TIM BURTON

MARRIES THE DEAD

by Brad Balfour

Since director Tim Burton emphasizes eccentricity in everything he does from Batman to Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, it's no wonder that he found a special niche in stop motion animation. Even though the 48 year-old Californian seems to be working in a children-oriented medium he doesn't leave the bizarre behind so it was inevitable that his next story, The Corpse Bride not only explores the land of the dead, he makes it more appealing than this world. Of course, it didn't hurt that he used his usual ensemble--folks like Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp and Danny Elfman--to make this a remarkable film.

Are you optimistic that the afterlife is as colorful as you painted it in this movie?

I have no idea what happens, but I do respond to other cultures that treat life with a much more positive approach. I think this other form, kind of teaches, especially as a child, to almost be afraid of everything and feel like something bad is going to happen. As to where that other way, it just seems like a much more spiritual and positive approach. That's as far as I go, because I really have no idea what will happen.

What's the appeal of the dead and undead to you?

Dealing with the undead comes from growing up in Burbank, I think. It's sort of a suburban Night of the Living Dead during the day. I always liked monster movies, and I'm always fascinated by, again growing up in a culture where death is looked upon as sort of a dark subject and then living so close to Mexico where you see the Day of the Dead skeletons and it's all humor, music and dancing and sort of a celebration of life, in a way, and that always felt more like a positive approach to things. So I always responded to that, more than just this sort of dark, unspoken cloud in the environment I grew up in.

Were your corpse characters based on the Mexican Day of the Dead figurines?

I used to have those figurines and they'd always have these nice scenes with them in clothes. There was a lot of humor and fun involved with those characters and that's what I felt was really inspiring to me.

Do you think this movie is appropriate for children? Will they enjoy it or maybe it will be too scary for them?

Well, I've always had problems with that. I remember that people were saying that about Nightmare and tiny, tiny little kids came up and said they loved the movie. I think it's more of an adult problem then it is a kid problem. I find Corpse Bride is even softer in a certain way. It's basically an emotional love story with humor, and any kind of fairy tale or fable, there are elements that are maybe slightly unsettling, but that's part of the history of those kinds of stories.

Did you have problems with the rating?

No, PG, which I think was appropriate, because as I said, the story is quite emotional and I personally don't find it dark at all, in the same way as Nightmare. In fact I think it's almost less dark in a certain way. I also find that adults forget that kids are their own best censors. Some kids like that kind of stuff and some kids don't, and they're usually the best ones to judge it. It's when adults are going "Oh, you can't see this, can't see that" that it creates this climate of fear, and makes children more afraid. I have a child that's under two years old, and he's watched When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Viva Las Vegas, which isn't a horror movie, but some people may find it scary. It's about how you present things and if he got scared, he'd run away.

Is there anything that would scare your son?

Only his parents….at the moment…truthfully [laughs]. I don't know why. We don't try to scare him, but he just looks up at us like "who are you?" I don't know if it's because of the way we look or the way we act. But no, it's interesting to watch. I'm not going to start showing him hardcore porn or anything, but I find it's a fascinating subject and I was talking to somebody, who's actually writing a book on it. You go into a shop and it's like here's the Teletubbies, here's the Wiggles, and it's this very limited kind of--which some might say is scarier than most horror movies. If you show them other things and don't present it like "Ohhhhhhh, it's a bad thing." It might be amazing what they just accept.

What animated cartoons that you watched as a kid influenced you to make two animated films?

It immediately had to do with [master animator] Ray Harryhausen. He was the guy. If I saw his name [on a movie], no actor meant anything but his name certainly meant something, and that's where my love of this type of animation came from--because you could see an artist at work. His monsters had more personality than most of the actors in the movies. Even the monster was just a monster; the death scene was always just so beautiful and tragic. The final little twist of the tail or the one final breath or whatever. He just brought such passion into the work, so to me, he was the guy who not only inspired me, but he inspires almost any animator. In fact, several months ago, Johnny and Helena and I went to his house in London and met him for the first time and he was just such an amazing man and so generous with his time and enthusiasm. He went to the set of Corpse Bride and production sort of ground to a halt that day because everyone was [makes bowing motions]. He truly has inspired not just stop-motion animators, but any animator.

