That was the text I got from my best friend. He lives in Melrose, Massachusetts. It was July 2023.
“You sure?” I said, treating the conversation like we were Hollywood insiders trading movie industry secrets over steaks and whiskey at the Brown Derby. “From what I understand, they’re filming in East Corinth, Vermont, same as last movie.”
“The street is all done up for Halloween and it’s crawling with crews and security. Also, someone told me flat-out it was for Beetlejuice 2. So suck it.”
Normally, that info would have sent me right down the Bat Pole for a quick change and speedy exit out the Bat Cave, but I couldn’t make it to Melrose for a couple of days. When I arrived, the Halloween was all down and it was back to summer on the street. Only one thing looked abnormal for a Boston suburb in the throes of the Sweltering Season.
In the backyard of one of the houses, easily visible from both the front and side streets (the house was only one away from the corner), was a short, twisted tree bearing no foliage. Lodged within its branches like it was custom made as a single piece with the tree was a treehouse. I didn’t have to grow up in the 1980s and 90s (even though I did) to know immediately and without doubt that I was seeing a Tim Burton artifact. It looked like a miniature version of the tree from his movie Sleepy Hollow. I took some photos but refrained from getting too close because it was somebody’s backyard and an occupied car parked at the curb seemed to be guarding the site.
I shrugged my shoulders, posted a couple of the pics on the socials, and crossed my fingers that it would be in the Beetlejuice sequel (which at the time we didn’t know would be called Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice). Turns out it would be, in a pivotal scene, as would the red house in front of it.
A week later, inspired by both the tree and visit from a Los Angeles friend, I decided to head back to East Corinth, Vermont, for the second time in my life.
The first time was while researching The New England Grimpendium in 2009—more than two decades after the 1988 movie came out. It’s a tiny town, and no sign of Beetlejuice was left on its main street on that first visit—not the house, not the covered bridge, nothing with the town’s stage name of Winter Haven on it.
On this 2023 visit, however, everything was back. The white house on the hill. The bright red covered bridge. And everything had the name Winter Haven on it—the welcome sign, the firehouse. They had also erected large lampposts and continuity-favorable facades on the few buildings that make up the downtown. It was like someone had suddenly shouted Winter Haven, Winter Haven, Winter Haven.
Also different from my last visit, the place was maggoty with tourists, all there to see the movie set.
Finally, September 2024, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice debuted. I dug it. A lot of cool ideas. Burton seemed to be having fun for the first time in decades. All the actors were all in (especially Catharine O’Hara as Delia Deetz). Sure, there were too many main characters. Way too many. By about three or four. And one of those unnecessaries—the soul-sucking ex-wife of the Ghost with the Most, played by a much-stapled Monica Bellucci—should have had the entire movie built around her. Still, it felt good to enter the world and afterworld of Beetlejuice again.
The year in between my set visit and the movie debut was the arduous continuation of the worst years of my life, but it’s interesting to look back and see the Beetlejuice bookends on one segment of those years. During the set visit, I had my own much-stapled Monica Bellucci at my heels. But at the movie’s debut, I was cozily hunkered down with my daughters and close friends basking in the dim light of a private screening. Things were better.
I love it when movies are more than stories. In this case, the Beetlejuices have been personal adventures across New England for me, have been the topics of my own work, and have allowed me to trace time (since time changed me). Probably some other things.
I returned to the Melrose treehouse two weeks after my initial visit and one week after my trek northwest to East Corinth. The prop was completely wrapped in black plastic, awaiting the end of the writer’s strike. These days it’s a blank space in a back yard.
