Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

i recognize this podcast never seen that pod before in my life or afterlife i really can't do beetlejuice it's been so years i really do willem dafoe in this movie so i'm not unified well my character's a little less well-known i suppose wolf jackson wolf jackson last i considered or last i checked he's the star of the number one movie in the world beetlejuice beetlejuice opening to a robust 111 million one one one yeah one one one spooky uh but i think isn't the beauty of beetlejuice that he is just completely open-ended character this is true it's what makes it hard to do an impression of him because i think it's a lot yeah sure but uh i finally david many months late to your recommendation the recommendation of many others i finally been listening to the seth meyers lonely island podcast which is unsurprisingly my shit isn't it just unbelievable how good that is given the genre of podcast fits within which is usually really bad i was ready to enjoy it even if it was the worst version exactly even if it was bad it's the kind of shit we like but there was one episode where andy samberg talks about his pitch for a show at sketch that was supposed to be a cold open that was meet the press but tim russert was out and the guest host was beetlejuice the whole thing was that samberg in like 2006 which i argue was kind of what kind of like how es meyers makes fun of him for multiple times but i guess he kept working quantum yes no we call it just a mind sketch right i think the end of the mind sketch was just what's a movie i like from the 80s can i do it um but samberg was talking about how good his beetlejuice impression was and i was sort of in this episode going like but no one does a good beetlejuice you can't really do it and then he did it i was like it's fucking good it's fucking good i don't have it uh i'm sorry i can get like five percent of it it is look let's just say it it is some of the magic of this character that there is some undefinable thing that you're like it should just be untethered chaos and yet there does feel like there's some cohesion to the way keaton does it can you try you just say the juice is loose no it's terrible it started bad he's deeper in this one he's gravellier i think a lot of people say like he hasn't aged a day and i think it is a lot of fun to see him because of this character i do think you do sense like oh the entire timber of his voice is aged 36 years he looks like an old goth too yeah which is just a tough look what if he played it just like a spotlight like he didn't do beetlejuice in this way and he was just like really like right we've got to get caught in the law um we ought to do the work no like just right just like really really quiet or and then leaf driver was in it too and he was like this is good recording uh this is this is good recording this is the process that's my leaf driver there's somebody that would go what what'd he say you don't have any rules they were talking about beetlejuice beetlejuice let's just say this one week out from its theatrical release not even this episode will come out about 10 days after it's come out people use the eldest for releasing episodes too quickly now they say too slowly 10 days out already just kind of a fascinating cultural object there's been such a tsunami of hype and promotion and onslaught of media ramping up to this movie after like years of kind of stop and start speculation about this thing happening you know there was the original russia trying to make a beetlejuice sequel for the 10 years after the first movie it's going to go hawaiian and then there's been like 15 years of like what if we did a beetlejuice like a sequel and it finally exists and now like less than a week out i'm like it is so strange this movie exists and it's a humongous hit and it's kind of explicable and all of us are already trying to remember things about it you saw it last night i remember so well i remember this film so well i bet you guys don't at all that was my point i wanted to see it on 9-11 don't forget that don't forget and there's other things you shouldn't forget should i not see movies on 9-11 on the 23rd anniversary just respect let me say this another thing people should never forget is that this is one sec with griffin and david i'm griffin who else is here marie hi marie barty marie barty yes right yeah whatever yeah well i can't remember what i'm supposed to call you you can call me whatever you want as long as you call me david and keep inviting me on these episodes i will what have i not been doing my best bottlenecking marie in the pipeline david ben has the producer ben is here hello uh beetle vape juice i believe was the name that is given to you many years ago because this is a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers say their second movie is beetlejuice a sort of bewildering hit that comes out of nowhere that people cannot really even figure out how to replicate for so long uh not just in literally taking this on to make a sequel but also people trying to make beetlejuice-esque movies a film that really now just kind of stands out as like a miracle i feel like more and more with the passenger how did this things fucking come together what are the beetlejuice-esque movies like the frighteners that's a good one that's a good example that's good but i also think just to a degree uh a lot of the rest of tim burton's career oh so tim burton trying to rebel i know but what about um i mean look my bulletcaster is definitely trying to throw some beetlejuice in there yeah scrooge i think scrooge is a little beetlejuice i think i came out one year after beetlejuice okay i think you're right david johansson in that movie is like very very very beautiful little monster yeah where it's like can we do spooky fur with like some family edge i think dead fred yeah absolutely i also think the burbs the dante boom i don't think that's something slightly different yeah i would say a great example is i think uh bill and ted's bogus journey is meaning into the beetlejuice elements of can this be really stylized and work for people really visual really special effects heavy i think the nicholas rogue witches and the tone of adam's family uh that's not about that those certainly are happening partly because of beetlejuice totally yeah but i think it's just one of those movies we talked about this uh to some extent with the ghostbusters on our patreon but another thing where people go oh my god special effects comedy yeah i mean this year we had two iconic family special effects driven comedies that just like are like ensconced in the heart of every child no i wasn't even gonna make that joke i was gonna say if and harold in the purple cream but sure ghostbusters frozen empire too it also has a uh the younger one falls in love with a ghost a lot much like this one yeah uh his second film he was a bit of a guarantor he basically had three guarantors in a row changing the type of checkbook he had access we talked about that yeah on our timber miniseries which you can listen to if you have the stamina to make it through 20 movies maybe even 21 i try to block out maybe even a clean gymster just hit bosworth that series of course ended wow that miniseries of course ended with ben saying that he thought timberton should be spaced which is send him to space as punishment he doesn't get out of spacesuit live on this is his 21st film okay and he has not made a film since we covered him our miniseries at the time it has been a five-year gap he of course did wednesday in between but that is i think the longest stretch he's ever gone without making without a released film that is correct yeah and it is a movie that has come with all of these narratives of like is burton back is this gonna get him back hope's expectations what did i say you over text the other night which i kind of stand by i don't know i was expressing some skepticism at people being like he's burton back but maybe a little bit of that what's the thing you said i would not be surprised if his next movie is very good what's his next movie i don't know he doesn't have one isn't he supposed to do that like 100 foot woman or whatever they're things he certainly match himself to right yeah right which is exciting yeah um this does feel like a movie that is uh i equated it in our text thread with the doughboys to like seeing the kids in the hall reunite yeah you said that where you're like you're a little bit aware of like the passage of time yeah and the way it's like hung on the people you're watching on stage and also yourself and wondering why you want to see this thing be recaptured and it's not the disastrous cynical cash grab version of it in my eyes but you're also just like it's maybe a little foolish of me to assume that everyone could just get totally back in the pocket that i'm inside the movie ends ben turns to me immediately throws up two big thumbs and a smile and goes fun and i was like i gotta agree with that it was fun if you start to pull this thing apart which we are not going to do for the sake of this podcast we're gonna do it a little bit i am there's not a ton of the bones so i don't know how pulling will do certainly the only way you can engage with this thing is just like oh look it's a bunch of people like kind of doing a come next door of this shit all these actors going back playing together again these aesthetics it's a weird movie when you think about it really weird and not weird like beetlejuice which is weird in an impressive way just where you're like why that though why it wasn't bad but i think that's how the three of us feel about it marie yeah i saw it uh in london do you like tim burton or beetlejuice really you weren't with us i wasn't with you guys for the tim burton series i love beetlejuice i love you love the man and his actions i do he's never done anything wrong and i believe in bioexorcism um this is a fact yes yes uh no i think the the tim burton run up through sleepy hollow is unimpeachable yeah i love every movie that he made in those what like 12 that's how i feel it's 80 it's 87 to 99 right yeah yeah um and i haven't really liked anything that he's done mostly hollow like i don't like you don't like any of you like big fish big fish i mean i haven't seen it in a while i don't when he started sort of let's go by the sea you don't like it when the fish are big but what about the eyes what about when the shadows are dark i haven't seen big eyes i do love the work of larry karzinski and sky alexander you might love big eyes i might like i could maybe use a few defenders on my island about when the home for peculiar children is ms peregrine's so i just had to do that you did that and not when ms peregrine's home is peculiar i haven't seen that one but i have i have an ex-boyfriend who's like kind of a crazy person who his favorite one of his favorite movies was guy richie's revolver which is a terrible movie that makes no sense and he also was really into ms peregrine's home for peculiar is this the guy you were dating when i first knew you no this is the guy who i used to date who now has a movie coming out oh that guy that guy do we keep this out and do we yeah but anyway that would have been crazy though you have some stories i have stories um but no i but he was always like that movie's amazing miss peregrine's home for your children i'm like okay maybe i don't know but then that was like this is like kind of when we were in the new car smell phase of the relationship where i thought everything he said was really interesting and he had really cool opinions on movies and that totally went away when he made me watch guy richie's revolver and i was like i don't trust a single thing we'll do guy richie one day and it's partly possibly and it's partly because he made movies like revolver but revolver's not good no you're like oh crazy he made this yeah i i've heard defenses of it no it's not good i uh it's you know now some distance i don't remember how our rankings yeah thank you because if he just would stop making two movies a year but now it's just impossible right we would have to make a jam of like five movies anyway go on sorry miss peregrine with some distance now feels like the absolute nadir of his career which isn't to say it's his worst movie but it is the most nothing thing it's kind of irrelevant feeling that's true like alice wonderland makes me angry plan vx makes me angry you know yeah no no i'm like why did anyone bother getting out of bed for this you think so you think this peregrine is more than a deer than dark shadows those are the two where it feels like it's just but i think it is miss peregrine i like it more than you do peregrine i've got nothing going on no it's not a quality thing yeah i'm just talking about like miss peregrine is him being like i don't know what should i do i should do that so can i ask a follow-up question to miss peregrine thing um because i was just in london which i'm going to keep talking about because i need to share my entire theatrical experience and aj may be throwing some big damn trash yes thank you did you go to fleet street hey there's a demon bomb snip snip you're returning to me how about a shay