FILM DIRECTOR BURTON ACCEPTS HIS SILVERSWORD AWARD WITH AN AIR OF WHIMSY

By Tim Ryan

From Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 06.05.2000

Tim Burton has made a career out of directing some of the most macabre, frightening and just plain weird films ever made.

But on a cloudless Friday night on a golf course driving range turned into the ultimate movie drive-in for the Maui Film Festival, Burton, 41, is on his back peering into the night sky talking more to himself than the reporter next to him.

"What's really out there?" he says. "Behind the stars, beyond the stars; there has to be something!"

Then while a Maui hula halau performs, Burton whispers "Wow, did you see that!" A shooting star fills a quarter of the night sky, leaving an almost imperceptible streak.

"This is so great," Burton says. "Usually the places I scout films are toxic waste dumps or dripping with asbestos. I don't know if I could actually work here, it's so beautiful. You know they say I am a very dark director."

Then he laughs.

"God, I really don't want to be dark."

Burton is in Hawaii to scout locations for his new Twentieth Century Fox film, Planet of the Apes. He is also in Wailea to receive the Maui Film Festival's "Silversword Award" honoring his body of work and imaginative film making.

In that whimsical spirit, festival director Barry Rivers, presented Burton with an imaginary award, passing to him, well, an armful of Maui air.

Burton opens his arms to get the non-existent prize, pretending to stagger under its weight, then kissing air where it's supposed to be.

This scenario was the reason Burton decided to attend the Maui event.

"I love it," the filmmaker said. "I have the perfect place for it: my imaginary award cabinet."

His acceptance speech before several hundred film fans sitting in beach chairs or on blankets eating popcorn and sipping wine at the unique outdoor theater is sincere and short, ending in less than 20 seconds.

Moments later, Burton stands off to the side of the giant outdoor screen, explaining he's not "really an awards person but I thought that considering the nature of my films this is the best representation."

"And it's the right spirit of appreciation for what I try to do in film," said the director of the darkest Batman--Batman Returns--the macabre comedy Beetlejuice, the frightening children's tale Sleepy Hollow, the odd Edward Scissorhands, and an unlikely tribute to the worse director of all time, Ed Wood.

"In Los Angeles, people get really caught up in this award thing, especially around Oscar time when people get this glazed look in their eyes," Burton said. "It's nice that people are thinking about you, but to take it any deeper is not what film making is about.

"You make things because you want to make things. The best response is a response that it affects the viewer in some way."

Burton has visited Maui on vacation several times, calling it a place "where I sing more and dream more than I've ever been."

"The first time I came here I thought I was dying because I had never felt like that before in my life," he said. "So relaxed in a way that I couldn't or didn't want to move."

Burton is dressed quite un-celebrity-like: dark jeans, white T-shirt under a red long-sleeve shirt and black boots. He has an easy-going smile and is friendly to anyone who approaches. Someone says he looks like a young Bob Dylan.

"Thank you," he says to Esme Gallegos, 24, of Kahului, "but I can't sing a note."

Burton's early film career was fueled by a lot of luck. He began drawing at an early age, attend the California Institute of the Arts, studying animation after being awarded a fellowship from Disney, for whom he went on to work.

Burton said he found that the mainstream Disney films he worked like The Fox and the Hound (1981) were far removed from his own sensibility.

Disney eventually gave him the freedom to work on his own projects, including the 6-minute animated black-and-white Gothic Vincent Price tribute Vincent (1982), and the 27-minute live-action Frankenweenie (1984), which was judged unsuitable for children and never released.

Paul Reubens--a k a Pee-Wee Herman--loved Frankenweenie and chose the twentysomething Burton, to direct his feature debut, Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985).

The enormous--and surprise--box-office hit led to the supernatural comedy Beetlejuice (1988), followed by the hugely expensive Batman, one of the most successful films of all time, giving Burton unprecedented power in Hollywood considering the originality and adventurousness of his work.

Edward Scissorhands (1990) was another hit, then Batman Returns (1992), a far darker and quirkier film than the original movie.

Ed Wood (1994) was a box-office disaster, but it garnered some of the best reviews of Burton's career.

"The best thing about movie making is the process, not all the accouterments associated with it.

"I love being on the set with the people, the creative team and the actors, the people making the movie."

Unfortunately, since Hollywood has gone corporate it's become business with "a capital 'B,' " Burton said.

"The business side has become a lot harder," he said. "Once I can get myself away from the business and get in the trenches with the people actually making the film, then you experience the beauty and the joy and the absurdity of it all."

Burton says staying unaffected by the fame and fortune and "games" of his profession has taught him to remain "a moving target."

"A matter of survival," he says with almost a giggle.

At the Maui Film Festival's Celestial Cinema, Burton visited the specially built trailer housing two state-of-the-art 35mm projectors to autograph an interior wall as the event's first celebrity signature.

In true Burton fashion, the former animator takes 5 seconds to write his name and 5 minutes to draw some large circular headed, skinny necked otherworldly character with a part bat, part slug body.

"Most places would describe this as graffiti punishable by some jail time and I accept that," he said.

Burton said Hawaii's beauty has been disconcerting during his location scouting for the Planet of the Apes film.

"My films are not shot in the most beautiful locations," he said. "This is really an uneasy feeling. But honestly we're just looking around."

Burton already has scouted the Big island, Lanai, Maui, and Kauai; Oahu is not being considered for the film, he said.

"The stage we're in right now with this film is to think and dream and look," he said. "Once you get going on a film you don't get a chance ever to sit and appreciate a place, even a toxic waste dump."

Burton also is considering other locations for Planet but declined to say where or what the budget will be because, "I'm not sure yet."

But he is sure that he's not taking on Planet to do just another remake of the franchise.

"It was a movie that had impact on me as a kid," he said. "It's like a fairy tale, a folk tale to me. I had a feeling that there is a way to do it differently, exploring thematically similar things but in a different way.

"I think it can be revisited and re-imagined to a whole new generation and to people like me who are interested in other aspects of what the film said."

Filming will begin sometime this year.

"But I have to say," Burton said glancing toward the star-filled sky.

"This would be a perfect place to do it."