Johnny Depp Film Season at the BFI

British Burton fans may want to check out the upcoming Johnny Depp film season at the British Film Institute in London. It includes a chance to see both Sweeney Todd and Corpse Bride on the big screen. More information below:

This February the BFI Southbank London presents a season of Johnny Depp films which includes some of Burton's most personal work in one of Hollywood's most successful collaborations. These screen alongside some of Depp's other work with some of the greatest contemporary directors, including Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmusch and Roman Polanski.

"Johnny Depp's ascent to the top of the Hollywood A-list has been marked by a refusal to compromise, and by doing things his own way. We look at the work of an actor who's never happier than when he's messing with his appearance."

Elfman Interviews Burton

Interview Magazine has a unique new article: Danny Elfman interviewing Tim Burton. The long-time collaborators discuss Burton's favorite films, the elements of the macabre in his films and artwork, how Alice in Wonderland is such a different movie from his previous films, and what really scares him. Here is the entire interview:

Tim Burton

By Danny Elfman
Photography Sebastian Kim

In 1984, Paul Reubens was looking for a director. The film in development was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), and Reubens, who had been working on the perversely juvenile conceptual-art project for about 15 years, was desperate to find someone he could trust to direct it with style. So, as people in Los Angeles do, he asked around at a party. One of the guests had just seen Frankenweenie—Tim Burton’s 1984 live-action short about a dog that is brought back to life. Burton had no previous experience as a feature-film director, but the two men immediately bonded. Only 25 at the time, Burton got the job, and the pair watched as their strange but imaginative film earned more than $40 million at the box office.

Of course, these days, Burton doesn’t need to rely on word of mouth to find work. Throughout the many stages of his 30 years behind the camera, there has remained a consistent underlying emotional current in Burton’s work—a delicate balance of sadness, humor, and horror that matches his eye for gothic beauty and mythical surrealism. The 51-year-old filmmaker has written, directed, and/or produced more than 20 movies. Between 1988 and 1996, he was responsible for Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), and Mars Attacks! (1996). It was also during this period that he began working with Johnny Depp, who has acted in seven of his films—a transformative relationship for both men.

Burton grew up in the suburbs of California, and has often said that, as a kid, he found the realities of everyday life—parents, teachers, school, breakfast—far more terrifying than monsters or movies. What are zombie pet dogs, after all, compared to real-life threats like dullness and loss? Burton’s characters are born outcasts, perpetually at odds with their identities and in some ways monsters themselves. His fairy-tale endings are a little messier than most standard Hans Christian Andersen fare; Edward Scissorhands does not get the girl.

Last November, New York’s Museum of Modern Art honored Burton not only for his film work but also as a visual artist, with a retrospective that displayed a large collection of his drawings—including versions of Jack Skellington, Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, and Batman. His next film, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, due out next month, is a suitably trippy semi-animated adventure featuring Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter (Burton’s partner), Anne Hathaway, and Crispin Glover. Danny Elfman, who has been composing music for Burton’s films since they worked together on Pee-wee (and who also did Alice in Wonderland) spoke to him recently about how he has made his way as an artist—and about what really scares him.


DANNY ELFMAN: Okay, we’re rolling. Be aware that we can stop and start; we can even redo a question if you don’t like what you’ve said. You can suggest a topic. No pressure.

TIM BURTON: I say stream of consciousness, and whatever happens, happens.

ELFMAN: Then let’s start with something easy. Growing up, which films and directors had the greatest impact on you?

BURTON: Well, being a big monster-movie fan, the Universal monster movies and the Japanese science-fiction movies, like the ones by Ishir¯o Honda. Then there were the Italians, like Mario Bava.

ELFMAN: Which particular films really got under your skin?

BURTON: Bava’s Black Sunday [1960] is probably the one that did it. I remember, in L.A., I’d watch a whole weekend of horror movies. And after you watched about two movies in a row, you’d go into this dream state, and sometime around 3 A.M. on the weekend, Black Sunday came on. It really was like your subconscious, like a dream, almost like hallucinating. I also think that I’m one of the few fans who actually likes dubbing in foreign films. I love Fellini or Bava dubbed because it adds a surreal nature. I prefer dubbing because the images are so strong you don’t want to take your eyes away to read the subtitles.

ELFMAN: Did any film give you nightmares?

BURTON: I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact, I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared, but I never was. I was much more terrified by my own family and real life, you know? I think it would be more of a nightmare if someone told me to go to school or eat my breakfast. I would wake up in a cold sweat about those issues. I think that movies probably help you sort those kinds of things out and make you feel more comfortable. I did get freaked out when I saw The Exorcist [1973] for the first time, but that was about it. Images like the ones in Black Sunday stay with you. I always just enjoyed them.

ELFMAN: That takes me to monsters from our childhoods. How do you think they stack up against the monsters of today?

BURTON: The thing I love about the old monsters is that they had such a strong, immediately identifiable image. I find that a lot of monsters today are just so busy. They have so many little tentacles and flaps and whatever else that they don’t have the kind of strength in their images that the old monsters had. It’s also due to the CGI heaviness. You’re missing the human element—like Boris Karloff, who actually played the monsters. Even in Creature From the Black Lagoon [1954], the guy had a complete costume, so you felt like there was a human being underneath. I think that’s important. It’s always an interesting challenge to see if you can create a character that’s got emotion. It can be done and it has been done.

ELFMAN: You once said that monsters are usually more heartfelt than the humans around them in those movies. Do you still feel that way?

BURTON: Oh, yeah. It’s like society. In fact, it’s probably gotten more extreme. We sort of equate the monster with the individual, getting devoured by bureaucracy. Even in making films with studios, you used to be able to deal with people as individuals. Now you’re dealing with a vague bureaucracy, where no one’s in charge when there’s a problem. [laughs] So I think that’s only intensified over the years.

ELFMAN: I guess there is a certain nostalgia for early cinema. Some of those old movies hold up and others don’t.

BURTON: There are certain movies that really don’t. But the ones that you really love, I think they do. Obviously, the pacing of movies has gotten much quicker, but the old ones have a slower dreamscape that weaves its way into you. When you watch older movies, you don’t think, Gee, I wish this cut were quicker.

ELFMAN: It does make it harder to play them for our kids, because they expect a pacing that didn’t exist then and they have to get past that.

BURTON: That’s true. Even before kids watch a movie, they’re already accustomed to video games and stuff. So that sense of slower pacing is already gone. It’s unfortunate because there’s something very introspective about movies that give you a chance to dream.

ELFMAN: You used to hang out in graveyards when you were a kid, didn’t you? I’m assuming that was because it was very peaceful and calm there, that going to graveyards allowed you to be introspective.

BURTON: People think that it’s morbid, but it really was much more quietly exciting. There was a mystery about it, a juxtaposition of life and death in a place where you really weren’t supposed to be.

ELFMAN: Did you ever believe—or half believe—in ghosts?

BURTON: Yeah. I’ve seen things and felt things. I think most people do. I think it’s just how much you suppress it. I don’t go out and say, “Oh, my god, I was abducted by a UFO,” or “I’ve seen these ghosts.”

