Burton and Depp on "Jonathan Ross"

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp were both on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on February 26th, 2010:

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Part 4:



Part 5:

Chesire Cat Clip

A new clip from Alice in Wonderland -- The Chesire Cat:

Interview: "Alice" Character Designer Michael Kutsche

Gerrick Kennedy of the Los Angeles Times has an interview with Alice in Wonderland character designer Michael Kutsche:

GK: “Alice in Wonderland” was your first experience working on a film. How did you fall into the world of Wonderland and Tim Burton?

MK: It was a huge leap for me because I’m from Germany. I’ve been a pretty successful illustrator but not in the field of movies, and I was doing illustrations for games -- like the packaging. Two years ago I put all the work that I did online [because] I never really took good care about making myself public. When you’re working full-time you’re not really thinking about other jobs. One day I was working in my studio in Berlin and I got this e-mail from Sony Imageworks that was like we have this movie project and we found your portfolio would you like to work on a movie? This was a big deal for me.

GK: But you didn’t know you were “auditioning” to work on Alice in Wonderland?

MK: They said there were a couple of illustrators -- kinda like a competition -- so would you please draw a caterpillar. Like think of “Pan's Labyrinth,” real actors with animated features. I did that in one day … I tried to do the best that I could. I got the job and finally met the vice president of Sony Imageworks [Debbie Denise]. She said what movie I’d be working on. She said it was Tim Burton and “Alice in Wonderland.” I was totally like fainting.

GK: What type of creative freedom did you have in your work? Burton has a very unique style. How did you adapt to that?

MK: I worked with visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston – this is the guy who did “Star Wars”! He said we were very early on in the production, we don’t have much direction, take some characters, get some ideas for it and go crazy. That’s what I did. In the beginning, I was a little over the top with it. A little too frightening.



GK:In your early sketches, the Cheshire Cat is more human-like and is slight and slinky, with hot pink stripes and an unsettling, toothy grin, and your Mad Hatter wore industrial goggles and had less whimsy...

MK: Because it’s a Disney production [some of that] didn’t really have that mass appeal. It would have shocked the kids. Tim Burton is a big fan of that book, and the original illustrator. Tim had his own drawings in his London office, so he wanted to have a little bit of a classic feel, so that the animals were more like animals with a twist instead of having a far-off fantasy. Sometimes he gave like a very quick sketch that was really helpful. I would take that and make it really detailed.

GK: With this being a reimagining, as opposed to a remake, how much of the original did you have in your mind as you did your designs?

MK: I was looking at the original drawings from John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham and I also looked at the clothing from that time to have the feel for this period so that it's rooted in some sort of reality. We gave those characters clothing from that time.

GK: Everyone, of course, is focused on the 3-D element of the film. Did knowing that it would be seen in 3-D have any influence on your designs?

MK: Not for this one. I would doubt, maybe in terms of environment. In terms of design itself, even if you look at it in 3-D the brain kinda recognizes it. It's more about the shape and the perspective.

GK: When did you first get into illustrating?

MK: I was always drawing, from kindergarten age. I didn’t really go to art school, I just self trained. At that time I always felt self-conscious that I don’t know too much, now I kinda find that’s what makes it a little more special. It’s not the taste of the professors or one of my [peers].



GK: You’re from Germany and a lot of the work on “Alice” was done in London. How did that work for you?

MK: I worked from home on “Alice” for half a year. I asked if it was a good idea to come to London. They put me on a plane, and took me to Tim’s office. They took me to the set so I could get a feel for the movie, and the production so that the characters aren’t disconnected. After awhile in Plymouth [where large portions of the film were shot] and in London, when the production moved to Culver City they moved me into a little trailer. They asked if I wanted to sit in the Sony building but I wanted to be as close to the set as possible. Of course I wanted to get a peek at what they were doing, so I had this little trailer in the backyard.

GK: People never see the step-by-step process of creative work, the process that went into it.

MK: Of course I read the script in the beginning, then they would send me an e-mail about a character that they needed urgently. I would start doing some sketches, scanning them and putting them in the computer and then making the color refinement. But I would also add some fur textures, little things so in the end it didn’t look like a painting on the computer. It had a more realistic feeling. When they decided on Alan Rickman to be the caterpillar I looked at photos of his face. It wasn’t Photoshopping photos of his face that wouldn’t work. So it had to be a design of its own, it kinda has the character of his eyes and the cheeks. Even if they didn’t cast characters, I always try to imagine who could it be, to try and get as much personality as possible. I think it’s crucial.



GK: You worked on a number of characters, also including the Red Queen and Knave of Hearts. Is there one that sticks out as your favorite?

MK: I think the caterpillar. But I also like the twins in a way, which that’s a design that Bobby Chiu did. As crazy as they are they kinda work together really well. I also think that because usually you have a big group of artists working on one character, because we only had like three people designing them (Kutsche, Chiu and Kei Acedera), they were really distinct. They didn’t get watered down. Like too many cooks [in the kitchen]. I think he was careful not to work with too many people.

Up next for the 32-year-old who said he didn’t “expect to stay in America this long” is character work on “Thor” and “John Carter of Mars,” slated for release in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

Video: "Alice in Wonderland" Press Conferences

Here are some videos from two press conferences with Tim Burton and the cast of Alice in Wonderland, courtesy of YouTube user laudepp126x. Also, after the videos, scroll down to read some other comments from Burton and the cast at the London press conference, courtesy of FilmShaft.

Here are some videos from the recent London press conference:

Video 1 -- Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton, Anne Hathaway, Johnny Depp:



Video 2 -- Tim Burton, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter:



And here are some videos from another press conference:

Video 1 -- Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter:



Video 2 -- Michael Sheen, Matt Lucas, Helena Bonham Carter:



Video 3 -- Johnny Depp, Tim Burton: on fuderwacking and their kids' favorite films:




From FilmShaft:

Hungarian Journalist: I have a question for Miss Anne Hathaway: You were cast as a princess and now you’re a queen. There are so many Disney princesses who couldn’t make it. They are desperate and wanted to get the role of Alice. I wanted to ask you, what do you suggest for those who studied like you…there are so many out there. What would you say about why you made it and they didn’t?

Anne Hathaway: (laughs) I don’t know I can necessarily answer that. I owe so much of my career to luck. My mother always told me that luck is preparation meets opportunity and, um, I’ve been given extraordinary opportunities to work with filmmakers long before I was talented enough and deserved to work with them. I’ve learned a lot from them. I just keep getting hired. I consider myself lucky and I don’t know who is responsible for it.

HJ: You wouldn’t suggest anything for them that they shouldn’t do?

AH: Why don’t you tell me what you suggest?

HJ: You’re interested in my opinion?

AH: (mockingly) We all are!

HJ: I never see you not wearing panties.

AH: I’m not sorry to say I’m happy to hear that.

Mia Wasikowska on the pressure of playing Alice:

“There’s a certain amount of pressure when you’re playing such an iconic character and very well known and loved by some many people. We discussed that from the beginning and one of the things we wanted to do was take away that baggage that comes with being Alice and get behind the teenager behind the iconic image.”

Johnny Depp on playing the Mad Hatter with a Scottish accent:

“The Scottish accent was something I did mess around with on Finding Neverland. That was a bit more Aberdeen, and Tim and I talked about the Hatter being made up of different people and going to extremes…go dark and dangerous with the Scottish accent. I hope I arrived there.”

Tim Burton on the Disney versus UK cinema chains boycott:

“I’m happy it’s resolved. I’m just happy.”

Crispin Glover and Anne Hathaway are asked would they consider living in Wonderland, if they could:

Glover: “I’d definitely consider it.”

Hathaway: “I’d be happy to live in a world with no rules!”

Johnny Depp on how Helena Bonham Carter affects the Burton-Depp dynamic and why he will always work with Burton:

“We only started quarrelling when Helena showed up.”

“He’s one of the true artists working in cinema.”

Tim Burton on what attracted him to making the film:

“What really intrigued me was the opportunity to make a 3D Alice in Wonderland. It seemed like a proper mix of the medium and the material. A few years ago, I don’t know if I’d have been intrigued by it, but it just seemed like the trippy-ness of the world and the tool of 3D seemed like a good mix. And also, going back, there’s about twenty different versions and I’d never really connected with them. The characters and imagery and the icon way it has infiltrated culture was just so strong.”

How the actors felt reading the books as children:

Helena Bonham Carter: “You know what? I can’t remember. Okay, so my made up answer is…I can’t remember.”

Mia Wasikowska: “My most vivid memories of Alice as a kid were when my mum used to put myself and my siblings in front of the stop-motion Czech Alice. I remember watching it and feeling incredibly disturbed.”

Anne Hathaway: “When I was a young kid I had a wonderful teacher in the fifth grade who had us memorise the poem, The Jabberwocky, and we all had to get up and recite it to everyone.

Johnny Depp: “I can remember reading the book as a kid…the condensed version and then obviously the Disney cartoon. The story is so episodic and all over the place, but I remember more than anything was just the characters. Even people who haven’t read the book know the characters.”

Tim Burton responding to a question about the different between Underland and Wonderland:

“It’s spelled different and that’s about it.”

Richard Zanuck Video Interview: "Alice in Wonderland"

Producer Richard D. Zanuck takes questions on the making of Alice in Wonderland:

1. On working with Tim Burton
2. On Johnny Depp and Tim Burton
3. On Mia Wasikowska

Alice in Wonderland: Interview - Richard D. Zanuck - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Zanuck on "Wonderland," "Dark Shadows"

FilmShaft's Martyn Conterio has an exclusive interview with legendary producer Richard D. Zanuck. Zanuck, who has produced all of Tim Burton's live-action features since 2001, talked about Alice in Wonderland, the upcoming adaptation of Dark Shadows, and more. Here's the entire interview:

MC: How did you get involved with this project?

RZ: I’ve produced the last five Tim Burton movies and so I’m part of that team. When Disney approached Tim about doing this, that was about three years ago, I came on board. I’m a very hands-on producer…I’m there every day and I’ve been on this from the very beginning.

Did you know Alice in Wonderland well before you took on the film?

I can’t pinpoint when I first read the books or may have even been read to me as a young person or maybe as a student. I can’t remember exactly when, but when we decided to make the movie I went back and read them and I was amazed that most of the characters were very familiar to me. It was like they’d been implanted in my subconscious because I felt I knew all these characters and know the setting and all of that…it all came back to life. And that’s an example of why this book has endured throughout one hundred and thirty-five years because we’re all familiar with it. It’s permeated culture.

The production wasn’t a typical Hollywood endeavour – it was all green-screen. Had you experienced anything like that before?

No, nor had Tim. We started the picture with live action down in Plymouth. We shot ten days there for the beginning and end of the picture…you know, before she goes down the rabbit hole and after she comes out. We went back to Los Angeles, at Culver Studios, to do all of the green-screen. It was only forty days of shooting, actually, but almost two years of computer generated animation work, there’s some mo-cap work. It was very tricky technically. I think it’s the first time that all three elements: computer generated, mo-cap and live actors all worked into the same scenes. Also Alice’s size goes from six inches to seven feet tall and her regular size and so the actors playing with her had to be adjusted. Matt Lucas had to work on stilts! It was very tricky, especially when they weren’t together. The eye lines had to match up. We had all kinds of charts where everybody’s size was measured very carefully.

Did you ever think while making it, “Is this going to work?”

