How Michael Keaton COMPLETELY Reinvented Beetlejuice
It could have been VERY different...
When you look back at Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, aside from the director's dark sense of humour and startling imagination, the thing that sticks out most is Michael Keaton's stunning performance. Even more impressive is the fact that the character and performance were nothing like what Keaton had done before.
He'd done comedy - with Mr Mom sticking out as the most famous example of his early work these days - but the complete transformation into Burton's demonic exorcist is so convincing that he barely even feels like the same actor. It's easily one of his best performances, if not the very best (though Birdman obviously attracted more accolades) and it loses absolutely nothing for the passing of time.
Far from universally loved at the time, Beetlegeuse himself has to go down as one of the greatest, strangest character creations ever imagined and he seems to tick off everything we'd come to expect from Burton creations. He was dark, supernatural and strangely charismatic with a distinctly disheveled look and an irrepressible joie de vivre only matched by his morbidness. He was the walking, talking realisation of Burton's apparent creative fetish for the dead and boy did he make an impact.
But it might have been a lot different if not for Michael Keaton himself.
According to a 1989 NY Times article, the script "called for a relatively conventional approach, that of a stereotypical Middle Eastern thug," but Keaton had other ideas. In that article's words, he went instead for a "sort of hebephrenic satyr gone to seed," and Burton responded enthusiastically, as Keaton remembered:
''When I came in and said, 'This is what I'm doing, this is my choice. Tim heard me loud and clear. You know, people assume he's really strange, with that look of his. I don't think he's strange at all. I just think he's very imaginative.''
Imagine that for a minute... Beetlegeuse as a Middle Eastern thug... Not only questionably racist (particularly as Keaton isn't Middle Eastern) but also FAR less interesting.
So Beetlegeuse's weirdness wasn't down to the infamously "strange" Burton at all, it came down to the actor, which goes even further to explaining how great he was for it. Not only that, but it also goes some way to explaining why Burton was so keen to go to bat for Keaton as his Bruce Wayne for Batman in 1989.
And wouldn't you know it, Keaton managed another truly great performance for Burton in that movie too.