Beetlejuice popped my.. well it was more like rape.

I have always loved Beetlejuice. This love affair has been going on since... well going on since as far back as I can honestly remember. Come to think of it, I think my sister still has the VHS tape which my parents bought for us, back when the film was first released. So I would have to imagine that at the very least, Beetlejuice is responsible for the first F-bomb these precious ears of mine had ever heard. Moreover however, Beetlejuice is certainly responsible for my first ever encounter into the world of dark humor: Comedy involving death, causing people to laugh because it's funny. Still however I am troubled. I'm troubled with this selection because I'm not entirely sure if it was the idea behind the movie (bio-exorcist from hell learning to cope with the Deets family from the north) or if it was simply Michael Keaton's interpretation of the character that's forcing me to select Beetlejuice, and Honor the movie for basically creating the man I am today.
I feel obligated to mention that only because I own a very large collection of Michael Keaton movies, and it would suffice to say that I have seen... nope memorized, rather, more Michael Douglas "Keaton" quotes than everybody in Michigan combined- including any, or all of his own personal family members. It is almost a sort of fetish, though I try not to think of it like that.
Aside all that however I believe my selection is still highly admirable. As Tim Burton very simply introduces his audience (by killing off the two main characters within the first five- ten minutes) to an underground world where everybody is dead, yet everybody is still content. And I imagine that like the rest of the world, my young developing mind was easily able to recognize how both the charcoal burnt chain smoker, and the lady reading the magazine- next to her decapitated legs- were actually dead. Well not just dead people, more like the "recently deceased" patiently waiting in a lobby to talk with their case workers. So as a young 2,3,4 or whatever year old, it would have been very clear to me off, right off the bat that neither Alec Baldwin or Geena Davis, much like the football team, had survived the crash. However if that had slipped my mind, it wouldn't have taken long for either Juno, Otho, or the Deets' to later explain it to me.
The impact that this movie has made on my life however, is far more vivid and explainable than any of my first 30 viewings of the movie combined. And probably my last 10 or so, due to the dangerously heavy drinking game that my brother and I often play while watching it. But the impact is still clear, and travels much further into the makeup of my brain than just my unknowingly, habitual tendencies which cause me to steal many or all of Michael Keaton's mannerisms.
The movie changed my life because I saw it a thousand times. We didn't have many movies, and this was the only one that my sister and I could agree to watch together. I thought it was funny, and she thought Alec Baldwin was hot. Non the less I've seen the movie too much. So much in fact that the mere thought of death (generally ghost and underworld claims) nearly always brings up an habitual association with the movie: Beetlejuice. I have seen this movie so many times that I often quote lines aloud, after similar moments from the movie arise. An example for instance would be

The Radio: A man and wife were found dead today......

Everything appearing after the elicits can be depicted as my thoughts trailing off into the movie.

So in a nutshell I'd have to claim that this movie has altered my life to the point where I not only steal it's prized character's mannerisms... I eat, live, sleep, and crave it. And because of all this (Tim Burton and Michael Keaton) I have learned to treat death as it's own sort of character, even within my own writing. As I am recently handed in a short story for workshop where an Englishman in Canada is planning to leap off from his building, while an elderly American woman with binoculars can't stop starring at his teeth. Eventually he jumps and it is described like a Bidet.

I hope Beetlejuice is as helpful to you as it has always been for me.