisioned Scarin's credited with a lot of punch
ups in the eighties. He helped top Gun with stuff
like the Righteous Brothers scene and rewrites, and he got
Tom Cruise back on board with romance and more emotional

(20:20):
development for Maverick. Because I guess Tom Cruise just wanted
to be flying the large planes. Past plans excuse Me,
the less successful follow up to Fast Car, and also
burnished Jack Nicholson's joker dialogue for Tim Burton's Batman movie.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Burton met Scarin in Austin in.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
Nineteen eighty six or nineteen eighty seven and spent a
weekend banding about ideas for the film of Beetlejuice. Scarin
introduced music to the film. He recommended that Lydia sing
Percy Sledge is when a man loves a woman at
the end of the film, and they also arrived at
the Afterlife as a vision of a dull bureaucracy, and
they Beatle Juice is more of an annoying trickster character

(21:02):
than you know, a winged demon who's killing and raping.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
And did he eat I feel like he ate something
that he shouldn't have eaten. In one of the early drafts,
maybe not.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Did you guys see that the tweet or image macro
meme or whatever that was Like, that's dating myself even
calling an image macro. That was just a picture of
like Beetlejuice and Jim Carrey and dumb and dumber. And
then in the mask, and it was like you used
to be able to make movies on a premise of
what if a guy was just really annoying?

Speaker 3 (21:31):
What was They mentioned earlier that Tim Burton was saying
that he didn't think that the early script of Beetlejuice
followed a Spielberg's story structure.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (21:40):
A good one, like a conventional, conventional one.

Speaker 5 (21:45):
It has a beginning in the middle and an end. Yeah,
and something with a father and a son. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
The main characters don't die in a car crash in
the first ten minutes.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
So bolstering up the script of Beetlejuice, which again needed
a lot of work, took a lot of work. For
a lot of time on Beetlejuice, I felt like I
was in court giving depositions Tim Burton to all the
independent I remember having script meetings that lasted for like
twenty four hours over the course of two days. By
the end of it, we were questioning every element and hilariously,

(22:17):
Warner Brothers just wanted to call the project house Ghosts.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
But Tim Burton.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Nearly had an aneurysm when, as a joke he suggested
Scared Sheetless and they wanted to go with that.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
That's I mean, Scared sheetless, that's fun. Scared sheetless is better.
But yeah, he's talked about in I think I forget
which interview. He doesn't give very many big in depth interviews,
but yeah, at one point, House Ghosts is just that
sounds like something.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
We would pitch on that I'm not getting or no.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Just a low effort. It sounds like something that we
would pitch as a joke, you know, one thing that
I've never been.

Speaker 5 (23:00):
I mean, it's kind of like house Guests, Oh sure,
but not close enough.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, it's like not enough.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
Yeah, such a fine line between stupid and clever.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
House guests and fish smelling after three days?

Speaker 5 (23:13):
Is that?

Speaker 3 (23:14):
That?

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Isn't that? That?

Speaker 4 (23:15):
That?

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Similarly something? Anyway, the movie could have even been even weirder, though,
if Tim Burton had gotten his initial casting choice.

Speaker 5 (23:23):
I just want to point out that Heigel has titled
this section I myself am Strange and Unusual. I love that.
So Burton's initial choice for the title role was Sammy
Davis Junior, which I'm.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Just saying out loud sounds like a try.

Speaker 5 (23:38):
And in response, David Geffen reacted poorly. Burton said in
an interview that when he pitched Sammy Davis Junior, that
was the first time I ever heard crickets chirp chip. So,
after ranting to Burton and Marjorie Lewis about why that
would not work, David Geffen responded with Michael Keaton, which,

(24:03):
it's it feels odd to me, like I get it.
At the same time, it feels odd to like, that's
that's a weird card move.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (24:12):
So like like I see your Sammy Davis Junior and
I raised I'm raising you, Michael Keaton. Mister I'm raising you,
mister mom. So uh odd move. Keaton had a strong
start of the decade with his hits like Night Shift
in nineteen eighty two Mister Mom in eighty three, but

(24:33):
more recently had anchored the underwhelming and underperforming Touch and
Go and a movie called Gung Ho in eighty six
and a movie called The Squeete in eighty seven. Nope,
no idea. I have not seen any of these movies,
and Keaton barely seemed to want to do it either.
He turned down the role twice, telling The Independent, I

(24:53):
didn't quite get it and I wasn't looking to work
with That's some stones. Yeah, before accepting the role. Finally,
I didn't understand what he was talking about, Keaton said
to Charlie Rose in twenty fourteen. I said, I wish
I could do it. You seem like a really nice guy,
and I know that you're creative, but I don't get it.

(25:15):
Funnily enough, producers also considered Producers also considered Dudley Moore.
Can you imagine that a Dudley Moore beetlejuice?

Speaker 4 (25:26):
I mean, I Dudley Moore was in a movie.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
He was in the original Bedazzled in the sixties with
Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore was like kind of the
nebeshy guy the Devil screws with But I could almost
if you reframe it as like kind of like an
English trickster.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
What was the movie with Phoebe Kate's and Rick Mayol.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
Oh uh dropped dead Fred dropped Fred?

Speaker 4 (25:47):
Yeah, I almost see that. I could almost see that working.

Speaker 5 (25:51):
I can. I can see that as this is like
the weird upside down version of what's the famous Dudley
Moore movie Arthur?

Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, like the upside down version of Arthur. So
producers were considering ally more and also comedian and also
comedian Sam Kinnison.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
That would have been awful.

Speaker 5 (26:12):
That would have immediately managers supposedly never bothered to inform
Sam Kinnison of the studio's interest. I imagine when Kennison
finally learned about it, he screamed.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
About that probably would have immediately consigned this to the
dust be dustbin of history. Can you imagine how.

Speaker 5 (26:30):
Oh absolueting he would have been in this, like just
completely one note, yeah, jacked.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Out of his mind, like, h no.

Speaker 5 (26:40):
Don't judge as hate it, what that happens.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Good move, Sam Kinison's manager circa nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
Thank you for saving us all from a terrible fate.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Well, back to Michael Keaton, I'm legally obligated to mention
the fact that Michael Keaton's first show business job was
working for mister Rogers as a stagehand. Oh yeah, he's
been in a bunch of like Mister Rogers specials and documentaries.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
I think it was like Katy, that's so cute, right,
And I also.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Didn't realize until watching a like a that I think
it was on Amazon or something, a docu series on
the comedy store Famous Club in la. I had no
idea that he was a stand up that was like
came up with the same class with David Letterman and
Jay Leno and all those people in the late seventies.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I didn't think. I don't think I knew he was
from Pittsburgh.

Speaker 5 (27:31):
That's wild, that's your takeaway. Yes, More importantly so, Burton
was talking to The Independent in that aforementioned interview and said,
Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton is a maniac, a live wire,
and he's got these he's got those great eyes, and
a lot of the stuff in the film was improvised.