i'm going to murder such a parent cohen i hear the penis he shows in his movies his prosthetic has that been on x recently i don't look anymore i feel like that's a room that we heard oh fair enough fair enough fair enough fair enough all right okay wait no the man's got a rubber pecker uh london i won't clean what was i gonna watch i decided to watch the first harry potter movies oh yeah we were talking about why did you decide i guess when you're flying from london you got hours to fill on the way to london i watched molly manning walker's how to have sex oh yeah you're going to go on the way back i was like you know i'm gonna turn my brain off totally i'm just gonna watch harry potter do you like either of those movies um i liked kinds of i liked kinds of kindness um and for how to have sex i liked it up until the end but while you were in the fair city of london sweeney town as i like to call it uh you you go to a stamp your passport it's everywhere i went to a cinema a theater spelled the other way yeah right with the e at the end i want to ask my initial question which is why i brought the harry potter thing i was reading about initial reviews of harry potter and the sorcerer stone movie and there was some credit i forget who in a negative review was like tim burton should have directed this movie and and then that had me wondering is that what this peregrine is like is it his harry potter possibly but also in a way where it feels like him being like i guess i should have done something like this you know what he should have done was fucking lemony snicket right at that time it felt like he went this feels a little too obvious i'm doing other stuff right versus peregrine is him now like 10 years later being like i guess i'll do one of these i don't know that he would have made an amazing harry potter the whole question with harry potter is like would there ever have been like an interesting version of the first movie because i felt like the whole enterprise is more like no no no like we can't be interesting we have to just be faithful in that sense that's the perfect choice in re-watching those movies yeah i do think they work i think they work they're watchable that was sturdy enough he did but i think the template really is the core own template like what all of the but yeah but columbus passed it correctly what's passing correctly like yeah those movies is though as much as i i i've met chris columbus he's a wonderful guy he seems like a true mensch the kids talk about him so so fondly and said he really protected us for those movies which is sort of crucial them keep doing the movies all good foundation shit the leap in just like voice from chamber secrets is so it's crazy watching the back is fucking wild given that these are insane corporate giant like money-making ventures like controlled by an author controlled by studio to watch car on come in you're like oh shit right that's what directors do right that's their job the harry potter thing was like fuck spielberg wants to do it jk rowling wants terry gilliam the public is clamoring for timber and you're like charlie came up a lot i love the idea of charlie came up a lot i love the idea of charlie came up a lot here's that here's the point of whatever doesn't matter columbus was the right guy for that specific job which was the beginning of almost these things being less about you could make the best movie right now and who could set the best template for a franchise all of this to say this narrative on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice for a while that we've all just been kind of like scrambling the armresting going like I don't want to get too excited was okay he's doing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice oh this could go really right really really badly right the worst version of this is just like claw your eyes out nightmare you did not like this movie marine I did not but I don't think you felt that level of like I was great no I wasn't I wasn't enraged there are parts of the movie that I enjoyed but I do think I let months of burdens back baby enthusiasm get to me because we were talking like Griffin you were getting intel from people like months ago about the Willem Dafoe character and the emphasis on practical this was the big thing and I'm like oh my god that sounds so fucking good you know he doesn't make a movie for five years he does Wednesday which is huge I have not watched a millisecond of Wednesday I realized it is maybe the only publicly consumable thing that Tim Burton's ever directed that I have not seen because my testament with him was so wild for years that I'm like I don't think there's a commercial or a music video or a viewable short film he did that I have not seen until Wednesday which I didn't watch and it's his most culturally relevant thing he had done in 10 years can I just tell you some news please that came over the wires oh boy Clint Eastwood's juror number two will be closing the AFI fest on October 27th and then opening in theaters on November 1st it's just it's just here great guess what that's winning best picture I don't think so it's winning best juror that could happen or you're sure yeah I think you might be a bad juror it's a matter of perception okay I mean a very good juror that you notice the case intimately this is just good so you can pivot to the Biden getting railroaded movie which I am now convinced needs to be Clint Eastwood's swan song oh she's about Biden oh my god don't you think so yeah I know I'm overwhelmed thinking about it Clint's like I'm playing Biden obviously that was my one contingency I only want to see if he's playing Biden we're gonna do the whole debate in the movie that's just in the movie the whole Trump debate is in there everyone else in the cast is a non-actor he cast the guys from the train to play the rest of Biden's character whoever plays Kamala is gonna play her like a fucking in the Richard Jewell what's her name um oh I'll just play that character let me just like like you're like so evil yes that'll be Clint's stick like I railroaded I mean he was the president you know that'll be it anyway um sure's that party mom night beetle juice beetle juice beetle juice there have been this thing you and I both like dumb but more than a lot of people we felt there was some juice in it some stuff and it's certainly not a movie that wholly works it's got a lot of the Disney remake problem that we've been so exhausted but it felt like one of the only ones about the only one that was like actually trying to do something different and what was interesting about it I think that you and I both felt is textually you feel in the movie Burton's starting to fight against am I a caged animal am I a freak that's been commodified Michael Keaton playing this weirdo version of like Walt Disney right and that was our reading into it keep saying he didn't think he was locked you're good in that movie yeah let me put it this way even if he's not happy with the choices he made I don't think he's like sleep watching through that he's doing he's doing a lot that movie feels like it's doing a lot is a movie that's fighting with itself which maybe makes it less functional but it makes it more interesting than a lot of the Burton movies leading up to it and it left us in a place of like this guy gonna reconnect and in the last five years the Wednesday thing I sort of just don't engage with I felt really bummed out when they announced it I was like this is the most predictable thing he could do he's doing fucking Netflix now this sucks but then it gets him this boost of relevancy Keaton is 10 years into his comeback Winona's on the biggest fucking tv show in the world Catherine O'Hara wins an Emmy like suddenly you're like everyone's kind of back uh there are a few people who are on back though Mr. Alec Baldwin Mr. Jeffrey Jones I would say those guys are not back you have this core three actors no it's interesting the rebound that various folks had had that probably helped convince Warner Brothers like yeah let's do it Seth Smith and uh Katzenberg uh in the early 2010s pre-Birdman went to Warner Brothers and were like has anyone tried to take a new stat at Beetlejuice started developing at the end so there have been scripts even before Keaton's value went back up and this became a higher priority thing and suddenly it's like this is fucking happening we're all sort of like it's a good idea it's a bad idea and everything that's coming out as you're saying Marie is like Burton's doing interviews where he's like I'm never working for Disney ever again Dumbo isn't having an essential crisis I realize I need to reset myself and get back in touch with my initial instincts and then you're hearing Keaton agrees to Beetlejuice on the terms of it's practical and you're like fuck I agree with you that it's like Tim's like alive on set he seems excited there's joy the vibe the vibes felt good the vibes felt good in opening Venice good sign good sure some confidence there right and I was hearing you know the range of things I was hearing there's some people I had heard be like I think it's a lot of fun I think it works I had heard early from certain people like the script is a disaster but Keaton's really locked in and Burton's having fun for the first time in years and that's been my baseline of just like at the very least I want to feel that watching I think that's true I think that's true you cannot get around how disastrous the script is and what's frustrating about it is I was ready for it to be bad in a sort of like it's undercooked way yeah it's so much more frustrating to be like this is so overly busy and so overly thought and you could take like five things out of it and the movie works 20 better like the fact that it's in addition by subtraction solve makes it so much more frustrating than them not identifying what it should have been to me when was the last time you guys watched Beetlejuice 1988 very recently you also watched it very recently your husband just talked for the first time yeah I watched it like the day before I saw it the thing that really stood out to me on this rewatch is how simple this is what's simplest this is simple this is what throws a lot at you well it's what makes this so hard to define and I want to say I had a big breakthrough in the last week of I think I finally had sort of solved what happened to Tim Burton which we at the end of the series I was like I hope I gained some clarity from watching all these 20 movies of like what was it that went wrong and I think I finally fucking figured out watching this even though this movie feels the most promising sign in a long time that's the issue and you've been trying so hard to space him for years there is the character in the waiting room where you see all these incredible like you know the Edward Rory cartoon how did this person die there is the character if you notice Ben that is an astronaut whose face has clearly been sucked through his broken visor yeah oh yeah that feels like almost Burton being like I see you fucking Hosley you tried to do this to me I'm here making fucking videos I think we should add that to our list of Ben Hosley easter eggs and yeah oh sure that's a direct reference yeah yeah David yes got an intentional air about you today well I'm more intentional about what I wear at day to day I'm sure you can get those from anywhere right oh quince look oh he's showing tag on me um it's been my go-to because very clean fits very nice fabrics yeah don't they don't feel like cheap fabrics I hate dirty fits I hate cheap fabrics I am at Miriam you know if the weather's getting warmer I really rely on my quince polo shirts for the kind of like exactly like a formal enough piece of clothing that can go to the office but it's comfy yes because we do have a dress up here um so they got those 100% pima cotton tees with a softness they got a feel oh and for the David is touching the fabric pants hit that same balance relax and comfortable I gotta tell you uh I recently had a birthday and my in-laws sent me a quince gift card because they know I like quince so much and I am pitching to spend it that's that's a really strong endorsement right yes um everything at quince is priced 58% less than what you find in similar brands because they work with those ethical factories they cut out the middleman getting premium materials without the markup I've got this cashmere zip hey David is showing me oh nice cashmere zip it's very nice yeah I wear it all the time it's got pockets um so refresher every day with luxury 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the story yeah you know but all this color comes from all these wild dimensions this is the core problem and I also did a watch through all Michael Keaton's movies recently for the big picture and would try to similarly analyze what was the issue when Michael Keaton kind of lost the front of his career it's a really funny episode because you're doing a Mount Rush for it and you guys talk about Keaton for a while and you're like it's like Batman Beetlejuice spotlight are fucking guaranteed let's just argue over the fourth right like I mean it's basically it's almost yes it's like what I didn't mention is Mr.