Besides Harryhausen, were there any other pop culture references that influenced your recent movies like comic books?

Those kinds of things that you grow up watching like the Rankin and Bass "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", they stay with you. They just kind of form what you like to do. I wasn't a big comic book fan, really. I don't know if I was dyslexic, but I always had trouble knowing which box to read first. I kept reading the wrong box and thought this is a comic book that doesn't make any sense. Do I read the one up here or the one down here? I couldn't quite deal with it.

What led you to filmmaking?

I always liked to draw as probably every kid does and make Super 8 movies like a lot of kids did, and I never had the real goal to do that until in school. I was such a bad student, and I remember having to do a report where you had to read a book and write a 50 page essay on it, so I made a little Super 8 film on Houdini, a book that I had to read about. I remember not reading the book, not having to write and getting an A+ on the project and I thought "Oh, this might be a good living to try to do." So I always liked making things and then I got into animation, and also luck comes into it as well.

And now you have done literary classics, like Sleepy Hollow and of course, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Some people were like, "Oh you're remaking the movie," but with Charlie, none of us ever felt we were remaking the movie. We felt we were trying to make the book. The screenwriter never looked at the [first] movie. For that one we didn't feel pressured to try and top the original.

Was your relationship with Johnny much different on Corpse Bride?

It was weird because we were doing both at the same time, he was Willy Wonka by day and Victor by night so it might have been a little schizophrenic for him. It's the first animated movie he's done, and he's always in for a challenge. He's kind of up for anything.

Johnny has said that he scrambled Victor together in about fifteen minutes. Was it that instantaneous?

Oh yeah. We were shooting Charlie one day and it was like, “Hey, let's do some recording tonight.” And as we were walking over he was like, “Shit, who is this character, what is he doing…I have no idea…” Great thing is, he likes to work spontaneously too and, really, in that one session he got it. I think he might have been a bit worried to begin with but I think he likes that.

Helena Bonham Carter had to audition for the film and then had to wait painfully for two weeks for your answer. Is that true?

No, she's an actress, so she's making it more dramatic [laughter]. It was probably a slight bit of torture, but it's a two-way street. It wasn't as dramatic as that. I think maybe because I'm with her, I probably was a little harder on her than I would be with somebody [else]. Nobody else did have to audition, that's true [laughter]. Long before I met her, she had done many movies. She's very secure with herself and what she's done. There's never really been any problems…yet. No, seriously, she was fine.

Would you ever dare not to cast Helena in one of your films?

Of course. I wouldn't cast her just to cast her in the same way that I wouldn't cast Johnny or anybody that I love working with just to have them in the movie. You always want it to be the right thing and the right role. I think she and most of the people I work with understand that.

Do you look for outcast qualities in the actors that you use?

Yeah. Of course. When I first met Johnny on Edward Scissorhands, he was sort of looked upon as this handsome leading man, but I don't think in his heart he felt that way and that's why he wanted to do it because he understood that being perceived as one thing and being something else.

Victor is sort of an outcast--so are the Bride and Victoria.

Yeah, the love triangle in Corpse Bride--they all are outcasts in their own way and that's the beauty of the story to me. That's what gave it its poignancy to me; it's bittersweet with a sort of hopeful and sad quality altogether. The juxtaposition of who is going to be with who and what's going to end up happening was a very tricky balance to get, but something that was again crucial and important to who he was.

Your movies have always been about outsiders. Now that you have a happy relationship, a kid and so on, is it hard to still feel like an outsider?

Well things aren't always happy [laughing]. No, you are very affected by your early life and if you ever had that feeling like an outsider, or that lonely feeling, it doesn't leave you. You can be happy successful, whatever, but that feeling still stays inside you. You always will have that.

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...