I always felt it would work because Tim’s a genius and nobody has that imagination. He hadn’t done anything this complicated before we had Ken Ralston who has won four Academy Awards and nominated a dozen times. He actually started and helped invent a lot of the process. I think his best work is with Alice. He was supervising even the green-screen stuff. Between he and Tim, he would imagine it, but it was Ken and about four hundred people behind him on computers putting what Tim imagined – frame by frame – onto the film. It was very labour intensive and tricky to co-ordinate all that. Tim had a good team behind him…he’s an artist…a real artist.

Tell me how you cast Mia Wasikowska as Alice?

Alice was a part that everybody wanted to play, regardless of their age. We had stars who were totally wrong…everybody thought they should play Alice. So we had a whole slue of volunteers. Tim and myself, from the very beginning, wanted to go with a fresh face. We didn’t want a Hollywood starlet or somebody that would we’d seen before. We went on a massive campaign with the casting people in Australia, casting was done in this country and in the United States. Throughout the world really…and kept narrowing and narrowing it down and finally brought twenty people to the UK. We tested them and got that down to eight. Mia was one of them. She came over three times in total. We did a full scale, studio screen test with our crew and the wardrobe people…make-up…a complete test and Mia came out on top.

Have you any more plans to work with Burton since you’re on a roll?

Yes, I’m going to be doing Dark Shadows with Johnny (Depp) and Tim later towards the end of the year. He’s got to do another Pirates movie. But we’re shooting over here (London) even though the movie is set in Portland, Maine. We’ve got the stages at Pinewood lined up.

Obviously you’re a legendary film producer…

That sounds like age…(laughs)

You’ve made classic after classic, do you find films easier to make now than back then?

It depends on what kind of film you’re talking about. My wife and I made Driving Miss Daisy and that was a very difficult movie to get financed. An old Jewish lady and a black chauffeur…nobody was interested in that subject. We spent more time on bended knee…over a year of begging people. If you have a picture like Alice in Wonderland which is a famous title, add Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, 3D, Disney – which is a big selling point…it’s a slam dunk! You don’t have to beg people to do that kind of film. It all depends on what story you’re doing to tell. The bigger, wide canvas ones are easier than the small ones. But they’re much, much more expensive to make…but that’s how it is.

Out of all your films, do you have a personal favourite?

I probably do…but you’d have to kill me to get it out of me (laughs). I hate to use the phrase, “they’re all my children” because it’s so over-used, but it’s true. Each one is an experience and a very unique experience and different. The box office can be different too…so maybe my favourite one is considered a failure. I made Steven Spielberg’s first two pictures – Sugarland Express and Jaws. I must say Sugerland Express and that whole experience of working with Steven on his first film is one I’d have to rank very highly in terms of gratification.

Richard Zanuck, thank you.

Thank you.

Interview with Johnny Depp

TeenHollywood has a thorough interview with Johnny Depp. Here's the entire article -- WARNING!: CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS!!:

TeenHollywood: Johnny, you and Tim Burton have done about seven films together. When he came to you with the part of the Mad Hatter, what was your reaction?

Johnny: Well, to be honest he could've said 'Alice' and I would've said [yes]. I would've done whatever character Tim wanted, but yeah, certainly the fact that it was The Mad Hatter was a bonus.

TeenHollywood: Because the Hatter was a fun acting challenge?

Johnny: It was because of the great challenge to try and find this guy and not to just sort of be a rubber ball-heaved into an empty room and watch it bounce all over the place. So (hard) to find that part of that character but also a little more history or gravity to the guy.

TeenHollywood: Yeah, there's kind of a tragic nature to the Mad Hatter's background in this that we've never seen before in an Alice in Wonderland film. Can you talk about that? He's very sympathetic.

Johnny: Well, there's the whole Hatter's dilemma really which is where the term 'mad as a hatter' came from; the amount of mercury that they used in the glue to make the hats and everything was damaging. So in terms of The Hatter, looking at him from that perspective, it's this guy who's, literally damaged goods. He's physically damaged. He's emotionally a little obtuse.

It was taking that and deciding what he should be as opposed to just this hyper and nutty guy. We should explore all sides of the personality at an extreme level. So he could go from one second being very highfalutin' and with a lot of levity and then straight into some kind of dangerous potential rage and then tragedy. So, yeah, it was interesting. Trying to map it out was really interesting.


TeenHollywood: Was there ever a time in your career where you felt like you were 'Johnny Depp in Wonderland'?

Johnny: My whole ride and experience on the ride since day one has been pretty surreal in this business and it defies logic, why I'm still here.

I'm still completely shocked that I still get jobs and still am around. But I guess more than anything it has been, yes, a kind of Wonderland. I've been very lucky.

TeenHollywood: Did you think that it was going to be that way when you started?

Johnny: No, not at all. I had no idea where anything was going but you can't. It's almost impossible to predict anything like that. I had no idea. I had hoped.

I felt like after I'd done Cry Baby with John Waters and Edward Scissorhands with Tim that they were going to cut me off right then. I felt at that point that I was on solid ground and I knew where I was going or where I wanted to go and I was sure that they would nix me out of the gate. But I'm luckily still here.



TeenHollywood: You and Tim have collaborated on so many projects. How did you see your relationship, both personal and professional, grow on this film? Tim said that each time he works with you that you surprise him. Do you feel the same way?

Johnny: Yeah, each time out of the gate with Tim the initial thing for me is to obviously come up with a character but then you start thinking that there's a certain amount of pressure where you go, 'Jesus, will this be the one where I disappoint him?'

I try really hard, especially early on, to just come up with something that's very different that he hasn't experienced before, that we haven't experienced together before and that I think will stimulate him and inspire him to make choices based on that character. So I basically try not to embarrass him.

TeenHollywood: You've created so many wonderful characters that we all remember. When you start to create someone new like the Mad Hatter do you have to look back at your own work and go, 'well, this might be too much like Edward Scissorhands and this might be too much Captain Jack'?

Do you have to look back at your own work and make sure that you don't repeat anything?

Johnny: Well, because I've used an English accent a number of times, it becomes a little bit of an obstacle course to go, 'Oh, that's teetering into Captain Jackville,' or 'This one is kind of teetering over into "Chocolate" or Wonka.' So you've got to really pay attention to the places that you've been. But that's also part of it. That's the great challenge, that you might get it wrong.

There's a very good possibility that you can fall flat on your face, but again, I think that's a healthy thing for an actor.

TeenHollywood: Of all the characters and all the movies that you've worked on with Tim which one of them has been your children's favorite?

Johnny: My children's favorite, and it's funny because they've seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it's their dad and they make that connection, but it's Edward Scissorhands. That's by far my kid's favorite.

They just connect with the character and also they see something, their dad feeling that isolation, feeling that loneliness. He's a tragic character and so I think it's hard for them. They bawl when they see that movie.

TeenHollywood: If the next project was motion capture for you, would you don a suit like they did in 'Avatar'?

Johnny: (grinning) I don't know. What color is the suit?

TeenHollywood: Black.

Johnny: Black? It matches my eyes.(laughter). I suppose. Look, I'll put anything on. It doesn't matter to me, obviously. Look at me (more laughs). Yeah, no. I don't mind.

TeenHollywood: Regarding your happy dance in "Alice". One of the great earmarks of a happy dance is that it's unique to the person. Was this happy dance a part of your own personal repertoire?

Johnny: (laugh) Uh, no. Tim, he had a very curious vision for this happy dance.


TeenHollywood: Did you have to prepare and practice it in front of a mirror or something?

Johnny: No. I tend to avoid mirrors at all costs. But no, you had to treat that like a stunt. We had to treat it like a kind of a stunt.

TeenHollywood: When did the original 'Alice in Wonderland' book enter your life the first time and how did the story influence you?

Johnny: I do remember vaguely that I was maybe roughly five years old and reading versions of 'Alice in Wonderland', but the thing is the characters. Everyone always knows the characters and they're very well defined characters which I thought was fascinating. Even most people who haven't read the book, they definitely know the characters and can reference them.

Ironically this was maybe only a year prior to Tim calling me, and I had reread 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass'. What I took away from it was all these very strange little cryptic nuggets that he had thrown in there. I was really intrigued by them and became fascinated with them because they were asking questions that couldn't be answered almost or made statements that he couldn't quite understand.

TeenHollywood: Like what?

Johnny: Like, 'I'm investigating things that begin with the letter M.' That took me through a whole stratosphere of possibilities and finally doing a little research finding that the M is mercury. Then 'why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character and you realize that the more you read it. If I read the book again today I'd find a hundred things that I missed last time. It's constantly changing.

"Alice in Wonderland" World Premiere Footage

Alice in Wonderland had its world premiere on Thursday, February 25th, at the Odeon theater in London's Leicester Square. Here's an hour's worth of footage:

Here's a link from AFP.

From ustream:

UK Exhibitors End "Alice" Boycott

Good news for European fans of Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland: Vue Entertainment and Odeon have come to agreements with the Walt Disney Co. and will be showing Alice in their cinemas.

Odeon said in a statement it was "pleased to announce that, following detailed negotiations with the Walt Disney Company Ltd, an enduring agreement has been reached encompassing all the different aspects of both companies' commercial relationship".

"Odeon is pleased to announce that it will now be showing Alice In Wonderland beginning March 5 in its cinemas in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Austria."

Vue Entertainment, one of Britain's largest cinema circuits, released a statement saying that it would be showing Alice in its 69 cinemas in Britain and Ireland.

In a statement Tuesday, Vue said it had reached "an important and far reaching agreement" with Disney that "will deliver more choice for cinema goers while also providing more flexibility for the studio."

"We are delighted we have reached an agreement with our partners at Disney,'" said Tim Richards, chief executive of Vue. "This is a win-win for everyone in the entertainment business and in particular for our customers by offering greater film choice.'"

Entertainment Weekly Stars "Alice"

The February 26, 2010 issue of Entertainment Weekly will feature new information on Alice in Wonderland and an exclusive interview with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Look for the one with the Mad Hatter on the cover (of course)!

Here's an excerpt with Depp:

“When we first went in to do the camera tests, I was thinking, ‘They’re going to lose their minds,’” Depp recalls. “But Tim fully supported it. It was a couple of solid hours in the makeup chair everyday but it really helped. You start to understand who the guy is through all that weird kind of Carrot Top kabuki.”

Alice marks Depp’s first foray into the brave new world of 3-D filmmaking, but the actor (who admits he still hasn’t seen Avatar) says he won’t be able to fully appreciate that extra dimension. “I’m actually unable to see 3-D,” he says. “I’ve got a weird thing where I don’t see properly out of my left eye, so I truly can’t see 3-D.” Then again, he never likes watching himself onscreen anyway. “So I have an excuse this time,” he says, laughing.

CBS Interviews Burton, Depp

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton discussed Alice in Wonderland with CBS:

"Alice Explored" Video

Another new video showing the world of Alice in Wonderland:

Three New "Alice" Clips

Three new clips from Alice in Wonderland have appeared online on iesb.net:


"Tea Party":

IESB - Movie News, Interviews and More!

"Potion Making":

IESB - Movie News, Interviews and More!

"Off With His Head":

IESB - Movie News, Interviews and More!

Carter and Hathaway Interview

TeenHollywood has an interview with Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway. In it, they discuss playing feuding royal sisters in Alice in Wonderland, their female roles, how their children have responded to the film, and more. Here's the entire interview, but beware of minor SPOILERS!:

TeenHollywood: Helena, that's an adorable dress.

Helena: Thank you! I thought it was appropriate for Alice.

TeenHollywood: When people say you have a "big head" in this movie, they aren't speaking of your ego, right?