ELFMAN: Did you feel any hauntings at the graveyards where you hung out?

BURTON: You feel an energy. Most people say about graveyards, “Oh, it’s just a bunch of dead people; it’s creepy.” But for me, there’s an energy to it that is not creepy or dark. It has a positive sense to it. It’s like all of that Day of the Dead imagery. That, to me, is the right idea. It’s a celebration. It’s much more lighthearted. There is humor involved—color and life. We talked about it when we did Corpse Bride [2005]. That was going more toward the Day of the Dead culture, which is much more positive.

ELFMAN: Once, a long time ago, we went into a room at CTS Studios that was supposed to have a child ghost haunting it. Do you remember? Everyone in the studio kept telling us about it, so we went in there and just stood in this dark, creepy room for a while. Nothing happened—as things usually don’t. Have you ever been in a room where you might have had an experience?

BURTON: I’ve been in certain hotel rooms in Venice.

ELFMAN: Did you make it a point to go into these rooms?

BURTON: I think anytime you try, it ain’t gonna happen. It always seems to occur when you’re sort of open but not thinking about it. So, no, I’ve never held a séance.

ELFMAN: I want to ask you about Vincent Price. When I first met you, you told me how much of a hero of yours he was. Then I saw the animated short you did, Vincent [1982], which was inspired by him. Had that been brewing for a long time?

BURTON: It’s obviously based on the feeling of watching his movies. I felt connected with him, and that helped me get through life. I had written it all and done it in a kind of storybook or storyboard fashion, and I just decided to send it to him. I had no idea what would happen. It was most likely that he wouldn’t respond, but he responded pretty immediately, and he seemed to really get it. That made me feel really great. He didn’t just see it as a fan thing. That’s why it was really special to me. It’s hard to get projects going—and also hard to meet somebody you’ve admired. You never know what they’re going to be like. They could be a complete asshole, you know? But he was so great and supportive, and even though it was a short film, he helped get it made. That was my first experience in this kind of world, and it was a really positive one. It stays with you forever. When times are tough, all you have to do is remember back to those kind of moments—those surreal, special moments—and they really keep you going. To discover that somebody like Vincent Price, who had been in the movie business for a million years, and to see that he was still such an interesting guy—that he was so into art, and helping this college in East L.A., giving lots of artwork, and still curious about everything—it helps you to keep going when you feel jaded.



ELFMAN: In art school, you had an epiphany where you didn’t care anymore about drawing the way your teachers wanted you to. What happened exactly?

BURTON: It was at the farmers’ market. We went out to draw people. I was sitting there, getting really frustrated trying to draw the way they were telling me to draw. So I just said, “Fuck it.” I truly felt like I had taken a drug and my mind had suddenly expanded. It’s never happened to me again quite that same way. From that moment on, I just drew a different way. I didn’t draw better, I just drew differently. It freed me up to not really care. It reminds me of when you’re drawing as a child. Children’s drawings all look pretty cool. But at some point, kids get better at drawing, or they say, “Oh, I can’t draw anymore.” Well, that’s because someone told you that you couldn’t—it doesn’t mean that you can’t. It taught me to stick to what’s inside of me, to let that flourish in the best way it can. I’ve been waiting for that feeling to come back ever since, and it hasn’t yet. At least it happened once. [laughs] It literally happened at that moment; the drawings changed right there.

ELFMAN: Then, interestingly, you became an animator at Disney. Clearly you didn’t fit the mold there, but your talents didn’t go unnoticed either.

BURTON: Again, it’s one of those weird timing things. If it had happened at any other point in the company’s history, I probably would’ve been fired. But the company was so directionless then, and I was under the wing of a great animator, this guy Glen Keane. I was kind of his assistant, and he tried to help me draw foxes and do all of that, but I was useless. They eventually realized that, too, but instead of firing me, they gave me other projects because they liked my drawings. That lasted a year. And then I drew where I wanted for a couple of years. And that was very formative because out of all that came things like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Vincent.

ELFMAN: I don’t know if many fans are aware of the depth of your infatuation with drawing and art. When I describe how I got started writing songs for Nightmare, people are surprised that it didn’t start with a script. Instead, you had a story and a series of amazing drawings.

BURTON: That’s why I’m very grateful for the show at MoMA. It hasn’t been about categorization—like, “Oh, that’s film. This is art. That’s photography.” It’s trying to show that it’s all just a process and that there are different ways to approach things. I think both you and I hate categorization. People are always trying to stick you in a box and say, “Oh, he’s in a rock band. Now he’s a composer, but he only composes this kind of stuff.” You fight that every single time you do something. The MoMA exhibit shows that each different approach is all part of the same thing—an idea—whether it’s written or drawn or a piece of music or whatever.

ELFMAN: I’d like to touch on a hidden talent of yours, which is writing rhymes and lyrics. When I began the songs for Nightmare, I was surprised to see that you had already written a lot of the great lyric pieces, all of which got assimilated and incorporated into the final songs.

BURTON: When I was growing up, Dr. Seuss was really my favorite. There was something about the lyrical nature and the simplicity of his work that really hit me. I’m always amazed by people that can do it in the simplest way, but yet it is sophisticated and emotional and telling.

ELFMAN: For the record, my favorite lyric line is “Perhaps it’s the head that I found in the lake,” from The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s your line, not mine.

BURTON: But you made it sound good.

ELFMAN: Now I want to take you to the Batman moment in your career: It’s only your third feature, and you’re still the new kid on the block. You don’t even have a reel—other than comedies, you don’t have a commercial track record. And as I recall, the pressure was enormous. The production was enormous. The budget, for the time, was enormous. How did you cope with that?

BURTON: It helped being in England. Not much was going on there at the time. You could really go and focus on the movie and not be involved in all of the hype, like “Who’s going to play Batman? Oh, they picked Michael [Keaton]”—all this kind of hoopla, which is just a waste of time. So being in England was very helpful. Even though it was a big-budget thing, it was still slightly under the radar.

ELFMAN: So you got a little bit of protection.

BURTON: A little bit. Jack Nicholson was obviously a big star. He was very protective of me. He had a lot of clout, and when people were getting on my case, he could use it to cut me some slack. He was very supportive.

ELFMAN: I’ve always wondered if part of the reason for moving on to Edward Scissorhands right after Batman had something to do with wanting a smaller project with less pressure attached to it.

BURTON: I think it was a bit of that. But the weird thing was that trying to make it low budget, after doing Batman, was very difficult. Everyone thought, Oh, you made this big movie, so this is another big movie. But it wasn’t a big movie. I was out in the swampland in Florida, and people wanted to charge me a million dollars to use it because I had just made Batman. So there was a lot of having to walk away from certain things just to get the movie made. But, yes, it was nice to go back to a smaller project. It’s only gotten worse in this era. When I did Batman, you actually didn’t hear the word “franchise.” That wasn’t even in the language.