Mom you're kind of between Mr. Mom and Night Shift and you guys were all kind of like we don't want to Birdman on us we're not going to right right most people would do that most people would I just put spotlight on it and be like that includes Birdman bye yeah I'm like that's the best representation of Elder Statesman Keaton dramatic actor but talking about Keaton comparing him to a lot of comedy stars and he tried to veer away from this the thing that befalls a lot of comedy stars is they're funny funny is the thing you kind of can't put a price on right it's like unquantifiable someone hits or they don't they get this involuntary reaction from the audience you watch it like Beverly Hills Cop and Eddie Murphy just comes in and he's just like got so much energy he's such a tornado he's giving his all he's got so much to prove and you're like holy fucking shit and then that escalates Eddie Murphy to be a 20 million dollar movie star and you get to the point where 20 years later studios are like well if we have a script that's good why do we offer it to Eddie Murphy the script is funny we don't need to pay him 20 million dollars to make it funny you pay Eddie Murphy 20 million dollars to make something that feels it should be funny but isn't funny funny where they go if we play Eddie Murphy in Haunted House that would be funny right a movie that basically attempts to be Beetlejuice that Disney did twice like if you put funny people in the house it'll be funny right without having a funny script and Tim Burton is one of the few examples of a director whose style is so unique and singular that it's not just a brand into itself but the idea of but imagine if he did the Tim Burton version of this was so compelling to studios that for this guy who has always admitted I really don't have to judge whether a script works or not I know what ideas sometimes excite me but I don't think I have a sense for like story structure emotional arts any of this but he's starting out in his career and he's somewhat unproven and he's pushing the boundaries and making movies that cross genre lines and don't really have a precedent studios are really kind of holding the feet to the flame of trying to make the script work before they let him get to set these scripts go through rigorous years of development before they even land on his doorstep and then I think it gets to a point where they're like if Tim Burton did Alice in Wonderland would that be interesting just fucking do it buddy right and they just assume like much like if we pay Eddie Murphy 20 million dollars we'll show up and we'll say some funny shit right well I mean the other weird thing of course is like all those later Burton movies have all-star you know writers on them yes but you know that probably just belies like lots of passes by lots of people right and what's insane to me about the problems with this script is they don't feel like the effect of too much meddling by a studio it feels like them being like we'll probably figure it out yeah yeah we gave them a bunch of ideas they'll figure some shit out and the best stuff in the movie is the stuff where it just feels like he's just kind of fucking going off look Beetlejuice as you say has a core premise that is it's not a long movie it's a nine-minute movie has a core premise that is that's cute makes sense these these ghosts want to get people out of their house that makes the villains Catherine O'Hara and Jeffrey Jones basically right and then Beetlejuice himself is this wild card who kind of shifts between sides it's the classic version of you have a greater villain that actually causes the heroes to unite with the presumed villains but it also has uh Harry Belafonte songs right it has the sandworm and it has like motion capture that comes out of nowhere I mean it's not motion capture actually those sandworms are played by actors yeah that stuff that when you see the movie the first time you're like who thought to do that like you know like what the calypso music like what about this Connecticut ghost movie suggests calypso music and yet there it is right you know like the premise of it is simple enough that he got to color in all these margins with these ideas that you're just like where did that come from or who else would think to execute that in that way and it's what used to work for him is giving him a sturdy architecture with also a lot of space for him to fill in but he needs good bones right yeah it's just weird with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice that they took so long to figure out a sequel because I'm like you don't need to do much no Beetlejuice in Hawaii sounds the best to me yeah the other premise that I kicked around for a while was Beetlejuice goes Hawaiian was one of two scripts that really kicked around for about a decade right Daniel Waters of Heathers and stuff that was at Burton's suggestion he was like you know what feels like a funny area for a sequel is smashing the sort of gothic German expressionism of Beetlejuice with a like 50s 60s beach movie uh and that's like a Lydia movie that was sort of running with uh Lydia's popped the cartoon show's running people like Lydia and Beetlejuice as a team maybe this movie is more than working together the other script was interesting because it's the other way they could have gone about this uh which was called Beetlejuice in love and I believe one of the original writers of the first movie was working on this and that was hey here's a movie where Beetlejuice attaches himself to new humans you have an entirely new cast and Beetlejuice exists in a similar role it was like a dead guy uh comes down to the underworld uh hires Beetlejuice as his bio-exorcist to try to um I think someone was romancing his ex-girlfriend the whole point of the movie was Beetlejuice becomes in love with this dead guy's living wife and becomes obsessed with going up to earth to try to get her a similar kind of like Beetlejuice has his machinations people unwittingly involve him in something don't realize he's going to turn both of these premises you just explained really succinctly and within one of the senses do that with this movie the only way to describe the premise of this movie is explaining what happened first Beetlejuice right like all of it is sort of iterating on because even just saying it's a movie about like three generations of women who have to kind of come back and like reckon with their relationship to this guy but also not really right it's not about it it's not about it it's not about them I'll tell you the mother stepmother mother daughter relationship if it's about anything at all but really it's just about like everyone you remember from Beetlejuice except the people who got canceled are back the kids in the hall coming back on stage you're gonna do some of the sketches you know you know and a couple new things that feel like the best evocation of the style you remember. In their defense, it would be hard to have Baldwin and Davis be in the movie in any sense cancellation or not just because, like, they're all going to end this job. Yeah, I think their narrative is pretty much resolved by the end of the first time.

It's just not because Beetlejuice literally ends with, like, we're all going to live here together, we'll be happy. And Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice has one line, we're like, yeah, we have to figure out the whole, and that's it. Don't worry about it. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice has a lot of don't worry about it, and I like the anarchic spirit of the character Beetlejuice.

And you like, you post on all of his actions. He papers over a lot of don't worry about it, right? It's like, it's Beetlejuice, he does magic shit, it doesn't matter. But there is a lot of don't worry about it.

And seriously, why can't they see the dad? Why can't they see the dad? Why can't she see the dad? It makes no sense.

She's like, I'm so mad that you can't see her father. And you're like, oh, there's like an emotional hook to that. That's an interesting little kind of curse of like, oh, she can see the dad, but she can't see, you know, this person. And then at the end, he's like, I'm sorry, you can't see me.

And I'm like, oh, okay, so it's just kind of like The first joke just has the right amount of rules versus we're not explaining this and we're not making you think about the fact that we're not explaining this. It has a brilliant joke of, oh, all the rules are in this book. And it's like, what is this book? It's like, oh, no one wants to read it.