(27:53):
I would go over to Michael's house and the two
of us would come up with jokes. It was really
fun because we were essentially creating a carearacter. And this
improvisation that the two of them had going on in
pre pro continued on set, with Keaton telling Rolling Stone,
you show up on the set and you just go
it was rave acting. You rage for twelve or fourteen hours,

(28:17):
and then you go home tired and beat and exhausted.
It was pretty damned cathartic. He also added, I started
thinking about my.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
Hair, my acting choices.

Speaker 5 (28:31):
I wanted my hair to stand out like I was
wired and plugged in, and once I started getting at
I actually made myself laugh and I thought, well, this
is a good sign. This is kind of funny. And
then I got the attitude. And once I got the
basic attitude, it really started to roll. Despite all of that,
he only filmed for about two weeks, which that's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, of the ad libbing, he said. Alec Baldwin said
that the part where he goes, he like hawks up
a loogie and spits it into the inside of his
jacket and then pats it and says, oh, I'll save
that one for later, a like Paulman said he almost
choked when he saw him do that.

Speaker 5 (29:08):
And it's such an aside too, It's such a throwaway joke.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (29:14):
The first thing I remember writing about the character, or
saying to Keaton about the character was he SCRATCHO Marx
from Hell. Yeah, which h That quote comes from Larry
Wilson to Yahoo. He was supposedly also said elsewhere that
he was inspired by Bill Moseley's performance as chop Top,
one of the murderous Reds in the Texas Chainsaw him

(29:37):
ask her too, which actually.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
It makes entirely too much sense, and it's really funny
because it would have come out like right around that time.
And uh, Texas chainsawm Asacer too is such a wild
departure from the first one in terms of it's going
for like this really insane It's basically where Rob Zombie
his in his entire career from It's going for this

(30:02):
really fun house demented comedy. The poster was famously a
parody of the Breakfast Club poster, and Bill Moseley is
so obnoxious in that movie, and like, it's so funny.
It's so perfect to me that that Michael Kean would
have seen it and been like, yeah, I wanna I'm
gonna do that, am.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
I go Keat have a coke problem? Just watching this
movie kind of makes me think maybe it's possible.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
It's apparently in the musical, apparently, one of the things
in the musical that critics didn't like was Beatletice does
a line they thought that was in poor taste.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
So Oscar winning makeup artist v Neil said that when
she first copied some of Burton's sketches of the character
on to Keaton, the results were actually too scary and
not silly enough. We've talked a lot about Burton has
talked a lot about German Expressionism, but the film of
such a punchline these days. Portlandy has a whole sketch
about people getting it from Netflix and never watching it

(31:23):
as the cabinet of Doctor Kligari. And in that movie
you see the big like grease paint circles around the eyes,
and so that was and the vertical lines of the suit.
There's also parts of the architecture in the Afterlife that
have the sort of canted hallway angles descending into the distance.

(31:43):
So that was. It's a through line in all of
Burton's career, but this was, I think more than Pee Wee,
the first movie where he really got to flex that
as an influence. So they did make some changes. They
went with pale yellow makeup bordering on white for his skin,
green hair dye for the wig, purple and brown makeup

(32:03):
for the giant under eye circles, and one very specific
tool to make him look like he had mold on him.
Because Keaton and Burton decided that Beetlejuice lived under rocks
new recalled Diyahoo. I sent a pao off to the
hobby store and I said, get me some crushed green
foam like they use on model kits for moss and
stuff like that. I said, we'll put some moss in

(32:25):
his hair. We'll just make it look like he crawled
out from underneath a rock. So I got this crushed
green foam and I painted up the areas where I
wanted it to come out. I wanted it to look
like it was creeping out from underneath his hairline and
his neck and stuff. I just stuck it on wherever
the glue was. Hollywood gluing hobby foam onto your lead actor. Keaton,
for some reason, also wanted Beetlejuice to have a broken nose,

(32:47):
but the makeup team didn't have any prosthetic noses. But
what they did have were prosthetic lips, so they just
put fake lips on either side of his nose to
make it look more bulbous. And one of Burton's gnostic
proclamations to Keaton that the character of Beetlejuice lived in

(33:07):
every time period but was of no time period. So
Keaton got his wardrobe for the character by saying, to
wardrobe the wardrobe department, he said, just send me a
rack of stuff from every time period, like literally a
whole rack, and I will just mix and match.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
And when he said and and he I think he
said in a different interview that when he came on
to set for the first time, he was worried that
he'd pushed it too far with h with the look,
and the crowd just or the crew just started chanting
juice at him, which maybe they thought OJ was there
that day. But that joke on the land, okay, you were,

(33:47):
You're just giving it space to breathe.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
I was, Yeah, you know, it's like an Annie Hall
when the Woody Allen snorts the earth, sneezes and blows
the cocaine everywhere.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
They got such a huge laugh in theaters that they.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Do in the roll of Palm Trees or something afterwards,
because it was stepping on the next line in the
next scene.

Speaker 4 (34:06):
Yeah, that's what I was doing.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Test audience has responded so well to Michael Keaton, who
amazingly doesn't appear in this movie until forty five minutes
and is only on screen for something like twenty minutes
that audience has actually rejected the original ending that had
him trapped in the Maitland's model home and plagued by sandworms,
so a newer, more comedic ending with him in the
afterlife waiting room was filmed.

Speaker 5 (34:29):
Where he gets his headstrong.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, I had that act sorry, I had that action
figure of him at the shrunken head. And another fun fact,
the legs he's like seated in between a woman who
has been bisected. I think she's supposed to be like
a magician's assistant who died in an on stage accident.
And the legs are played by Tim Burton's then girlfriend,
which you know we'll get to this later. But Tim

(34:53):
Burton must be slinging some dong like you wouldn't believe
because that guy punches above his weight. Man girlfriend is
Monica friggin' Baluchi. I'm telling you, Tim Burton, monster dong.
You heard it here first on tm I that's our

(35:15):
pool quote monster dong. It's probably just also like a
nice guy. Jordan, what are your thoughts on Tim Burton's
monster dong.

Speaker 5 (35:24):
That's what played the sadles.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Actually, I was not able to find out if those
are obvious dune rip. But they seem like an obvious
dune rip, not just because Lydia comes back in riding
it at the end The Desert Planet Giant Worms feels
like maybe I just see dune and everything.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
No, I think that this one is pretty plainly obvious.
That is funny that she would be the Shaihlu Paul.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Now I'm just looking at like those goals that are
like I'm looking on right now.

Speaker 4 (36:02):
From the Clever dot Com.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Fifteen Beautiful women who fell in love with Uguy.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
I didn't say he was ugly. I just said he's
punching above his weight. I knew what it meant.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy, Polina post Cova.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Oh Rick okask that was a crazy one. Yeah, dude
looked like a praying mantis.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
A lot of these are like old rock stars like
Ronnie Wood who are married to like twenty five year
old ballerinas.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
That's not fair. Samahayak and a guy who looks like
Gene Hackman.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Oh, but that dude's like that dude's like loaded, he's
like a billionaire. I think Samahayak's husband.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Sure, but okay, Julia Roberts and I love it a
guy no, butly love it was going to be my
runner up, Amber Tamblin and David Cross, Christina Hendricks and
that guy who was uh the Snosberry's tastes like strashberries
from Super Chip.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
What's his name? Uh? Jeffrey arnand Kristen.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Bell and Dax Shepherd, Mary kay Olsen and Sarko Si.