Helena: Well, I’m not as inflated (today). Maybe that’s why Tim gave me the job. I’m one of the few actresses who can blow up their head.

TeenHollywood: Is there music in the background? Can someone turn that off?

Helena: Funny. That’s my music. That’s what we do at home is we have the (film's) score going…




TeenHollywood: Talk about the challenges of acting all this against green screen. Seems more and more films are getting made that way now.

Helena: When you’re acting you kind of have to imagine anyway but the unsung heroes of (the movie) are these various green people dressed in leotards that fed us the lines off(stage). (For example) Michael Sheen (White Rabbit) wasn't there. I had a 12-inch drawing of a rabbit but, behind him was this green screen actor so that’s what we had to act opposite. I would have appreciated it if (Michael) had come in his bunny outfit once but he didn’t. (laughter). This actress (indicating Anne) is the one who had to do her own special effects. She didn’t have anything special done to her. We all had to act opposite tennis balls and bits of tape but you do that anyway. Actually tennis balls and bits of tape can be good actors; minimalists (Anne is laughing).

Anne: I would do anything if Tim wanted me to. I would have played a mushroom in this if that’s the way he saw me in it. I would have happily donned my green onesie and been up on stilts. I would have done anything to be in Wonderland but it’s kind of nice to be a real person as well. Being CGI'd or not? I have no preference, sorry I don’t.

Helena: Tim did digitize my waist. Did anyone notice that? They go on about my head but my waist is digitalized. (laughter). He told me that from the beginning, ‘don’t worry. Don’t go for the full pull-in with the corset every morning’ so I didn’t. Then halfway through says ‘you know? The waist is gonna cost too much so…’ So halfway through I suddenly went for the pull and then luckily, someone just told me ‘no we could do the waist’.

TeenHollywood: Anne, can you talk about your character the White Queen?



Anne: I’m so much more interested in what Helena has to say about it. One of the most fun parts about my character was this freedom that Tim gave me from the first conversation we had. He said ‘you know, in Wonderland, I don’t want anything to be all good or all bad so I don’t want it to be that the Red Queen is the bad one and you’re the nice, benevolent one who’s all good’. So, he said ‘have fun exploring the relationship between the two of them. They come from the same place’. So I thought ‘how fun if my character has a sort of hidden psychosis’..

Helena: It’s not all that hidden (we laugh).

Anne: Now it’s not. She is interested in knives and things like that and is kind of adorable on the outside and has tried very hard to become this good, almost over the top, positive creature but, underneath, she kind of has a murderous streak that comes out when she’s around weaponry. So, it wasn’t necessarily that they were opposites. They were just sisters who were different.

TeenHollywood: You have sympathy for the Red Queen at the end of this I think.


Helena: Oh, thank you.

TeenHollywood: Helena, I heard you had to spend hours in the make-up chair each day. What was the problem?



Helena: (laughing) You see the problem! Speak to my husband. No, it wasn’t that long. I just said hours for the sympathy effect but it was only two and a half hours.

But they put a bald cap on and get rid of my hairline then have to paint it and put my beauty make-up on, that took some time, then my huge wig. They didn’t blow my head up every morning. They did that on camera. I had this one camera, there are two cameras in the world that do this, they just blow your heads up. I had this huge camera dedicated to me, which was fine by me.

TeenHollywood: You weren't in the make-up chair longer than for your ape make-up for Planet of the Apes?

Helena: No, that was much longer. That was four hours. He (Tim) likes to put make-up on me, likes to deform me. I love it. I always like looking as different as I can.

TeenHollywood: Anne, when did you read the “Alice in Wonderland” books? Or “Jabberwocky” (a Lewis Carroll poem)?

Anne: When I was in fifth grade I had a teacher who made the entire class memorize “Jabberwocky” and perform it. So, I made Tim, during the battle sequence, let me recite the poem. And he looked at me, ‘you know it’s not going to be in the film’. And I said ‘I know but just for my own sense of completion, in my life, please let me do this’.

I didn’t read “Alice” until I was in college. I was really moved by it. She’s a very emotional character and I think a lot of people feel confused at 19, as to who they are, who they think they are, who they want to be. We struggle with a sense of identity then and other times in your life. I really read the book from that perspective; of a girl who is trying to find her identity which is great because that’s what the movie focuses on; which Alice are you? So, that was my experience.




TeenHollywood: Anne, you were quoted as saying you thought of the White Queen as a punk rock, Vegan pacifist. Can you explain?

Anne: The pacifist thing was in the script. My character had taken a vow of non-violence but it was also in the script that, when she talks about that she hits a bug so that gave me the idea that’s she’s taken this vow against her will, that she recognizes that her sister is sick and believes that a means to an end is cutting people’s heads off and that’s kind of her default setting and I’m just like ‘I don’t want her to be in charge so I have to be in charge’.

I like the idea that my character probably, left to her own devices, might not have wanted to be queen.

So, then I started to think about who she was when she was in her off-queen time and I realized she spends a lot of time in the kitchen and I made her a Vegan then I just imagined her in Mosh pits and not really punching anyone but fighting against these people really hard and then I thought ‘I like Blondie’ and she’s blonde so that was obvious but I still wanted her to have a regal thing so I watched a Greta Garbo movie. I watched a lot of her silent films. I thought nobody has ever moved on film the way she did. Her whole body looks like it’s breathing.

TeenHollywood: Helena, as a mom of young kids, what do you think is an appropriate age for them to see this film?


Helena: I don’t know what age. Tim always has a theory that it’s us who have got the problem. We impose fears on our kids and the kids are actually quite robust. So, it depends on your kid.

We haven’t shown it to Billy (age 6) yet because it wasn’t finished until a few days ago. When we were trying to find a nursery school for him, according to the Montesorri method, (kids) can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy until age six. (The woman there) recommended no fairy tales so that’s why we didn’t send our son to Montesorri because telling Tim Burton that fairy tales are not a good idea is ….. ooooh (laughter).

TeenHollywood: What were your kids' reactions when they first saw you in costume?

Helena: My little daughter who was only one, just went ‘Mommie!’ (laughter). That’s what I look like at home but it was bizarre. But my son, slightly frailer and sensitive, he just didn’t want to look at me.

TeenHollywood: Helena, you’ve played everything from sex symbols to villains. Do you gravitate more to one than the other?

Helena: Thank you. Is this the sex symbol one; a frightening sex symbol? Actually somebody did approach me in the lift today because they found me attractive with a big head. No, the older I get, I only get villains at the moment but whatever is well-written and has a good somebody behind the camera who knows what they’re doing and a really good storyteller… I’ll act anything.

TeenHollywood: Anne, the film is really female empowering. Girls should dream the impossible, as Alice does, and make it so. Can you relate to that?

Anne: Yes. I think my life is an impossible dream. Acting made me curious about what actually is impossible and once you go after it, you find that a lot of things are very achievable. I think some things may seem impossible but you have to try.

See the "Alice" World Premiere LIVE

If you can't make it to London on Thursday, February 25th, Disney has announced that you will be able to see the red carpet events at the world premiere of Alice in Wonderland via live webcast. Click this Facebook link to become a fan and RSVP for the event.

The Royal World Premiere of the film will take place at 9:30 am PST / 5:30 pm GMT on Thursday, February 25th and be streaming live via a Ustream webcast.

"Alice in Wonderland" Press Junket

Jake Hamilton spoke with Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Michael Sheen (the White Rabbit), and Matt Lucas (Tweedledee and Tweedledum) about Alice in Wonderland. Here's the press junket:

The White Queen = Cooking Star Nigella Lawson?

Tim Burton explained some of his real-world inspiration for the White Queen character in Alice in Wonderland:

There's this very beautiful cooking show host in England named Nigella Lawson and I quietly had her as my image for this character," Burton said, referring to the comely author and television personality sometimes referred to as the "queen of food porn."

Burton said that as lovely as Lawson is, her cooking routine has an eerie edge to it at times. "She's really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there's this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, 'Oh, whoa, she's like really ... nuts.' I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don't know."


British cuisine star Nigella Lawson.

The White Queen is played by Anne Hathaway in Burton's film.

Burton also discussed the tense relationship between the Red Queen and the White Queen.

"With a lot of people I've known, when it comes to sisters, there's this perception that there's the nice one and the bad one," Burton said. "But then, that nice one, there's also undercurrents there and things going back and forth between the two. She can stay up sharpening knives all night, but she's still the nice one."

The director said that Linda Woolverton's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's original stories bent the perception of good and evil beyond cliched archetypes.

"The interesting thing I think was to have them connected, and neither is quite what you expect," Burton said. "What Linda did with that was great. It helps with the thing that really sets Alice apart from so many other types of kids literature, which is the fact that everybody is a little bit off. Even if somebody is good, there's something wrong with them. Everyone is a bit twisted somehow. The White Queen is no exception."

20 Years of Burton and Depp

Alice in Wonderland marks the seventh collaboration of director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp. Their first pairing was for Burton's iconic Edward Scissorhands -- 20 years ago.

MTV News asked the duo about their collaborations and friendship:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

"I think we always treat each thing as what the project is," Tim Burton explained, insisting that it isn't simply automatic that any movie he makes star Depp. "[Whether I cast Johnny depends on] what the character is."

"[Just] because you know somebody ... [we don't make movies] just to work with each other, but it has always been great," the filmmaker said of their solid track record. "You want to make sure each thing is on the same level, or better. We always just treat it as what the project is — no pressure either way."

When it came to Alice in Wonderland, Burton did call up Depp. But the actor didn't know exactly what to expect.

"To be honest, when he called I didn't know what character he wanted me to be," Depp admitted of the duo's initial Wonderland conversations. "For all I knew, I could have been Alice — which would have been fine also."

"You would have liked that," Burton teased.

"I was just prepared to do whatever he wanted, whatever character it was," Depp said of their recurring collaborative efforts and what keeps bringing them both back. "Each time out of the gate with Tim, you just try something a little different. You try something and try to keep him interested. You want to try to stimulate the atmosphere."

"Which is great, because that's what movies are all about," Burton explained. "It's fun and interesting to see how his character develops [as we shoot a movie]. How it feeds off of me and the rest of the crew. It's why you like to make movies."


Johnny Depp, age 46, also talked about how his children -- Lily Rose, 10, and Jack, age seven -- respond to Edward Scissorhands.

He said: "It's funny because they've seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it's their dad and they make that connection, but it's Edward Scissorhands. That's by far my kids' favourite.

"They just connect with the character and also they see something, their dad feeling that isolation, feeling that loneliness. He's a tragic character and so I think it's hard for them.

"They bawl when they see that movie."

Burton on "Jonathan Ross" This Friday

A heads-up for Tim Burton fans in the UK: the filmmaker will be on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on BBC1 at 10:35 pm.

Burton, Depp on Mad Hatter, "Sweeney Todd" Hysterics

ET interviewed Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and talked Alice in Wonderland. You can see the video interview here.

With Alice in Wonderland, Burton and Depp have made seven films together -- yet Depp hasn't seen a single one of them. The actor said his kids are more likely to see Alice before him. Burton says of Depp, "From working with him for so many years, the one thing I knew from the very beginning is that he goes for anything, and that's very exciting. ... That's what creation is all about."

Burton jokes of choosing Depp for the Mad Hatter character, saying, "After he lobbied for Alice, we went to the next logical character."

Depp explains why he continues to work with Burton, saying, "The atmosphere that he creates for that set is so conducive to creating essentially whatever you want and not being afraid to try something. ... There is the element of trust that's there."

