The Zen-Dad Wisdom of Michael Keaton (original) (raw)

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He is wandering around the restaurant, hunting for a quieter table, in the unselfconscious way of the older dad. Dressed like one, too: baseball cap, polo shirt, jeans, practical sneakers. He is, after all, a Pittsburgh-born, Montana-dwelling, fly-fishing, practical-sneaker-wearing father and grandfather, a visitor to the big city of New York, just looking for a quieter restaurant table. But he is also Michael Keaton—of Beetlejuice and Batman and Mr. Mom and about a million other blockbusters, grosser of multiple billions at the box office, and bona fide movie star.

He scopes out the bar. No luck there, but he at least returns with a glass of tequila. We try another table, which is…fine. Then the hostess points out a back booth, which she assures him is the quietest in the restaurant. Finally, then, we’re settled.

Jacket by Tom Ford. Shirt, his own. Brooch by Goldbug Collection.

Or, as settled as you’re going to get when you’re talking to Michael Keaton. At 72, he’s still wiry, if slightly more worn. But that energy, man. It made him a top-tier guest on Letterman in the ’80s, doing rambling non-sequitur bits about esoteric Bazooka Joe cartoons. In conversation, it feels like mainlining cold brew while strapped to a bullet train.

It’s the type of energy that helped him flawlessly resurrect Beetlejuice, in Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, out this September. It’s funny and a bit strange that Keaton—despite having such a long and varied career that has coalesced into him being known as an American everyman—remains famously and indelibly associated with a perverted demonic entity covered in mold. In the same way that it’s conversely funny and a bit strange that 1988’s Beetlejuice, a scrappy and bizarre gothic horror comedy directed by a then-29-year-old Tim Burton, has become such an American institution.

Keaton is at that age when you naturally start looking back on what you’ve accomplished and are considering questions like legacy. Questions that you’d expect would be front of mind for someone returning to a project he first embarked on 35 years back, an entire lifetime ago. And it’s not that Keaton does not think about these things. But it soon becomes clear that he does not really give much of a shit.

About 10 years ago, another, tangential narrative seemed to be developing around Keaton, when he starred in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, about a washed-up actor best known for playing a superhero staging a theatrical production. This was framed as his big Oscar-winning comeback.

“A really, really, really smart guy, a guy I liked a lot, said, ‘Comeback—that's the story,’” Keaton tells me. “I went, ‘Honestly, it's kind of bullshit.’”

He had been working steadily, all these years, putting himself out there, and collecting paychecks.

“I thought I could make that story up, but I knew I'm going to be bullshitting every time I talk about it,” he adds. “By the way, I know business. I like business. Doesn't bother me. You go, ‘This is a business, man.’”

And if Keaton has learned anything, it’s to be fine with the business, with the inevitable ups and downs. “I never panic,” he says. “If you get desperate, you're fucked. Don't ever get desperate. You can get insecure and nervous, and go, ‘Wow, boy, I'm not doing so great right now.’ But when you get desperate, you're dead.”

Coat by Dolce & Gabbana. Shirt by Thom Sweeney. Pants by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Shoes by John Lobb.

The long, gnarly road back to Beetlejuice began shortly after the success of the first one. There were, as there tend to be, talks. Talks that didn’t go anywhere. Talks about making it tropical—Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian was on the table for a while. Scripts were commissioned, written, and rewritten. And then, a few years back, the talks began again in earnest.

When Burton finally had his hands on a script he felt good about, he shared it with Keaton. The actor felt good too, though he had some stipulations.

In the first movie, Beetlejuice gets a whopping total of 17 minutes of screen time, which is pretty wild when you realize what a knockout presence he was. “Keaton is like an exploding head,” wrote film critic Pauline Kael, reviewing Beetlejuice in The New Yorker. “He isn’t onscreen nearly enough—when he is, he shoots the film sky high.”

