A real snow flake
For Michael Keaton, playing a snowman in Jack Frost is, well, a ball
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun
NEW YORK -- In the holiday fantasy Jack Frost, Michael Keaton plays a snowman.

For many actors that would be quite an acting stretch.

Not so for Keaton.

He played a prankster poltergeist in Beetlejuice, the caped crusader in Batman and three clones of himself in Multiplicity.

"That's not me in the snowman costume. I just loaned my voice to the snowman. It was a bit like doing an animated cartoon," explains Keaton.

The actual snowman is a joint creation of the Jim Henson Creature Shop and George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic.

It is a 5-ft., 6-in. puppet inhabited by gymnast and stunt woman Denise Cheshire.

The face was modelled after Keaton, giving it his trademark eyebrows and grin.

In Jack Frost, Keaton plays an aspiring musician named Jack Frost, who dies in an automobile accident on Christmas Eve without ever telling his wife (Kelly Preston) and son (Joseph Cross) how much he loves them.

The following year, when Jack's son builds the family snowman, Jack is able to imbue it with his spirit.

"For the holiday season, Jack gets to be the really cool dad he could have been, should have been and would have been if he hadn't focused so much on his career," says Keaton.

And just how cool a dad does he become?

"He's below freezing. You can't get much cooler than that."

Keaton hopes that he's a cool dad for his 14-year-old son Sean.

"I try to be there for him when he's playing sports and I'm really proud of his humanitarian spirit. He's a great kid.

"Last year (Sean) worked in a public park with Alzheimer patients. That's the kind of compassionate person he is. This year he wants to get a good paying job because there are things he really wants to buy himself.

"Sean is very realistic about the value of money. He learned that early on from his mother (actress Caroline McWilliams) and me."

McWilliams and Keaton were married for seven years.

After their breakup in 1990, he dated Michelle Pfeiffer and Kim Basinger briefly and was then engaged to Friends star Courtney Cox for six years.

Since their split, Keaton has been single.

"I'm the world's worst bachelor. I'm very much a family guy. I don't enjoy being single, but that's how things have been working out."

Keaton, who was born Michael Douglas, was the youngest of seven children. His father was an engineer and a surveyor and the family lived in a large, old house on an acreage where they raised chickens.

"I was close with my father, but not in the same way I'm close with my son.

"My dad came from the toughen-up-kid generation. Those men felt deep, but they hid their feelings. As a result, they were not great communicators.

"I'm a really sensitive person. I cry if I miss a cab. I've always worn my emotions on my sleeve. I think it makes life so much better when you can talk about anything.

"What's most gratifying is that Sean is so open about his feelings for me. The house will be filled with his friends but if I walk in, he comes over, puts his arms around me and gives me a hug and a kiss.

"He doesn't care who's in the room. Sean and I are great communicators. That's the theme of Jack Frost and one of the reasons I agreed to do the film. It says a great deal about communicating with the people you love."

Once Jack's spirit inhabits the snowman, it comes to life and spends its days playing with his son. They ride a toboggan and play hockey together.

"There have been wilder movie ideas that have worked. I remember when Tim Burton came to me with Beetlejuice, I had no idea what he was talking about and look what happened with that movie."

Keaton says he was also intrigued with the idea of "making a movie that would become a perennial Christmas family treat. I love the idea of families sitting down and watching an uplifting movie together over the holidays."

Keaton says he plans to spend this Christmas "visiting with my family and then taking off to do some skiing."

In Jack Frost, Keaton does his own singing and mimes playing the guitar and harmonica.

"I sang in a little cabaret group the summer between high school and college, but I haven't done any real singing since, so this was a blast," he says of his jazz rendition of Frosty the Snowman.

"I actually played harmonica and guitar in high school, but I was only ever a notch above mediocre. Still I knew enough to fake the fingering for both."

Any conversation with Keaton will eventually get around to his stint as the caped crusader in Batman and Batman Returns.

"I'm grateful to Batman. It made me a very wealthy man. It's allowed me to buy property and to do the kind of small movies that interest me. I never have to worry about money again.

"I don't regret turning down Batman and Robin. I was getting bored with the character and that's deadly for me. I actually caught about seven minutes of Batman and Robin.

"I was at a multiplex waiting for another film to begin and popped into a screening of Batman and Robin. I saw enough to know I'd made the right decision not to do it.

"I'm the first to admit I haven't had the same kind of success with any film since Batman, but that's to be expected."

Though he says he would never consider getting back inside the batsuit, Keaton says he would resurrect Beetlejuice "in a heartbeat if the script was good. I loved the wild unpredictability of that character."

Michael Keaton Article's Page 9