It's so boring. But then you also have like Otho saying like, oh, there's a joke that people who commit suicide end up working at civil service in the afternoon, which is a joke, but you also like kind of kind of, okay, yeah, that works. Right. There's this aspect of like, can Lydia only see ghosts that are roaming around in our world, like the Maitlands versus the ghosts that are stuck in the afterworld offices.

Right. So why did he end up there? Why did he end up there? Right.

I don't know. Other than him having a visually humorous death? I don't know. I do not know.

I don't know how much I care, but it does make the movie feel a little... I think it's floppy. It's kind of unrealistic. Wait a second.

Are you just saying you detect a cinema sin or two in this movie? I'm not dissing this for me at the end of the movie. What if I say it's not realistic? It's kind of my new thing where I'm just pointing out when movies are unrealistic.

The teenage dead kid. What's his name? Jeremy? Sure.

His name is Jeremy. He's played by an actor named Arthur Conti. Grandson of Tom Conti who played Einstein in Ophiart. I've talked about a lot on the show.

But he kills his parents, which is a thing I knew instantly. He murdered them horribly. How did the mom die? He put a blender in her face.

That was a blender and an egg beater. Yeah, egg beater. How do you kill someone with an egg beater? I don't know.

It's probably horrible. It takes a lot of effort and persistence and I think focus. You don't do it in one shot. You got to commit to the idea.

He died falling out of the treehouse when the cops came to get him or whatever. And he broke his neck. But the egg beater thing just really... Oh, you didn't like that?

No, because I'm like... Can I just say this? Please. I want him to not be a ghost and for instead, the fact that you don't see his parents' faces at the start and ones just in the kitchen and ones just...

To be just kind of like an interesting kind of Tim Burton-y commentary on like, ah, team life is a shit. It was such a specific choice that happened. I had the exact same reaction. I had the 80% like, okay, they're probably...

I knew he was a fucking ghost immediately because I watched season one of American Horror Story and the exact same plot line. I know, is it so sad? Can't leave the house. And she's so fucking Dylan McDermott.

Spoilers, I haven't watched it yet. Okay, well, sorry. But also... This is my new bit.

Getting here to spoilers for shows I didn't sign up for 10 years ago. That's all I'm about to start. There's at least like the... Spoilers, don't tell me other twists.

There's a guy in a gimp suit. Spoilers! Well, that was like in the advertising. But you don't know who's in the gimp suit.

I haven't been watching the advertising, but save it. You're just on the subway but I'm going, what's Evan Pears or what's his name? Yeah, the whole funny thing about American Horror Story is he's a school shooter. Oh, sure.

And the teen girl who just moved in the house falls in love with him. Okay. Not realizing that he's a ghost. Okay.

And that he's a school shooter. Oh, so it's really similar to this. Uh-huh. Sure.

Then she finds out that he's a ghost. But also it's like kind of about to watch it. I feel like they don't call it that retroactively. So it wasn't Ghost House, it was Murder House.

Spoilers! But like the same, like the grunge outfit like stuck in the early 90s. It's the exact same thing. I didn't watch American Horror Story, so this was kind of fresh for me.

But I did sort of like this. Oh my God, I hated it. I thought this worked for me better than certain aspects of it. I didn't dislike it.

It just felt like one of many plots. Yes. And I kind of wanted them to pick a reason for things to be happening rather than have kind of like four half reasons. Well, here's my big thing.

I like Monica Bellucci. Monica Bellucci. I like Willem Dafoe. I think both of these characters have fun ideas behind them and fun looks.

Yeah, but if you find out the movie, it doesn't make a difference. No, I'm just like, I don't understand how someone didn't stop at some point and go, hey, it's one or the other. They're basically both similar threads that amount to nothing. The movie finally brings them and you're like, oh, this is going to be crazy.

All the threads converge and this was all happening for a reason. And the Beatles basically goes like, man, not interesting. It's like, what's the plot? It's kind of funny.

Okay, here's what I almost want to give him credit for being like, I don't give a shit. But then I'm like, why? Like, we know why Monica Bellucci's in the movie. Why is Monica Bellucci in the movie?

I'm really not sure. No, I don't. It's kind of a funny idea. People are chasing Beetlejuice.

Here's the plot of Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. I'm just going to leave a character by character. I'm going to leave a character by character. Winona Ryder's Lillia Dietz since Beetlejuice.

She has married Santiago Cabrera, divorced him, and then he died in the Amazon. Researching spiders with Mademoiselle Webb. She had a kid with him named Astrid, played by Jen Ortega, but they are somewhat estranged because Astrid doesn't like that she's this hack sort of ghost TV show. Like Long Island Medium, but she wears all like Compton Croissant and Junior One Toppy.

But also she takes more effort for her father. Sunday blames her mother or the father being this one. So Astrid, to pick up that thread, is a disaffected teenager at boarding school. She reads books.

Like Crime and Punishment. She also loves science and just likes global warming. Right. And she doesn't believe in ghosts because she's ruling against her mother.

And it's not realistic. She's kind of a Ben Hossley. Catherine O'Hara is the only thing she's still in Connecticut making her silly art. Making a thing about her doing big projects.

She is still in Connecticut. She's got her own full gallery space. I like the device of the graffiti artist dying and that being artistic. When I say I don't like this movie, there are little moments and bits and scenes that I like.

I think they're fun. And those bits have innately more energy and creativity to me than Burton has shown in a while. There's lots of fun stuff. Justin Theroux is there.

He plays Lydia's new fiancee. He's kind of the Otho of the movie of like who's the most obnoxious living person who everyone can kind of laugh at. Kind of the New Delia too. Yeah, you're right.

He's just right. He's kind of phony. He's this very obvious phony. And then over in the afterlife.

They make this TV show together. He is sort of reluctantly applying her prescription medication. She seems kind of on edge in very much the modern mode of Winona. Is this person about to shatter?

Right. Seems like a little stretched. Yes. Then in the afterlife, Beetlejuice played by Michael Keaton.

Oh, that's who? Okay. I forgot who that was. Seems to be running a call center with a bunch of frunken head folks.

Funny. And then also we have Monica Bellucci's Dolores who is Beetlejuice's ex-wife who murdered him and then he murdered her in maybe Italy in like, you know, Mario Bava type movie. Oh, me too. I like that part when he starts speaking in Italian.

Yes. Which I was like, oh great, this is awesome. I like people be like, do we really need a Beetlejuice backstory? And I'm like, no, this is the right kind of It's just funny to be like, she realized he was the same fucking guy.

He's like a 14th century grave robber who fucked a black widow and then when she killed him he got mad and chopped her to pieces. She has reassembled and wants to suck his soul because she's a soul sucker. Not explained. Right.

And has maybe three lines of dialogue in the entire movie. Basically just is introduced seven times walking slowly through a room sucking someone's forehead and continuing to walk. Monica Bellucci looks wonderful is currently partnered with Tim Burton. Do we know timeline wise were they dating and then she was written to this movie or vice versa?

Not sure. But you know, it's where we're going. Let's just acknowledge Tim Burton quietly has revealed himself to be one of... Dare I say it?

He's a legendary stick man. The numbers don't lie. At this point... He has a type.

Obviously he's often dating the same sort of like, you know, beautiful raven haired goddess type. Big titty goth girlfriend. Not always that. But I do feel like he has a gothic type of lady.

He likes to swire around him. Isn't big titty goth girlfriend like a thing? Like he's not an archetype that people talk about on the internet? Yeah.

Tim Burton's talking about that he makes money every time someone says it. Are you telling me the internet talks about tits? Anyway, Willem Dafoe plays a character called Wolf Jackson who's a ghost detective who's like a shitty actor. He was a shitty actor on a procedural cop show who now in death has become a real cop?

Sort of. Kind of. Vern Gorman in kind of a wonderful performance is a fussy little priest who's also like a quiet alcoholic who's constantly trying to cover it up. And there's a wonderful performance from Danny DeVito as a blue-faced gender who gets squished into a pancake.

Who's addicted to drinking antifreeze? He kind of rocks. Or varnish? Is it floor varnish?

I took it as antifreeze, but I wasn't sure. You know, some kind of product. Wouldn't be surprised to hear that Ben seems very excited during this sequence of the movie when Danny DeVito showed up, blue, chugging toxic liquids, drooling out of his mouth. I could have done with more of it.

And the incendiary incident is that Jeffrey Jones' character, Charles, has died horribly in not a plane crash, not by drowning, but he was eaten by a shark after those two things. I mean, this is a lovely sequence. It is. A real, like, fuck, is this going to totally work sequence of the movie where you're like, Burton suddenly cuts to stop motion.

Perhaps largely works around to the fact that you don't want to allow Jeffrey Jones onto a set, a physical location. But yes, you're watching the explanation of his tragic death play out in these funny stop motion models. It also looks a little different than Burton's usual style, I would say. Supposedly, Burton said to Miles Miller and Alfred Gowell, who wrote the script, that that was his worst nightmare.