Speaker 5 (37:10):
Dax Shepherd is not a bad looking.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Guy, Mary, Tina Fey and a guy who looks like
Peter Dinklage. Oh, Pat Mlachchi paup Mlachchie was with Salmon
rush Down. I didn't know that post Fatwa and number
one on this list Cafain Sated Jones and Michael Douglas.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas was swinging some hog in the eighties.

Speaker 5 (37:37):
Oh absolutely he the Gordon Gotcoke. Come on. So the
role of the goth teenager Lydia dets I'm jumping on
this please. The role of the god teenager Lydia Deads
was difficult to fill as well, so also up for
the role was Sarah Jessica Parker. I have a lot
to say about that Brookshields Jennifer Connelly would have killed this,

(38:01):
and Molly ringwol All turned down the role. Juliette Lewis
auditioned for the part. She would have been good.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
She does too much.

Speaker 5 (38:11):
But the person who got closest to it and didn't
get it was Alyssa Milano, who admitted to a Huff
Pust Live in twenty sixteen that she really wanted that part.
He can't have it. It was between the two of us,
and Wenona Ryder actually got the part. I always wonder
what would have happened differently in my life had that
worked out. Not that I would want it to be

(38:31):
any different, but it's just an interesting thought game. I
believe you. Burton had just seen sixteen year old Winona
Ryder debut in the nineteen eighty six coming of Age
story Lucas. In an interview with Marie Clare, Ryder said
that she was bullied at school before her film career,
and that she had hoped that her appearance and Beetlejuice

(38:53):
would make her more popular. It did not. I remember thinking, oh,
it's like the number one movie. This is going to
make things great at school. But it made things worse.
They called me a witch. It's so funny. I know,
it's so sad for her. The writer Larry Wilson revealed
in an oral history for CBC Radio that he found

(39:15):
inspiration for Lydio while seeing again Robert Smith is going
to just be a tertiary character throughout this entire episode. Uh.
He found inspiration for Lydia while seeing the Cure perform
in concert and looking at the young woman, looking at
the young women in the audience, which, of.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Course, I just want to shout out Mermaids with Menana
Ryder and you.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Love that movie.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
I mean share that movie. Oh my god, you've this.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
You've mentioned that movie quite a lot.

Speaker 5 (39:45):
Actually, I know.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
You just saying, just saying, uh.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
Have you have you not seen it?

Speaker 2 (39:51):
I'm not in yours?

Speaker 4 (39:53):
Oh it holds up is great.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Angelica Houston was initially cast as the Deets Families art
damaged May Triarch, but dropped out due to illness. So
Katherine O'Hara and the Great Katherine O'Hara, who also initially
passed on the part.

Speaker 4 (40:07):
Nobody wanted to be in this goddamn movie.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
She came on board when Tim Burton flew out to
meet with her personally. Burton later told The Independent the
only person who initially really wanted to do it was
Gina Davis, though it did end up working out for
Katherine O'Hara, who met and eventually married production designer.

Speaker 4 (40:23):
Bo Welsh while working on Beetlejuice.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, apparently the scene of Beetlegees eats the Fly is
a wink at the fact Gina Davis, who had been
in The Fly. Oh, super funny to me. That's great. Yeah,
I love the fact that she was the only one
who was like gung ho for this.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
Katherine O'Hara has a pretty great anecdote about her non
audition for Beetlejuice. She's talking to The New Yorker very
recently said, I've been asked to audition for Beetlejuice. I
had all these calls with David Geffen, who was a producer.
I didn't know him at the time. Out of ignorance,
I was like, who is this guy? Keeps bugging me,
keeps calling and saying this is the part for you,

(41:01):
you should be doing this. He kept calling. Then they
said they wanted me to meet this guy, Tim Burton.
I didn't know Tim Burton. And finally I was depressed
at home and I had nothing going.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
I said, okay, I'll go to audition, I'll go meet him.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
I was so sad that I decided to meet. That's
an incredible metric for depression. So she flew to la
from Toronto and I rented a car. She said the
address was in Burbank. I drove for hours.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
I thought, what.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Kind of director is this far from show business? I
was so late, I got lost. There was no cell phone.
I had to pull over somewhere and find a phone
booth and phone my agent. Finally, two hours late, I
got to Burbank. There was a note on the door
from Tim Burton. It said I'm sorry. I waited as
long as I could. I go back home the Toronto
and a few weeks later they offered me the.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Part that turned out well for her. Funnily enough, though,
Geena Davis, despite being stoked on the film, wasn't Burton's
initial choice for the character of Barbara Maitland. I've read
that Kirsty Alley was and that she couldn't get out
of her Cheers contract to shoot. But adorably, this was
the first set on which Geena Davis's parents got to

(42:13):
actually come see her work. The Beetlejuice was shot in Vermont,
and her parents lived close enough by that they came
and visited her on set, bearing baked goods for Gina
to distribute to the rest of the cast. She wrote
this in her memoir, and then an assistant director used
her parents as extras in a scene to keep them busy.

(42:37):
It is adorable. Alec Baldwin, who plays the other half
of the Maitland's, did not have high hopes for the film.
He was talking about to GQ and he said, when
we did Beetlejuice, I had no idea what it was about.
I thought, my all of our careers are going to
end with the release of this film. Maybe we're all
going to be dead. Hilario. Oh, yeah, that has an

(42:59):
aged Yeah, Balbin's a prick. Yes. Tim Burton then proceeded
to stack the rest of the cast with his favorite
celebrities from bygone eras sixties crooner Robert Goulay and talk
show host Dick Cavett. Robert Goulay are given roles as
the deep snobby friends, and Burton hounded Hollywood silver age

(43:21):
actress Sylvia Sidney incessantly until she agreed to play the salty,
undead social worker Juno.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
I just want to like praise the fact that you
just said Sylvia Sidney incessantly.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
I'm a damn professional. Her appearance in Mars Attacks a
few years later in nineteen ninety six was her last role,
so she and she made friends with Tim Burton. There's
a piece about the making a beetlejuice for the Ringer
and one someone recalls Sylvia Sidney opening a gift basket
she'd gotten from the hotel Wild Chain smoking and just exclaiming,

(43:55):
what the am I supposed to do with a pineapple?
Jordan take Dick cavit, I know you love Dick Cavitt.

Speaker 5 (44:00):
I love Dick.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Cot Dickkeviott actually saved the day when making this movie.
It was when they were filming the iconic dinner scene.
He told Yahoo that Tim Burton was running in a
difficulty getting the final shots in which the shrimp cocktail
turns into hands. Oh, they grabbed the guests and hosts
faces into their bowls. Because SFX workers were under the
table and couldn't actually see who they were grabbing, they

(44:23):
kept missing their marks.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
So Dick Kevitt suggested they film that.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Part in reverse, and Bert thought that was a great
idea and decided.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
To do just that.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
He filmed some takes of the hands grabbing the stars
faces then lowering back down into the table, and then
I don't know who this is, Sogel tell us about
Jeffrey Jones.

