August 25 - Tim Burton

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On this day, in 1958, Timothy Walter Burton was born in Burbank, California. It’s hard to say what influenced Tim’s decidedly quirky, fairly macabre worldview the most, but the fact that his mother once owned a gift shop themed entirely around cats gives us a good start (although growing up at the epicenter of the entertainment industry would probably have darkened even the perkiest of kids). Tim began experimenting with stop motion animation in his backyard at a fairly young age. He spent a lot of time making soundless super 8 films that could have been spent shoring up his mediocre grades, but then we might not have ever gotten to experience some of my favorite movies.  Tim’s grades were good enough, however, to allow him to move on from Burbank High School to study character animation at CalArts, and really that’s all that matters in the long run.

While at CalArts, Tim wrote, directed and drew the animation entirely by himself for an animated short that caused quite a stir among his fellow students. Stalk of the Celery Monster depicted an unconventional dentist office that employed the titular monster as a sort of dental hygienist. Only fragments of it survive, but in the minute and a half that does, you can see most of the signature Burton aesthetics are already in place. Which really makes what happened next kind of strange: because of the glimmers of strange brilliance evident in Celery Monster, Disney offered Tim an animation apprenticeship.

Image copyright Disney

At the tail end of the Seventies, Tim started a relationship with the Walt Disney Company that, quite frankly, was doomed from the beginning. Over the next several years, he would be tried out in several different roles, none of which bloomed into anything. He spent time as an animator on The Fox and the Hound. He was moved to the art department and became a conceptual artist on The Black Cauldron, except none of his concepts were ever used (and that film could have used a whole lot of different concepts). He was given storyboard, graphic design and even some art direction work. None of it seemed to fit. And things didn’t get any better when Tim worked on projects of his own.

Image copyright Disney

In 1982, Tim was able to complete his first short, a stop-motion animated piece called Vincent. It’s a brilliant six minute poem about a little boy who likes to pretend that he is Vincent Price and the best part is that Tim got Vincent Price to narrate it. Disney played it for two weeks in exactly one theater in Los Angeles before the movie Tex (remember that one? Yeah, neither do I). Tim then directed a live action adaptation of Hansel and Gretel for The Disney Channel. Given a distinctly Japanese flavor, the movie features and all Asian cast and culminates in a kung fu fight (even though that martial art is really Chinese) between the siblings and the wicked witch. Disney aired it one time on Halloween 1983 with little warning and no promotion. Tim’s next project was the 1984 live action short Frankenweenie. It’s both a spoof and an homage to the original Frankenstein. Although Frankenweenie was later seen in the United Kingdom in front of Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (another film you won’t remember, although this one you don’t want to), it was never shown in the United States, in spite of the fact that it cost nearly $1 million to produce. Those two facts apparently gave whoever in management who didn’t like Tim all the ammunition they needed. He was accused of wasting company resources on a picture that was deemed too scary for kids and fired. The good news for his fans is that the spark that fueled his subsequent fire had already been made.

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Paul Reubens was one of the few people who actually got to see Frankenweenie and he loved it. Paul was looking to put his popular character Pee-wee Herman into a big screen romp of some sort and decided that Tim was just the guy to direct it. Tim in turn asked one of his favorite rock stars, Oingo-Boingo front man Danny Elfman, to write the music. The rest, as they say, is history. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure was a bona-fide hit, taking in $40 million on an $8 million budget, putting Paul, Tim and Danny firmly on the entertainment map and Tim and Danny forged a relationship that has seen Danny score all but three of Tim’s films.

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Tim took a breather, directing some episodes of a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and , before moving on to another feature film. He took a quirky script that was languishing around the offices of Warner Brothers, gave it a rewrite with a lot more comedy thrown in, cast a bunch of folks who were relatively unknown (but wouldn’t be for much longer) and spent the most money he’d ever been allowed to, $15 million. The result was Beetlejuice, a classic comedy that grossed over $74 million worldwide and convinced Warner Brothers that Tim was ready for what they called the big leagues: they gave him the greenlight on his version of a Batman movie.