What if I was in a plane crash and survived and they got eaten by a shark and they were like, oh, that's funny, we'll do that. And his death brings everyone to Connecticut, to their old house. Yes. Al Kolder and G-Navis are gone because of the loophole.

And everyone's here. Okay? Lydia and Delia are kind of getting along now. Lydia seems just basically a little beaten down by life.

Addicted to pills. Yeah, maybe. And that's also kind of abandoned. In the first, when they introduce it to the beginning of the movie, you're like, oh, wow, this feels like a more bracing, realistic thing than most Tim Burton movies touch on.

I just saw Ed Wood again recently. They did an anniversary screening of it where Larry Karazisky did a Q&A. And there's that feeling of like, oh, watching Tim Burton depict drug addiction, you know, is like sobering. Yeah, it is.

And part of the magic of that movie is when he lets the tragedies of real life kind of seep in for these people who want to live in a fantasy world. And there's a little bit of that feeling of the two of them fighting over the pills in the bathroom and it amounts to nothing. Lydia Dietz, I would say, compelling that I don't think is the most compelling execution but the idea they have going. And I think especially to Tim Burton not to project a ton of shit onto him.

Tim Burton had a weird relationship with his father, right? The classic thing is reflecting all of his movies of like, I was a weird dark boy, born in Burbank, my parents didn't understand why I wasn't happy and why I want to spend all my time thinking about monsters and not go out and play ball. You know, the entire dynamic that his short film Vincent, his first real film project, immediately summarizes, which will be the key text of all of his work. Big Fish is the movie he makes in response to his father dying and trying as an adult to come to terms with someone who has just a very different perception of life than he did and find some common ground, right?

Now Tim Burton's at a point where he has children who are teenagers, college age. I don't know anything about his kids. I'm not going to make any assumptions here but it is funny in a movie where he's clearly relating to Lydia more than any other character in the original Beatles, right? That feels like the stand-in for Tim Burton.

This feeling of I'm in a nice house and all I think about is darkness. I was thinking, right, forget even the family stuff but just like him being like, did I just sell out? Am I just kind of lazy now? Like, you know, that.

But also that the thing that Lydia is dealing with is that her rebellious teenage daughter is more normal than she is, right? This weird flip of perspective that he's now able to speak from of I went through being defined by my confusion with my surroundings, my lineage, you know, I was born in the wrong place with the wrong people then trying to come to terms with them and having my own kids and I've seen them become their own people. It felt like there was a perspective here he could talk to. Well, yeah, but I don't think that's in the movie, Griffin.

I think it's in the setup of the movie a little bit and I feel like it's not really concerned with it. Astrid is immediately identified as an outsider. We see her being bullied by her classmates who then like put a fake ghost in her room and I think they're making fun of her that when they announced oh, the star of Wednesday is going to play Lydia's daughter in Beelge's Beelge you're like, yeah, that writes itself. She'll just be a new little Lydia, right?

And I think it is pointed even if this movie does not figure out how to totally make it work that she's a different type of outsider that Lydia cannot relate to her being an outsider. Sort of. I just feel like you're already reaching for more than what she's providing. The movie just doesn't have any of that.

Probably the movie because it's like Lydia's a sellout. She's like, eh, I'm kind of a sellout and I do this bullshit thing. I'm sort of doing. I'm in my misperegrant phase of just a lot of emotions.

One of the funniest moments and then like Lydia is getting married to Rory, right? They go to the funeral and Rory is like, what if I propose to you and get married in two days? Let's have a show of his Halloween marriage in two days. By the camera.

I do need to shout out how funny it is that the gravestone is shaped like a shark. That's so fucking funny. There's little shit like this. It's very, very, very.

His gravestone says like father, husband, bird water. It does. Like, yeah, there's stuff. And you're like, couldn't they have taken 70% of the script out and given him more room to do stuff and just found one narrative idea that could then just fill in the gaps?

Rory's like, let's get married on Halloween. And you're like, oh, okay. So that will be sort of the narrative spine of the movie. Like we're preparing for a wedding that nobody really wants to be a part of.

Instead, it's basically just like when the wedding is happening and Lydia's like, oh, right, my wedding. I should go to that. Like she never seems remotely interested in it. No one in the movie cares about it except for Justin Theroux.

Yes, it's a setup for the Beetlejuice wedding, but you don't need that because people just can just make it happen by me. It's in the last movie. Another weird choice this movie makes is it feels like it's out of my fingers. Yeah, it's almost trying to do a parody of the like it's about trauma unpacking like a sequel.

Right, and then making fun of that a little bit with the Justin Theroux with all this kind of hollow trauma. Therapy sneak, right. And this thing of Lydia like underlining like, you understand, this horrible thing happened to me when I was a child. A ghost tried to marry me.

An adult ghost tried to marry me when I was a child. Which is one of those things that people love to say like, if you look at Beetlejuice, I'm actually going to fuck it up. Beetlejuice is going to marry a child. Yes, Beetlejuice is in fact not politically correct.

Yeah, I'm not making news. No, no, just to finish my lady's face. What is this? Okay, it's about her reconnecting with her daughter.

I guess. That's like the emotional thing. But right, it feels like mostly they just are in parallel tracks of the entire movie and then, you know, Jenna or take what the fuck's Astrid gets sucked into the netherworld and oh no, we have to rescue her. And she's like, yeah, of course I'm going to rescue her.

I want you to die. You're my daughter. I love you. And Astrid's like, now that I see that you weren't lying, I forgive you.