ELFMAN: Right. It hadn’t entered the vocabulary yet. For Scissorhands, you had great faith in Johnny [Depp] right from the get-go. He was pretty much unproven at that point—he really only had a TV show [21 Jump Street]. As I recall, you were under some pressure to cast someone else. How were you able to find the faith to see something beyond what Johnny had shown in his TV work? There was clearly more to him, and you saw that.

BURTON: It was exactly for that reason. Meeting him, you realize that there is
this perception of him as a teen idol, but he’s really not that person. That’s just how he was perceived by society—and thus who he was. And that’s exactly like Edward: “I’m not what people think I am. I’m something else.”

ELFMAN: You got all that just from meeting him?

BURTON: Yeah, absolutely. That’s the thing. I could tell that he understood. You can always feel if someone understands the dynamic. There’s a certain pain in that. Johnny’s not Tiger Beat, even if that’s how the rest of the world saw him—as a page of a teen magazine. He’s got a lot more depth, a lot more emotion. There’s a certain sadness when that happens to people. So it’s very easy to identify without even really talking too much about it.

ELFMAN: You’re known for working on amazing sets and compositing shots that use as few effects as possible—maybe with the exception of Mars Attacks!, and even then you had sets and actors and animated Martians that were realized pretty quickly. Now we are about to see Alice in Wonderland, which is a totally different animal. What has it been like working on that?

BURTON: It’s completely opposite from the way I usually make a film. Usually the first thing I know is the vibe and feel of a scene. It’s the first thing you see. Now it’s the last thing you see. It’s like actually being in Alice in Wonderland. It’s completely fucked up. You understand that when you’re shooting—that some percentage of what you’re filming isn’t going to be exactly like what it ends up being, because so many elements are added later. It’s in your head, and it can be unsettling. I did find it quite difficult because you don’t see a shot until the very end of the process. Even when we were making Nightmare or Corpse Bride, you’d get a couple of shots and know what the vibe was. This is completely ass-backward.

ELFMAN: We’re going to end with a little free association here.

BURTON: Uh-oh. Always a bad sign.

ELFMAN: Reality. [Burton laughs] As a kid, what was your idea of reality?

BURTON: Well, it’s those things that I always loved. People say, “Monster movies—they’re all fantasy.” Well, fantasy isn’t fantasy—it’s reality if it connects to you. It’s like a dream. You have a nightmare, and it’s got all this crazy imagery, but it’s real. You wake up in a cold sweat, freaking out. That’s completely real. So I always found that those people trying to categorize normal versus abnormal or light versus dark, yada yada, are all missing the point.

ELFMAN: I remember what you said to me when you were fighting the R rating on Batman Returns, which was absurd because there was nothing really violent in the whole movie to put an R rating on. You said, “You know what’s scary to a little kid? When they hear one of their relatives coming home and knocking over furniture because they’re drunk. That’s frightening to a kid. Not monsters!”

BURTON: Exactly! Or when an aunt who has blood-red lipstick and lips three feet long comes to kiss you dead-on on your face. That’s terrifying!

ELFMAN: [laughs] Okay. Animals. How did animals play into your perception of reality?

BURTON: Well, I had a dog—a couple of dogs.

ELFMAN: Maybe a raccoon, too.

BURTON: And a raccoon. Two dogs and a raccoon can very likely be your heart and soul. I guess it’s pretty sad, but it can be the strongest emotional tie you have. There’s a purity to that love. It’s very good to remember and good to hang onto and aspire to on the human side. At least it shows that it’s possible.

ELFMAN: Freaks.

BURTON: We’ve all been called that before. [laughs] When I hear that word, I hear, “Somebody that I would probably like to meet and would get along with.”

ELFMAN: Good and evil.

BURTON: Hard to tell sometimes. That’s the thing. Especially when you’re making a movie, you experience good and evil about 20 to 100 times a day. You’re not quite sure where one crosses over into the other. It’s quite a slippery slope, that one.

ELFMAN: Has your sense of reality shifted, now that you have children?

BURTON: Obviously, you get more grounded, but at the same time it gets more surreal. And it’s nice to reconnect to those abstract feelings. It’s good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way. It’s like weird, twisted poetry, the way kids perceive things. And quite beautiful sometimes. They kind of blow your mind and ground you at the same time. So it’s great.

ELFMAN: Last question. You don’t have to answer it—this is just a personal question. I’ve always wondered, but I’ve never really asked you: Why in the world did I get hired to do Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? Because it didn’t make any sense, even to me.

BURTON: [laughs] We never talked about it, did we? It’s very simple to me. I used to come to see your band play at places like Madame Wong’s.

ELFMAN: But that’s so different from film scoring.

BURTON: It wasn’t to me. I always thought you were very filmic in some way. I don’t even know what that means! There was a strong narrative thrust to what you were doing. And it was theatrical. Also, because I hadn’t made a feature-length film yet, I just responded to your work. It was very nice to be connected to somebody who I felt had done so much more than I had at that point.

ELFMAN: Well, Johnny and I both owe you.

BURTON: It’s all great. Like I said, what’s great is that I’ve known you longer than anybody. There’s something quite exciting when you have a history with somebody and you see them do new and different things. We have our next challenge set out for us, that’s for sure. But let’s have you watch it, and see if you want to quit.



Photo credit: Tim Burton in New York, July 2009

Danny Elfman is a singer-songwriter and an Academy award–nominated composer. He has scored the music for movies like Batman, Milk, and Tim Burton’s upcoming film Alice in Wonderland.

"9" DVD and Blu-Ray Available Now

You can now purchase the post-apocalyptic animated thriller 9 on DVD and Blu-ray. Click the previous links to buy the film at Amazon.com.


According to DVDTalk.com, DVD extras include:

Feature-length commentary track with director Shane Acker, animation director Joe Ksander, head of story Ryan O'Loughlin, and editor Nick Kenway.

U-Control PIP:
This picture-in-picture interactive feature takes recorded footage, some mentioned below in the special features and others recorded/taken at the same time, and pairs them within a green box at the lower-right portion of the screen. Interviews with Shane Acker, Tim Burton, Elijah Wood, Pamela Pettler, and others elucidate the process, while a sizable chunk of the dialogue recording footage mixes within raw concepts and behind-the-scenes footage.

9 -- The Long and Short of It (16:28, HD):
This feature discusses Shane Acker's process of assembling the short, and how it's adapted to the big screen. Discussion pops up about Acker's process of building the film as his college thesis, along with how earning an Oscar changed his life. It then shifts over into how the short film fell over into Tim Burton's hands as a producer. Then, Acker and screenwriter Pamela Pettler (Corpse Bride) guide us through the process of bridging that gap between his short to the feature length, as well as whether they wanted to include dialog or not in telling the story. Interview time crops up with Acker, Burton, Pettler, as well as with Elijah Wood and other members of the cast, taken from both original interviews and archive footage.

On Tour with Shane Acker (5:36, HD):
Shane Acker takes us through the Starz Animation workhouse for the construction of 9, illustrating each depart in great detail. He talks about editorials, the art department, modeling, animation, layout, effects work in "the dungeon", and lighting. Hearing discussion about the film itself is great, but the behind-the-scenes shots of the computer imaging and the concept sketches are the real draws to this featurette.