Along with discussing Wonderland, Depp recalled how their previous collaboration, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, would put the director into fits of laughter. "It was the most normal I've ever looked in any of his films and that alone made me feel really uncomfortable," Depp tells ET's Mary Hart. "Then I'd come to the set and [Burton] would burst into hysterical laughter."

"Waking Sleeping Beauty" Trailer

The trailer for the upcoming documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty has made its debut. The film chronicles the story of the renaissance of Disney feature animation in the 1980s and 1990s. Directed by Don Hahn (who is working on Tim Burton's upcoming animated Frankenweenie as an executive producer, and produced the 3D re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas), the documentary includes such animation titans as John Lasseter, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Don Bluth, Michael Eisner, Roy Disney, Glen Keane, John Musker, Howard Ashman, and many more, including Tim Burton himself.

Waking Sleeping Beauty will be released in select theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco on March 26th, 2010.

See the trailer on YouTube or Apple Trailers:

Video of "Alice" Cast at Ultimate Fan Event

Here's a video of Tim Burton and the cast of Alice in Wonderland making their big appearance at the Ultimate Fan Event that took place in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19th:

Photos from "Alice in Wonderland" Fan Event

Here are some photos from the big Hot Topic fan event promoting Alice in Wonderland. The event, called "The Great Big Ultimate Fan Event," was held on Friday, February 19th in Los Angeles:


Anne Hathaway.


Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway.


Never Shout Never.


Singer Kerli.


Johnny Depp and Matt Lucas.




Trace Cyrus, of the band Metro Station.


Sean Foreman, of the group 3OH!3.


Anne Hathaway and Tim Burton.


Mason Musso, of the band Metro Station.






Mia Wasikowska.


All photos: AP Photo/Matt Sayles.

Will AMC Carry "Alice" in USA?

Not unlike some European theater chains, AMC, the second-largest theater operator in the United States, is uncertain if it will carry Alice in Wonderland at all, the Los Angeles Times reports. This is due to Disney wanting to shorten the theatrical run of the film in favor of earlier home entertainment releases.

Less than two weeks remain before the theatrical release of Alice, but the Kansas City, Mo.-based company, which has more than 4,500 screens worldwide, has not yet agreed to screen it, according to three people familiar with the matter.

If AMC refuses to show "Alice," that would be a major blow to the film's box-office returns. However, Disney and AMC are expected to reach a compromise that would avert such an outcome -- even if negotiations go down to the wire, sources said.

Representatives of AMC and Disney declined to comment.

"Clothe This Girl" -- "Alice" Clip Online

A clip from Alice in Wonderland has appeared online. This excerpt is called "Clothe This Girl!":

Official Avril Lavigne "Alice (Underground)" Music Video

The official music video of the new Avril Lavigne song "Alice (Underground)" has been released. The song will be available on the Almost Alice album, available on March 2nd.

Burton and Depp Recall Worst Decisions Together

MTV News caught up with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. The director/actor duo were asked what the worst idea either of them brought to the other was. Here's the video of their recollection:

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

"Maybe just any time I've called him," Burton grinned, looking over at his frequent leading man.

"I remember one morning on 'Sleepy Hollow,' " Depp began, referring to the 1999 hit that had him playing Ichabod Crane. "I came in to block a scene, getting a cup of coffee — you're only half awake. Tim was there, giggling a little bit.

"I said, 'OK, what's the scene?' " Depp continued. "And he said, 'Well, this is where we're going to strap you to this large metal thing — which is attached to these giant horses — and then we'll drag you across two soundstages for the entire day."

Added his director with a smile, "That was on Christmas Eve, I believe."

"Yeah, it was on Christmas Eve!" Depp agreed. "And the horses ... well, I suspect they might have gone for curry not long before I was strapped in."

"Both of them," Burton said with no hint of apology. "He was dragged around for a couple hours by these flatulating horses."

They also considered a hypothetical future television adaptation:

"We did discuss doing 'H.R. Pufnstuf,' " Burton teased. "With him playing Freddy the Magic Flute."

"Jimmy! Jimmy!" Depp screeched in a tiny, high-pitched squeak.

"Look, he's got the voice down!" Burton beamed with approval. "Perfect!"

Cineworld Will Be Showing 3D "Alice" in UK

In case you're in the UK and concerned if you'll be able to see Alice in Wonderland, Cineworld Cinemas has just announced that they will be showing the film in 3D on over 150 screens.

After much speculation around whether or not major cinema exhibitors in the UK would play the film, Cineworld has reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Company UK.

Cineworld Chief Executive Steve Wiener comments “we are extremely pleased to have reached a satisfactory compromise on this matter. As leaders in 3D we did not want the public to miss out on such a visual spectacle. As the success of Avatar has shown there is currently a huge appetite for the 3D experience”.

You can book your tickets to see Wonderland by clicking here.

Trailers for "Alice" DS, Wii Games

There's a trailer for the Alice in Wonderland game, exclusively for the Nintendo DS:



The DS game will be available in stores on March 2nd for $29.99.

There is also a trailer for the game adaptation for the Nintendo Wii console, which will also be available on March 2nd and will cost $37.99-39.99:

Helena Bonham Carter on Craig Ferguson's "Late Late Show"

Helena Bonham Carter was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on February 17th. Here's the video, in which she discusses Alice in Wonderland and more:

Part 1:




Part 2:

"Alice" Banned from Certain European Cinemas?

Following the announcement that Walt Disney Picture's wants to shorten the theatrical run of Alice in Wonderland in favor of an earlier home entertainment release, several cinema chains in Europe are threatening to boycott showing the film at all. This is particularly so in the UK and the Netherlands. Some Italian theater chains are also considering similar action.

Walt Disney Pictures is one of several studios that are experimenting with shorter theatrical runs and earlier home entertainment releases of upcoming films, in response to declining DVD sales. Disney said it intended to release the Alice DVD and Blu-ray about three months after the movie appears in theaters, compared with the typical four- to six-month window.

But theater owners, especially in Europe, fear that the decision may dissuade consumers from going to cinemas.

No U.S. theater chains have threatened a boycott yet, although same may pull Alice from screens as soon as the movie is available in various home entertainment formats.

"I'm getting e-mails from my colleagues all across Europe and everyone says ... this is one step too far," said Ad Weststrate, president of the International Union of Cinemas in Europe. "The guys are really fanatic now."

Some European exhibitionists have also complained that Disney had not consulted with them until very recently (unlike their American counterparts).

"It was represented like 'take it or leave,' " said one high-level European exhibition executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of discussions. "It was done brutally."

Vue Entertainment Ltd. and Odeon Cinemas, two of the U.K.'s three major cinema chains, currently don't plan to show the film in their theaters, two people familiar with the matter said, although talks remain ongoing.

Britain is the second-largest international market for American movies after Japan, but its potential for Alice is even larger, given that the movie, which cost about $150 million to produce, given that it is based on a British series of books and featuring a largely British cast and crew.

"Anything that would prevent maximizing Alice for the U.K. would be horrible," said Joe Roth, a producer of the film. "This would be one of the biggest pictures of the year in the U.K. But I honestly think this will be worked out."

Despite the dispute, Odeon will still host the "Royal World Premiere" of Alice at its flagship theater in London's Leicester Square next Thursday.

Burton on Spall, the Bloodhound

While the title is familiar, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is aiming to be quite different from previous cinematic adaptations. One example of this is the presence of a character that never appeared in the two "Alice" books by Lewis Carroll: the Bloodhound.

The canine character is voiced by Timothy Spall, who previously worked with Burton on his last feature, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, playing the Beadle Bamford. Spall is no stranger to fantastical films, having acted in Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Enchanted.

"Timothy Spall is amazing," Burton said. "I love him. He's exciting because he's always doing something different, he's always working and doing some interesting project. He does all sorts of cool things."

The bloodhound's presence may be "a reaction against the Cheshire Cat" in the film, says Burton, who is no fan of felines. "The film felt a bit feline- and rodent-heavy, perhaps, and I think the Bloodhound adds a certain little gravity to it. When you see all of the characters, the animal ones, together, he added a little balance to it."

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton explains her creation of the bloodhound character in this Los Angeles Times article, which does include a few SPOILERS.

Although much of the film is animated, Burton, a notorious dog-lover, really wanted to go for realism for the bloodhound character -- aside from the obvious talking bit.

"We were trying to find with this character and the other talking-animal characters the right kind of animation and the goal was to keep it naturalistic and to fit into that world in the background," Burton said. "The movement of the animals is really what I'm referring to, in some animation the characters don't move the way animals do and we wanted to go the direction of being naturalistic."

Matt Lucas on "Wonderland"

Matt Lucas, who plays Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Alice in Wonderland, was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on February 16th. Here's the interview where he discusses the movie and more:

More of the New World of "Wonderland"

Some new behind-the-scenes footage and scenes from Alice in Wonderland in this video:

Burton: Barbara Windsor is "a National Treasure"

Tim Burton expressed his profound appreciation of Barbara Windsor, who lends her voice to the role of the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland.

"I've been living in England for many, many years and I'm a huge 'EastEnders' fan," said Burton, referring to the soapy (and routinely controversial) drama that has aired on BBC One since 1985. "And Barbara Windsor is just wonderful on it and in so many other things. I'm serious, she's a national treasure in England."

To date, Windsor, 72, has appeared in 1,399 episodes of EastEnders.



Burton continued with the voice of an autograph-seeking fanboy: "She's just the nicest, the greatest -- well, I don't know, it's just nice to meet people that you're a fan of, then you find they're really cool people. We're lucky to have her in the cast."

Tim Burton vs. the Chesire Cat

Tim Burton explained to the Los Angeles Times that a certain character stirred some strong feelings during the development of Alice in Wonderland -- and not exactly good feelings.

"The Cheshire Cat was a character I had a very specific image of and it's because I just have this thing about cats," Burton said. "The Cheshire Cat taps into what you might call my hatred of cats."'

Stephen Fry -- the acclaimed British author, broadcaster, actor, comedian, and all-around polymath -- lent his voice to the ever-grinning feline.



"Stephen Fry did a great job of getting that creepy quality. You know, this weird kind of floaty, too-focused, creepy -- he did it great. He has this thing of getting up close and just sitting there and staring at you, you know, like a cat. It just kind of sits there."

"I have this thing with cats. And with Cheshire Cat it's a love-hate relationship. You can, uh, hear it in my voice can't you?"

Mark Salisbury on the making of "Wonderland"

Mark Salisbury, who has written extensively about the art and films of Tim Burton, has a detailed article written for the Telegraph on the making of Alice in Wonderland. Here is the entire article.

BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!:


In a cavernous soundstage at Culver City Studios in Los Angeles in November 2008, Johnny Depp stands before a massive green backdrop wearing a frizzy orange wig, turquoise frock-coat over a red waistcoat, and a chequered kilt complete with sporran. On his legs he has striped socks, one blue and turquoise, the other red and cream. On his head is a top hat, with hatpins and price tag tucked into a silk ribbon. In his hands he wields a huge broadsword that is almost as tall as he is. With his white-painted face, rouged cheeks and fluorescent green contact lenses, Depp is almost unrecognisable. But as Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter, he is suitably freaky. No surprise really, given that the man behind the camera is Tim Burton and together he and Depp have, over the past two decades, created a memorable series of onscreen oddballs, including Edward Scissorhands and Willy Wonka.