Speaker 5 (44:40):
Oh do we have to talk Jeffrey Jones.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
Jeffrey Jones.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Higel tell us about the pediast. Jeffrey Jones, the actor
who plays Lydia's dad and, perhaps more famously, the dean
in Ferris Bueller. Oh yeah. He was arrested for possession
of chod pornography in two thousand and two and accused
of a seventeen year old boy who is fourteen at
the time. The offense allegedly occurred of trying to get

(45:04):
the jeffreyed wanted to take some bathing suit area pictures
of this youth. Jones.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
Can I just say, sometimes you can judge a book
buck cover.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
He does have that aura about him. Jones pleaded no
contest to a charge of soliciting a minor and the
misdemeanor charge of possession of child bornography was dropped, But
despite getting off relatively lightly with a five year probationary period.
He was arrested twice for failing to update his sex
offender status, first in Florida in two thousand and four

(45:38):
and then six years later in California. So folks watch
out for Jeffrey Jones. He could be anywhere.

Speaker 5 (45:47):
We should have cut that off at the pass and
just arrested him after Howard the Duck. Oh god, so
that unpleasantness aside. Moving on, Principal photography on Beetled began
March eleventh, nineteen eighty seven. Beatlejuice's budget was fifteen million dollars,

(46:07):
with just one million dollars given over to visual effects work, which,
knowing the visual effects in this movie, that is very
surprising to me, considering the scale and scope of the effects,
which included stop motion, replacement, animation, prosthetic makeup, popetry, blue screen.
It was always Burton's intention to make the style similar
to the B movies that he grew up with as

(46:29):
a child. He said, I wanted to make them look
cheap and purposely fake looking, he said to Mark Shapiro
in eighty eight, we went big and more personal with them.
What people will see are effects that are, in a
sense a step backwards. They're crude, they're funky, but they're
also very personal. Oh, case in point, the animatronic snake

(46:50):
that attacks them, that the banister that turns into a
snake was actually built before Keaton was cast. Producers were
concerned that the audiences wouldn't connect that the snake was
simply a random monster, so they had to pivot and
outfit it with a brand new head that looks like
Heaton as Beetlejuice. And then they reshot it.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, they for the scene of the Maitlance come back
into their home after drowning and realize they don't have
any reflections. They just reversed the set, like they pulled
the wall back around that they just moved one of
the walls back so that they could film it through
the mirror. It's just really like just old timey like

(47:30):
they would do, you know, back in back in the day,
Tim Burton had wanted to hire a guy named Anton
First as production designer after being impressed with his work
on Neil Jordan's pre Crying Game masterpiece, The fairy Tale
sex drama The Company of Wolves Fairytale were Wolf sex Drama,

(47:51):
I should say, and also full metal Jacket another movie
you may have heard of, although first was committed elsewhere,
and so Burton went with Bo Welch. This turned out
to be a fruitful collaboration. The pair continued to work
together on Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns. But Welch told Uprocks,
when I met Tim, it was like a breath of
fresh air in terms of liberating me from dreary realism.

(48:14):
He would push me towards German expressionism and reference other movies.
He was always a fan of the old horror movies,
but he would view them with a sense of humor
in that period. When you try and wrap your head
around his aesthetic, you learn it was a fantastic experience
that I changed the way I approach movies from then on.

Speaker 5 (48:30):
I'm really curious, Heigel, because I think among the three
of us, you are the horror movie connoisseur. So can
you maybe talk about like Burton as like sort of
a con do it?

Speaker 2 (48:44):
It is interesting like.

Speaker 5 (48:45):
The person like he's the filmmaker too horror movies, as
like Tarantino is to Grindhouse.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
He isn't. I don't think he's he he comes from
I think he's of the age that he missed the
Eindhause stuff because not a lot of his movies have
that really nasty seventies sensibility. He's definitely like an atomic
age fifties b guy. And I think it's an interesting

(49:13):
divide because even though he's sort of the same age
as some of the people who we associate with the
big seventies auteur era of horror, like John Carpenter and
Wes Craven, there's it's just like they were freshmen when
he was a senior or vice versa thing, because like
their set of influences just so different. Even though you know,

(49:35):
a lot of people talk about German expressionism like, oh,
you know, I really wanted to use the angles you
find in German expressionism. And also, like you know, another
big one is Night of the Hunter. Like if you
talk to Scratch any like six horror directors and they'll
five of them will say, well, I'm really influenced by
the lighting and use of shadow and Night of the Hunter.
So you see that a lot is the one of

(49:57):
John Carpenter's big John Carpenter, weirdly enough, is obsessed with
and this is what I say, this is why Again,
it's like it's like two roads diverged in a wood.
Because John Carpenter's influences were Westerns. He was obsessed with
Howard Hawks and and Rio Bravo and like the Searchers
and stuff. So again, same period of media, like the

(50:17):
fifties and stuff. Just Tim Burton was like, I like
the flying saucer men pictures and the guys in rubber suits,
and John Carpenter was like, a, you know, I just
like Westerns, but I'll make spooky movies instead of Western.
I don't think he's ever made a pure Western, except
for maybe John Carpenter's Vampires, which is a real piece

(50:38):
of shit. But but Burton is really funny because, you know,
being from California and not from like the dismal industrial
environs that influenced like David Lynch or you know, the
Midwest where everything is just up and sad. I guess

(50:58):
citation needed, sorry to our listeners in the Midwest. You know,
you get that like lounge fifties lounge vibe and like
rayon shirts and and you know, vibraphone music instead of
instead of like slasher stuff, Like I could never imagine
Tim Burton doing a slasher even something like Sleepy Hollow,

(51:21):
which is probably as close as he would ever actually
get to that is so much more informed by like, uh,
like a hammer horse exactly, Gothic hore, and that's the
big thing that people. Yeah, he's probably I would. I mean,
I don't think I've read interviews where he's talked about,
but I wager this hammer sixties stuff was a big
thing for him as well. People in frock coats.

