Departing The Dark: Tim Burton on Big Fish

Departing The Dark: Tim Burton on Big Fish
by Mark Salisbury

Tim Burton has made his name a cinematic byword for a certain kind of delicious darkness and strangeness. Undoubtedly he is a "personal" filmmaker in that his abiding interests and his stylistic signature are clear on every project. However he has rarely been seen as "personal" in the sense of mining his own share of life's common experiences for the purpose of his movies. One clear exception is his 2003 picture, Big Fish. In this abridged extract from Burton On Burton (Faber and Faber), the definitive study of the director in his own words, editor/interviewer Mark Salisbury describes the inception of the Big Fish project and draws from Burton an account of the personal circumstances that led him to want to direct the movie.

MARK SALISBURY: Burton's father Bill had passed away while he was in pre-production on Planet Of The Apes in October 2000, and his mother, Jean, died in March 2002. Although Burton was never close to his parents – moving out of the familial home when he was very young – their deaths affected him deeply. Professionally, Burton wanted to get back to making something smaller and more personal, especially after the studio shenanigans involved with Superman and Planet Of The Apes.

He was sent the script for Big Fish by producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who had picked up the Best Picture Oscar for Sam Mendes' American Beauty. Based on a book by Daniel Wallace, the script had been adapted by screenwriter John August and initially attracted the interest of Steven Spielberg, who had August write a couple of drafts with Jack Nicholson in mind for Edward Bloom Sr. A year later, with Spielberg no closer to committing, August put together a 'Best Of' draft from the many that he'd done, removing much of what Spielberg had overseen, before Jinks and Cohen sent it out to Burton.

Big Fish revolves around the exaggerated adventures of Alabama traveling salesman Edward Bloom, a gregarious, romantic and prodigious teller of exceedingly tall tales, now in the twilight of his life and estranged from his only son, Will (Billy Crudup), a journalist living in France, soon to be a parent himself. When Will returns home in the hope of reconnecting with his dying father (beautifully played by Albert Finney) and attempting some kind of reconciliation with the real person he believes is beneath the persona, the film then cuts back between the time-present drama and a fantasy version of Edward (Ewan McGregor as the younger Bloom) through whose eyes we see events. And it's through these mythical tales that William eventually comes to a better understanding of his father.

TIM BURTON: I was ready for something like [Big Fish]. And reading the script just surprised me. It was also nice to do something that wasn't a known entity – probably not since Beetlejuice have I done something completely off the radar, so to speak, and it was nice to work like that again, where you don't have a release date before a script, where you don't have a brand name, or something that everybody knows and compares it to. It was nice too, after a few years of doing this other kind of stuff, to connect with something again on a certain level.

My father had recently died and, although I wasn't really close to him, it was a heavy time, and it made me start thinking and going back to the past. It was something that was very difficult for me to discuss, but then this script came along and it actually dealt with those same issues, and so it was an amazing catharsis to do this film – because you're able to work through those feelings without having to talk to a therapist about it. For me, that kind of stuff is always quite uncomfortable and sappy and hard to put words to. That's what I liked about the script – it kind of put images to the things that I couldn't say. And when you start to analyze your relationship with your parents, it's so bizarre and complicated, and yet so simple at the same time. Why, if a parent is like a hippie, are the children little straight-arrows? And why, if the parents are two boring accountants, then the children are wild? You realize it's the strangest relationship you can have.

My dad was a professional baseball player early in his life, before I was born. He played for the Cardinals, it was a Triple-A team, I think, and I think he got injured. Then he worked for the Park and Recreation Centre in Burbank, he was city employee, but he stayed in sports. He was very well liked, he had a very outgoing personality, because he had to deal with kids' baseball teams, girls' and men's softball teams, all the different sports, because Burbank had a good city sports program. And then he became a part-time travel agent, so he would travel a lot.

I don't know if there's any real reason why I didn't get on with my parents. It had more to do with the fact that when I was living there, I felt old for my age. I didn't get along with my mother so much, and my father was away a lot, and they were having whatever their problems were, and I was just always remote. That was my personality, it seemed – and even when I went to live with my grandmother, it wasn't a big deal, I just sort of did it. And then I got my first apartment when I was 15, so I always felt older. I had to make my way. To go to Cal Arts, I had to get a job. My parents didn't pay for my college, but I never felt really angry about that with them. I actually felt it was probably good, because I was the one who had to go do it, and I did it. In a kind of perverse way, that teaches you to be independent, and I always felt independent. And ultimately I feel that in some ways I was lucky that I was allowed that independence.

When my dad was ill... you start to prepare yourself. As I say, I didn't have the closest relationship with them, but as he got ill I tried to kind of re-connect a little bit. I didn't get to the point where Billy's character does at the end of Big Fish, although it wasn't as bad in the first place. I made some headway. But I did start thinking too about how the relationship starts out quite magical and then it sort of turns south, kind of similar to this film in some ways. And the thing I realized was – no matter how old you are, the relationship is still parent/son, it's not human beings together. And I never really treated my parents like human beings. They're your parents, then you grow up, and even if you're not close you kind of realize later on that they have a whole other life going on. And you can be 45 years old but still feel inarticulate and cut off with your parents. And they kind of go full-circle, they go from children to parents and then back into children, and you go full circle in your life too. So it's a very unique and powerful relationship.

Making anything should be cathartic. And with my dad, thinking about the relationship, it wasn't something I could talk to a therapist about. I've had therapy but I've never discussed my parents. But in reading this script I thought, 'This is it exactly, this puts an image to the uncommunicable.' So I liked that very much. I wouldn't normally do something like that except it hit me on that level. It's like having a baby - you can't really prepare for your real emotions. It just hits you very strongly and in a primal way. I wasn't looking for that kind of catharsis, even though I had been thinking about my parents. So, in a way, I felt it was good to be kind of surprised...

MARK SALISBURY: Big Fish opened in the US in November 2003 to generally extremely positive reviews. While many found the film truly heartfelt, some critics believed the film to be too sentimental. There were others, however, who hailed it as a massive departure for Burton, despite the evidence of his earlier films which contain their own share of emotion and pathos, be it Martin Landau's heartbreaking performance in Ed Wood or Johnny Depp's in Edward Scissorhands.

TIM BURTON: That's why it always makes me laugh a bit to myself. "He's a dark person, but this is a real departure, a much lighter film, blah blah blah..." But I don't really think too much about that. That's what the movie's about – how people perceive things, reality, what is and what's not. I think Nightmare Before Christmas has sad, emotional moments. But you would think I just made these dark tone poems...