Next to Depp is Alice herself, played by the Australian newcomer Mia Wasikowska, but looking quite unlike any Alice you have ever seen. In a Joan of Arc suit of armour, tight blond curls cascading past her shoulders, a steely-eyed Wasikowska sits atop a green animal-shaped box on poles, being carried by men dressed entirely in green, brandishing her own sword to the imaginary hordes of the Red Queen’s army; playing-cards loyal to Helena Bonham Carter’s monstrous-headed monarch that will be added to the scene via computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the coming months. 'There’s definitely not a whole lot to draw from in terms of your environment,’ Wasikowska admits during a break in filming. 'It’s good that it leaves a lot of room for your own imagination, but it is kind of hard to jump into a moment. You have to imagine you’re sitting on a beast, it’s all dark and gloomy and there’s one army here, the Red Army, and another army here, the White Army.’

To create his 3D version of Lewis Carroll’s hallucinatory classic Burton is shooting his actors in front of green screens rather than on real sets, then using the latest digital technology to insert sets, props, backgrounds and even some characters into the frame in post-production – the colour green chosen as it is so far removed from skin tone. He dabbled with this technique for several sequences on his previous film – a very bloody adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s horror musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which also starred Depp – and was intrigued enough to commit fully to the process for this. And so, apart from those scenes featuring Alice in the real world – which he filmed in Cornwall for two weeks before the production relocated to Los Angeles – Burton has spent the past few weeks in this sterile, all-green environment and has several more to go.

Outside, the Californian air is heavy with ash, raining down from several wildfires raging around Los Angeles. Inside, conditions are not much better. The green itself is a bilious shade, bordering on the fluorescent. The film’s Oscar-winning producer, Richard Zanuck, says that sickness and lethargy have been a constant problem among cast and crew. Burton has even had special lavender lenses fitted into his glasses to combat the effect.

'The novelty of the green wears off very quickly,’ Depp says in his trailer later, the Hatter’s make-up now gone. 'It’s exhausting, actually. I mean, I like an obstacle – I don’t mind having to spew dialogue while having to step over dolly track while some guy is holding a card and I’m talking to a piece of tape. But the green beats you up. You’re kind of befuddled at the end of the day.’

Many of Carroll’s creations will be fully animated characters, including the Dormouse, the White Rabbit, the March Hare and the Cheshire Cat, and Burton has amassed an eclectic group of British actors to voice them, among them Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Paul Whitehouse and Barbara Windsor. On set, these characters are represented either by green cardboard cutouts, full-size models or actors dressed in green. The tubby twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee are being played by Little Britain star Matt Lucas, but only his rubbery features will make the finished film, although all his movements are being recorded to provide the basis for the digital Tweedles.

As Burton readies a close-up of Depp and Wasikowska, he has a 4ft-long model of the finished set brought out for his actors to look at. One of his monitors has an image of the set with a temporary digital background. 'It’s really helpful to go and see the screen, the composite one, and think, “OK, that’s where we are”,’ Bonham Carter says. 'You’ve always got a hell of a lot of imagining anyway. You just do a bit more.’

Tall and rangy, his mass of unruly black hair peppered grey, and wearing black shirt, black jeans and scuffed black boots, Burton wastes little time between set-ups. With his actors in place, he heads back to his monitors, settles in his chair, and picks up a microphone. 'Come on, kids,’ he shouts, his cheerful voice booming around the soundstage, 'let’s put on a show.’

Written by the Rev Charles Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland first appeared in 1865, and was followed six years later by Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There. The books, now published together under the more familiar title of Alice in Wonderland, told of a little girl’s journey into an alternate land populated by bizarre characters, and changed the landscape of children’s literature. A century and a half later, they continue to delight. 'It’s still new. It’s still fresh,’ Depp says. 'If it were written yesterday and released on shelves today, people would still be as amazed by it as they were then.

It’s a monumental achievement.’ Cinema was quick to latch on to Alice’s appeal, the first film appearing in 1903. And while there have been frequent attempts to adapt the story since, notably Walt Disney’s 1951 cartoon, none has truly managed to capture the anarchic spirit and surreal, nonsensical, fever-dream logic of Carroll’s writing. But if anyone can, Burton can.

The American screenwriter Linda Woolverton, whose credits include Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, had been considering doing something with Carroll’s world for some time, but couldn’t find a way into the story. 'I wrote this at a very dark time in my life,’ she says. 'A lot of bad things had happened –death, divorce, moving across the country – so I was kind of down the rabbit hole myself at the time.’ It was only when she thought of making Alice older and bringing her back to Wonderland that it all came into focus. 'I got an image of her standing at a very crucial moment in her life, looking over and seeing this rabbit leaning against the tree, looking at her, knowing she had to put a pin in this crucial decision and follow this rabbit, because that was her destiny.’

Burton’s film takes place a decade after the events of Carroll’s book and incorporates a lot of the themes and characters from the original. 'But it’s an entirely different story, a different Alice,’ Wasikowska says. 'She’s grieving from the loss of her father and feels very isolated and alone and awkward in her skin. She doesn’t fit into the society she’s a part of, and she doesn’t like what’s expected of her, which is to get married and be a good wife.’ Finding herself being proposed to at garden party, Alice spots a familiar-looking white rabbit, and consequently follows him down a hole and into Wonderland. What she finds is, according to Burton, 'a place in decline, overgrown, a little bit depressed, with a slightly haunted quality to it.’ His vision of Wonderland – devoid of colour and life under the oppressive rule of the Red Queen – was inspired by the work of Arthur Rackham, who illustrated the 1907 edition of Alice in Wonderland, as well as a black-and-white photograph of a family having tea during the Second World War with London, dishevelled, in the background.

After being reacquainted with the Mad Hatter, Alice is taken to see the wise, old, hookah-smoking Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), who informs her that her presence in Wonderland is no accident. Rather, according to ancient prophecy, she has returned to slay the Red Queen’s dreaded Jabberwocky and bring about the end of her reign. Wasikowska found her character easy to relate to. 'Returning to Wonderland is Alice rediscovering who she is and having the strength to be more self-assured when she comes back,’ she says. 'Alice is such an iconic character. I wasn’t sure at first how much they wanted to play with that, or how different they wanted to make her. Tim decided it was important to keep some of the iconic nature. So, for me, the challenge was finding Alice the teenage girl, and bringing that to the story. I wanted to make her real to teenagers and young adults.’

Burton had been determined to cast an unknown as Alice. 'She had that emotional toughness; standing her ground in a way which makes her kind of an older person but with a younger person’s mentality,’ he says. Anne Hathaway, who plays the White Queen, says, 'I love watching her work because it’s very quiet what she’s doing but it goes so deep, and every time she says a line it’s as though she’s saying it for the first time.’

Despite having only 40 days to complete the green screen section – roughly 90 per cent of the film – the atmosphere on set is fun and familial. Burton favours working with many of the same key creative personnel time and time again. Between takes, he and Depp laugh and joke constantly, their current obsession orange-haired characters in cinema and television. On a shelf beneath his monitors Burton has a collection of toy dart guns of varying calibre; he selects one as he waits for another shot to be readied, firing it into the ceiling.

Alice marks the seventh time Burton and Depp have worked together since Edward Scissorhands in 1989, and for Depp it is always a joy. 'He leaves you such room to play, to mess around. That’s the opportunity you dream of as an actor, to say, “Look I’d like to try something. It might be absolute crap, but I’d like to see if it works.” If you don’t try to push a little harder or go a little bit outside, what’s the point? And if it doesn’t work, he’ll just say, “All right, you tried it, now try this.” But when it pays off, and I hear that cackle off screen, that’s when I know I’ve hit something on the nose, for Tim.’

Depp was in Chicago filming Public Enemies when Burton called to discuss the Mad Hatter. 'The funny thing is, I had just re-read the book, so it was still pretty fresh in my mind,’ Depp says. He was keen to incorporate into the film a number of lines from the book that he thought were key to the character. 'He says, “I’m investigating things that begin with the letter M.” When you dig a little deeper you find out why. It’s because of the mercury.’ Depp’s research revealed the term 'mad as a hatter’ had an unfortunate basis in fact. Hatters suffered from mercury poisoning, a side effect of the millinery process, which would affect the mind.

In creating the Hatter’s look, Depp felt his entire body would have been affected by the mercury and he worked closely with Patty Duke, who has been his make-up artist for 18 years, and the costume designer Colleen Atwood, whom he also met on Edward Scissorhands, to bring him to life. 'He’s a little bit punked out, but he has a lot of accoutrements on his costume that are the tools of a hatmaker’s trade,’ Atwood says. 'He has a bandolier of thread, he has ribbons tied on – all things he can make a hat with at any moment. At the first fitting I found all these crazy thimbles and showed them to Johnny. He stuck them on his fingers and started playing music on them. We had a lot of fun with all those bits that add to the character and he can use when he’s doing the part.’

The following day Burton is directing a scene in which Hathaway’s White Queen banishes her older sister, Bonham Carter’s Red Queen, from Wonderland. Hathaway wears a small green box on her head that, in post-production, will be digitally transformed into a crown, and she seems to glide across the stage floor, her hands raised like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. 'It’s like she’s on wheels, and her hands begin talking before she does,’ says Depp, who admits to being a little envious of Hathaway’s performance. 'In a way, her hands have their own personality. There is a part of it that’s really subtle and a part of it that’s really out there. It’s like Glinda the Good Witch on some sort of hallucinogen.’

Although on the film for only nine days, Hathaway has immersed herself in her role. 'I wanted the White Queen to have the punk spirit of Debbie Harry, the etherealness of [the American artist] Dan Flavin, and the glamour and grace and emotion of Greta Garbo,’ she says, pointing to a postcard on her trailer’s fridge door featuring one of Flavin’s signature fluorescent tube light sculptures. 'That kind of reminded me of their relationship, the way the red’s pushing down on the white. It’s actually three red tubes for every white one, and the white one is still the more dominant.’

Bonham Carter met Burton in 2000 when he cast her as a chimpanzee in his remake of Planet of the Apes. The pair became romantically involved when Burton moved to London the following year after his break-up with the model and actress Lisa Marie. Since then they have worked together on six films and have two children, Billy, six, and Nell, two. 'I didn’t know, as ever, if I was going to be in it,’ Bonham Carter says. 'I assumed not. Then everybody else seemed to know before me, and Tim said, “Obviously it’s you,” and showed me the first drawing he’d done of the Red Queen, and there’s this doodle of a really angry woman with a big head.’ Her transformation into the Red Queen requires three hours in make-up each day. The result, physically inspired by Bette Davis’s Elizabeth I, is startling, especially for her son who, along with his younger sister, is visiting mum and dad at work today. 'Billy doesn’t want to look at me,’ she shrugs. 'I don’t know if he’s scared or embarrassed. Nell – not a problem. Nothing fazes that girl.’

Alice in Wonderland requires somewhere in the region of 2,000 visual effect shots, a considerable number, particularly given the film’s relatively tight production schedule. When I meet Burton in November 2009, a year later, the pressure to complete the effects in time for the film’s March release date is clear. For an artist used to controlling every detail, micro-managing each CGI shot has been arduous and time-consuming. 'There’s never a shot where I just go, “Great!” ’ he sighs. 'There are comments on everything. There may be 20 comments per shot. Maybe more. And you’re talking 2,000 shots, so there’s lots of dealing with stuff. You make a comment and you may not see the results of that for a month or two.’

Despite the frustrations, Depp believes Burton’s vision will, ultimately, prove worth it. 'Alice in Wonderland – if you’re not walking on a tightrope, juggling super-sharp knives, there’s really no reason to do it,’ he says. 'Because if you’re not willing to get into the same arena or take the same chances as Charles Dodgson did, what’s the point? Tim is that guy who will get up on that high wire and juggle double-edged daggers to amaze and astound us all. He couldn’t have bitten off anything bigger to chew. This is almost lunatic time. To choose to grab Alice in Wonderland, that in itself is one thing, and then to do it to the Tim Burton level is madness. It’s so huge because, whether it’s the CGI or the green screen or the 3D or the live action, he’s done it all here. It’s the greatest undertaking I’ve heard of.’

