Day O!

Well hello there, I am so excited to talk to you because in celebration of Halloween, we are looking at a semi-spooky movie featuring an interior designer as a character. This is actually a little bit of a combo of talking about a building and its designer in a film. Personally, I love seeing interior designers as characters in all types of media because it’s very indicative of how people see us designers- the good, the bad, and the tacky! And today’s character is such a good depiction of a designer, even though they exhibit plenty of negative stereotypes, I have always been curious about one Otho Fenlock from Tim Burton’s feature film Beetlejuice.

Before we talk all about Otho, let’s briefly look at the color of the week. It’s autumn here in New York City and the leaves on the trees are just starting to get good. It’ll be a few more weeks until true fall foliage peak, but presently we are surrounded by gold leaves from maple, walnut, and redbud trees. Pantone 7409 C is the perfect golden hue to bring that cozy fall energy into your life. Try collecting bundles of fallen leaves as a table centerpiece or getting some natural beeswax candles to bring the outdoors in.

So, it’s a little bit of an understatement to say that I love all things Tim Burton. If my fangirl ways creep into this episode, consider yourself warned. I’m not really going to get into the plot of Beetlejuice today, but I will still offer fair warning, if you wish to remain unspoiled and have not yet seen the 1988 movie Beetlejuice starring Michael Keaton, please pause this episode, watch the film, and come on back. Or stay tuned and let me spoil you!

Beetlejuice was one of Burton’s earliest movies, and it really set the tone for his whole career. His previous movie, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, was not quite as dark as Beetlejuice, save for the Large Marge scene, but once you go macabre, you never go back. The TLDR synopsis of this movie is a young, recently deceased couple is spiritually bound to their old Connecticut farmhouse for 125 years after their deaths. They attempt to scare away the home’s new owners with hauntings and scare tactics to no avail, and enlist the help of the titular creature to really give the family a freight.  What we are diving into today is presented merely as a subplot, but it has always captivated me. The new owners of the home have a friend-slash-interior designer named Otho who helps them to drastically remodel the whole place from top to bottom. We will also be taking a look at the before and after of the home to get a better sense of Otho’s work. 

There have been some pretty great character analyses of Otho already written, one in particular from tor.com goes into some of the stereotypes that are forced upon him and problematic tropes his character embodies. There is a link to that article in the show notes for your reading pleasure. But I want to look at Otho from the lens of a fellow designer. Otho Fenlock is a New York City legend, or so he says. He’s schooled in chemistry, worked as a hair analyst (which I assume is some type of forensic work), he was one of New York City’s leading paranormal researchers (he knows just as much about the supernatural as he does about interior design), and had a stint as a performance artist at The Living Theater. Now of course, he’s remodeling homes in Connecticut. While this back story around Otho may simply serve as witty background dialogue, I think Otho being on his fourth career is pretty spot on. I’ve worked with other designers who lead past lives as ballet dancers, flight attendants, insurance adjustors, accountants, anything you can dream up. In fact, many graduate level programs in interior design and architecture are geared towards students making intentional career changes - Harvard’s GSD program is the most prestigious example. A background in any field can add a unique and helpful layer to a designer’s point of view. So even though the movie is presenting Otho’s past in what feels like an attempt to discredit him and make him look unfocused, I think this is spot on with accuracy.

We first meet Otho in one of the best character entrances ever. His big red patent leather shoe dangles in through a side window into the Deetz family’s newly acquired and haunted home. He enters through the living room window, rather than the front door because it’s bad luck. So, we know by the foot wear and choice of entrance that we are dealing with someone who pays attention to both customs and trends. He’s dressed impeccably and very much like a designer - all black suit with red buttons, red shoes, and a turquoise bolo tie. The second he is in the Deetzes house, his mind is at work,  his eyes are sizing up what is likely a blank canvas, his eyebrow arched at the prospect of a new project. He lets patriarch Charles Deetz, purse strings holder, know right off the bat this is going to be an expensive under taking.