Image copyright Warner Brothers

Tim had been developing his concepts for the Caped Crusader for a couple of years before getting the go ahead. He was making his superhero a much darker entity than the Superman of the Seventies and wasn’t afraid to court controversy. He insisted on making Batman a regular guy who used super gadgets and cast Michael Keaton, who he’d just worked with on Beetlejuice, as his lead over the objections of every fanboy out there who cried over a comedic actor landing the role. Then he cast Jack Nicholson as his villain, who came with a cloud of demands that threatened to overwhelm the production. Tim then had to constantly butt heads with Warner Brothers’ management to keep the tone of the whole thing from getting campy. And then the budget ballooned from thirty million dollars to forty-eight. The whole thing could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t. Batman opened to good critical reviews, Keaton and Nicholson were both praised for their performances and the film grossed over $400 million. Tim was now an established Hollywood director, one that even Disney was willing to listen to.

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As Tim was ramping up production on what is arguably his best film to date, Edward Scissorhands, he couldn’t forget about a little project he’d left behind when he’d been forced out of Disney. It was a three page poem, titled The Nightmare Before Christmas, that he first thought would make a great children’s book but might also work as a half hour television special. He asked around about it and discovered that Disney still owned the production rights to it. However, his former company was interested in talking to him about producing something based on it (isn’t it amazing what success will do for people’s perceptions of you?). Tim was interested but had a magnum opus to finish first. He hired a young Johnny Depp for his lead, converted a Florida subdivision into a giant movie set (in one scene you can see a sign for Publix in the background; that might not mean something to most of you but Floridians love it) and managed to get Vincent Price in for his last major film scene before he passed away. Edward Scissorhands is probably the most autobiographical film that Tim has ever made and is one of his biggest critical successes as well.

Image copyright Disney

After Edward, Tim found himself with two projects on his plate. At Disney, The Nightmare Before Christmas was becoming a feature length film. At Warner Brothers, a second Batman movie was being developed. Wanting to avoid the tediousness of three years of stop motion animation work, Tim opted to produce Nightmare and direct Batman Returns. He handed the reins of his holiday extravaganza over to another former Disney animator, Henry Selick, who created one of my favorite films of all time. Nightmare did moderately well at the box office in its initial run but has since become a cult classic that seems to continue to grow with each passing year. In a karma fueled twist of irony, Tim’s name, once derided at Disney for being too dark and weird (and therefore easily fireable), had to be put in front of Nightmare’s title in an attempt to draw in his growing fan base. Three years later, Tim and Henry would collaborate again (as producer and director respectively) for Disney’s second big stop motion feature, 1996’s James and the Giant Peach.

Image copyright Warner Brothers

Meanwhile, over at Warner Brothers, Tim demanded and received total control over Batman Returns. The result, much to the dismay of studio executives, was an even darker movie than the first one, with overtly sexual overtones. The sequel was a critical and financial success (albeit at half the rate of the original) but left management too worried about the direction Tim was taking the superhero. For the third installment, they relegated him to the role of producer only and after that he wasn’t even allowed to do that. I’m not saying the franchise suffered because of that decision, but I’m guessing we wouldn’t ever have had to see Batman and Robin if things had gone down differently.

In the decades since leaving Gotham City, Tim has directed 14 more films, all but one of which have been commercially successful. The lone money loser, Ed Wood, is actually one of his biggest critical successes (and a Touchstone Pictures movie). It’s a pretty good film but it’s also a biopic about an obscure director of terrible movies. If you aren’t interested in the subject (and even now, most people would be hard pressed to tell you who exactly Ed Wood is), you just aren’t going to care. Outside of that, Tim’s movies over the years have appealed to a wide swath of the viewing public. Whether you’re interested in summer popcorn fare (Planet of the Apes, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children), quirky bios (Big Eyes) or more of his signature macabre (Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Dark Shadows), he’s done something for just about every taste, a sentiment boosted by the fact that his films have grossed over $4 Billion. That figure has been greatly helped along by the three pictures he’s done for Disney since Nightmare: a live action Alice in Wonderland, an animated Frankenweenie and, his latest project, a live action Dumbo which have a combined box office of nearly $1.5 Billion (and, incidentally, are all kind of remakes that were done in the opposite medium from the originals). There is currently no word on what might be up Tim’s sleeve for his next project, but we know that whatever it is, it will not only be fun to watch, but probably more than a little bit off the beaten Hollywood path and that makes the anticipation just that much sweeter. Happy 61^st birthday, Tim!