Alec Baldwin Thought Beetlejuice Would Run His Career Right Into The Ground
In 1988, the world was given the gift of "Beetlejuice." It featured a tour de force comedy performance by Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice (or, more correctly, "Betelgeuse"), a demon/bio-exorcist who derails the afterlife of Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin). In the film, Adam and Barbara die in a car crash and become ghosts. They are given an afterlife handbook and told they have to stay in their house for 125 years. However, the living Deetz family moves in, and they are told by the dead people's corporate office they have to get the family out by themselves. Barbara and Adam hire Beetlejuice to help them get rid of the living, though he is a disaster and evil in the silliest way.
Even Baldwin thought Keaton's performance was great, though he was worried that the film's reception might keep the actors from getting cast in the future, according to a GQ video interview from 2019. This was an early feature for Baldwin, who had only done "Forever, Lulu" and "She's Having a Baby" beforehand. "Beetlejuice" is a pretty wacky movie, and it's understandable that you might wonder about the future of your career when a guy is blowing his nose into his jacket and says he's going to save it for later.
Alec Baldwin: The ghost with the most
Most films shoot out of order, so it's understandable that Alec Baldwin said in the GQ video that he didn't have any idea what the film was about. However, he praised Michael Keaton's performance, saying that the loogie scene cracked him up. "I thought I was going to choke," he said. "I was laughing so hard off-camera." There is definitely a moment in the scene where it appears Baldwin is about to break. Despite the fun times on set, Baldwin was a little worried about all their careers:
"I thought maybe all of our careers are gonna end with the release of this film, we're all gonna be dead, but when you're around Tim [Burton], he was just such a crazy professor. When we did that scene, when the char boy was there and he offers me a cigarette. 'Cigarette?' I forgot the lines ... and I say 'No, no, I don't smoke.' And [laughs] we were like, we couldn't handle it. We were just cracking up all the time. That's one of the earliest movies I made and you see everything that's involved in making movies brought to bear on a movie like that."
There is no better anti-smoking ad than that scene, which popped into my head any time I've even thought about it. "Beetlejuice" was a risky film for a newer actor. It could have been really, really stupid if it wasn't in the right hands. The casting (and Tim Burton, of course) just made the whole thing sing like Harry Belafonte. I mean, besides Davis, Keaton, and Baldwin, you had Catherine O'Hara and Winona Ryder. (Yeah, and Jeffrey Jones, but the less said about him, the better.)
The long-awaited sequel "Beetlejuice 2" is scheduled for a release date of September 6, 2024.