Beetlejuice (1988): 25 Shocking Facts Hidden for Decades

Tim Burton's second feature began life as a horror script in which the ghosts were the sympathetic ones and the living family were the problem. Almost nothing of that original tone survived to the screen. This video works through 25 documented secrets from the production, drawing on surviving drafts, cast and crew interviews, and papers archived at the Harry Ransom Center. Covered here: the question that started the whole property, how far the title character sat from the version audiences know, the studio that turned the script down flat, the alternative casting that nearly happened, and the phone call in which Michael Keaton described a look nobody had approved. Later chapters deal with the practical effects work done for roughly one million dollars, the Vermont village that stood in for a fictional Connecticut town, the score one conductor refused to record, the makeup improvisation that won an Academy Award, and the follow-up that stayed unmade for thirty-six years.