The Look of 9 (13:12, HD):
Composing the visual look for 9 falls into focus here, as Shane Acker and others discuss the time placement of the story. They discuss the "caution tale" elements of the film, as well as the Industrial Revolution look about the picture that slaps it in the middle between World War I and II. It also discusses the low-angle construction of the film, and how it allows for a lot of great up-glancing shots. They also discuss the beauty used behind the rust, garbage, and industrial grunge appeal to the film, and how the feel of the film reflects on its influences.

Acting Out (4:54, HD):
To round out the featurettes, this piece covers how the animators become actors themselves as they construct the burlap dolls in the film. It discusses how they have mirrors at their desk to see facial expressions, and the dual uses behind having the recorded dialogue footage of the actors for both lip sync and emotion purposes.

9 -- The Original Short (10:33, Letterbox 4x3 HD):
As a very special treat, Universal have also included Shane Acker's original short on the disc -- with a commentary featuring Shane Acker and animator Joe Ksander. The commentary is very dense, as they discuss the differences between the two features -- where elements of the short went into the feature, the dynamics between the two puppets, the lack of dialogue, etc. -- and the entire "guerilla" feel to the camera movement. What's a shame is that it's a letterbox HD version of the short; and, since it's in 1080p, most Blu-ray players and internal zoom televisions can't zoom in on it. Still, the simple inclusion of the piece itself is absolutely wonderful.

Also included on this disc are five Deleted Scenes (7:24, 16x9 SD), available in striking storyboard illustrations. This Blu-ray Disc has also been activated in order to hop onto Universal's online framework, as well as containing pocketBLU interactivity. However, the online functions weren't active yet as of this testing. It's also been incorporated with Chapter / Bookmarking of "favorite scenes", like all of Universal's other discs, and activated with D-BOX motion control.

Watch Tim Burton on "The Charlie Rose Show"

In case you missed it, here is the superb interview with Tim Burton on The Charlie Rose Show, which premiered on Thursday, November 26th, 2009. This is most of the episode. It begins with the three curators from the Museum of Modern Art discussing Burton's art, then goes to the man of the hour himself. Rose describes Burton as the "perfect guest", as they enthusiastically talk about a plethora of topics including his most personal films, being a parent, children's artwork, his creative process, and much more:

The Making of Tim Burton's MoMA Spot

From MoMA's Inside/Out blog, written by Julia Hoffman:



To help promote MoMA’s Tim Burton retrospective, we asked Burton himself to animate the MoMA logo for a thirty-second video that would be used to promote the exhibition on television, at the Museum, and online. Tim quickly came up with a concept utilizing stop-motion animation, and he asked Allison Abbate, his producer on Corpse Bride (2005) and the upcoming full-length version of Frankenweenie, if she could help pull things together.


Tim Burton's original robot design

Abbate turned to Mackinnon & Saunders, a U.K. firm that designs and builds animation puppets, models, and maquettes and produces TV commercials and entertainment programs for children’s TV, because they had worked on past Burton projects, including Corpse Bride. Company heads Ian Mackinnon and Peter Saunders pick up the story: “For the promo, Tim had designed a cute and quirky little robot character whose job was to inflate four typically Burton-esque balloons spelling out the MoMA logo. The whole premise sounded very simple, until we found out the timescale. We had just three weeks to create the character, the balloons, animate them, and get the footage out to Los Angeles for post production.”


The robot model and storyboards

Mackinnon continues, “Tim was very keen for the whole piece to be rendered in stop motion. For the robot character this wasn’t so much of a problem, Joe Holman, one of our lead sculptor/designers, broke all records to get the character fully sculpted and broken down into his constituent elements, head, body, arms, legs ready for moulding.”


Sculptor/designer Jo Holman renders the Robot in modeling clay

At the same time the problems of creating the illusion of four balloons being inflated in stop motion was being addressed. “The first thing we did was buy some large foil balloons and blow them up just to see what dynamics we were dealing with. We considered creating actual rubber balloons and inflating them with helium and shooting them time lapse but in such a short time if we hadn’t got it right the first time we would miss the deadline,” says Mackinnon. The team also considered replacement animation, a technique whereby each stage of a balloon’s inflation would be rendered as a separate model. “Again time was against us and there was no way we could produce the literally dozens of stages we’d need in time.” adds Saunders, “For all these reasons we decided to go with CG for the balloons and called our friends at Flix Facilities to create a test shot of the 3-D balloons for us.”



Lead CG artist Simon Partington took up the challenge. Within a day he had a beautiful bobbing balloon for us to see. “It was gorgeous,” says Mackinnon. “A bit too gorgeous. It didn’t have that quirky stop-motion feel that Tim was looking for so we asked Simon to try again.” Sculptor/designer Noel Baker quickly produced plastercine sculpts of the balloons and painted them to match Burton’s designs. These were then photographed and shipped over to the Flix team. “We reproduced the shape of Noel’s fantastic sculpts as closely as possible in CG.” explains Partington, “We then took Tim’s actual drawings and textured them onto the balloons before adding some of the same imperfections such as fingerprint detail that Noel had deliberately left on his sculpt. This all helped to recreate the sense of realism that stop motion provides.”


John Whittington maps the Burton design onto the 'M' balloon

Over the course of two days Partington and his team nailed down a technique that not only gave the light, fluffy feel of big rubber balloons but also had the slightly staccato feel of stop motion. The tests were rushed over to Burton, who was deep into post-production on Alice in Wonderland. “There was a huge sigh of relief when Tim gave the thumbs up. In all honesty I don’t know how we’d have got this done in time without the Flix team’s work,” MacKinnon smiles.


The Flix CGI team: Simon Partington, Neil Sanderson, John Whittington, and Mike Whipp

Meanwhile, head puppetmakers Caroline Wallace and Richard Pickersgill completed mold-making and cast out body parts for the robot character in fiberglass, rubber, and silicone, while at the same time constructing the intricate metal skeleton, which fits inside the puppet and enables it to hold any pose during the animation process.


Richard Pickersgill adding the finishing touches to the robot

“Typically a puppet character can take anywhere between twelve to eighteen weeks to produce,” says Pickersgill, “But Tim’s design lent itself to a very economical build and we put the puppet together in just ten days, probably something of a record!”

Pickersgill completed the final paint job a mere twenty-four hours before photography was due to begin. “As he was a bit of a beat-up looking little fellow, I decided to add streaks of rust around joints and arms. We sent pictures off to Tim and the only change he made was to remove the rust—so there was an eleventh hour (literally!) repaint.” Pickersgill chuckles, “I think the paint was possibly still tacky when we put him on the set!”


An arm is released from the mold

With the delivery deadline only four days away, lighting cameraman Martin Kelly and animator Chris Tichborne took over. “Our set was very simple,” says Kelly, “Tim wanted the robot and the balloon against a flat grey background. It was great because it further emulated the look of his original pen-and-ink drawings on a plain sheet of paper. We had three days to shoot the whole piece and my first take had to be right. I’d spent a day the previous week videoing myself performing the robot part. You feel a bit silly but Neil Sutcliffe, who edited the footage into his animatic, was very kind. He didn’t laugh too much!” Even for such a short piece, Tichborne tried to cram in as much in as he could. “Richard and Caroline had included a hinge top to the robot’s head which bobs open and closed as he walks. I also had in my mind Charlie Chaplin when the robot walked—not directly copying him but more just how he would create an idiosyncratic walk.”