Yes. And you're just like, it was fine, but there's... it's bullshit nothing happens they don't do any work no this is the other thing i was gonna say it feels like it makes sense that the idea of this wedding looms very large in lydia's mind right it is wild that beetlejuice is reintroduced in this movie he opens the newspaper he sees that charles steed's died and he goes great now i'm gonna go and have it again right i'm like beetlejuice's thing isn't i gotta marry people all the time that's how the first movie ends and by the way it kind of means to end because his whole thing is if you marry me i get to come back to the world of the living which is what they try to do again with teen boy right i'm using you as my pathway right i have two parallel there's like three parallel marriage plots sort of which this movie makes it seem like the entirety of the ghost world is predicated on tricking people into marriages which i'm like i want to see beetlejuice have a totally different plan i want to see him try some new crazy shit i want to be on a surfboard well that's fine with a bunch of fucking tiki men yeah sorry i just think that would have that would have crushed in the early 90s when that was like an aesthetic that was kind of more dominant right your tiki bar era right your rocker's modern life your drew carey show right and now it would be like what is this no i almost would respect that more because it's even more out of date because it's weird like my favorite thing about was so much about teen lydia and it was her summer camp or whatever and then she got too old they were just like you can't do it one of the things i love about like peak tim burton is the way that he combines like mid-century american kitsch with gothic all victorian elements right all these different artistic and cultural didn't get as much of the mid-century american kitsch here's the other thing in this that i really like and after that stuff looks great in this movie i would say by and large because it's practical the um irl stuff looks kind of flat i actually was really excited for the first scene of the movie because they had the couple that was guesting on lydia's show right they both had really weird faces great tim burtony faces and i was like oh we're in the pocket we're gonna we're gonna get back to like weird character actors and in my head i'm still thinking about like all the hype on practical effects and all this and so i'm like he's like firmly back doing the good stuff and then everything it's just that he doesn't really continue on with that yes uh in person he's talking afterwards we'll just win number two i think yeah that's where i landed back then and if i didn't it probably is where i land now um but he was talking about the first production designer they hired for edward they had to fire because he was a huge tim burton fan and was like i'm so excited to be working on a tim burton movie and kept on submitting tim burton designs and tim burton was like no this is me trying to do something different and it's not it this is part and parcel with the we don't need the script to be good if we hire tim burton he'll put his shit on it i'll make it fun kind of thing is you get to a point where everyone's showing up going great i get to do the tim burton thing versus what used to be interesting was he was having to push and pull people in weird directions out of their comfort zone you know and like harmonize all these wildly different things like you're saying of like oh this weird contrast of like it's roger corman but it's also like you know i don't know it's all the roger roger corman it's somebody's right it's the jetsons it's also edward gory it's frozen tv dinners right there's so many different things he's pulling from and now all of that is synthesized as right the tim burton aesthetic it's no longer thought of us the separate pieces it's just its own thing i just want to say it's his 20th movie that list i was working from nightmare before christmas not i was misread you know like now so this is his 20th i'm apologize to henry sellick david that guy he doesn't get mad about anything like he won't care about you can take this week exactly but in a year or two i might be calling back up um and i'm slotting this in as number 11 on my list huh there i mean i list it as top heavy yeah i defend more of the back half than you do i have it below i mean there's obviously the big seven that you talked about you know the run uh big eight sorry what do you have it above dumbo big eyes charlie and chocolate factory frank and weenie torch bride which is i just don't like those movies that much as my you know uh miss peregrine dark shadows plan of the apes some movie called i think i definitely put charlie and big guys about this sure i'm telling you what i think i know i hear you i'm debating whether there's one more i put above this but that's roughly the space i have but i have it below like sweet and big fish which are the two of the you know later movies of his that i like like things about yeah and then i put charlie guys in that pot as well charlie just whatever you hate chocolate i don't hate chocolate i'm gonna start this as a narrative david hates chocolate yeah i feel like i'm more negative about hot fuzz than you are definitely yeah i'm not even that negative about it no and yet but let's let's please repeat that for everyone in the back you're looking forward to what um the running man with glenn powell sounds good him possibly doing barbarella with sydney sweeney no i don't know last night in soho barbarella is not you can't do like sexy things but also barbarella is like a parody of sex yeah i can see that that's a british winky barbarella is just not like something really firm to start off you know what i mean like it's just not a really good launch barbarella's just like boobs in space i'm sure you have some thanks david yes you look like a man who doesn't know that fast-grown trees is 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plants and better growing at fastgrowingtrees.com using code check at checkout fastgrowingtrees.com code check now's the perfect time to plant let's go together use check to save today offer is valid for a limited time terms and conditions may apply beetlejuice beetlejuice uh beetlejuice beetlejuice beetlejuice so all the stuff in this movie that has beetlejuice in it i really enjoyed it he's great i'm a big fan of the actor michael keaton douglas yeah he's going by that now huh i think so but only for like stuff he was like no he was like i wanted to do it for knocks goes away and i forgot and then i went to the final edit i was like how does knocks goes away i don't dislike it cool no it's a little interesting i think it's weird that he's just twice been like yeah i guess i'll direct this sad hitman movie and people are like so you like directing he's like not really wait he did another one merry gentleman with kelly mcconnell yeah uh there's stuff in knocks goes away yeah um he like michael keaton he said in interviews his two big terms he said for tim burton in terms of returning art i think we gotta go practical we gotta get back to basics gotta get the old crew back go back to the old style and the second thing is you have to resist the temptation to make beetlejuice the main character to put me in every part everyone's going to want to do that i think we should keep it to the same amount of runtime we had in the first movie an idea that i think is correct in principle but it speaks to the weird math of movies especially when we talk about people who like to fucking runtime police how much character is or isn't in a film and you're like it's less about minutes it's more about feeling and about the vision of that and how effective they are in the scenes they're in the big thing in the first movie is you're holding back beetlejuice for a while because the whole movie is built on the foundation of fuck what's going to happen if we summon beetlejuice right you have to keep him in the shadows because he's this mystery box yeah the whole great thing in the movie is right is gene davis being like what about beetlejuice and you know he's no good he's no good it takes a while for him to enter and then from that point on it's everyone trying to control him he's coming and going right but it really kind of takes the halfway point for him to show up this movie a starts showing us glimpses of lydia seeing beetlejuice as like hallucinations very early on but then i want to say at like a minute 15 it just as you said cuts two beetlejuice in an office with a bunch of front and head guys and at that point you're now just artificially capping how much beetlejuice is in the movie in terms of screen time versus any narrative reason that he's being held back because the movie basically sets up this thing of like he's trying to figure out how to get out there and do some classic beetlejuice shit but we're gonna hold back on him getting up there because we decided we don't want argument for why he's not getting up there really and it feels like wolf jackson and dolores are both kind of included to have other shit that take time away from beetlejuice but are sort of beetlejuice adjacent so you have other threads going so that keaton's idea should be met right here's like the first disappointment i felt with this movie teaser poster comes out reveals that the title is beetlejuice beetlejuice we're all like biting our fist going like oh fuck that's good this is gonna be good it's burning back right but the teaser poster was also beetlejuice holding the slip that had the release date on it that looked like his like take a number slip from the end of the first movie he goes down to the waiting room he goes take a number his number is like 20 million and he swaps it with a drunken head man right i see that poster my mind starts racing i'm like if this movie opens with the joke of he's been waiting for all these years and 36 years later his number is finally up that's oh the reason why finally beetlejuice is returning now is because they finally called his number it took 36 years i wanted some kind of tie together for that instead the movie's just like here he's 36 years later he's like a middle manager he runs a call center which is funny in theory it's like he would do a scammy thing and he's in the newspaper the death announcement and he's like here's my way back and i'm like this thing wasn't that his only portal was this house his thing was that he only loves marriages part of what i like about beetlejuice is that it's like i can't figure out what his thing is and this movie starts to make it like he's got three moves trying to marry someone right model yep someone says his name accidentally right away from bureaucracy right but nonetheless anybody's in the movie i'm happy that's why i'm like you could put more of him in here i think the instinct to not have him be the character is great i don't think the movie breaks if he's in 40 minutes instead of 20 minutes it's also just weird okay again because he's working delia lydia astrid the first time we see beetlejuice it's because rory justin theroux yeah is like i'm just gonna say it three times like this is some trauma thing of yours i'm just gonna burst through it and then they go to the couple's therapy scene he spills his guts i thought that was all really funny i think an incredibly fun sequence the introduction to the baby which feels like burton's got ideas he's showing up to meetings with notes and he's like what if what if and you're like yes tim start like fucking brainstorming here fantasy made a great point about this though shouldn't this movie be like building to the moment where lydia shows up realizes that astrid's been taken to the underworld fuck i have to go save my daughter reluctantly i call upon beetlejuice and the whole movie's been like everyone's trying not to say it and she realizes she has to say i agree that's what i'm saying why is the road to do it to have a fun 10 minute sequence or five minute sequence or whatever is like great we get some great burton shit it kind of just immediately deflates the balloon of like we're just gonna call beetlejuice whenever we feel like it and send them away whenever we feel like it also of course the movie could be about astrid what i thought the movie was gonna be about which is astrid goes in the attic find out about beetlejuice summons beetlejuice by mistake now we got a beetlejuice and she wants to go to find her father exactly and instead it's like a different character could winks her into that exact scenario and they need beetlejuice to get him out okay and just once again is like you know i love marriage right it's just maybe he cares more about family values than we thought so this is why i like the idea of dolores being in the movie because she's like i'm the one person as crazy as you we're destined for each other because we were obsessed with killing each other and he's like running away from her and i was waiting for the threads to be like she shows up the wedding and she's just like what is the shit of you trying to marry a normal person why don't we just spend our life together constantly doing insane shit to each other that's not about it all she's just i want to suck yourself out because she's not talking for the entire movie i was like this is all building up to you at the end she delivers a big monologue that's like beetlejuice accept your fate they get sandwormed inexplicably right that's all that happens a new rule that's like i did think it was funny when he was like you look so put together i really that did make you just has jokes the character himself like the other i'm sorry we're just picking this movie but it's like she gets down there and the evil boyfriend is like okay sorry i fooled you i've actually taken your swapping and then it's like okay but he has to stamp that one passport right for you know to make this official and she's like oh shit i gotta run over there wait he's got my dad over there like out of nowhere they're just like oh yeah by the way there's the daddy's on the fucking window eight you know he's just there and here's the other thing that happens they're like he's gonna get away with it how do we stop him in time just beetlejuice just goes there he's like behind the counter and like right why is he helping it's really funny yeah but okay the thing i don't know you're asking a question like we're gonna have an answer no but i i love the lore that is like you know hinted at in the first movie and then i think they're they you know recognize that people do really like the lore so they're trying to build on the way the afterlife works right but they're only making it more confusing the thematic thing to build upon there is what decides what ghosts go where right when you start why is there immigration for ghosts if it's is it like in coco where they all come back and they visit their graves on the day of the dead to eat i don't know what but like again what if there's there's only one way a ghost can come back it's but i see advertising for this and i'm like justin thoreau is playing jen ortega's dad yeah does that make sense really and then i hear like oh no he's like the new boyfriend her dad is dead in the movie i'm like well there's something here to having like a dead parent there and like charles eats dead and i like the setup of her being like if your ghost shit's real why can't you see i think it's a good hook and then as you said the movie just at some point hasn't go like wait i'm the dad hey i'm over here by the way no disrespect to you i sentiogo cabrera in other roles i think largely that this part is underwritten but it's like the scene where the three of them are all in the same like conference room together oh my god you guys make sense together anyway i gotta go bye there's no emotional way to the scene where you're like this should be the whole fucking movie's building up to this because the original movie is not treacly no but it does have a sentimentality to it and that's part of the thing that struck me about the sentimental core that the original movie you're watching now is how sweet the barbara and adam relationship is that's what sort of you're rooting for each other but also when they realize that lydia wants to attempt suicide and is writing her suicide note they're they want to save her child is not by choice it's all that but it's all like simple and you're rooting for that you know you want to save their house because they have this nice house they made and yes they couldn't have kids but it's okay they sell this lovely house now it's taken away from them because they died and delia is absurd and her makeover of the house is garish like this is an offense but also okay another it's just a real movie and then beagle just shows up but also the characters even if they're crazy like delia yeah that she does still feel kind of like a real person. Well, that's the magic of Catherine O'Hara.

