Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

“It’s showtime.”

This is a story about one of the best part of the ‘90s – the movies.

The ‘90s was a time when you had to go to a video store to find a film once it left theaters – for all you kids out there, that’s a place where you would go and select one, MAYBE two movies that you could rent for 24 hours (“Be kind, rewind!”) – and cross your fingers that the new release you’d seen advertised in the store for the last month wasn’t all rented out. (It usually was…)

Can you imagine? Not being able to see what you wanted exactly when you wanted to? I KNOW! It was torture! Then you had to put your name down on a wait list, go home defeated and wait by the phone... and wait… and wait… but here’s the thing, the films and filmmakers of the ‘90s were worth the wait and then some.

Fewer things were (and are) more affecting in my life then movies. For some it’s books, music, sports – where it’s not necessarily the literal book or song that you love, but the time in your life / memories that it evokes and makes it so noteworthy.

Growing up, we spent summer vacations at our family cottage, and if we woke up to find a rainy day we would go into the small town nearby and have a dinner and movie night. My brothers and sister and I still remember every movie we saw year after year in that theater - the majority of them during the 1990s - and is what I officially blame my life long crush on Michael Keaton for.

You see, one of the films we saw there was Batman – the BEST Batman (okay, technically it was 1989, but why split hairs?) – Tim Burton’s perfect mix of comic book, action and darkness. And deny me the virtuosity of Jack Nicholson delivering screenwriters Bob Kane and Sam Hamm’s brilliant lines:

“Where does he get those wonderful toys?”

“Antoine got a little hot under the collar…”

“Never rub another man's rhubarb!”

The ‘90s were a good decade if your name was James Cameron, (T2: Judgement Day, True Lies, Titanic) Tim Burton, (Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow ) or Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Stepmom, Mrs.  Doubtfire). It was also the decade of brilliant trifectas brought to us courtesy of Quentin Tarantino (Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction) and Martin Scorsese (Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro in Good Fellas).

Were these the best movies in the world? Well, some of them yes. And they were in good company with other ‘90s classics: Pretty Woman (which my Dad didn’t want me to watch at the impressionable age of twelve, but that my Mum snuck in one night when Dad was out!), The Silence of the Lambs (which a group of us watched in my friend Neil’s basement one night – see, always hanging out in someone’s basement), The Shawshank Redemption (is there a better scene then the warden and the poster?), Dazed and Confused (alright, alright, alright), along with Fargo, Heat, Good Will Hunting, Wayne’s World, Groundhog Day, The Usual Suspects, Boyz n the Hood, The Sixth Sense, The Big Lebowski and more.

Which brings me to another cottage classic, Beetlejuice - okay, again technically it was released in 1988, but I’m going to squeeze it in because this is my #1 go-to movie – see, Michael Keaton much? This is the movie I watch when the world overwhelms – when yoga or meditation aren’t cutting it, when you’re all cried out or the liquor cabinet is dry – it’s that album you go back to over and over, the TV series you binge, the book you re-read, or that movie you’ve watched so many time you can recite every line.

In my case:

“Don’t mind her, she’s still upset because somebody dropped a house on her sister.”

”I’ve seen the Exorcist about 167 times, and it keeps getting better every single time I see it!”

“Go ahead, make my millennium.”

Because it’s not just the film that informs, it’s the time it transports you back to when you first watched it – taking you out of your complicated present to a simpler past – even if just for a few hours. To disappear into stories that bring us back to better times, to re calibrate. You can only absorb so much bad content without countering it with some good.

And for that I am forever grateful for Tim Burton's imagination, for creating a space to escape into when reality is too much.

But, what I am most grateful for?

…

…

…

That he’s making Beetlejuice 2!!

 

Love,

Grace

Honourable mentions: Ghost, The Joy Luck Club, Romeo + Juliet, The Piano, Thelma and Louise, Jerry Maguire,  Boogie Nights, Point Break, The Lion King, Clueless, Boys Don't Cry, Fight Club...