DOP Martin Kelly slates a shot

CG lead Simon Partington was on set the whole time doing test composites of the balloons and the animation, just to make sure everything was lining up in terms of lighting and the timing of the dynamics. “The CG and stop-motion animation had to be delivered simultaneously; there would be no time to fix things later so we were literally doing the CG renders and the animation at the same time. Seeing it come together shot by shot was fantastic!”

Although the shoot took three long days over a weekend, the team’s experience and preparation paid off and the shoot went off without a hitch. The precious footage was beamed off via a high-speed data link for Tim Burton to oversee the final post-production in Los Angeles.


Chris Tichborne helps the robot pump it up

“Tim and the folks at MoMA seemed very pleased with the results,” says Ian Mackinnon, “It was a great little project to have been involved with and we hope the audiences at MoMA like it too!”


Final robot on set

Happy Halloween from Tim Burton and Facebook

Have a Facebook account? Then you can send a personalized Happy Halloween greeting card featuring classic or new Tim Burton artwork!:

Producer Abbate Tells Few "Frankenweenie" Secrets

Animation veteran Allison Abbate gave a few bits of information on the stop-motion adaptation of Frankenweenie, which she is producing.

Abbate told HitFix.com that production will commence in early 2010, likely in the spring. The production time frame is "two years", said the producer, and will hopefully be released around or before Halloween 2011.

Previous reports stated that the film would be shot in stereoscopic 3D. But Abbate now says that that idea is actually still up in the air. Executive producer and Disney veteran Don Hahn and others have stated that the film will also be shot in black and white, but Abbate was more hesitant. "Maybe," she said. "That's one of the ideas that is being put up. I think it would be really cool." It might be a hard sell for a Disney animated film. But neither the 3D nor black and white possibilities have been entirely ruled out yet.


A still from the live-action short film Frankenweenie from 1984.

Abbate remained secretive, noting that Tim Burton is working on several films. "He's got to get through 'Alice [in Wonderland' first]," she said, and Burton will also be directing a cinematic version of Dark Shadows.

But the producer did confirm that the film will be entirely stop-motion animated. (Although a few CG or traditional cel animated elements as seen in Corpse Bride are possible, we're guessing.)

Abbate is also a producer on the stop-motion The Fantastic Mr. Fox, directed by Wes Anderson and based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name, as well as Brad Bird's The Iron Giant and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in the past. She was also an artistic coordinator on The Nightmare Before Christmas, her first assignment on a Tim Burton film.

Frankenweenie will be shot at Three Mills Studio in London, CinemaBlend.com reports, just like The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Anderson's stop-motion film was also made on a similar two-year time frame.

It's Alive! "Frankenweenie" Rises from the Dead!

Tim Burton's stop-motion animated, feature-length adaptation of his 1984 live-action short Frankenweenie is coming! And executive producer Don Hahn has provided some details at Disney's D23 Expo to SciFi Wire:

1. It will be in black and white. An animated movie in black and white? Was this not a hard sell? "It was and it wasn't," Hahn said. "I think now, with Tim working at the top of his craft, the top of his game, on movies like Alice in Wonderland, I think Dick Cook really felt like if you're going to take a risk on anybody, why can't it be Tim Burton? A Tim Burton movie in black and white based on Frankenstein, how cool is that? Dick was very supportive of it." [Dick Cook was the chairman of the Walt Disney Co. until a few days ago. It is unclear whether his abrupt departure from the company will affect the film.]


Don Hahn has been in the animation industry for a while.


2. The new script will include more Frankenstein and more of the dog. And the screenplay is finished, Hahn confirmed at the press conference. "It's Frankenstein mixed with a boy-and-his-dog story, very much like the original one," Hahn said in an exclusive interview after the conference. "What's great is Tim grew up in Southern California, in Burbank, and the movie itself kind of takes that California suburban look at a monster movie story. I think that's what we're trying to do."


3. The Frankenstein family tree is growing. Bigger movie means more characters. "There are a lot of great new characters in it, really great new characters," Hahn said in the exclusive interview. But who will be among the cast? "It's the ensemble. It's the Tim Burton ensemble." Many of the actors from Burton's 1984 short film are still alive, such as Shelley Duvall, but which collaborators of Burton's may be on board? "The neat thing about Tim is he can pretty much call up anybody he needs and they'll be happy to work with him," Hahn said.




4. Now Tim Burton can do what he wants. Disney wasn't very happy with the original Frankenweenie, deeming it too scary for children. But now, with Burton's bankability, Disney is letting the creative filmmaker unleashed (relatively speaking). "Unlike Tim's recent stop-motion movies, he's designing the characters himself," Hahn said in this exclusive interview. "So you really get kind of the hand of the artist in it and get to see Tim's work itself. It's Tim Burton at his best. I think that's why he leapt at it, because when he started out making movies, it was his first choice for a live-action movie. I think he felt like, 'Gee, I wish I could've made a feature back then.' So now to come back and revisit the material is pretty fun for him, I think." Indeed, Burton has been wanting to make a feature version of Frankenweenie for 25 years -- a quarter of a century.


5. It has begun. And it's set for a 2011 release. "I'm not sure it's a 90-minute film," Hahn said. Burton and his team have already built maquettes. "We're underway on it, and I think the most important thing is it has to be a good movie," Hahn said. "So if it's not ready for 2011, then we'll let it drift into the next year, but we're up and running already." Like Corpse Bride before it, Frankenweenie is entering production in London. "The primary reason to go there is Tim lives there, and there's a great group of talent over there also that is really into stop-motion animation," Hahn said. (So a 2012 release date is not unrealistic.)


More exciting news to come in the future! Stay tuned!

Burton on His Films and Art

The Wrap's Eric Kohn recently interviewed Tim Burton. The director discussed a myriad of topics, including his greatly anticipated Alice in Wonderland and feature-length Frankenweenie, the forthcoming exhibition of his artwork at the Museum of Modern Art, issues with the studio system, and his past classics:

The trailer for Alice in Wonderland leaked online a day early. How did you feel about that?
I didn't like that. Somebody f---ed that one up. It just shows you how easy … it's like, "Oh, sorry, I just pushed that nuke button." That's the problem. All this stuff is so available. I still come from the olden days where you like to see a movie and be surprised. Then you want to know something about it -- as opposed to getting everything front-loaded. A movie just loses its whole mystique.

The art of the trailer has become an entirely separate creative process.
Well, yeah. I've always had my theories, and my theories are always different from the marketing people.

At any rate, the trailer indicates an appropriately vibrant take on the story. Is this a palate-cleanser after the grimness of Sweeney Todd?
Yeah, it's a different palate. Also, the Alice imagery has been around. For me, it wasn't so much the books. I was aware of it from other aspects of popular culture, whether it was in music or other images. It was just about trying to tell it in a way so it's not a series of weird events, like in the book.