Part of the deal was, if Keaton were to come back, he didn’t want to take up more space. “The idea was, no, no, no, you can't load it up with Beetlejuice, that'll kill it,” Keaton says. “I think the Beetlejuice character doesn't drive the story as much as he did in the first one. He's more part of the storyline in this one as opposed to the first one, which is a case of, this thing comes in and drives the movie a little bit.”

He was also adamant that the 2024 version preserve the handmade spirit of the original Beetlejuice, rather than leaning on CGI. “When I say handmade, it's literally handmade,” Keaton says. We’re talking ghoulish puppets, outlandish set design—the kind of thing, he notes, “that’s really hard to do in 2024.” He had reason to insist: “For the most part, [with CGI] I think a lot of audiences subconsciously feel farther away from what's actually going on on the screen or in the story. It'll work, they'll accept it,” he says. “But I think for a lot of movies, it's not quite as enjoyable.”

Jacket by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Turtleneck by Loro Piana. Pants by Thom Sweeney. Shoes by John Lobb. Socks by Falke.

As for the character himself, there was not a ton of updating to be done there. Beetlejuice, debauched sicko in 1988, remains a debauched sicko in our more enlightened era. “He's a thing. He's more of a thing than a he or a she, he's more of an it. And I'm not saying ‘it’ to be politically correct. I just viewed it as a force more than anything. I mean, there’s definitely strong male energy, like stupid male energy, which I love,” Keaton explains. “You don't want to touch that because it's not like you go, ‘Well, it's a new year and this thing would now act like that.’”

Instead, to see Keaton in the film is to feel the eerie sensation of no time having passed at all. “It was like a weird family reunion,” Tim Burton told me. “Very strange, but the strange part of it is, Michael got back so into it, it was kind of scary in a way. I mean, for somebody who didn't really maybe want to do it, he seemed to channel it very quickly. And so it was quite exciting and surreal.”

And even though Beetlejuice seems so at odds with the rest of Keaton’s public image and filmography, it may actually be the character imbued with the maximum Michael Keaton. “He brought his energy to Beetlejuice,” costar Catherine O’Hara told me. “So that is Michael—real fast-talking, full of great crazy ideas, and really free.”

“There's a sexiness to him,” O’Hara added, laughing. “Which is crazy to say about Beetlejuice!”

Though, at first glance, all-American Michael Keaton and goth mastermind Tim Burton seem to have nothing in common, they do, in fact, match each other’s proverbial freak. “I love Michael because he has a certain energy,” Burton told me. “That's why I wanted him to be in Batman, because you just look in his eyes and he seems intelligent, scary, crazy, everything all at once.”

Back when Burton tapped Keaton to play the Caped Crusader in Batman, it was a controversial choice. So much so that, in the pre–social media days, 50,000 comic book nerds wrote to Warner Bros. to protest the casting. Keaton, not a comics guy by any means, did not quite understand the fervor. Now, he looks back at what Burton did with a different lens.

“Tim deserves enormous credit. He changed everything,” Keaton said. “I can't necessarily say this, but there's a strong possibility there is no Marvel Universe, there is no DC Universe, without Tim Burton. He was doubted and questioned.”

“He hasn't gotten himself enough credit for going, ‘Yeah—that guy,’” he continues. “And everybody went, ‘Wait, Michael? You worked with him on Beetlejuice, right?’ But I think what happened was Tim saw _Clean and Sober_”—Keaton’s first non-comedic role, about a man overcoming substance abuse. “I get the credit. I don't know that he got enough credit for making that move. That was a bold move.”

Plenty of esteemed actors have since wriggled into the Batsuit—George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, Robert Pattinson—but Keaton is still considered to be one of the best Batmen, and certainly the best Bruce Wayne. He’s even reprised the role, twice: in 2023’s The Flash and in the unreleased Batgirl, the latter of which was scrapped by Warner Bros. amid cost-cutting measures and will never see the light of day. Was the fate of Batgirl disappointing to him at all?