I mean I think there’s plenty to critique in this one scene alone, but I for one am completely on board with Otho’s mix over-the-top drama and matter of fact candor. Just like a New Yorker. Let’s side step for a minute to understand exactly what it is Otho is eyeing up.

The Maitland farmhouse at the beginning of the movie has dark wood doors, floors, and trim; with bright white walls covered in a delicate blue floral wallpaper. There’s a feature cuckoo clock, a precious fireplace framed in emerald green 2x2 ceramic tiles with a mantle covered in plastic toy horses, and two cozy arm chairs right in front of it. The kitchen is small but functional, with butcher block counter top on top of painted white cabinets, a turquoise shiplap accent wall, with exposed wood beams in the ceiling. It’s understated, but not without charm. I’m surprised more people didn’t use this as their farmhouse decor Pinterest inspiration, most of these elements would be warmly welcomed by first time home buyers today.

The exterior is pretty distinctly Second Empire Style, except in a Tim Burtony way. The whole house sits on an awkwardly tall foundation of exposed stonework. This foundation is so high that every entrance into the home is on the floor above and can only be reached by a full flight of stairs. This gangliness is exaggerated because the whole house sits at the tippy top of the highest hill in town. Looking up at the house we see nothing but blue sky and a twisty little nearby tree. Everything is painted white, but stained over time with dirt and water. A small porch sits below an oversized square tower that’s capped by a shingled mansart roof. Each side of the tower has a pair of hung windows above a single round port hole style window, giving the tower a humanoid face. The rest of the roof is rusted tin at a steep pitch. As the Deetzes move in, mother Delia (played by Catherine O’Hara) watches her modern sofa literally ram into the staircase, which is undamaged due to its “good sturdy country craftsmanship.”

Otho and Delia immediately go on a walking  tour of the house, writing on each wall in spray paint the color it will be painted. As dramatic as this is, it’s a similar technique used by contractors to mark which walls are being demolished and which are staying, so I found this scene to be pretty  realistic. Otho comments that the home has no organic flow through, which is so true of old homes in general, but by the way the movie is presenting this character, I get the distinct impression we are not supposed to like him. This city dwelling, over-the-top, pretentious, arts-fartsy intruder is invading the poor recently deceased Maitland’s home, and changing everything about it. It’s a natural villain edit. But from everything I’ve seen so far, Otho is a passionate, creative, dedicated designer. And he’s sensitive enough to notice the Maitlands shuffling about the house in their ghost form, even though the movie goes to great lengths to make sure we viewers know that the living usually chose to ignore the dead. Not Otho. All that time as a paranormal researcher must have sharpened his sixth sense because he can feel a presence in the home.

Upon reaching the tartan clad study, Otho utters one of my favorite lines in the whole movie - “deliver me from LL Bean.”

Otho makes quick work of a remodel, although there’s no real time stamp, but the next scene we see the house in its final stages of construction. The foundation is now clad in black and white horizontal stripes, similar to those of the alternate dimension sand snake that’s bullying the Maitlands, and later we will see these stripes in Beetlejuice’s finale outfit. The whole house is glistening in new white paint, even the tin roof, with brand new post modern bright yellow painted steel I-beams cantilevering from two sides of the house, off of which hangs a secondary facade attached to a spaceframe-esque form. Like one of those three dimensional grids that created a portal at the grand entrance of a mall in 80’s. Can you handle the nostalgia? This is all completely unnecessary of course, and adding only aesthetic value. The porch has almost doubled in size, smart move for a country house, but otherwise the majority of the house remains only gently modified.

The interior renovation is a little more dramatic. Although upon close inspection it’s mostly paint and furniture. If you look carefully you can still see a lot of the old molding and trim from our original friendly farmhouse,  it’s just been painted over with speckled faux granite texture and some walls even have faux green marble murals painted on them.