Are you staying away from the acid subtext?
No, no, not so much that. I'm just trying to keep away from the structure that the other [interpretations] suffer from, the episodic stuff. A passive little girl wandering around thinking everything is weird.

It's weird talking about Alice when I have so much left to do on it. It's a bit creepy.

Audiences tend to bring a certain baggage to the theater when the movie involves a familiar brand, which many of your movies do.
They're harder to do for that reason. Everybody looks at the white rabbit or the Cheshire Cat or the Mad Hatter and has an idea of what they should be. With known icons, you're always going to piss off somebody.

Like with Watchmen?
That's the thing: You never know what you're going to get. With something like Watchmen, it's known on one level. It's like a great novel. You have to leave something out, somebody's favorite part. Somebody will think the essence has been sucked out of it. That's just the nature of tackling something known.

Sweeney Todd was a quintessential example of your darker side. Why didn't it do better business?
I didn't know what kind of response it would get. It seemed to do OK. I don't really know. I never know. Every movie I've ever done, I never could predict a response.

But if anyone could turn such a morose story into a massive commercial property, you're the guy.
Yeah, but if you look at the “Harry Potter” movies, they've gotten darker. For 20 years, I’ve had to fight against the whole "dark" issue. Now it's the "norm." I've tried to keep my stuff in there.

Do you feel like studios try to dumb down your ideas?
That's always the case, especially when you're dealing with a bigger budget. That's fair enough from the studios’ point of view. It's a big investment. I don't try to pay too much attention to that. It's a bit abstract anyway.

You'll have a huge exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Does seeing your entire career surveyed make it seem as though you've achieved your creative potential?
I hope not. We'll see. Am I going to go back and remake Pee-Wee's Big Adventure? I don't think so. I feel like I've been pretty pure about that. There's been a lot of pressure to do, like, a sequel to Nightmare Before Christmas. I'm just not going to do it.

But you've talked about turning your early short film Frankenweenie into a feature.
I might do a low-budget, stop-motion movie. Something I couldn't do in the short. It would be nice to capture the spirit of my original drawings.

Like Corpse Bride?
No, less than that. I'd do it in black and white.

What about all those Broadway musical rumors?
Yeah, I got approached to do a Broadway version of Batman. I couldn't quite bring myself to do that, either.


So, how did you find the time to help out as a producer on 9?
This was a few years ago. I got involved after I saw the short film [which was nominated for an Oscar in 2005]. I felt close to his design sensibility. It's different from mine, but I related to the characters and the world. Since I've been through the experience of making animated films, I just felt like I could help him keep all the outside evils away.


Do you still watch a lot of animated shorts?
When I was first in animation, it was like a dying art form. But if you're an animator, there are more opportunities now than ever. Also, it’s using all the media.

A few years ago, they declared cel animation dead again, but now I'm hearing about some cel-animated films. I think that whole thing, "Oh, now we're only going to do computers, or we're only going to do this or that"... those barriers have been broken through.

"Alice in Wonderland" Books Coming

Two books are coming out in relation to Tim Burton's cinematic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy: a visual companion by Mark Salisbury and a novelization of the film by T. T. Sutherland.

There is no cover art for either Alice in Wonderland books yet, but you can preorder them on Amazon.com. The novelization will be available on Feburary 2nd, 2010 and the visual companion on March 2nd. (You can also buy the two together on Amazon.)

Mark Salisbury has chronicled the life and films of Tim Burton extensively. He is the editor of the definitive Tim Burton interview book Burton on Burton, and the author of the visual companions for Burton's Planet of the Apes, Corpse Bride, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Burton on "Alice," "9," and More

Cinematical has an extensive interview with Tim Burton:

Cinematical: At Comic-Con, it was informative to watch you first discuss a film which you're directing and then one that you're just producing. In the 9 panel you said that you were there to fight battles with the studio so that Shane Acker could focus on directing the film; when you're serving in a producorial capacity is that what you do or is there a sort of creative consultation?

Tim Burton: Well, yeah. I don't know if Shane said it, but I was an animator and I know what it's like; you have to be so concentrated and have to put so much thought into every detail. I had it easy because it's like you want somebody that's not looking at those every day and has a more fresh perspective on it, which is something I appreciate because when I make something, it's extremely helpful to have people that you trust who have been through it before to look at the big-picture kind of stuff, look at a cut or look at the script or look at the characters inside. Shane's an artist, and the good thing about an artist is that they don't have that ego; he was very open to things. I felt it was quite a good collaboration with everybody, because Timur [Bekmambetov]'s made films, I've made films, and we all liked what Shane did so there was none of this, like, "well I've got to put my stamp on this or that" kind of a thing. So it was kind of creating that kind of an environment to let someone do their thing; even without all of that stuff, just making the film, that's where you want him to put all of his energy.

Cinematical: Both in the program and on stage the film was referred to as "stitchpunk." Do phrases like that mean anything to you?

Burton: No. I mean, I always liked stitching, and maybe I'm a frustrated sewer, but no. I just like the look of it and the feel of it. Personally I think it's intriguing, and I like that fact that someone has given something a name like that, but I don't do that myself.

Cinematical: Even if you're the one inventing such descriptions or names, is that limiting at all in the sense that it creates a specific association? Or does that provide sort of a shorthand that gives people an immediate entry point for what they might be seeing?

Burton: I don't know. The thing I liked about this movie was that I couldn't quite categorize it. We've all seen post-apocalyptic imagery in films – it's not like it's new territory in that sense, although at the same time I liked it because I couldn't quite categorize it. There was an emotional quality, and after myself working on Nightmare and things where you're trying to take characters that are not necessarily perceived as attractive-looking characters, but giving it an emotion, that's what I liked about what Shane was doing, so I felt connected in that way. But I like the fact that you can't really categorize it; the very Hollywood sort-of way of pitching things is kind of like, "well, it's The Terminator meets Wall-E," you know, but you immediately get that's a kind of short-hand, but I was just kind of like, oh, brother. I think we're all lucky with a group of people like Shane and Timur and Jim [Limley] and myself, we all kind of like to avoid that stuff, so there was none of that going on and it was good.

Cinematical: Yesterday at one of the panels a fan asked if you would be interested in remaking The Wizard of Oz. As much as adaptations and interpretations of properties like Alice and Wonderland and Sleepy Hollow are in your wheelhouse, do the commercial opportunities of doing material like that limit you from doing things that are more original or specific to your appetites?

Burton: Well, yeah. It's true, because there are things like Nightmare or Edward Scissorhands, things that I really [put myself into], but I've enjoyed the other things that I've done. But yeah. Also, too Hollywood, it becomes a thing where it's, okay, which TV show haven't we done yet, and I understand it because it's an easy [choice], but yeah. I'm not answering your question, but it's a bit of a danger. Yeah, it is, but that's why I like getting involved with this, and what also was nice about this which you don't get these days is sort of flying under the radar; there's something about him, something new where you don't know a whole lot about it, and it gets made, and it's a bit more of a surprise, and that was really cool with this.