“No, I didn't care one way or another. Big, fun, nice check,” Keaton says, rubbing his fingers together in the universal gesture for “moolah.”

He pauses for a second, then softens slightly. “I like those boys. They're nice guys.” (Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, he means.) “I pull for them. I want them to succeed, and I think they felt very badly, and that made me feel bad. Me?” he says, shrugging. “I'm good.”

Keaton is starting to get visibly agitated with this line of questioning. He tenses up, and I suddenly find myself on the disapproving end of some of cinema’s most famous eyebrows. Why does everyone want to talk about Batman all the time anyway? At the end of the day, it was a role he played, like any other. If there was one thing he really got out of it, it was this: “I'm nothing but only respectful and grateful, 100%,” Keaton says. "And proud of it actually, because I like to prove everybody wrong. It's fun for me."

The dad vibes, first established with Mr. Mom, remain strong with Keaton. It’s a priority in his life—he has a son, Sean, who now has kids of his own. It continues to be a preoccupation in his work—both his self-directed film from earlier this year, Knox Goes Away, and the upcoming comedy Goodrich, wrestle with fatherhood. But nowhere is it more present or palpable than on his Instagram. That’s where, to his 945,000 followers, he posts stuff that could otherwise be posted by your average MSNBC-loving suburban dad. It’s refreshingly unmanicured, the majority of the feed populated by photos of his dog, photos of his actual TV taken from the couch, screengrabs of articles with wonky cropping, and, once, a photo of a tweet on his computer that was then posted rotated 90 degrees the wrong way.

When I merely mention the existence of his Instagram account, he turns bright red and starts belly-laughing that great Michael Keaton laugh, pretty much collapsing in our booth.

“It's embarrassing and great at the same time,” Keaton admits. “I try to embrace it. My kid has given up on me. He's totally given up. He tried to educate me, and he goes, ‘No, man, I'm just going to embrace this. I'm just going to laugh at you all the time.’ I don't know what it is. First of all, I'm too lazy. I'm too lazy to do the extra work. I go, ‘Here, you should know about this. Just have at it.’ By the way, I want to defend this. Why should I do everything for you?”

Jenna Ortega, his young costar on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, deemed Keaton “strangely normal,” adding that, “I think someone as successful as him, you could tell his priority lies with family and just being a kind, genuine guy.” James Marsden, who played his son in Knox Goes Away, recalled his first meeting with Keaton. “I sat in a room with him for about two hours. I don't think we intended to speak that long,” he said. “We just talked about fatherhood and kids and life, and never really even mentioned acting at all.”

I see Keaton’s grandfatherly instincts in action when, near the end of our interview, a girl who can’t be more than five and her mom are seated at the table next to ours. The kid shyly slides into the booth near Keaton. He greets her as if she’s an old friend and strikes up a conversation, sharing our french fries. Her mom is laughing, as if she can’t really believe what’s going down. The kid, naturally, has no idea who he is.

“You don't understand, but I'll explain when we're out of here,” says Mom.

There was always a sense, though, starting all the way back from those early Letterman appearances, that Keaton is just having more fun with the spectacle of celebrity than everyone else. “I'm a little surprised how many people take it seriously,” he says, when I raise this idea to him. “I was just with somebody I really liked the other day. This guy's great, so talented, so funny. A stand-up. We were at a little get-together. And for me, I mean—this guy's way younger than me, and I felt him behaving himself too much. I was pointing out some stuff that I thought was funny, and I don't know—I was shocked that there was no sense of _mischief._”

Maybe, I suggest, this business was just more fun back in the day.

“I might have more fun with it now. It’s not like I don't care about it, I care about it to the degree that it's my job, you shouldn't be a jerk. But, essentially, it's kind of all ridiculous,” he says. “That's the great thing: It all looks silly. The whole thing looks sillier every day.”

PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Christine Hahn
Styled by Michael Darlington
Grooming by Marissa Machado at PRTNRS
Tailoring by Ksenia Golub
Set design by Jennifer Correa