Speaker 5 (51:42):
Yeah, I'm thinking now about the aesthetics of like Edward
Sissar Hands, the the pastel houses.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, the just the California vibe. Yeah, it's Orange County
by way of you know, Transylvania. So to find the
fictional town of Winter River, Connecticut, in which Beetlejuice is set,
early on in production, Tim Burton, production designer Bo Welch
and line producer Richard Hashmoto went location scouting in Vermont, and,

(52:11):
in bow Welch's words, they drove aimlessly from one end
of Vermont to the other. Eventually we went into a
couple of bookstores or gas stations and kept seeing this
postcard over and over for this little town called East Corinth, Vermont.
We saw at enough times where we thought, well, that
one looks great. Art director Tim Duffield finished interior sets
in Los Angeles and then flew to East Corinth to

(52:33):
dress the town and construct the Maitland's home. The hardest
part of all this was that they couldn't find a
town that had a covered bridge, like your classic archetypal
New England covered bridge thing, so they just built one
and the weather did not cooperate. Duffield said, we kept
having thunderstorms. We had to build a big dam to
control the water level, and a thunderstorm would come by

(52:55):
and blow it all away. But the town still has
a lot of the stuff that we left there, just
like filming in Uh, what was it Nambia or No Tunisia,
Star Wars Jordan, Take Us Home.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
Welsh and Duffield.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Also described their vision of the afterlife as quote the
d m V. Through a German expressionist lens Uh, Welsh
came up with the concept of the Johnson Wax Building
in Oklahoma, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
Uh. With these posts that were spread out at the top.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
They look like golf They look like golf tee built
in They look like if this in this building, it
just looks like they're they're they're you know, pillars that
are skinny at the bottom and blossom at the top,
and it just looks like the whole interior is supported
by golf teas and.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
Those are all built in, but they're also extended by
a matte painting. And I love how much you love
ment painting. In describing special effects, and is that your
favorite film special effect?

Speaker 2 (53:52):
It's either that or the smoke tank. I do love that.
I love the smoke tank. The smoke tank looks bad
once you start see what were we just talking about
that Raiders Traders encounter. It's in it's the opening credits
and the thing, right, I love a smoke tank.

Speaker 4 (54:11):
That's for why most of the dead are like, you know,
kind of candy colored.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Tim Burton one of them to look like neck A
wafers from of the Pod. Neck A wafers made from
my hometown Boston, Massachusetts, went out of business, stopped making them,
and then somebody paid like five bucks and now they
have the rights to make them, and they're like trying
to rebuild the factory in Boston. There's a little place
called Necho Lane, a truly discussed in.

Speaker 5 (54:37):
Candy Yes Delicious Chalk flavored Catechism wafers.

Speaker 4 (54:43):
Is it candy flavored chalk or chalk flavored candy?

Speaker 5 (54:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Journal, which it's your Boston assid Yeah yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:51):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (54:52):
Fun fact.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Welch's sculptures he created for Delia have proven so iconic
that people have already stolen them off the set of
the currently Shoot sequel.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I tried and so hard to find an interview with
him where he talks about what he was influenced by
for those sculptures. I could not find it. Very bummed
about it, but they are iconic for anyone who if
you know you know Lydia deeds shouts.

Speaker 5 (55:18):
If you insist on scaring people, do it with your sculpture.
So getting the mainitlans to their caseworker in the afterlife
proved to be confusing. We just couldn't figure it out, uh,
screenwriter Larry Wilson told The Independent. I kept coming up
with more convoluted ways that they could escape the house,
and Michael would just sit there and say, no, no, no.

(55:41):
I finally got really mad and said, what do you
want them to do? Drawn effing door. We just started
laughing because that was perfect. And if you recall from
the movie that's exactly what they do.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Is that also what she does in pans Labyrinth.

Speaker 5 (55:56):
I think you're right, and it must be said in
Wes's Wordswards the end of the movie, Tim told me
we were shooting Vermont, you should ask Catherine out, And
I said what he said, Yeah, you should ask her out.
It didn't even occur to me that I was even
supposed to talk to the actors, But since Tim told
me to, I did, and then we dated and we're

(56:18):
married and we're here today. So good on you, I know.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
If nothing else, Beetlejuice gave us the happy marriage of
Catherine O'Hara and Bo Welch. I love that, but it's
adorable as you meditate on that. We'll be right back
with more too much information after these messages, Jordan, I

(56:52):
know you've I know you want to do this.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
I've been waiting for this. Yes, Iigel's title of the section.
Come mister Tallyman telling me banana. And that's because we're
going to talk about one of my favorite people, Harry Belafonte.
Where we Jude and I were just talking about Harry
Belafonte earlier today.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
Oh yes, the clip on the Smothers Brothers.

Speaker 5 (57:10):
Yes, of the the beatings in Chicago in sixty eight famous,
like not just as a singer, but as a civil
rights icon, the same.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
Level of activism considering just how straight laced mainstream everything
was back then. So also we learned, as we learned
in our Weird of the World episode Architect of the
We Are the World charity single. So I mean, you know,
pound for Palm, and you really think about probably raised
more money for charity than Geez, I mean anyone on

(57:47):
the short list of celebrities, I'd have to say, So
we take that belt off, take that bono, but we're
going to investigate right now. The most iconic scene and Beetlejuice,
in which the Maitland's turn a dinner party into a
show's stopping possession jazz Hands thanks to Harry Belafonte's Dao
the Banana Boat song.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Can you can either one of you give us a
give us a day?

Speaker 5 (58:14):
I'm sorry that was.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Daylight, gom on muon. Just watching that come out of it,
Just watching that come out of Catherine, her hair's face
and her performance, like she deserves an Oscar for that
scene alone, just the way that she's like shocked by it.
It's a perfect scene.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Now for the song itself, it dates back in nineteen
fifty two. The Caribbean singer Edrick Connor recorded it first,
calling it.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Day da Light, day Light, Day da Light.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
But it's obviously a Harra Belafonte's song in the popular consciousness.
So in nineteen eighty six, David Geffen, remember the producer
behind this film that at least owns ran the studio
that produced it, called Harry personally and explain the film
to him. Belafonte later told Pitchfork in twenty eighteen, I
never had a request like that before we talked briefly.

Speaker 4 (59:16):
I liked the idea of Beetlejuice. I liked him. No
one said that about David Gafore I agreed to do it.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
What was particularly attractive was that he wanted to use
my voice.

Speaker 5 (59:28):
I want, I desperately want a Yeah Dunes to be
a fly on that wall.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
A man who has done nothing for charity as far
as no, I don't, maybe he has. Bellefonte's songs are
used all throughout Beetlejuice. During the opening scene, Alec Baldwin
listens to Sweetheart from Venezuela and Truly thereafter dances to
man Smart, Woman Smarter, before the real estate broker interrupts,

(59:57):
and after the couple realized they're dead, plays faintly as
Geena Davis flips through the handbook for the recently deceased,
planting the song in viewers' heads. And then, of course,
Manona Ryders celebrates acing a math test by having her
ghost parents possessor so she can sing jump in the
line Shake Senora, which is a song that Heigel requests

(01:00:18):
that I play when I DJ his wedding two years ago, and.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
It killed and it killed. Yes. So the addition in
the original script for that dinner party Possession There wasn't
even supposed to be music. Screenwriter Larry Wilson told Pitchfork
that when he and McDowell their concept for the dinner
party seems that one of the guests spilled a glass
of wine on a rug with a floral design, and
then that the rug sprouted vines and wrapped up the guests,

(01:00:43):
which is, you know, visually appealing, doesn't have quite the
same verve. So the addition of the music is believed
to have been the work of the punch up writer
we mentioned earlier, Warren Scarren, but he did not envision
it with Harry Belafonte. The dinner scene was supposed to
feature the ink Spots nineteen thirty nine's hit If I
Didn't Care, and as we mentioned earlier, Lydia was supposed
to sing when a Man Loves a Woman at the

(01:01:04):
end of the film.

