Tim Burton Admits He Was a Little Lost in His Career Before Beetlejuice Sequel | Tim Burton
Tim Burton has described being “a little lost” as a filmmaker before returning to his roots with the star-studded new sequel to his 1988 cult horror film Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice, which opens the Venice Film Festival, features members of the original cast, including Michael Keaton as the titular ghoul, Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder as Lydia, now the mother of her own brooding teenage daughter, played by Jenna Ortega.
“I’ve been a little disillusioned with the movie industry over the last few years. I’ve gotten a little lost,” Burton said Wednesday. “I realized the only way to be successful is to love what you do. For this one, I just enjoyed it and loved doing it.”
“I didn’t want to do a big sequel for money. I wanted to do this for very personal reasons.”
The film reunites the audience with the Deetz family. Lydia, now the host of a cheesy ghost-hunting show, returns to the haunted Winter River house with her stepmother, Delia (O’Hara), and her grumpy daughter, Astrid, who opens a portal to the afterlife.
Ryder, who was 15 when she first played Lydia, said her return to Beetlejuice was “one of the most special experiences of my life.” “My love and trust for Tim is so deep and there was a certain sense of play and willingness to try things,” she added. “You feel so safe in the absurdity, but you also feel completely free.”
Ryder also told Keaton that one of his favorite moments was “being able to look him in the eye again.”
Asked how he approached his character’s evolution after more than three decades, Keaton joked: “As suave and sensitive as[Beetlejuice]was in the first one, I think he’s even more so in this one. Just his caring nature in general, his sense of social mores and his political correctness.”
Burton said he’d been thinking about a sequel for a while, but filming the Netflix Addams Family spinoff Wednesday “gave him a new lease on life.” “And meeting (Wednesday star) Jenna was obviously a big deal for me.
“Working with her and thinking about Lydia’s character and what happened to her 35 years later, and thinking about my own life, what happened to having children or relationships.”
Ortega said she “admired a lot of the cast” and had to make sure she “wasn’t copying Winona’s work from back in the day…but still bringing together the aspects that make (the characters) similar.”
Other newcomers to Beetlejuice include Justin Theroux, who plays Lydia’s shady boyfriend and manager, Willem Dafoe as a dead cop and Monica Bellucci as a soul-sucking demon hell-bent on revenge against her ex, Beetlejuice.
The film will premiere out of competition at the 81st edition of the film festival, which opened on Wednesday in full view of everyone. Hollywood names such as George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are expected to walk the red carpet over the next 11 days.
Speaking about the event, the festival jury members, including its president, Isabelle Huppert, expressed concern about the “very weak” state of contemporary cinema. “I worry about the things that worry everyone. Making sure that cinema continues to live because it is very weak at the moment,” Huppert told the press.
“It’s very difficult to make a film. A film is not just an individual effort, it’s really something we offer to the world. So I wonder if our world will continue to communicate with people. That’s why the Venice Film Festival is necessary.”
American filmmaker Debra Granik said she was “relieved” to hear Huppert address “the elephant in the room”.
“We understand that the generations gathered in this room need this festival to continue to tell stories that are not covered by the mainstream,” Granik said. “Maybe festivals are now festivals of defiance. They go against the grain.”
Meanwhile, before receiving the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, Sigourney Weaver broke down in tears as she spoke about the role her acting has played in empowering women, including US presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
“To think for a moment that my work could have anything to do with her rise makes me very happy,” Weaver said. “Because it’s true. I have so many women who come up and thank me.”
The three-time Oscar nominee also discussed Hollywood’s changing approach to aging actors. “Suddenly, I think they decided that older women could play interesting characters and started writing a lot of older female characters.
“Suddenly we stopped being a joke and a stepmother, and we started being real people, because actually, a lot of our audience is real people.”
