Any time Beetlejuice plays in a Rochester theater, the first screams should hit at the 2:10 minute-mark, when Warren Skaaren’s name pops up.

Skaaren, writer of Beetlejuice and Hollywood screen doctor of blockbusters, was from Rochester — a 1966 alumnus of Rochester Community College (which later became Rochester Community and Technical College), in fact. His swift, empathetic approach to storytelling earned him a spot at the pinnacle of movie-making.

Some quick hits: he jumped into the Top Gun script to change Tom Cruise’s love interest from gymnast to rocket scientist, imbued Batman’s Joker with Nietzsche-isms to coax a performance out of Jack Nicholson, and pumped up Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice with traits from Native American trickster archetypes.

Audiences will have a chance to see Skaaren’s work on the big screen again this weekend at Gray Duck Theater, 619 6th Avenue NW. Beetlejuice plays there three consecutive nights Oct. 15-17 at 7 p.m.

Skaaren was born in Rochester in 1946, where, according Alison Macor’s “Rewrite Man: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren,” he spent his youth as a Boy Scout and occasional aid to the police as a speeding-car reporter.

In 1969, as student body president of Rice University, Skaaren led the successful ‘coat and tie rebellion’ to depose the newly hired university president. His film industry career began a year later, at age 25, when he was appointed by Texas Governor Preston Smith as head of the state’s Film Commission. As head of the commission, he maneuvered between producers, directors, small-town sheriffs, oil barons, and movie stars to bring film crews (and all the money they spend) to Texas.

His tenure on the board saw roughly 40 movies filmed in Texas. He even won a heated face off with legendary Western director Sam Peckinpah over whether or not The Getaway should take place in the 1940s.

He left the Film Board to pursue writing after the lucrative one-two punch of suggesting the title of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and securing its distribution rights. After swooping in to rescue the Batman script, his reputation placed him among the ranks of Hollywood’s top writers.

Despite being one of the highest-paid writers in Hollywood, he remained in Austin to avoid diminishing his vision of humanity, which empowered his writing. That may have been influenced by his experiences with film industry people while on the film board.

Photo courtesy the Warren Skaaren Charitable Trust

As he told Jeff Millar for a July, 1973 profile in Texas Monthly, “I remember once going through a small town in East Texas, very poor, and here’s this guy who represents one of the people who makes the whole moving-image business in this country what it is, and he turns around to me and says, ‘How do these people stand it? They look like they’re living in a commercial!’ The film people don’t understand their own bias.”

When Skaaren died of cancer in 1990, his obituary ran in both the New York Times and LA Times, but his influence runs deeper than movies. He and his wife Helen Griffin fostered seven children and helped found the Travis County Foster Parents Association. The Warren Skaaren Charitable Trust, funded by his earnings, continues his work on behalf of children and the environment. Part of the trust funds a recurring scholarship at RCTC: the Skaaren Scholarship, a nod to the continued relationship Skaaren enjoyed with Robert Wise, Associate Dean of Students at RCC.

Skaaren’s final project, Beetlejuice sequel Beetlejuice in Love, was never produced. Neither was his first commissioned project, Jewel of the Nile sequel Of East And West. You can find bits of each in his papers, which are at the Harrry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas Austin.

Bryan Lund is a Rochester writer and regular contributor to Med City Beat.

Cover photo courtesy the Warren Skaaren Charitable Trust