Speaker 5 (01:01:05):
But uh is that? Sorry? Is that Inkspot's song? Is
that the song that opens up the Shawshank redemption?

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Ooh great pool?

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
You might be right if I did?

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, more than words could say if I
would I feel this way?

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Jordan moving on, Yeah, you're right? Oh yeah, uh so
Geffen exact. Marjorie Lewis, though, told the Ringer that these
songs were prohibitively expensive. Every time somebody heard the words
David Geffen, she said, they raised the price. Jeffrey Jones
told Pitchfork that Catherine O'Hara was the person who suggested

(01:01:46):
Calypso would bring more energy to the siege. Really is
the MVP of this film. Bob Bodami, the film's music editor,
told Pitchfork that Tim Burton worried about the scene a lot.
He didn't think it was very funny, and obviously he
needn't have worried the scene and the film success prompted
a resurgence in Bellefonte's career. He told Pitchfork everywhere I

(01:02:06):
went for about a year, I had kids all over me. Oh,
the guy from Beetlejuice wiping their hands full of tomato,
ketchup and mustard on my clothes. That is not a
quote I made up. That is in the actual article.
I have no idea why that is. His recollection of
his career resurgence following Beetlejuice was children with their hands
full of tomato, ketchup and mustard. But he did say because.

Speaker 5 (01:02:30):
I mean, if you know Bellefonte, he's always dressed.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Yeah, he's always were playing hot dog festivals. But he
said he enjoyed the whole excursion. And when Glenn Shaddick,
who played atho otho Otho, died in twenty ten, they
played Dio at his funeral. Burton ended up battling the

(01:02:56):
studio over that scene. They wanted it cut, but as
we mentioned Earli, they were also agitating for the name
House Ghosts Speaking, which what the hell's going on with
the title this film A thing that I did not
pick up on until I was like a teenager. The
fact that Beetlejuice is named after an actual star in
the Orion constellation, the ninth brightest star in Earth's night sky,

(01:03:20):
by the way, but his name is spelled completely differently.
What's up with that? What's the deal with no not finishing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
The way it's supposed to be spelled? Looks terrible?

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Yeah, way grabbier to be to be Beetlejuice.

Speaker 5 (01:03:33):
The you know, guys, I didn't realize it was a
real place until weirdly recently, because I remember it being
referenced in Hitch Yeah, and I thought that Douglas Satam's
had made that up.

Speaker 4 (01:03:50):
Too, So it does sound like it would have been.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Who wants to take Danny Elfman? I'm gonna cue up
the video special mention must go out, of course, to
Danny Elfman.

Speaker 5 (01:04:00):
The curiously ripped Danny Wright and his work scoring the film,
So Danny Elfman said, I wrote music before I saw
a rough cut of anything. He told he was talking
to GQ. Actually this year, twenty twenty three, I had
a little extra time and thought i'd get started. I
read the script, I wrote a bunch of music and

(01:04:21):
all got thrown away and as soon as I saw it,
I was like, oh, this is not the movie I
was imagining in my head. This is something else completely.

Speaker 6 (01:04:29):
It was a really deceptively hard score to play. I
didn't realize it at the time, just the simplicity of
bottom bottom bom bom b b buttm but really strict times,
so half the brass section going up up, up offbeats
like that, and there's a tendency to want to let
it swing good da doo do do, don't say no
no no no, and poor tuba player is like turning

(01:04:52):
blue without a break, just like on and on and
on and on and on. They tried to record it
in Glenn like for a best of album. The conductor
in England looked at the score and they started playing.
He picked it up and he threw it on the
floor and he said, this is unplayable, and it's like,
I'm enjoying this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Danny Elfman's so annoying. Thank you, okay, I was. I
was waiting for everyone to stop so I could make
I love a lot. I mean, I love Night Member
for Christmas so much, but I listened. I was somehow
I ended up watching like three movies that he scored
right in a row. I think I talked about this
in a different episode, But he has so many ticks

(01:05:40):
that he uses over and over again, and it's like,
I mean, I think of that throwaway gag on Family
Guy where they have him like it like cuts to
him doing like in front of the symphony or whatever,
and too he just goes.

Speaker 5 (01:05:55):
That's enough.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Danny Elfman.

Speaker 5 (01:05:58):
Uh So. Elfman also said I didn't realize in hindsight
how lucky I was that when we did these movies,
nobody was paying attention to us. They were small enough
budgets that we could do them, and nobody from the
studio ever showed up saying can you play some of
the music. There were no presentations. It was just Tim
and I. It was really kind of like two kids

(01:06:21):
in the kindergarten class and the teacher leaves and they're
just like running their own class.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Their friendship is really adorable. I just those two little
weirdos found each other. Danny Elfman with his like closet
of haunted Victorian dolls in his home studio.

Speaker 4 (01:06:36):
Maybe it just thirteen million.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
Beetlejuice went on to grow seventy five million in the
US and spawned an animated series and a stage show
at Universal Studios Theme Park. It also won the Academy
Award for Best Makeup in nineteen eighty nine. So all
worked out for that Moss.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Driver Academy Award winning film Beetlejuice, and.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
It triumphed over some pretty heavy hitters, including Rick Baker's
work for Coming to America.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Which is you know where he's got, Eddie Murphy playing
four got the four guys in the in the barber shop, and.

Speaker 5 (01:07:12):
Our Citia Hall playing multiple characters.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
So the fact that Michael Keaton's Moss makeup one, I
wasn't able to find out who did the prosthetics for
the when they stretch their fate when she stretches her
face into like the bird beak thing, because that's like
one of the more indelible images in that movie for me.

Speaker 4 (01:07:30):
See, And this is a little stuff that I really
as a kid just creepy.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah, but it's like cartoony creepy again orchard Haunted House.

Speaker 5 (01:07:37):
Come on, ah, it is legitimately funny that Alec Baldwin
literally pushes his hand through the back of his head
to give him like like the chicken.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
Yeah yeah, oh man, And I think all of that
was just Tim Burton drawing, like just because that's one
of the other things that Alec Baldwin was like. He
was like, yeah, Tim didn't really give us any direction.
He was just constantly sketching. I would just like look
up from his sketchbook and be like, yeah, uh, just
go back down and keep drawing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
Following the success the Beetlejuice, Water Brothers greenlit Tim Burton's
version of Batman, with Michael Keaton in the lead role
in By nineteen ninety, there was also a public announcement
of a sequel, beele Juice Goes Hole High In, with
Michael Keaton, Monona Ryder, Jeffrey Jones, and Katherine O'Hara all
agreeing to reprise their original roles. But then Warner Brothers,

(01:08:28):
the same folks who wanted to rename it House Ghosts,
offered Tim Burton total creative control on Batman returns.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
And so he and Keaton went off to do that instead.