Yes, but it's true. Like, I understand Justin Theroux in this movie is not a real person. And he's funny in this. He's perfectly funny.

He is funny, but he's not a real person. In a way, I'd say even Otho is more of a person. Otho is a real person. I like, no Otho.

Yes, Otho is like half a Twitter. Yes, yes. I mean, Glenn Shadix has a great dad that he can be in the movie or whatever. But there's something wrong with Justin Theroux.

It just kind of feels like a pitch from 10 years ago. Like, yeah, the therapy's a fake emotional guy. Which feels like another thing of Burton coming to terms with how much his thing has become kind of commodified and passe, where you're like, there's a guy who can read it. That is a huge read.

That's a good read. I like the idea. What they should be doing. Is this guy pretending to be a Burton guy?

It's more what they should be doing. Who basically admits like I go there, like, you know, I go to bereavement groups cruising for sensitive women and I just was like, I guess if I put on the right clothes, she'll like me. I mean, I went to Five Below. My favorite place to buy cell phone cables, charging cables, and Liquid Death.

And obviously we're coming up on Halloween, smoky season. There is truly an aisle they have that is the Tim Burton aisle. And it's like Wednesday, the old juice, Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride. And I was just like, there's not a single item in this aisle that is not from a Tim Burton project.

And there's something to that where you're just like, there's nothing really countercultural about Lydia anymore, which is why she could be someone who's on a shitty daytime talk show. You know, selling this version of it that her daughter's embarrassed by, which feels like the stuff that Burton's talked about of like, I feel like Disney just looked at me like a flying elephant. They wanted me to like sell dolls, you know? It's not really to get into that.

Yeah. What do you think of Jenna? It's so weird that maybe this is just an old guy complaining. It's like, Christina Ricci is Wednesday.

Like, that's such a definitive performance. Like, it's a generation of like, you know, sarcastic off girls, right? And I'm just looking at Five Below's t-shirts and there's Jenna Ortega's Wednesday. And I'm like, right, she's Wednesday.

It says, I'm not weird, everyone else is. I don't get her. You don't get Jenna Ortega. I get her.

I thought she popped in X. Yeah, I think she pops in Scream and X. I haven't seen Scream, but she popped in X. The whole thing with Scream is Scream, we're referring of course to Scream 5, essentially, you know, because there are two movies called Scream.

One of my least favorite trends. The movie does make fun of it within the movie, which is funny. Jack White has a long, rambling monologue about how annoying it is that people do that. Can you imagine if Beetlejuice was called Beetlejuice?

Parenthetical 2024? In Scream 5, the movie, the trailer I remember showed us like, oh, Ghostface is like using an app. And I was like, they're bringing back Scream for this garbage, right? And then the movie, I watched the movie, and no one's seen Scream 5.

I'm the only one. I've seen it. He's just hanging out today. What are you talking about?

He's not here. I can see him. girls. Jen Ortega is sort of in the Drew Barrymore world.

She picks up the phone, and it's Ghostface. I like scary movies. And she's like, I don't really like that stuff. I like Elevated Horror.

I like the Babadook and stuff. And it's like, in the hands of someone else, that would be so hacky. And with her, I was like, I don't know who this is. I wasn't like, oh, it's the girl from Iron Man 3.

I was like, this girl's funny. This is working. Miguel Ferrer's daughter. she's the girl from Iron Man 3.

That was an important trivia question. Were you there for that night? I must not have been. Oh, well, we got it right.

Immediately she pops. The biggest problem with Scream 5 is there's not much of her in it because they don't know what they have on their hands in a way. I do kind of like her. I haven't watched Wednesday, which is obviously her definitive thing.

I haven't seen the Scream movies, so it's primarily X and this and seeing some of her fucking interview appearances and whatever. She is one of those people who makes me feel eight million years old. Sure. Where I'm like, yeah, I get it.

And then I hear that young people look at her the same way that we looked at Christina Ricci and Winona Ryder where we're like, she must make sense. Right? Where we were just like, she says how I feel. She's got bangs.

She's browning. I'm not saying she's like doing imitation of them, but I'm like, it's that kind of thing. I get it. And I do think she speaks that deeply to a generation.

And I've even heard people. It's one of those, we're just like, this is not for us. But I get that she's natural. You don't like her at all?

You're just like, when she's on screen in Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, you're just like, whatever. my costume after she got radium poisoning. I was like, we could bust that off, guys. That's not the right obscure reference.

It's a little too obvious in a way. It's also not like creepy. It's also not funny. She's just wearing an old dress.

I'm like, why can't you be wearing something kind of boring? They don't want her to be Little Lydia. Not to mention the Babadook again, but the perfect version of that joke is Casey Apple's tweaked. She went to the Halloween party and it was more of a wine and cheese.

We have to talk about the sort of the strays Millie Bobby Brown caught during the publicity tour for this movie. Wait, I'm sorry. Oh, oh. What's going on?

She's pretty sure. I think she's kind of lost her action. It's one of those weird things where she doesn't even know her. David, do you know that she's married to Jon Bon Jovi's son?

Jane Bon Jovi? Millie Bobby Brown Millie Bobby Brown Millie Bobby Brown is a more advanced version of Jen Ortega for me. I've seen Jen Ortega in various films. I've seen Millie Bobby Brown in the Godzilla movies.

She's in those, right? And that is it. I never saw Stranger Things and I haven't seen anything else she's done. So she is one of those people where I'm like, I know she's hugely famous.

I have no sense of anything about her. Her, I feel more of her. I just know she's glad her. I don't flirt with her.

Get it. She just doesn't have any education. She just was like, you know, put to work at the age of 10. I know, it's true.

She's going to look at the Netflix line. The Duffers are like, get to work at 11. I'm thinking of William Holin describing Faye Dunaway to be a straight-in-network and going, she doesn't know anything. She was raised by Netflix.

You know, he goes like, she's a child of Bugs Bunny. It's just truly the greatest. It's the funniest. Oh, shit.

The Katie Dippel. Showing the Babadook. I was trying to make story sense just going to kind of kill her and bring her back to life. Okay, wait.

So it's some stuff we have to talk about still. Yeah, we've gone through the plot out of order then. I thought that was funny. It's just like all the stuff I want.

Yeah, but I'm also like... It's a little bit of an old joke, but like, I just was like, anything where it's like there's production value, people are moving around, the camera's interested in this. There's a concept. Yes, like, I'm like, good, good, that's fun.

I felt excited. The MacArthur Park sequence I thought was really funny. Like, it does go on a bit long, but MacArthur Park goes on long. That's the joke, right?

No. Yeah, no, yeah. I thought it was funny. They're all lip syncing.

But I don't think there's as much of a fun disconnect between MacArthur Park and the Calypso song with the New York art hipsters. I think what's funny... I was sitting in my album being like, how many people know that this song is MacArthur Park and know what that is? And like, it's not resonating for anyone versus Deo, where it's like, kind of everybody grows up with that, right?

Yeah, the thing I like about it is that it feels like the sequence is Beelgeus being like, I want to show off. Because of course Deo is the Maitlands possessing them to sort of like freak them out. MacArthur Park feels like Beetlejuice getting to do his shit. I thought it was kind of funny.

And just watching Keaton do shit. Yeah. What was that? Is that the birthday song?

That's another bit which I decided 90 minutes ago and we couldn't figure out a good angle. What would your Beetlejuice song be? Like, I have to do a dance number and everyone's lip syncing. Oh, it has to be something throwback.

But not me. I'm making other people do it. Correct. There is a really specific curation to it that I can't necessarily put my finger on it.

It's throwback-y, but it also, it's like novelty. Maybe a little novelty. MacArthur Park does kind of feel like the right move though who are the people that are doing the lip syncing? Because it has to be something that's really got to throw them.

Something like really, really random like Toto's Africa. Some random people could be like, where the fuck did you even find this song? It's kind of too random. The kind of song where if you put it in any movie I can't watch this on TikTok next to someone playing an iPhone game.

And we're all going to laugh so hard. Or stumped? I'm just going to say Patti Smith's because of the night. That's good.

That'd be funny. It's the first thing that came to my head and I'm not letting it go. Mine would be Bloodhound Gang's Bad Touch. Come on, Eileen, maybe as my choice.