Cinematical: So when you do something like Alice in Wonderland that has a cache of familiarity, does that allow you to be able to do your own projects? For example, you did Big Fish, which wasn't as commercially successful as its follow-up, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Burton: I don't think about that stuff. I mean, I'm aware of the fact that if you make a bunch of movies that don't make any money it's hard to continue to make movies. There is a certain amount of that, but I never sort of said, well, I'll do a big studio movie and then I'll do a personal movie. If you can really sort of maneuver that, because that's the problem – it's a hard way of thinking. I never want to think about making a movie to make money, because it's not an exact science. Things like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I know it's a known thing, but it's also a book that I loved as a child. So you make a personal connection to everything that you do; even Alice, there's been so many versions of it and there's never been a version that I really liked. So that's my attempt, to make a movie of Alice that's just more than a series of weird events.

Cinematical: How did the technology augment your ideas for that adaptation, both in terms of 3-D and in terms of conceiving these really amazing character designs?

Burton: Well, I'm still in the process, and that's the scary thing. I mean, usually I don't ever talk about stuff in these early days, but the jury is still out on that one. I haven't felt the sort of liberation of technology yet; it's actually a bit more sort of the opposite of the way I usually work, where you have sets and actors and you can see what you get right away. Here, it's the reverse – you've got all of these pieces of stuff and you see a finished shot very, very late in the process. So it's strange.

Cinematical: As must be the case right now with these two films, how difficult is it to juggle your producorial efforts with those that you direct?

Burton: Especially in animation it takes so long that it wouldn't do Shane, it wouldn't do anybody a service to be [controlling], because it's like watching paint dry. It's a long, long process, so again, I love it because especially when I'm thinking of something else, like when I'm on Alice thinking about it, it's actually a luxury to kind of take my mind away for a second and look at something here and have a fresh perspective on it. it kind of keeps my mind stimulated and going, so it's actually been quite good that way.

Cinematical: Has your evolution as a filmmaker been sort of concurrent with the technology you're using now? For example, Nightmare was stop-motion, and potentially 9 could have been as well, but you and Shane are using CGI. Also, Nightmare was retrofitted for 3-D and now you're using it during the production of Alice.

Burton: Each project you try to actually pick the medium for the project, and the thing I liked about 9 is Shane, his inspiration was all stop-motion and it actually has a stop-motion feel. The quality of the animation, it's got that like more naturalistic thing. Now, the reason he couldn't do it [stop-motion], which I understand, is for the budget and the kind of camera moves, the kind of action stuff that he wanted to get. He chose to do it that way, which I think he made exactly the right choice; you get the best of both worlds with that. For me and for things like Alice, it seemed like 3-D and Alice, the material and doing it that way just seemed appropriate with the project, just the mix of animation and manipulate the live-action so it's in a stranger way. But that's not something you pre-plan; you just kind of take it, you see where the technology is at that moment, is this possible, and then take it as it comes, really. Obviously technology is so rapidly changing and it goes through those spurts, doesn't it, and it's in one of those growth spurts at the moment.

Cinematical: Do you feel a sense of protectiveness coming from the world of cel animation? It seems to be used more and more rarely these days, although today at the Disney panel, they showed footage from their next film, which is being done with hand-drawn animation.

Burton: Yeah, that's great. Because I remember somebody, DreamWorks does a cel-animated movie and it doesn't make any money so they go, "we're not making any more cel-animated films." I think Disney even said that at one point. John Lasseter and the real animators know that's just a stupid concept, and Pixar has proven the fact that you just do a project, do it in the medium that fits it and do a good story, and it can be hand-drawn, hand puppets, whatever. It will connect if it's the right thing.

Cinematical: How far into production are you on Alice?

Burton: We shot all of the live-action, and now it's just a lot of animation, and a lot of compositing. That's the thing: you just see pieces of a lot of shots. But there's a lot going on (laughs).

Cinematical: For Alice, how did you arrive at the way these characters would be rendered? Because they are exaggerated but they do have a vaguely real quality.

Burton: It just came down to things in technology that I liked or didn't like. For instance, I'm not a big fan at the moment for mo-cap stuff because I just don't like it personally. A lot of people have used it very successfully, but it's personally not a thing that I like. That's why I decided to go with pure animation for some of the characters, and then for some, live-action, rather than it just being animation or live-action – to blur the lines a little bit. With some of our characters, we're just doing some manipulation with it, so it's their real performance, real faces, real heads, real bodies, everything, but just manipulate it so that it's kind of a weirder crossover into what Wonderland is. It just comes down to sort of things that you like or don't like, and I just find with animation, you're able to achieve more reality by just doing the animation than maybe doing mo-cap stuff. Although it's getting better, I know that; they're doing really good things with it. But it's just a personal choice to do something that way.

Cinematical: So would it be accurate to say you're looking for an artistic authenticity rather than realism?

Burton: No, I don't know. I'm not sure. I think it just really came down to the fact that I didn't want to do the mo-cap thing, and therefore, how do we blend it? Because also, you've got things where you've got animation and live-action, and it's obvious what's animation and what's live-action, so there's a few characters where we can blur those lines a little. I'm not sure how that will manifest itself or how it will turn out, but that's the goal.

Cinematical: At their Visionaries panel, James Cameron talked about the way that Peter Jackson's Gollum showed him that performance capture was at the stage that he felt he could do Avatar. Do you or have you seen films that gave you a similar sense that a technology or design element had made a step forward that would make you want to use it?

Burton: It happens all of the time. I mean, yeah, definitely. That's why, for me, I didn't want to use mo-cap, but it's getting better all of the time, and it's great that people are doing it. I think the more tools, the better; that's why people go, oh, how come you're not doing this this way or that way, and the fact is there's no right way or wrong way. Robert Zemeckis does his things because he wants to do a certain thing, and that's great, and other people have a different way they want to do it. But each one is great; there's no right or wrong way to do it, I think. It should just be open to whatever the elements are, whatever the project is, use those elements, and all tools.

Cinematical: At the 9 panel an attendee said to you, "I'm a huge fan, and not in a hot topic kind of way." Is there any consciousness either consciously ignoring it or being aware of it when you take on new projects, that there is an association between you and a certain persona of being dark, brooding, or this goth guy?

Burton: No. You know, it happens to you in school – once you get a reputation for something, no matter what you do or who you are, it's like it sticks with you. I don't know where that one really came from because I don't consider myself that at all. I don't know if this answers your question, but I try not to think about it too much; it's that kind of thing like, you're a human being, not a thing, you know! I find it nice when people are complimentary or like something you do, and that means the most of anything. That means a lot to me, and when that happens, I feel very grateful for it, but I don't think about any kind of labeling or how people perceive me, because it's a slightly disturbing thought to me (laughs).

Cinematical: How then do you find the projects you do? Do you sort of gravitate to them, or is it a matter of being in the right place at the right time?