Speaker 5 (01:08:38):
They chose wisely, and meanwhile in between we got Beetlejuice.
The animated series, which one of the great loves of
my life A not launched in nineteen eighty nine when
I was eight years old and ran for four seasons.
The show followed the wacky adventures of Beetlejuice and Lydia Deets,
who are now on friendlier terms and voice different people.

(01:09:01):
It was actually really well received, winning a Daytime Emmy
that it shared with the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,
and a few of its voice actors later went on
to do voices in Fox's X Men cartoon, which also
ruled Yes, Yes, Yes. Probably the craziest story that we
could find about the animated series is that in nineteen
ninety one, fourteen year old Sharon Chamberlain, who was a

(01:09:25):
fan of Beatle Joos, had an idea for the animated series.
Her first attempt to contact the company behind the show,
which is called Nelvana That's Some Time, was unsuccessful, but
she found contact information for Gevin Pictures and sent her
proposal there. Gevin forded the idea, and Nelvana bought the
pitch frum Her for two hundred and fifty dollars or
about five hundred and sixty dollars in today's money. The

(01:09:47):
episode Brides of Funkenstein, which I think is a p
funk reference, aired as episode nine of season three, so
thank you, Sharon Chamberlin for all of your footwork kind
of ripped her off though, Yeah, yeah, but she lives on.
She's getting that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Oh man, you know I was correct.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
It is p Funk.

Speaker 6 (01:10:11):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
That was previous background singers for Sly and the Family
Stone that George Clinton put together. And one of them,
Lynn Mayby. I thought her name looked familiar.

Speaker 5 (01:10:22):
She is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
One of the backing singers and stopped making sense. So
there's yeah, her and Bernie Worel So there's I love that.
I will forever love the fact that there's two members
of p Funk and Stop making sense.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
That's delight.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
So Beetlejuice too is finally on the way.

Speaker 6 (01:10:42):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
Production began in May, but with the SAG and w
g A strike, who's to say how that's This thing
was originally supposed to come out next year. I don't
think that's gonna happen.

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
It's been written by Seth Graham Smith, the author of
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
Remember when those were things.

Speaker 4 (01:11:05):
The likelihood of this not being terrible just what?

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Yeah? Well, Graham Smith wrote the screenplay on the condition
that Michael Keaton would return. Winona Ryders said to come back,
and so is Tim Burton, and along with them Jenna
Ortega newly minted Scream queen. Jenna Ortega, uh, you know,
best known for Wednesday and her role in the Scream
rebooted Scream franchise justin Throw for some reason, probably taking

(01:11:32):
over the Alec Balbin role. Willem Dafoe, Monica Balucci has
Beatlejuice's wife, and thankfully Catherine O'Hara reprising her role as Delia.
No nobody can do it better and she's still killing it.
It's not like she's retired or anything. She's can I
just say.

Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
One of my biggest memories of the animated series is
that the show would intercut these weird like come Pewter
animated commercials, like from the Afterlife World, like about the show.
One of them was Jean Lafitte's feet Streets for Happy Feats.

(01:12:13):
There was like a whole jingle to go along with it.
It was they were literally like like milk bones that
your feet would eat it. I don't know what, I
do not know why that has stuck in my memory,
but that that's probably somebody's birthday or phone number that
I cannot remember, but I do remember Jean Lafitte's feet

(01:12:33):
streets for Happy Feats.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
That's so funny. Uh yeah, famous kind of on Google Bay.
It is famous French privateer pirate. I think it's a
bar named after him in New Orleans. This sequel is
one of the craziest long awaited things to come out
of Hollywood. Warren scarn And we mentioned was the co

(01:12:56):
writer on the original film finished a script called Beetlejuice
in Love that was actually mentioned in his obituary when
he died. They were like, he's recently complete. He recently
completed his final screenplay for Beetle Juice in Love. That
treatment featured a composer who dies while proposing to his girlfriend,
and then this guy meets Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice, however, immediately falls
in love with his would be fiance and attempts to

(01:13:17):
escape the afterlife to find her. But that is not
even the most famous unproduced Beetlejuice sequel.

Speaker 5 (01:13:25):
So the much more notorious sequel, which we've mentioned once
before here, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, which sounds like it could
have been an Elvis movie. Yeah, that worries me. The
deesis traveled to Hawaii to open a resort designed by Otho.
I'm liking this more and more with every word that

(01:13:46):
I read, which, being built on the classic ancient burial ground,
gets Beetlejuice involved when the spirits, awoken by the development,
hire him to sabotage the resort. Is this a brady
bunch like you're the Brady Bunch? Guy? Yeah, while they're okay,
So while he's there, just while he's on vacation. Beatlejuice

(01:14:10):
enters the surfing competition, attempts to marry Lydia again.

Speaker 4 (01:14:15):
Give it up.

Speaker 5 (01:14:16):
Guy takes part in a running gag where he goes
incognito as an oil tycoon named Monty Exxon, but by
the end of the film transforms into a wrathful creature
named Jusifer.

Speaker 4 (01:14:29):
Also good, also.

Speaker 5 (01:14:31):
Summons dinosaurs and turns normal people into Neanderthals. That script
went through a number of rewrites, as if we couldn't
tell just by reading that short description, including at one
point by Kevin Smith of clerks and mall rats and
chasing anything. Some people have suggested that Burton pitched the

(01:14:52):
whole thing as a Lark this. Honestly, this sounds a
little bit like the.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
The Gladiator sequel Nick oh hell, except that sounds awesome
and it's Travis Date. It never got made Jordan, if
you're unfamiliar, he basically pitched a sequel where Maximus goes
to the appell. He's like in hell and like has
to like fight his way through Hell, and then I
think it ends with him like he successfully escapes Hell

(01:15:19):
and becomes like an immortal soldier. And it was going
to end with this like long montage of him like
fighting in every war, which just cool as hell.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
Yeah, No, that was not.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
It's like Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump on the show
that all his ancestors had died in all every American More.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Why do you get you to bring the vibe down
like that? Yeah, it's really funny. Kevin Smith's like one
degree of separation from Tim Burton because he was doing
he was tapped at one point to write the script
for Burton's Superman movie, and that is where the famous
John Peters of a Star is born. Fame being obsessed

(01:16:02):
with giant spiders comes from.