"Alice" Cinematographer on "The Green"

Alice in Wonderland Director of Photography Dariusz Wolski spoke with the Los Angeles times about shooting Tim Burton's newest feature film.

Wolski was the director of photography on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and so was intrigued by the idea of working with Burton again for Alice.

"Alice was the most unusual thing I had ever done in my life," said the 53-year-old native of Warsaw. "Tim called me and said 'I am making this movie, will you do it?' I said sure because I like the guy. I had no idea what it was going to be."

"A debacle," Wolski described the experience as being with exaggerated distress. "I think Tim hated the green more than I did by the end."

The green, of course, is the vast green screen that the live-action actors performed in front of for the film. Wolski's camera would have to navigate through a non-existent world of fantastical, invisible landscape, which would be digitally sculpted later.

"It was quite absurd," says Wolski, who previous credits include the Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Crow and Crimson Tide. "You look through the camera and all you see is green. 'OK so there will be a castle there, a tree here and a hill there. And a moat, yes, a moat about there. There's this entire world that will be created but but it's not there on camera. It's...difficult."

The film being a live-action/animation hybrid in a sea of green wasn't the only difficulty. Another nuisance for the filmmakers was predicting Alice's changing sizes. This meant that Wolski and Burton had to compute the angles and orientation for each scene accurately.

"Sometimes she is six inches, sometimes she is two feet, sometimes she is eight feet. The eye-lines change, everything changes. It was a very bizarre project. And lighting? You're lighting blindly. everything will be filled in later after you are done. There is a lot of use of your imagination."

Wolski's next project will be the fourth Pirates movie. But he would he want to work in such a green-screen-heavy project again? "Uh. If it's Tim?" he asked. "Maybe."

Burton on the Tweedles, "Scary" Twins

Director Tim Burton discussed where his ideas for the look of Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Alice in Wonderland came from.

"I kept thinking about the twins in 'The Shining,' " Burton said, referring to the Stanley Kubrick thriller that celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. "But really any kind of twins. There's always something scary about them, in a way. Or there can be."


Burton was inspired by the eerie twins in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Burton then went on to praise Matt Lucas for doing a "great job" and informing the rotund look of the stripes-wearing twins.

"We didn't want to do motion capture because I'm, personally, not really into that and since I like these actors I thought it would be really nice to use them -- with actors like Matt or Johnny [Depp as the Mad Hatter] or Helena [Bonham Carter as the Red Queen] I wanted to get what they brought to it," Burton explained. "So with Matt it's kind of a mix of animation and him. It's a weird mixture of things which gives his characters the disturbing quality that they so richly deserve."

Burton on the Red Queen's Head

When we first see Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, the first thing we notice is her gargantuan head.

"Oh, it's true, I can't even look at Helena anymore because now her real head just seems like a small orange," director Tim Burton deadpanned. "It's like she's got some shrunken head. It's sad."

Burton continued with more reasoned explanations: "In lots of illustrations and incarnations of Carroll's work through the years, it always seems like she had a big head. It was an interesting challenge for us to find the right size and weight and proportions. One of the things we wanted to do was to use the actors and their performances -- to use the real them -- and then make them different. It's still their performance but it's just made weird. We wanted to achieve this blend. That was an important dynamic."

"In a lot of children's literature and other literature it's kind of the same thing over and over -- there's good queens and bad queens, and here you have that but the elements are a bit blurred," Burton said. "Everybody's weird and has weird qualities to them. She's kind of a mixture. When I look at her now, she reminds me of pictures I've seen of Leona Helmsley. There's a tiny bit of elements of my mother in there too, for some strange reason. And Helena brings her own things to it too."


The Red Queen = Leona Helmsley?

The head was a large challenge during filming. Because the proportions were scaled up later in post-production, the actors had to consider the magnitude of Carter's cranium in their green screen sea.

"This was not a place to work with method actors," Burton said. "I was very lucky to have a cast that was willing to just go for it and be manipulated, so to speak. Luckily there was no head-size requirements in their contract clauses. 'No you can't make my head more than 70% larger.'"

See Carter's remarkably round head on March 5th in cinemas.


Just look at that head...

"Alice" Theatrical Run Shortened

Disney CEO Bob Iger has decided to cut the theatrical run of Alice in Wonderland by a few weeks, the Hollywood Reporter states.

Normally, movies remain in cinemas for a 16-week run. But the theatrical run for Alice will be truncated to just under 13 weeks.

This experiment might become a growing trend for movies in general. Shortening the theatrical run of films might make home entertainment methods of viewing movies (Video On Demand, DVD, Blu-ray) more successful.

Another benefit would be freeing up the 3D and IMAX movie screens. Alice will be bumping Avatar off the map widely, and the 3D release of Warner Bros' Clash of the Titans (release date April 2nd) will be following Alice.

The abbreviated theatrical run will likely take effect in both the UK and the United States.

Disney Store Opens "Wonderland" Section

Enthusiastic collectors might be interested to know that the online Disney Store has opened its new Alice in Wonderland section. The is a huge (and growing) assortment of items to purchase related to the new Burton film, from clothing and accessories to watches and jewelry to music and books.

New Mad Hatter/Johnny Depp Footage

Some new footage of Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is online, with Depp offering some commentary:

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."

Hear Samples of Elfman's "Alice" Score

You can now hear official samples from Danny Elfman's Alice in Wonderland score. Click here, but beware of SPOILERS in the track titles! You can also pre-order the CD on the website, which will be available on March 2nd, 2010.

Tim Burton's Japanese Horror Film

Tim Burton was awarded the Winsor McCay Award on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at the 37th Annual Annie Awards ceremony. Jeffrey Katzenberg and Bruce Timm were also recipients of the prestigious award, which is given to those who have made an impact on the art and industry of animation. (Click here for a full list of past recipients.)

Burton was unable to attend the awards ceremony, so instead, he made a short film as his acceptance speech in the style of a Japanese horror film. Click here to view the J-horror parody:

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.

"Alice in Wonderland" Super Bowl TV Spot

In case you missed it during the Super Bowl, here's the new TV spot for Alice in Wonderland in HD, featuring some new footage:

Helena Bonham Carter on "Alice," Burton

The Guardian asks actress Helena Bonham Carter about her career thus far, Alice in Wonderland, how her life has change since meeting Tim Burton, and much more. Also included are pictures from a Wonderland-inspired photo-shoot. You can read the entire article here, but here are some notable excerpts:


'I’m ­often criticised for what I wear. That’s my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!'
Photograph: Gustavo Papaleo

Helena Bonham Carter discussed her exagerrated, tyrannical role in Alice as the Red Queen. "I've brought myself. It's me... in Alice," she says. Holding up a cardboard cutout of her character, she explained, "She's got Tourette's. She just says, 'Off with their heads!' all the time."

Bonham Carter has worked with Tim Burton in six films so far. Alice in Wonderland has gathered tremendous hype (and cost a bundle, too -- $250,000,000), but the actress revealed that she has not seen the film yet. No one has. The movie has been kept top secret. Then again, she may never see it. She and co-star Johnny Depp cannot stand seeing themselves on screen. "Johnny doesn't watch ­anything he's in. That's slightly comforting. You think if Johnny Depp can't watch himself..."

It doesn't help that Burton seems to dress her up in outrageous characters, either. "No, I can never rely on Tim to make me pretty."


'We do dress up at Halloween.'
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo


But playing such extreme and quirky characters has been working just fine for Bonham Carter. Prior to meeting Burton in 2001, she was mostly relegated to posh, corset-wearing roles in period dramas. She first emerged with a proper role in film at age 19 in A Room With a View, and went on to be a poster girl for EM Forster, English roses and the corset ­industry. Since then, her resume has altered dramatically.

"Ageing has helped hugely," she says. "There's no question I'm a better actor, and you leave ­behind a certain typecasting. I was like the corset bimbo." She stops, has a slurp of smoothie, a bite of toastie and starts again. "Well, not quite bimbo, but you know what I mean. The corset sex symbol, I suppose. Now I'm not going to be the sex symbol, I'm going to be the granny." She changes her mind by the mouthful. "Well, not quite granny."


Does Tim have a key to her house? 'No… He always visits, which is really touching.'
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo

Bonham Carter had had plenty of boyfriends, ­including Kenneth Branagh, but had never lived with anybody. "I remember I did think, 'Wouldn't it be nice if Mr Right moved in next door?'"

Eventually, he did. During the filming on Planet of the Apes in 2001 (with Bonham Carter as the female lead, the human rights advocating chimpanzee Ari), she met the director, Tim Burton. At the time, she barely talked to him. The only thing she remembers him saying to her is that he knew he wanted her as one of his apes, and that he had once lived in Hampstead and it was the only place in the world he'd felt at home. When the film was completed, they began their relationship, when she was 35, and he bought the home next door to hers in Hampstead. Today, they have two children, six-year-old Billy Ray and two-year-old Nell.

After meeting Burton, her acting work and wardrobe changed. "I'm ­often criticised for what I wear. That's my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!" she exclaimed. "Sometimes it's really offensive, but it's kind of affectionate now. We're like the 'bonkers couple'."

Another common label that is tagged on her is 'goth,' but Bonham Carter is uncertain that it's an appropriate adjective for herself. "I don't like the music particularly, I've got no goth records. Is it the predominant black? The make-up? And the whiteness? The white thing. Yes... Tim sometimes puts grey make-up on for the press and he doesn't tell me, so afterwards I'm like, 'You're ill!' He goes, nah, it's the grey make-up. Heeheeehee!"

Burton gets similar descriptions in the press, but she was equally skeptical about that description. "He doesn't like the music, either. But we do dress up at Halloween." Do they just stay at home in their make-up, or go out? "No, we go out and play. I don't know... well, he likes death... It's not that he likes it, but he's considered it in his work."


'In the six weeks when you’re up for an Oscar, there’s a little ­window where you’re offered everything. Seventh week, when you haven’t got it, you’re fucked. Forget it.'
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo

Burton is still considered an oddball, and their aesthetics do differ from the Hollywood conventions. Bonham Carter speculated that Burton might have Asperger's Syndrome in the past, but she now says she tends to get such observations incorrectly. "All the auties love Nightmare Before Christmas." Again, she apologises, this time for the word ­auties. "I played Jacqui Jackson, a single mum with children on the autistic spectrum, and I feel partly it's OK to talk like that because I know her, know that world, and she calls them auties." It makes perfect sense what she says about ­Burton. "I think he felt very isolated in Burbank where he was born. Edward Scissorhands is a ­version of where he was brought up. It is a bit ­Alice In Wonderland – I don't belong here." Whatever he may or may not be, there is no doubt that Burton is a unique, creative person. "He's someone who's very creative and has a mad ­exterior, but he is funda­mentally very sane and ­practical. I don't think we're crazy at all, to be honest," Bonham Carter said.

They're practical in domestic arrangements, too. Needing their independent space, she has one house, he has ­another and the children have the third to play in with the nanny. Do she and ­Burton see each other much at home? "He always visits, which is really touching. He's always coming over." Does he have a key to her house? "No, the houses are joined. We have a throughway. Journalists think there's an underground tunnel, gothic. It's ­actually quite above ground, lots of light." Do they sleep together? "Sometimes. There's a snoring issue... I talk, he snores. The other thing is, he's an insomniac, so he needs to watch ­television to get to sleep. I need silence."

