VENICE – The 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked off in Hollywood fashion with the world premiere of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Wednesday evening on the Lido.
To make the sequel, Tim Burton reunited with several key cast members from his 1988 horror-comedy, including Michael Keaton playing the titular ghoul, Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder as Lydia, now mother to her own sullen teen played by Jenna Ortega.
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“I’m not out to do a big sequel for money,” Burton said a few hours before the premiere, with his cast alongside him. “I wanted to make this for very personal reasons.”
The reason, he said, was that he'd become disillusioned with the film industry in the past few years. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was the kick he needed to fall in love with the process again.
“I just realized if I’m going to do anything again, I just wanted to do it from my heart. Something that I wanted to do,” Burton said. “It’s a bit like the Lydia character. Sometimes your life takes a little bit of a turn, you go down a different path. I sort of lost myself a little bit.”
The film comes 36 years after audiences first met the Deetz family. Though the original “Beetlejuice” was a hit, the tenth highest grossing film of 1988, and remains a beloved staple, Burton said he never quite understood why it was such a success. In fact, he didn’t even watch it to prepare to make this one. He remembered the spirit well enough.
“There are so few opportunities to be in something that you can say is 100% original and unique,” said Keaton, who joked about his character's evolution.
“I think my character has matured,” Keaton said. “As suave and sensitive as he was in the first, I think he’s even more so in this one.”
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which Warner Bros. opens in theaters worldwide next week, may be a major Hollywood studio release, but it was made with a scrappy and improvisational energy which extended from the cast to the crew, who were often building puppets on the spot.
“It’s not going to win any Academy Awards for special effects,” Burton laughed. “It doesn’t matter. It’s part of the DNA of the project.”
The film finds Ryder’s Lydia, now the host of a cheesy ghost-hunting television show, her stepmother Delia (O’Hara) and Ortega’s Astrid going back to the old Winter River home after the death of Charles. Astrid is a reluctant presence: Her character is just as surly as Lydia was as a teen, but unlike her mother, she doesn’t believe in ghosts.
“I was a huge fan of the first one,” said Ortega, who met Burton working on the popular Netflix series “Wednesday.” “He’s somebody I trust immensely.”
Ryder, who was 15 when she first played Lydia, found the experience of the sequel very similar even 30+ years later.
“It had been such a special experience, the first one, and just to be able to come back to it was a dream come true,” Ryder said. “My love and trust for Tim runs so deep. There’s a sense of playfulness where you can try things and you know if it’s bad he won’t use it ... You feel safe and also completely free.”
In addition to Ortega, new to the world of Beetlejuice are Justin Theroux, who plays Lydia’s sleazy boyfriend and manager, Willem Dafoe as a dead cop/actor, and Monica Bellucci as a soul-sucking ghost out for revenge against Beetlejuice, her ex.
Theroux observed that the playful atmosphere on set existed without the “normal downward pressure of a studio film.”
And everything in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was special to Burton, from the music to the references and homages to Italian and Spanish cinema and the “dumb movies” he loves.
“(It was) getting back to the things I love doing, the way I love doing them, and the people I love doing them with. I realized that’s the only way for it to be a success. I have to love doing it. It didn’t matter how it turned out. I just enjoyed and loved making it with all of these people,” Burton said. “It’s like a weird family movie.”
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is premiering at the festival out of competition, kicking off a busy 10 days on the Lido, which will soon be swarming with movie stars, from George Clooney and Brad Pitt, to Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie.
The Venice Film Festival runs through Sept. 7.
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