The ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Reunion Reunion: How It Came Together

 

If you wonder why it took 36 years for “Beetlejuice” to spawn a sequel, consider how complicated it was simply to reunite its busy principals for a video call last month.

The director Tim Burton joined from the south of France, where he was editing the second season of the Netflix series “Wednesday,” while Winona Ryder signed on from Atlanta, on a brief break from filming the final season of “Stranger Things.” Michael Keaton spent the call roaming a cabin he’d built in rural Montana — “I’m reheating coffee, if you want some,” he told the group — while Catherine O’Hara, the last to sign on, did so from her cottage in Ontario, Canada.

Still, even on a video call that catered to a torturous number of time zones, the quartet’s comic chemistry remained strong. Ryder said revisiting their decades-old bond was the best part of making “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which opens the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday before its theatrical release Sept. 6.

“It was nostalgic, but not in any saccharine sense,” Ryder said. “It went straight to the heart.”

In the 1988 original, the newly dead couple Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) marshal all their ghostly might in an attempt to scare away the Deetzes, city slickers who’ve moved into their Connecticut house. Eccentric hauntings ensue, including a memorable dinner-party possession where Delia Deetz (O’Hara) lurches in time to Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O.” But when the Maitlands go looking for added firepower, they make the mistake of hiring Beetlejuice (Keaton), a trickster spirit who plays by his own rules and has romantic designs on the Deetzes’ daughter, the dark and morbid Lydia (Ryder).

The new film picks up decades later as Lydia, now the host of an exploitative paranormal-reality series, heads back home with her stepmother, Delia, and skeptical daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), in tow. Meanwhile, Beetlejuice lies in wait, still pining for the goth girl that got away.

For Burton, whose recent projects have been lavishly budgeted and full of computer-generated enhancement, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” offered a welcome opportunity to get back to basics, returning to the eccentric practical effects that characterized his early career.

“I realized I got caught up in the Hollywood thing,” Burton said. “For me to be successful, I have to really try to do something from the heart, something that means something to me.”

He gestured to his cast’s faces, beaming in thumbnail windows. “Working with all of you did that.”

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

When you all came together to make the new film, what was it like to see each other again?

WINONA RYDER: It was like falling back into it, like no time had passed.

CATHERINE O’HARA: On one of the first days that I was with Michael, you just kept saying, “Do you believe we’re doing this?”

TIM BURTON: I almost started crying the first time I saw these people again.

RYDER: I did! I cried. I get emotional talking about it sometimes.

MICHAEL KEATON: I never cry. Only in character.

Had there been many opportunities for you to revisit the original film over the years?

BURTON: I didn’t want to because I didn’t personally understand the success of the first one.

O’HARA: Was the first one actually a success? I can’t remember.

RYDER: Wasn’t it over the years that it became so big?

BURTON: Somehow.

It was one of the most successful films of that year, but it had an even stronger afterlife. That VHS tape got worn out in so many households.

BURTON: That and “Deep Throat.”

O’HARA: Now that makes me cry, that one.

Michael, did the success of the first film surprise you, too?

KEATON: There was a screening and it didn’t particularly go well. I remember feeling so badly because I thought, “Oh man, that was such a fun experience, just absolutely unique and a truly authentic collaboration.” Then Tim called and said, “Hey, I want to do a real quick reshoot,” and I’m thinking to myself, “Geez, I thought this was done, we were dead in the water!” We did it and someone sent me a potential trailer and I thought, “Holy moly, if it gets even close to this, this is really good.”

It kicked off a very fruitful run of collaborations with you and Tim that included “Batman” the following year.

KEATON: I love working with Tim so much, but I don’t think we ever really analyzed why we work pretty well together; we just do. I think I let him down on one movie, but that’s just me, and it bugs me to this day. I was clueless on “Dumbo.” I sucked in “Dumbo.”

BURTON: I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but whatever.

In a lot of ways, Michael, making “Beetlejuice” seemed tailored specifically to you.

KEATON: It was freewheeling in the best possible way. It was the ultimate “yes and”: If I did something, Tim would let me go and then he’d throw in another suggestion. I wasn’t there that long. I showed up for two and a half weeks or something. Right, Tim?

BURTON: I didn’t realize until after we shot it [the sequel] that it almost mirrored the same schedule that we had on the first one. You were probably in this one more than the first movie, but we always said that less is more.

KEATON: Yeah, our agreement was no more Beetlejuice than the last time. If it’s over a minute or two, maybe, but we’ve all seen that failure: “Hey man, those car crashes were really good. Let’s give ’em 50 car crashes.” We both knew, don’t do that.

Winona, there’s a through line you could draw from Lydia Deetz to a lot of other dark and sardonic characters in pop culture, like Daria.

RYDER: That’s so interesting! I never thought about that, but I really loved “Daria.” Lydia’s very sullen, but there’s also something very pure about her, a very sincere thing that Tim helped me toward. I really identified with Lydia; I think a lot of people do. I’m protective of her and so is Tim.

BURTON: That was my interest in this [sequel], because you were such a powerful character. For everybody that was a cool teenager, what happens to you as an adult? What’s important to you? What are your relationships like? What happens when you’ve got kids? For me, this movie couldn’t have been made until now. I understand all these things a bit more because of my own strange journey.

In the sequel, Lydia is still an iconoclast, but unscrupulous people are trying to milk her gifts. Tim, I would imagine that’s an arc you can relate to after decades in Hollywood.

BURTON: You’re absolutely right. I’ve been through all this stuff, so it’s quite cathartic. I identified with Lydia then and now.

Catherine, you met your husband, Bo Welch, on the first film, where he served as the production designer.

O’HARA: Bo was talking to me all through the shoot and never asked me out. Tim said, “Let me see what I can do.”

RYDER: Tim as Cupid!

BURTON: It was great.

O’HARA: He begrudgingly asked me out: “Oh yeah, the art department’s going to a swap meet. You want to come?”

KEATON: The hiccup for poor Catherine was she was married to me at the time. And God, that was rocky as hell.

O’HARA: You handled it so well, though. Talk about “yes, and!”

KEATON: I did, but let’s face it: We were always in the tabloids, don’t you remember? It was like Burton and Taylor.

O’HARA: I think we were more exciting than they were.

What do you remember about filming the Harry Belafonte number in the first movie?

O’HARA: We had a guy under each place setting at the table whose hand would come up out of our dishes with a glove that looked like shrimp cocktail. They would get the cue to grab our faces, and every single time it was terrifying because you knew it was coming but not exactly when. That was the most fun!

BURTON: And you still see shrimp attacking you in your dreams, Catherine.

O’HARA: Oh, and it makes me so happy to be attacked in my dreams. I remember when I first heard what the song was going to be, I was like, “Can’t we do Bob Marley or something cool?” I love to be that wrong.

RYDER: I got to hang out with Harry Belafonte a couple of times — I’m on the Free Leonard Peltier committee, and he was as well. It was a very serious thing we were doing, but he loved the movie.

The sequel uses a lot of practical effects and elaborate makeup, and skimps on the sort of C.G.I. that’s commonplace now. It feels like a nod to the original.

KEATON: There’s a handmade quality that the audience can’t put their finger on. I was always convinced that was the reason for the success of it and why people like it so much. I thought, “Boy, to do that now, you’re going to get pushback from studios.” But [Tim] stuck to it.