Burton: It's a mixture of all of that. That's why I don't like to plan too far in advance, because you don't know how you're going to feel. Sometimes a project can come to you, like this, like Alice in Wonderland in 3-D, and I thought, ooh – that sounds intriguing. That's how that happened, but other projects like Nightmare or Scissorhands are things that you want to have and live inside you and you want to do, and sometimes they take a while to [happen]. Like Nightmare, from thinking about it took ten years to get made; Scissorhands similarly, Corpse Bride, similarly. But those are the kind of things that you know you're sometime going to do just because they're inside you and then there are the ones outside that intrigue you.

Tim Burton's "Crap"

Tim Burton (Reuters)

Tim Burton told WENN about some of the movie memorabilia he collects in his home.

"I've got so much crap in the house. I got a really huge chair from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which everybody loves sitting in because you feel like a little kid. I've got Corpse Bride puppets, Nightmare Before Christmas puppets."

But his collection is not limited to props and trinkets from his own films: "This wax museum closed down and I bought the wax figure of Sammy Davis, Jr. I have it on the couch and one of the friends of my kids went crying to his mother, saying we had a dead person on our sofa!"

Burton on MoMA Exhibit

Tim Burton on the set of Corpse Bride (Photo: Derek Frey)


From November 22nd, 2009 until April 26th, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City will open their exhibition "Tim Burton," the largest showcase of artwork by the visionary filmmaker. The exhibit will contain over 700 illustrations, sketches, paintings, puppets, photographs, and short and student films by the filmmaker, many of which have never been seen before. There will also be many artifacts from his career as a professional filmmaker, which spans nearly 27 years. Such artifacts will include original puppets from The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, severed head props from Mars Attacks!, and costumes from Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow. Burton's features will also be screened at the museum from November 18-30.


A familiar sketch of Edward Scissorhands

At a press conference, Burton told reporters that he was excited, but felt a bit surprised by the idea, too. "I didn't grow up in a real museum culture," Burton said at a press conference Wednesday. "I think I went to the Hollywood Wax Museum as my first museum…I was of that generation where I got more out of The Beverly Hillbillies than Monet."

But Burton has found the experience of revisiting decades of his art to be a cathartic and energizing one. "Every now and then, and since I had never done it, it's good to kind of go back and reconnect with yourself," he told reporters yesterday. "It kind of re-energizes you and connects you and gets the nerve-endings going again."

Admission for the MoMA exhibit will be $20 for adults.

"9" Teaser Trailer Released

The teaser trailer for the upcoming computer-animated film 9 (based on the Academy Award-nominated short of the same name) has been released (view it in HD on Apple's website).

Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambatov (Nightwatch, Wanted) are producing the film, which will be directed by Shane Acker (who directed the original 2005 short).

The official plot synopsis included Elijah Wood as the character 9, Jennifer Connelly as the warrior 7, Martin Landau (who was in Burton's Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow) playing the role of the aged inventor 2, Crispin Glover playing the visionary artist 6 (who will be in Burton's Alice in Wonderland), Christopher Plummer as war veteran 1, and John C. Reilly as 5, the mechanic.

Danny Elfman will also be composing music for the film, according to the official synopsis on Apple's trailer website. Pamela Pettler (co-writer of Corpse Bride) co-wrote the screenplay.

The epic science-fiction action-adventure was originally intended to be released at the end of this year. Instead, Focus Features has pushed it back to September 9th, 2009 (9-9-09, get it?).

You can also watch a (slightly) lower quality version of the HD teaser trailer on YouTube:

Christopher Lee in "Alice in Wonderland"?

Film legend Christopher Lee is just one of many actors who are getting talked about at least a little bit among circles of fans regarding Tim Burton's forthcoming Alice in Wonderland. But a reliable source is hinting that Lee will indeed be in the film.

On the forum of the official website of Christopher Lee, the administrator (Lee's son-in-law), said this:

Mr. Lee will be in this movie but confidentiality agreements prevent me from disclosing his character. I guess we will have to all wait for an official announcement from Disney but I think you all know what the character will be anyway.


Lee has worked with Tim Burton three times before, originally on Sleepy Hollow in 1999, and then Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride in 2005.

He narrated the original poem of The Nightmare Before Christmas written by Burton on the recent DVD release of the film.

Lee was also set to be in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, until his sequence and thus his character was cut while planning in pre-production due to time constraints.

Fans of this deep-voiced thespian will likely rejoice if word of Lee's participation in Alice is true. Until then, we'll have to wait for Disney's official statement.

Burton + Depp + August = "Dark Shadows"?

IESB.net has stated that director Peter Segal recently said that John August has written a screenplay adaptation for the TV series Dark Shadows -- and that Tim Burton is attached to direct it and Johnny Depp is (supposedly) to star in it.

Dark Shadows was a television series which ran from 1966 to 1971. It was a popular gothic soap opera, featuring vampires, werewolves, and other ghoulish creatures.

An image from the original series Dark Shadows.

This could be the secret project that John August wrote on his website late last year.

John August wrote the screenplays of Tim Burton's Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride.

Rumors of Burton and Depp teaming up for a big-screen version of Shadows came up on the Internet months ago. And this more official claim seems to encourage those beliefs. But just because Burton is attached to direct the film, it doesn't mean that he necessarily will. Months ago, Warner Bros. had Burton attached to helm an adaptation of the fantasy novel The Spook's Apprentice. But eventually, Burton moved to other projects (his upcoming Frankenweenie and Alice and Wonderland at Disney), and Kevin Lima is now currently signed on to direct Apprentice.

We'll have to wait and see what the future holds for Burton, Depp, and this planned Dark Shadows movie.

Producers Behind "Frankenweenie"

IMDb.com has stated two names behind the stop-motion animated feature-length version of Frankenweenie: Allison Abbate and Don Hahn.

While it's always good to be cautious with IMDb.com's reports, it seems very likely that the two will be producing the film.

Allison Abbate was a producer on Corpse Bride, as well as other animated films (stop-motion and otherwise) including Brad Bird's The Iron Giant and currently Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Mr. Fox and Frankenweenie are both set for a 2009 release, with the latter scheduled for December.

Allison Abbate and co-director Mike Johnson promoting
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride at Comic-Con in 2005

Don Hahn was also a producer on many of the animated films from the so-called "Disney Renaissance" of the late 1980s and 1990s, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. He was also a leading producer on the 3D theatrical re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas in 2006. Like the re-release of the cult classic musical, Frankenweenie will be shown in 3D in theaters, among numerous other future Disney releases. Pixar and Disney have decided to work exclusively in 3D for many of their upcoming films, on various forms of animation and even on some live-action movies. Specifically, Hahn will be an executive producer on Frankenweenie.

Don Hahn

Tim Burton will also be a producer on the stop-motion film, reportedly.

The movie website also stated that filming has commenced on Frankenweenie. This would make sense, as stop-motion animation is a tedious process (despite the film being deliberately low-budget, as Burton wanted). No updates on the screenplay or casting have come up. Frequent Burton collaborator Chris Lebenzon will likely serve as editor.

Again, it is always good to be wary of announcements on IMDb, but we feel confident with this information (plus, the author of these articles is already getting very anxious for these upcoming Burton films). We will keep you posted of any updates!