Speaker 5 (01:16:06):
Yeah, because it's that leads directly to exactly well, so.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
This all comes from like one of them, remembering Kevin
Smith was doing like proto podcasts where he would just
like show up at a lecture hall and just talk
about his wacky misadventures in Hollywood. This story comes from
one of these things where he talks about being in
a room with with John Peters and he's working on
the Superman script with that Nick Cage, when Nick Cage
was starring and Tim Burt was going to direct and
Peters was producing, and he was like, all right, I'll

(01:16:34):
tell you what you gotta do. You gotta have Superman
fight a giant spider at the end of the movie.
And Kevin Smith was like, uh why and and Peters
was like. Peters was like, well, they're the most deadly predator,
like fur their size or he said something ridiculous like that.
And that's and and then Smith is now talking to

(01:16:56):
I think Warner Brothers or whatever studio is. He was like, yeah, yeah,
I met with John Peters and it's kind of a
weird meeting. And they go did he bring up the
giant spider? And he was like, yeah, what's with that
guy in Giant Spiders? And then so of course kept
the button on this anecdote that Kevin Smith is telling
is that years later he goes to see Wild Wild West,
which is produced by John Peters, and sure enough they

(01:17:18):
fight a giant spider at the end. That story gets
funnier because in Licorice Pizza, the most recent PTA film,
John Peters is played by Bradley Cooper and there's a
line where he's talking to the kid played by Philip Seymour,
Hoffman's son. He says, you know what, I like you.
We're the same, We're both from the streets. That is

(01:17:40):
apparently something John Peters said to Kevin Smith. So this
Kevin Smith, Kevin Smith's like one interaction with John Peters
has given us such a wealth of things. And that
fucking Superman Nick Cage as Superman fighting Giant Spider made
it into the Flash this year. Eilers. There's like a

(01:18:01):
whole thing with like this multiverse bit in Flash and
they go and show a bunch of different Superman. They
show Christopher Fan Reeves, they show George Reid, and then
they show Nick Cave, Nick Cave, Nick Cage fighting a
giant spider. All done, cgo, It all looks it's an abomination,
but there is a secret you know, Kevin Smith's Giant

(01:18:25):
Spider story with John Peters is like one of the
most influential or history bits in American cinema in the
past thirty years. So to drink that in this I.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
Love this unified theory. Dude.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
Yeah, anyway, so this screenwriter Jonathan JEMs said at one
point that he didn't actually know if Burton was being
serious about any of this. He said, Tim just 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. But he got distracted by the
Batman movies, and then I guess there was a protracted

(01:19:06):
rights battle with Geff and scotched the sequel for the
intervening two decades, because in twenty eleven, writers David Katzenberg
and the aforementioned Seth Graham Smith were reported to be
taking their shot at it, and then that draft was
rewritten by a guy named Mike Vukadanovich. I don't know
Mike of the Moscow Vuka Danovich's. A few years later,

(01:19:32):
in twenty fifteen, Winona Ryder confirmed to Seth Myers that
this movie was happening, although in her characteristically and adorably
kind of daffy way, she didn't really seem like she
should be talking about it. I think she was confused
as to whether or not she could publicly talk about it.
And of course it didn't happen in twenty fifteen, and
then as recently in two nineteen, Timbert was doing press

(01:19:54):
for Dumbo and somebody asked him about the Beetlejuice two thing,
and he was like, I don't think that's ever gonna happen,
but here we are.

Speaker 5 (01:20:01):
I just want to say, living in Atlanta, like I do,
I have a bunch of friends who work sort of
in the industry, several of whom did some work on
Stranger things and got to work with one owned writer.
And one of them said, very lovingly, when I asked,
what is one owner writer like, he kind of threw

(01:20:24):
his head back, looked at the ceiling, and said, oh, Wanona,
she is such a sweet bird lost in the house.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
That stands.

Speaker 5 (01:20:36):
I think about that at least once a week.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
Yeah, well, Jordan, this takes us into your personal connection
with the with the Beetlejuice musical.

Speaker 4 (01:20:44):
That is right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
But we did get Beetlejuice the musical from director Alex
Timbers and composer and lyricist Eddie Perfect and Anthony King,
who co wrote the book My Friend's Husband. They started
work on it in twenty sixteen and Alex Timbers probably
best known for insanely lavish adaptation of Moulin Rouge on
Broadway Around the Stage, I should say, which mored in

(01:21:06):
Boston at the.

Speaker 4 (01:21:07):
Cost of twenty eight million dollars. I've seen it several times.
It is really spectacular.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
When Beatle Juice the Musical opened in DC in twenty eighteen,
it was at an insane cost of twenty one million,
and do to the technology involved, the creators told The
Washington Post that it could not have been done ten
years ago. And any Perfect also composed a musical about
King Kong, which is awesome, and apparently started writing songs

(01:21:35):
for Beetlejuice as early as twenty fourteen, four full.

Speaker 4 (01:21:38):
Years before the show started production.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
I think he wrote some of the songs on spec
which is insane. It was just like, who, here's some
songs about Beetlejuice in case anyone wants to make a
musical out of him. I don't know, just putting that
out there.

Speaker 4 (01:21:54):
Yeah, anyone, anyone.

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
The show opened in April twenty nineteen at the Winter
Garden Theater on Broadway, but it was not an immediate
hit with critics or fans at first. But one thing
that drastically helped the show was a major moment on
TikTok in late twenty nineteen.

Speaker 4 (01:22:11):
I had never even heard of TikTok.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
In late twenty nineteen, fans in particular, glomb onto the
song say My Name Not I Imagine, the Destiny's Child
song and began lip syncing and remixing it on mass,
propelling it to the top of the social media Internet
echo chamber.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
But despite this, it was announced that, due to the
show's initial.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Losses, Beetlejuice would be replaced by the Music Man, despite
the fact that it earned eight Tony Award nominations, including
Best Musical. A Save Beetlejuice hashtag trended on Twitter and
there were multiple petitions launched, and then COVID nineteen shut
down the whole of Broadway.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
Anyway, what did we learn?

Speaker 4 (01:22:51):
Iigel take us home.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
Yeah, it was nominated for one, two, three, four, five, six, eight.
Tony's lost every single one.

Speaker 4 (01:23:03):
The show seems like a cat.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
I think it was just in San Francisco and I
did not see it. It's played in soul. Uh yeah
yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:23:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
And just like taking an annoying guy and making him
even more annoying because now he has to sing all
kinds of stuff, like taking Beetlejuice and making him into
a theater guy, like a theater kid. That's awful. He's
already like, what's what is what's the de evolution of
a guy with stand up comic energy? It's a theater kid,
an improv guy. Well, lastly, it truly is the gleeification

(01:23:43):
of the cure. Yes, that's your SoundBite, just put that in. Lastly,
when Netflix launched in nineteen ninety eight, the first DVD
they ever mailed out was a copy of Beetlejuice.

Speaker 4 (01:23:55):
That's we should have loved that, but that's incredible. I
love that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
Well, thank you for listening. This has been too much information.
With very special guest Michael Alder June all the way
up from Atlanta. It's eleven o'clock for you guys. You've
had a very busy day. And I talked a lot
about John Peters wanting to put giant spiders in every movie.

Speaker 7 (01:24:17):
Thanks for taking the time, and also Tim Burton's mass Yeah,
tim Burton's Tim Burton's Hog. If you want to tweet
at us about this episode, please do so using the
hashtag tim Burton's Hog.

Speaker 5 (01:24:32):
Tim Burton's pale Goth Hog.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
We'll catch you next time. Here on TBI, it's mo
Mute July.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
Monies all the Time, now entering its sixth Proud Mom
that joke.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
You guys got a farewell? Can I stop recording?

Speaker 5 (01:24:57):
Now? Look good?

Speaker 1 (01:25:05):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog.

Speaker 1 (01:25:11):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Runtog
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
And leave us a review.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.