One thing that is drastically different is the fireplace which is now completely lacking miniature horses and framed with an art deco patina cooper mantle and glass blocks at the slip on the floor that seem to glow from within. Most of the space is tones of gray, contrasted by a new bright red wet bar, plus a geometric marble floor that probably inspired Kelly Wearstler for decades. The kitchen in unrecognizable, with cobalt blue walls and an expanded footprint that includes an island dressed in glass block.

All of the furniture is heavily influenced by 80’s darlings The Memphis Group. This design movement was primarily based in Italy and is characterized by high contrast color palettes and simplistic geometries including arches, circles, wavy and zig zag linear elements. The Memphis Group is a perfect pairing for this Tim Burton movie, not only because they were basically the most prevalent furniture design collective in the 80’s, but also because their approach and philosophy to design is very similar to Tim Burton’s style of movie creation. The Memphis philosophy is the opposite of form follows function, their furniture and design pieces were conceptualized to be highly decorative, so much so that their purpose was almost secondary. Function was treated with a tongue-in-cheek approach, almost a Rube Goldberg aesthetic. If you’re still having trouble picturing this style, just visualize PeeWee’s play house or the Max on Saved By The Bell. 

Flash forward to present day, and Memphis style is towards the end of having a renaissance, with the collective‘s Ultimate Strawberry full length mirror showing up in every young starlet’s foyer. But it’s largely been dismissed as ugly and frivolous in the past. What’s perfect about the use of Memphis-esque pieces here, is the strong contrast they provide to the understated farmhouse vernacular that they have replaced. Burton is working to create an other worldly depiction of the afterlife that is still palette-able for the movie’s PG audience, and this look accomplishes it. 

With Memphis being the dominant style of the time, Otho is clearly well versed on trends. He works with Delia to create an entire sculpture garden adjacent to the dining room for her art pieces, which are her absolute joy. Celebrating a clients artwork and what makes them truly happy is a good designer 101.

Now, Otho is present for the infamous dinner party scene, and frankly he’s a jerk to the other diners. It makes me question if all his thoughtful behavior is just an act for his paying clients, and he treats everyone else like garbage. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t seen that type of behavior from successful, principles level designers before. It’s like dealing with two completely different people sometimes! Regardless of the true explanation for Otho’s behavior, it doesn’t surprise me to see a high end interior designer act this way.

After stealing the Handbook For the Recently Deceased, Otho uses his other worldly gifts and new found partial knowledge to host a seance in the Deetzes dining room to impress a local hot shot real estate tycoon. But unfortunately, our Jack of all trades doesn’t have quite enough of a nuanced understanding of his spell casting, because he nearly exorcises the Mainlands souls, until Beetlejuice intervenes. Otho is then humiliated by Beetlejuice, who dresses him in a powder blue 1970’s suit (clearly not the look of the moment, although I still think Otho pulls it off). And just like that Otho is defeated as runs into the night, presumably back to the safety of Manhattan.

By the end of the movie, the house has been transported back to its original form, and Otho isn’t heard from again. One thing I’ve never understood about this aesthetic transformation is that Burton is clearly using the quant farmhouse aesthetic to represent good, and the Post-Modern Memphis style to represent evil, but the later is much more aligned with the aesthetic he used again and again in his movies, and what became his signature look. Many people would write off anything Post-Modern or Memphis-esque with the dreaded philistine insult “monstrosity.” But would Burton really use an aesthetic as his signature if he didn’t actually love it? 

Similarly with Otho, despite this movie’s $12 million budget and numerous script rewrites, our interior design friend lacks the true diabolic nature to be a real villain. Somehow we’re lead to feel that a shape shifting undead being with mold on his face who wants to marry a 13 year old is actual the hero of this movie. I’m not fooled. It’s clear that without this incredibly realistic, although exaggerated portrayal of an interior designer - the plot, scenery, and costumes would be half as interesting. And with that I will leave you with my number one favorite quote from Beetlejuice -

“your mother’s gonna kill you when she sees you cut holes in her $300 sheets.” Talk to you next week, bye!