In the interview, she went on to show some family photos on her mobile phone. "That's Bill as a pirate for his pirates party. He's so ­unbelievably patient. Nell's two, she's going to destroy everything. He's­ ­introvert, she's extrovert. He's very tender, she's much more traditionally masculine."


'I feel more sexy than ever, not because I’m sexually attractive, I just feel I’ve grown into my body.'

Hair: Carol Hemming. Make-up: Louise Constad at Mandy Coakley Represents using Benefit.
Photo: Gustavo Papaleo.


She thinks she has changed since being with ­Burton. "He's made me more aware. He thinks I overact all the time. He's got a thing about me having a very mobile face. Tim has often said I've got hyperactive eyebrows – he calls them the dancing cater­pillars. He's all for minimal ­expression. He likes to simplify things, I ­complicate them. I think we can do this or this or this, optionitis, then I get frozen because I don't know which one."

Has she changed him? "People who know him say I have, and I feel really flattered. Made him talk more. He didn't ­really talk before. He's much shyer than me. Every ­sentence was ­unfinished. I used to say he was a home for ­abandoned ­sentences. Now he actually finishes them." She sounds so chuffed, as if the thought has struck her for the first time. She is often ­described as Burton's muse, but that makes her uneasy. She says she would not be upset if in future he didn't cast her; there's always going to be a film for which she isn't right. "You can't take it personally." But what if he decided he no longer wanted her in any of his films? "Well, if it's obvious that I'm right for it, I probably will take it personally. I'll let you know when it happens." Could their ­relationship survive that? "It will be interesting. It's not without its pressures, working with Tim. It worked on Alice. Sweeney was very stressful, very hard on our relationship." Is he a boss or partner on set? "No, he's a partner in our private life, but when he's directing, he's the boss. And maybe I confuse that."

At age 43, she feels adult for the first time in her life, and capable of playing almost any role. "I feel more sexy than ever, not because I'm sexually attractive, I just feel I've grown into my body." Did she feel sexy when she was a ­beautiful young thing? "No, absolutely not. ­Totally uncomfortable. It took me ages to grow into being a woman, into being happy with it. When I was young, I believed in being androgynous, you can't flaunt it, you can't use it. The whole thing was just something yuck, to be ­embarrassed about. And now it's just like, 'Hey, enjoy it!' Now I feel fine about shapes and things. It's nice to have curves. To be a woman."

"I suppose I'm just a late developer."

"Alice in Wonderland": Disney's "Ultimate Fan Event"

Walt Disney Pictures has just released a very thorough press release on what is being called the "Ultimate Fan Event" for devoted Alice in Wonderland fanatics:

BURBANK, Calif., Feb 04, 2010 --WALT DISNEY PICTURES AND BUENA VISTA RECORDS JOIN FORCES WITH HOT TOPIC, KIIS-FM, MYSPACE AND MUSICAL ARTISTS FROM "ALMOST ALICE" FOR ULTIMATE FAN EVENT FEB. 19, 2010, AT HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLAND CENTER

Film Stars, Filmmakers and Artists 3OH!3, Metro Station, Family Force 5, Kerli and Never Shout Never on Concert Roster; Entire Event to be Streamed Live on MySpace

Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Records join forces with Hot Topic, KIIS-FM, MySpace and musical artists from the upcoming album "Almost Alice" for a great big ultimate fan event celebrating this Spring's most anticipated 3D motion picture "ALICE IN WONDERLAND." The star-studded concert event kicks off at 5 p.m. on Feb. 19, 2010, at the Hollywood & Highland Center's Central Courtyard. Featuring five musical acts, a visit from director Tim Burton to introduce select members of the "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" cast, plus opportunities to win prizes,including a sneak peek of actual film footage, the ultimate fan event will be streamed live on MySpace at www.myspace.com/wonderland.

An Entertainment Extravaganza

The event's featured artists will do a short set, including their song from "Almost Alice." Artists/songs include 3OH!3 ("Follow Me Down"), Metro Station ("Where's My Angel"), Family Force 5 ("Topsy Turvy"), Kerli ("Tea Party"), and Never Shout Never ("Sea What We Seas").

Available March 2, 2010, "Almost Alice" is a 16-song compilation featuring the film's end credit track "Alice," written and performed by Avril Lavigne, plus songs from artists including All American Rejects, The Cure's Robert Smith, Franz Ferdinand and Shinedown. Hot Topic's exclusive expanded version includes three bonus tracks. The album is a companion to the film's soundtrack, which features the score by composer Danny Elfman.

Hot Topic's Hollywood locale (3rd level of Hollywood & Highland Center) has been transformed to a mad version of Wonderland even the Hatter would enjoy. Hot Topic hosts the event and features exclusive "ALICE IN WONDERLAND"-themed products now available at Hot Topic stores nationwide and online. Beginning Monday, February 8, the first 250 customers who purchase any 3OH!3 t-shirt and preorder the "Almost Alice" CD will receive a wristband that will grant access to a special meet-and-greet with the band 3OH!3, entry into the concert's preferred viewing pit and admission into the special 3D sneak peek of footage from the film at the El Capitan Theatre after the concert event.

KIIS-FM, 104.3 MyFM and 98.7 FM will give away VIP preferred viewing pit wristbands to listeners between now and event day. Additional VIP tickets will be given away via MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. VIP attendees will be treated to a special 3D sneak peek of footage from the film at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre immediately following the event.

Fans are encouraged to dress up in costumes inspired by characters from "ALICE IN WONDERLAND." Costumes will be judged on site by Academy Award(R)-winner Colleen Atwood, costume designer for the film. Winners will be invited to attend the special sneak peek at the El Capitan.

KIIS-FM's Manny on the Streets will be the on-stage host for the event. Quddus from MySpace and theQside.com, Roslynn Cobarrubias from MySpace Music and Philip DeFranco from YouTube will be on hand as backstage hosts, interviewing key players along the way.

MySpace and Facebook will host the exclusive live streams of the event at www.myspace.com/wonderland and www.facebook.com/aliceinwonderland, powered by Ustream. Viewers around the world can experience the event first-hand, see exclusive backstage interviews with talent and interact by posting comments and questions to the page. Become a Fan on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/aliceinwonderland

SOURCE: Walt Disney Pictures


Again, the extravaganza will take place on Friday, February 19th, from 5:00 - 7:00 PM at the Hollywood & Highland Center, Hollywood, CA. Click here for the Facebook event page.

Interview with Mia Wasikowska

Alice in Wonderland will be released in cinemas in less than a month, so there will be plenty more to hear about the film until then. For now, the Los Angeles Times is doing extensive coverage on the film. Here's the LA Times' Geoff Boucher's interview with the star of the movie, 20 year old Mia Wasikowska.

BEWARE OF POTENTIAL SPOILERS!!:


GB: The film is called "Alice in Wonderland," but really this is neither a pure adaptation of Lewis Carroll's writings nor a remake of previous films. This is a whole new story, correct?

MW: It's a completely different and new story, but it has a lot of the same characters in it. It has the same feel of the original stories, but it's really fun to explore a story that goes further and imagines what all these characters would be like several years down the tracks. Alice doesn't have a recollection of her first visit there. She's gone back and is discovering this world and finding herself again in this place that she doesn't even remember.

GB: There are very few directors who have a style and vision that is instantly recognizable -- perhaps Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino are on that list among contemporary filmmakers -- but there's no question that Tim Burton is at the very top of that list. If you walk into a theater where a Burton movie is playing, you know it right away. That must make him an intriguing figure for actors.

MW: Absolutely. It is so cool to be part of his vision, to be able to start a project and see it all the way through to the end. It's almost like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was such a fan of his films growing up, movies like "Edward Scissorhands" and "Ed Wood." He has such a distinct style and a distinct sense of humor. And working with him it's been such an amazing thing to see something first on the page and then watch it become real as he brings it to life. He has such a cool energy too.

GB: This movie took you into the world of green-screen moviemaking. I visited the set and it was a little disorientating just walking around in there; it messes up your depth of perception. Was it a struggle for you in any way?

MW: It is really strange. But Wonderland itself is bizarre and weird and comical and confusing, so it's appropriate that, as you say, we were in this green-screen environment where it doesn't always make sense to you. Things were just really odd and weird, and I suppose that was suitable to what we were working on. It put you in the right frame of mind. And it made you rely on your imagination more.



GB: Tim's background is an artist and, as you say, he is so visual in his storytelling -- when he's working with the actors, does that help him or handicap him in communicating what he wants from the performances? Sometimes people with intense visual talents aren't the best communicators.

MW: Right from the beginning we had a very similar view as to how Alice should be played, so we were on a similar page right from the beginning, which was very helpful. He's very precise and clear and patient, and that was exactly what I needed as far as direction in this kind of film because it was so complicated [in the filming process]. One of the most interesting things about Tim is that he does communicate visually, but he is also very precise and uses a language that people can identify with. In that way he is a real genius.

GB: You're at the start of your career, but in this film you're performing with an elite and experienced cast with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, etc. Coming in, was that something that allowed you to relax a bit or did it have the opposite effect?



MW: They were all so wonderful and made me feel really welcome. It would seem intimidating to work with such big names, but then each, individually, were such lovely people that it only made me feel comfortable. It was wonderful.

GB: What was your sense of Johnny Depp, specifically?

MW: He is such a cool guy. He has the humanity to keep this sense of self. He's very kind and generous and so smart. To be able to watch Johnny -- just like with Tim -- as he takes something from the page to reality and how hard he works and what he brought to it and how much he brought to it, it's was amazing. It is inspiring too that he does things in a purely joyous way and has fun with it all, because so often there are people who seem disgruntled. To keep that love of what you do is so important. And watching him and Tim work together is fun. They have a very deep rapport. Watching them, it's like they speak their very own language.

GB: Coming into this project, I'm sure you made a lot of decisions about what you wanted to do with the character and maybe a few about what you didn't want to do with the character. What were some of the things you didn't want to do with your Alice?

MW: That's an interesting question. I suppose I would say I didn't want to bring in a lot of the baggage that is associated with "Alice in Wonderland" and just find the Alice that a lot of girls would identify with. I want to make her identifiable. She's at a crossroads in her life. So many people have an idea of how Alice should be played and there are these images in the public mind about her, but I wanted to keep to my own ideas how she would be and be true to that in the performance. The most important thing was to find the girl beneath this iconic figure.

Elfman on "Wonderland"

Alice in Wonderland is nearly done, with one of its last additions being that classic Burton trademark: a Danny Elfman score. Elfman did his final touches just this past Sunday. Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times interviewed the acclaimed composer as part of their Hero Complex series.

Watch out for potential SPOILERS!!

GB: I imagine you're feeling pretty good right now. The only thing better than taking on an exciting new project is actually finishing an exciting new project.

DE: Being done with "Alice" is a great relief, to put it mildly. Tim told me six months ago that this one would go right up to the 59th minute of the 11th hour. He knew it then. I was still doing last bits of music on Sunday and that was with the print-mastering beginning Monday. It doesn't get any tighter. But I knew going into it that this would be insanity. That's the nature of the beast. It's a function of motion-capture projects -- you're going to wait for shots to come in. You're trying to finish the movie and the shots are still coming in. Things are happening at the very last second. It's very challenging. But you can only go at the pace that it goes.

GB: What was the very last thing you finished on Sunday?

DE: It was this crazy dance that the Mad Hatter does. It's called the Fudderwacken. That was something we had tried many different approaches before we reached the one that is in the movie.

