Gothic Fantasy

The Fims of Tim Burton

Edwin Page

• Publisher: Marion Boyars
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780714521800
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Edwin Page takes us on a journey through the films of Tim Burton, through which we gain insights into the mysterious, and somewhat reclusive film director responsible for them. A book ideally suited to film studies and media studies, at school and undergraduate level, this book has analysis of the filming methods devised by Tim Burton, and descriptions of his works, including Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride.

1. Tim Burton: The Man Behind the Movies

Tim Burton is a tall man usually dressed in black. His dark hair is often wild and unruly, Johnny Depp stating that ‘a comb with legs would have outrun Jesse Owens given one look at this guy’s locks.’1 All his films have been affected by his childhood experiences, experiences which still have a strong resonance with Tim Burton the man. This personal touch has meant that his movies communicate a deep sense of humanity to those that see beyond the stunning visuals and often playful plotlines.

Born on 25^th August 1958, Timothy William Burton spent the first ten years of his life living with his parents and younger brother in Burbank, California. Burbank is the location of a number of film and television studios, including Disney, NBC and Warner Brothers, so even as a boy he was close to the industry he would eventually become part of.

He couldn’t understand why his parents sent him to Sunday school when they weren’t really religious or why they had a certain picture hanging on their lounge wall despite the fact they didn’t seem to have any real feelings for it. He also couldn’t understand why they blocked up the windows of his bedroom, leaving only high slits for the light to shine through. So, distanced from his parents and younger brother due to his perceived ‘difference’, Burton moved in with his grandmother at the age of ten and remained with her until leaving high school.

He saw the suburban life as lacking in passion, as a kind of colourless, flat landscape in which no one really knew anyone else beneath the façade of normality. He has said of his experience of living in suburbia that there was ‘no passion for anything, just a quiet, kind of floaty kind of semi-oppressive blank palette that you’re living in.’2

In order to escape these oppressive feelings Burton would indulge in creative and quite ingenious pranks. At one time, with the help of some other children, he distributed debris and stamped footprints around a local park, and then persuaded other kids that aliens had crash-landed there. He also faked fights in the neighbourhood and once convinced another child that a killer had died after falling into a swimming pool, their body having dissolved due to the fact that the pool had recently been cleaned with chloride (the tall tale was supported by some clothes he’d thrown into the water).3

Due to his suburban upbringing, Burton developed the belief that society tries to suppress any creativity and passion an individual may feel, while at the same time a particular culture is enforced upon us, almost suffocating any creative urges we may possess. Because of this he says that individuals need a ‘certain kind of strength and simplicity’ in order to break through the enforced, cultural framework.4 This ‘strength and simplicity’ is exactly what Burton employed in his passion for drawing, a passion that continues to this day. It is also evident in his films on a visual level, making his movies highly identifiable.

The symbolism Burton uses in his films provides clear evidence of his taste in painters and paintings. He’s a particular fan of expressionist and impressionist work, such as that of Vincent Van Gogh, and it is fair to say that his work is influenced by these tastes. He says of these paintings, ‘they’re not real, but they capture such an energy that makes it real, and that to me is what’s exciting about movies.’5 In the same way his films are not trying to assimilate reality, but are highly symbolic and stylised in order to capture and convey the complexity of emotions within the narratives.

Burton finds drawing both satisfying and cathartic, claiming that, ‘I think best when I’m drawing.’6 His art was a way for him to create his identity and to express the emotions and feelings he had within. He describes his drawings as being part of an impulse to be seen for what he was, and one of his biggest influences as a child was ‘Dr Seuss,’ whose books he has described as ‘beautiful and subversive.’7

Burton often uses his drawings to explain certain elements of his films to production designers, directors of photography and even the actors involved. For example, he has made sketches of Edward Scissorhands, the Penguin from Batman Returns and Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow in order to show the kind of look he was seeking from the characters.

Ultimate Quote

‘Like most kids, I felt different… I felt like a foreigner in my own neighbourhood and in my own country’ – Tim Burton8

Perhaps attributable to this tendency to work things out visually rather than verbally or through the written word, Burton also enjoys photography. He appreciates the fact that this visual element ‘taps into your subconscious,’ explaining how, ‘it’s a more real emotion than if I intellectualise it in my mind. I like just trying something either in a drawing or photo… It’s a visual concept as opposed to thinking.’9

His boyhood pictures may not have been intended for show, but his films certainly are, reaching wide and often spellbound audiences. This provokes a strange reaction from their creator, who has claimed he is unable to bear watching his films in anything other than small parts until about three years after their release.10 In part he is afraid of how they will be received, explaining that ‘I love the making-of process, but I get very vulnerable at the end of it. It’s like I’m afraid to show it to anybody.’11 For Burton, the process of filmmaking must be particularly harrowing, his movies are so very personal – almost a reflection of his mind. It is hardly surprising that he is somewhat fearful of what he has displayed of himself in these films, what he has revealed to the global audience of millions. As I aim to emphasise, however, it is this very willingness to expose his interior world, and make himself vulnerable, that gives his films the impact and the lasting quality that they have.

Burton’s other major boyhood passion was monster movies and horror films, especially those starring Vincent Price and based on the dark tales of Edgar Allen Poe, such as The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Raven (1963), both of which were directed by Roger Corman. He also enjoyed the British ‘Hammer Horror’ films, the films of James Whale, such as his 1931 version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and he also regularly watched ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘The Outer Limits’.

In the realm of monster movies Burton loved the stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen which can be seen in such films as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (Hessler, 1974), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (Wanamaker, 1977), Clash of the Titans (Davis, 1981), and in Jason and the Argonauts (Chaffey, 1963), which is the first film that Burton recalls seeing.12 His enthusiasm for the way in which these films were created was to become clear when he created his own stop-motion movies and used the technique for special effects in films such as Beetlejuice.

In the monster and horror films which helped him to get through his younger years, Burton found himself identifying with the monsters rather than the heroes, as the monsters tended to show passion whereas the leads were relatively emotionless. Indeed, Burton saw them as representative of suburbanites.13 It is also the case that the monster is the outsider, the alienated; feelings that Burton was familiar with. The monster is also often misunderstood, such as in King Kong (Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Dieterle, 1939), and again, Burton found he could easily identify with such themes. He was also attracted to horror films because of the ‘grand melodramatic emotion,’14 and we see this reflected in the emotive content of his own films.

This intensity aside, Burton’s initial motivation was almost accidental. One of his first brushes with film making was down to the fact that he hadn’t read a book about Houdini for a final exam at school. Because of this he filmed a little, Super 8 movie based on Houdini’s escape antics, including tying himself to railroad tracks. As he recalls the story, ‘It impressed the teacher and I got an A’, going on to explain how this affected him, ‘that was maybe my first turning point, when I said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind being a filmmaker.”’15

Leaving high school a semester early, Burton went on to the California Institute of the Arts after winning a scholarship. The Institute of...