Coolio's Gangster's Paradise. I think Bloodhound Gang's Bad Touch is an interesting choice in that you watch that now. And I have watched that music video in the last two or three months. I watched a lot of music videos on YouTube.

And my wife was like, what created this? What movements in music could you let us hear? And then was this replicated? No, it's an absolute cultural ditto.

Who are these people? They're a rap group. They're a rap group. And they did essentially their version of a novelty song and it was kind of their only giant hit.

But they also weren't like a comedy band. Really? They sort of were? They were funny.

They're almost called Array for Boob. The artwork on the physical CD itself looked like a boobie. And if you put it in a player, it was like the hub of the player would look like the nipple. That was the gag.

It was kind of a disc-based joke. I remember that they had that song I absolutely don't remember that. That was kind of good. It was kind of making fun of like Euro, like dance music.

It just was like you watch another and you're like, oh, you know what was happening here was they're kind of part of this continuum. Just one thing I'm learning about that's what you just know. I mean, Lippiscuit to Bloodhound Gang, there's some kind of Yeah, kind of. And also at the same time had Tom Green blowing up with the Fox on his own.

That's all kind of fucks. It does. Oh, well, this was the second and last album to feature drummer Spanky G who left the band to finish his studies. The fact that we were What?

Spanky G? The fact that we were reading Bloodhound Gang's Wikipedia is not a good thing. Maybe it was another album for six years after that. Bealsh is a huge hit.

They have guitars. That's sort of news to me. Three of them have guitars right here. In this picture, they're performing.

That was hot. There are 19 tracks because there were a bunch of us. There were skits. One of their tracks, track number nine, is called Magna Comnato.

Did we say they were in a company band? Can we please retract that? Oh my God, they're from King of Prussia. What?

They're from Pennsylvania. That was really close to where I grew up. That's where the mall is. Best mall in America.

Suck it. There's a woman who there's one ride that just spins around. Her name is Tara, the Spin Queen, I think. And she just goes on the spinny ride inside the mall every day and then counts how many spins she makes.

Here she is. Yep, yep. Let's try to pivot back to the movies. She's got kind of a Chewbacca mask lady vibe.

She's got kind of fun. Remember the Chewbacca mask lady? Is she doing okay? We tried to get her on George Lucas off show and she was too busy.

With like normal life stuff? I think we were trying to get her. I think, my memory, we were trying to get her to do something for a May the 4th show and her response was, hey, a couple follow-ups. A, how much does this pay?

And B, how long do you need me for? This is kind of my busy season. Why? Oh, because it's May the 4th.

Every May 4th, she's just like striking that iron again. Good for her. Good for her. I hope she's doing okay.

Delia. Or she like a Doors Crumpet. I don't want to know about it. Whatever, either is fine.

Yep. The snake business. That's kind of fun. Everything with Delia, I think it's fun.

The snake thing made me laugh a lot because it felt like a real good middle finger to legacy sequels of like, oh, by the way, we're just going to kill her off literally by mistake as a joke. It's the one part where I want to give this movie credit for some of its sloppiness, that its sloppiness almost feels like, I don't think a pointed satire of that kind of legacy bullshit, but just an attitude of like, we don't really give a fuck. We're not taking this too seriously. I find this movie to be such a relief in all the ways in which it's bad.

Do not drive me insane in the way of Ghostbusters Afterlife of like, this is so important. Like this movie is just people being like, I don't know. To be clear, and I should say this, I had, my wife just had twins, right, six weeks ago. You're dropping this for the first time on this episode.

Yes. We'll just feel just more like baby, baby. David, I'm hearing this right now for the first time. Is this true?

Wow, what is there to say? Oh, sorry, wait, you have a wife. David, I haven't said it on mic how insane it is that one of the funniest memes of recent years, which is Trump saying, you know, doing it here, is about one of the worst things that happens when they're... I've been using it a lot in our group.

It's really funny. I give it a ha-ha stamp every time. Because it makes me laugh. Anyway, the fact that he's one finger behind you, but wait a second, David, can you repeat this?

People may have noticed that I stopped reviewing movies and that I didn't go to Toronto and that the episodes have been recorded out of order. Right, and my thesis was you just don't like movies anymore. I like movies for my fans. But no, it's because my wife just had twins.

She got them early. They're doing okay. You got them up, steady. That's right.

So this is my first... This was my first... My point being... Twin boys, get a name on Griffin and Ben.

We pitched it. It was right there. My point being, this was my first film in theater since they were born, right? And I really...

Yeah, you haven't seen a movie in a month. Yeah, I mean, I've seen movies on my television. I don't really consider that seeing a movie. I consider that watching a movie.

But so I had to like basically just rush out of the house to the Alamo Draft House near my home to see this film. And I truly was just like, I truly appreciate that it is short. You know, not like 82 minutes, but it's brisk. 97?

Yeah, they're dropping the check, you know, and you're like, oh shit, okay, we're almost done. Okay. It's light. It's often funny.

Energy is high. It's not self-serious. It's right. It's not doing jerky legacy cool stuff of like, oh, you can't believe it, but Bob is back or whatever the fuck.

And my audience was laughing. A packed audience, by the way. I think that affected my viewing experience. I want to know about that in a second.

And I just walked out of there being like, yeah, that was cute. I had a good time. C plus B minus. It's worth saying, once again, it's probably going to end up being Burton's second highest person from all time behind.

Chex notes here. Eyes rolled in back of head. Alice in Wonderland. Where did you see it, Marie?

I saw it at the Curzon Aldgate. I didn't know they had a theater in Aldgate, but I would say, right, Aldgate is not exactly where like, at least in my memory of London, where like things are happening. It was like a very fancy theater. Yes, it was very fancy.

And it was like part of a whole like, we had a lot of like tuxedoed a gentleman with teen puppets. Going, oh my God, never. Every time Beetlejuice showed up on screen. There were like maybe like 12 people in the theater.

Sure. No one left. I will also say, Beetlejuice is not, I feel like, as much of a thing in Britain. I was going to ask.

I don't know. He doesn't really have much cultural footprint. I'm serious. And like, and so there might not be excitement about that movie there.

Might not be the place to see it. Because I saw it with a packed audience. It's not like they were screaming, but they were laughing the whole time. They were having a good time.

I think our catch may be halfway between the two points. And yet, They had, you know, ticketed events, but, like, we're showing it one day early. And I point out to Ben, I think 30 to 40% of the audience was wearing something Beetleju seemed. A lot of stripes.

Oh, and then, of course, in sort of the early part of the movie, he was trying to get... The bucket line was very long. You didn't get the bucket? I got the bucket.

Oh, I did. I didn't know you got it. Did you bring it? Oh, my God, I see it.

I got the handbook for the recent season. Oh, oh, that makes me happy. I have about four more buckets to collect. I appreciate the buckets are more steeped in the documentary of the first movie in the sequel specifically.

I'm not sure I'd buy a Wolf-Jackson bucket, but, hey, that hasn't been said. Oh, what's he doing? Oh, look. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, he's throwing tat at us. Oh, my God. Oh, he's got the plus danglers. We all got a box of plus danglers.

Let's see what I'm getting here. Are these like mystery, or is it mystery? This is what we call the mystery box. Okay.

We're going to find out who we have. Okay, now we get some great ASMR for our listeners. Hey, I got Lydia, right? Is that what I'm saying?

Correct. Yay. Yes. There's the wedding dress.

There's eight. But there she is in her little red dress. Okay, I got Dolores. Dolores.

I got Spill Your Guts Beetlejuice. That's a fucking good one. He's got Lydia, too. Yay.

Watch out for wait. I'm going to try to marry your Dolores figure, by the way, so look out. I don't know what I'll do with this. David, now that you've dropped news of you becoming daddy, I was like, am I going to announce this in some way?

I'm like, I'm not going to fucking return to Twitter for that. Can I float a tape that I believe I've auditioned for both Ben and Marie in the past? I've been building up to this moment. And you know what?

I'm just putting it out. I'm not even saying this is my belief. I want the listeners to do with this what they will. You are now a father of three.

I ask this question to the public. Is David Shrek? Let's look at the facts. He's got an annoying little friend who won't stop talking.

A tall, beautiful wife? Yes. Similarly tall. He is constantly yelling for everyone to stay up in the swamp.

That's so true. This is my home. You're welcome over. I'm just saying I kind of like...

In the same book, Roger, he says to Pinocchio, fine, I guess you can stay for dinner. No memory of that, but sure. Okay, sure. We couldn't align on someone for me.

No, it's tough. Marie is a tough bit. You could argue she's very godmother. Isn't she evil?

Yeah. Farquaad? She's definitely not a Farquaad. I don't think you're a dragon.

Wait, who just said that? Who is it? Rumpelstiltskin? Who's in Shrek?

I put forth the idea. Griffin suggested Rumpelstiltskin. A little bit of a troublemaker. Yeah.