GB: What were your compass points coming into this project?

DE: Your guiding principles on a narrative type of story like this, it's always the same. The same guiding principles, rather -- hopefully not the same score over and over again. [Laughs] Unfortunately it's common in my business. But we try to avoid it. But really it's about finding the narrative and finding the themes and trying to knit things together and form continuity. The decision-making process is about who gets a theme and who doesn't. You can't just give every character a theme. It just starts getting too crazy.

Experimentation for me is, usually, finding a central theme and then two or three secondary themes and determining how they're going to play. That's the fun of it, the surprise of it, too. Sometimes I'll find I'm using a theme over a character and it's not necessarily their theme and I don't know why I'm doing it, but I'll go with it anyway and there ends up being a certain logic to it -- [the scene] is about a certain character or about a trajectory of a certain character.

GB: I imagine there are many ways to follow a "safe" path that amps up emotion and excitement but can undermine the film's identity, right?

DE: All of it, the challenge is to be inventive but do the purpose, which is to add continuity and to add energy and motion and anticipation and a sense of something building. To get that sense of forward motion. To do it poorly in this kind of film -- a real active film, an adventure film -- is actually really easy. You can always just play for energy, orchestrate something very active. Anybody who understands film composition could that in their sleep. The hard part is, can you do that and still come up with something that gives it a sense of identity? That's really hard.

GB: The framing sequences in the film take place in England of the 19th century. Does that influence any choices you make?

DE: No. In essence, if I just played 19th century music it would get really boring really fast. Even in the context of a serious period piece, a drama, let's say, taking place in the 19th century, you're still perhaps only going to allude to the period. If you get too strict with it, it's going to get really boring. Eventually, you're going to play the characters and you're going to play internally, and when you start playing internally there really aren't any rules. In something like "Alice in Wonderland" there are even less rules. Who knows what kind of music does or doesn't belong in Wonderland, after all? Outside of Wonderland, at the beginning of the film and at the end of the movie, I'm really just trying to establish some of the themes that will come back. Essentially, Alice's primary theme and, because she starts as a little girl, I have what I called the "little Alice" theme, which I bring back later at times. I'm just planting seeds at the beginning of the film.

GB: And then when the film gets to Wonderland?

DE: I open up and get a little crazier, but I'm still incorporating the same thematic ideas. I am a believer in thematic unity and the importance of that in a storytelling film. There are certain types of film where it simply doesn't matter, but when you have a crazy story that you're following through and there are a lot of crazy characters, it does matter.



GB: In talking to Tim Burton, it's clear he considered the challenge in adapting the source material was the lack of a strong narrative arc.

DE: Well, you have to realize this isn't "Alice in Wonderland" from Lewis Carroll's book. It isn't that story up on the screen in any way, shape or form. It's really taking the characters and putting them in a whole new story. It's actually more like a sequel. We start off with Alice as a little girl, but we quickly pick up on Alice 10 years later. She's returning to Wonderland and there is the story. Is it or isn't it the right Alice that they have brought down to Wonderland?

GB: Sure, I think that's become especially clear with the latest trailer. I have to say that, personally, it makes me much more interested in the film. Watching a pure retelling of familiar stories isn't especially alluring to me.

DE: No one can dispute the brilliance of the book. To put that on the screen? That would be really interesting, but it's hard to say what kind of movie it would make, you know, for an hour-and-a-half. So they came up with a concept: Alice is [almost] 20, and she's going to chase the rabbit down the hole and you're going to see all the same stuff, but you also hear these voices. "Is it her?" "It doesn't look like her." "I'm telling you it's her." And then she has to find out if it's a mistake, if she's the right Alice or not. She's been brought there for a purpose. But you still have all the same stuff [as far as imagery] with the Mad Hatter and the tea party and everything.

GB: I think an older Alice makes the film more interesting right off the bat.

DE: Yes, and Mia [Wasikowska, the Australian newcomer] is wonderful as Alice. I had never seen her in anything before. She's a great Alice. She really is like a child-woman, a child and a woman both. She has a wonderful simplicity but she has to go through this emotional growth in the story. And Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, well, that's a slam dunk. When Johnny gets in this type of role he really has fun with it. The movie is a treat and a feast for the eyes. It was fun to do even though it was intense. I don't mind intense. When you're geared up for it and you're expecting it, it's 'OK, let me have it, I'm ready."

GB: You've worked with Tim Burton on more than a dozen film projects, including some of his signature films -- the two "Batman" films, "Beetlejuice," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Edward Scissorhands" -- and I'm curious how your collaboration has changed through the years? Either in rhythm or approach?

DE: The joy of working with Tim is and always has been his unpredictability. I never know how he is going to react to something. People say, "Oh, you've worked with him so long, you must know when you write something that he will love it." It's quite the contrary. I've never found the secret, magic key. He started unpredictable and he is extremely unpredictable for me still. In that is also the joy. Over the years, his favorite stuff has often been the stuff I played for him as an afterthought. He gravitates to the areas that others directors do not allow. Like the character Edward Scissorhands having a theme which is almost Eastern European Jewish. A lot of directors would have said, 'Hey, wait a minute, Edward's not Jewish and he's not from Europe." Tim doesn't ask these types of questions. He responds completely viscerally to everything and immediately likes it or doesn't like it. I have to figure out why. Honestly, after 25 years I can't say that he is any easier for me to work with or any more predictable, and that actually is what I look forward to the most in our collaboration.

PHOTO: Danny Elfman at his home in Hancock Park in 2003. (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times).

Burton, Wasikowska, Atwood, and Schaub on "Wonderland"

Rotten Tomatoes spoke with Tim Burton, Mia Wasikowska, costume designer Colleen Atwood, and animation supervisor David Schaub to learn more about the making of Alice in Wonderland.

Why did Burton choose to make Alice? Because he was underwhelmed with other cinematic adaptations that he had seen. "All the other versions of Alice I've seen were lacking a narrative dynamic," he tells RT. "They were just a series of absurdist tales with one weird character after another and not too much of a context. So you watch it thinking, 'Oh, that's weird,' and 'Yeah, that's strange,' without ever paying attention to the story plot points."

How is Burton's Alice going to avoid those pitfalls? "We tried to give all of the characters a bit more of a foundation and a more simple, grounded story to work off all the weird stuff," he explains. "I mean, they're obviously all mad. But we have tried to give each of them a particular madness and a bit more depth."



Burton also explained how much of the effects were done in a trial and error process. One experiment that didn't make the cut was the motion capture technology. "We suited the Tweedles (Matt Lucas) and the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover, pictured) for motion capture," explains animation supervisor David Schaub. "The Knave is eight feet tall so we thought that motion capture would be the best method. But Crispin had to be on stilts for eye line purposes, so all of the captured images looked like a guy on stilts. It was clunky." Was it frustrating to have to throw away the footage? "It's Tim's choice," shrugs Schaub. "He knows what's out there and he makes choices based on the films he sees and the techniques used."

"We discussed what we like and don't like about motion capture," admits Burton. "Personally, I think it looks weird."


Other technological tricks were more successful, but still challenging. "We basically have three live-action characters," explains David Schaub. "They are Alice (Mia Wasikowska), The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and The White Queen (Anne Hathaway). The Tweedles and the Knave of Hearts are real heads blended onto animated bodies. That creates a special look that you won't have seen before. It's very cool. Meanwhile, Helena Bonham Carter's character (The Red Queen) is an amalgamation of all kinds of different techniques, which we then distorted." One of the most difficult characters to create was The Cheshire Cat. "That was hard because he actually floats," says Schaub. "So we had to think, if a cat could float, how would a cat float? Then he's got this huge grin the whole time, which causes problems because he's got to have emotions. But how do you make him anything other than happy when he's got this permanent smile? It was intense."

Wonderland itself is almost entirely CGI. "There is one significant prop where Alice steps into Wonderland and goes down some stairs," says Schaub. "That was an amazing piece of architecture. But everything else is a CG environment."

The end result may look incredible, but it was hardly thrilling for Mia Wasikowska. "It was three months of green screen," she sighs. "So I had to try and keep the energy up and remember that there will be an animated character in front of me. But it's hard when you're acting opposite nothing but sticky tape and tennis balls."


While the Red Queen was a technical amalgamation, the Mad Hatter was a creative mix. "It's funny," laughs costume designer Colleen Atwood. "Tim, Johnny and I had all made sketches of what we thought the Mad Hatter should look like. Then, when we sat down to discuss it, we realised they were all really similar!" One intriguing aspect of the Mad Hatter's costume is that it changes colour according to his mood. "It's like a mood ring," explains Atwood. "I made his suits in different colours, with layers of other colours, and then they enhanced it with CGI. It's going to look really fun."


Atwood had great enthusiasm for Wasikowska, as well. "She's just an amazing young woman," Atwood gushes to RT. "Her head is not up in the clouds and she's a really hard worker with a great sense of humour -- something you need on a film as crazy as this. She's definitely channeling Cate Blanchett in the sense that both actresses are extremely talented but very grounded. Plus they're both Australian."

Tim Burton agrees: "Mia has an old soul, but there are elements of her that feel very young and naïve," he explains. "She's perfect to play Alice at this stage of her life because she is at a crossroads, and the film's journey is her finding out who she is and what she wants. Although this is probably the weirdest, most abstract movie that she will ever be in. I mean, it's weird even for me."

Is Wasikowska feeling the pressure? "A little bit," she nervously laughed. "I'm excited to see the finished product but, of course, there is a certain amount of anxiety that comes with it. Having said that, I have such faith in Tim and everybody on this film, so I'm not really worried."

Third Times Online Sneak Peek of "Alice in Wonderland"

The third and final exclusive sneak peek of Alice in Wonderland has made its debut on Times Online.

Click here for the video. This short clip includes words from Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Mia Wasikowska.

Some of the images featured in the slideshow. (Captions from the website, which contains SPOILERS.):


Bandersnatch illustration by Bobby Chiu.




Bayard illustration by Bobby Chiu.


Baynard the Bloodhound is voiced by Timothy Spall.


The Tweedles sketch by Tim Burton.


"I imagine them as naughty Victorian children, with their hand in the honey jar," says Matt Lucas, the British comedian and actor who plays them both. "And so I have made them quite child-like, which does come naturally to me, because I’m a big kid anyway."


Dodo illustration by Michael Kutsche.


Michael Gough lends his voice for the Dodo.


All images from Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Feb. 28: "Alice" at Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

Want to see Alice in Wonderland before March 5th? Those in Ireland can see the film in 3D on February 28th, as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. The film will be shown at the Savoy at 17 Upper O'Connell Street Dublin 1.

Click here to book tickets for this special JDIFF presentation!

Wasikowska on Making "Alice"

The new issue of Teen Vogue has a detailed interview with Mia Wasikowska, star of Alice in Wonderland. The article goes into depth about Wasikowska's past, work as an actress, experience making Alice, and her future projects.

Mia Wasikowska spent the first half of her life as a dancer, but at age 14, the Australian teenager began calling agents in Sydney. After he role in the HBO series In Treatment, Tim Burton came knocking, inviting the young actress, now 20 years old, to audition for his cinematic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's surreal, phantasmagorical world. Wasikowska's role as Alice will be the biggest role she's taken yet.

"Alice is such a high-profile character," she explained. "One of the things that was scary about taking on that role is the huge fan base; everybody has their own idea of who she is. So [Tim and I] discussed, very early on, just being happy with her being our Alice... making her my own."

Click here for more information on Wasikowska's past and promising future.