Tim Burton's dark and wonderful world can be explored in two ways. Either, (re)watch film classics like Edward Scissorhands or The Nightmare Before Christmas, or visit Tim Burton's Labyrinth, the fairground exhibition that sold out in Madrid and Paris and is now coming to Thurn/Tour & Taxis.
© Fabian Morasut
| Tim Burton in his very own touring Labyrinth, the fantastic carnival which will liven up this autumn in Brussels.
Who is Tim Burton?
- Tim Burton (65) was born and grew up in Burbank, the suburb of LA that houses the film studios of Warner Bros., Universal, and Disney. He never felt at home in the petty-bourgeois environment and found solace in monster movies from an early age
- At eighteen, he went to study animation at the California Institute of the Arts, three years later he joined Disney as an animator and storyboard artist. Two of his own animated shorts were too macabre to Disney's liking, and after being fired his career as a film director really took off
- He is known and loved all over the world for films such as Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Frankenweenie. His series Wednesday became a giant Netflix hit. Last year, he received a lifetime achievement award at the Lumière Festival in Lyon
Tim Burton may by profession be a film director, but he has the following of a rock star. Not because he bears a striking resemblance to Robert Smith, the frontman of The Cure, save the mascara. It is because his dark yet wonderful films like Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Batman, Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland overflow with empathy or sympathy for monsters, outsiders and other misunderstood misfits. That makes him the great hero of the many who recognise themselves in those outcasts and take comfort from that.
Having fierce fans that are easy to attract is one of the explanations why there have been several Tim Burton exhibitions touring the world for more than a decade. In Madrid and Paris, over 500,000 people were enticed to get lost in Tim Burton's Labyrinth, an exhibition that Burton himself describes as a fantastic carnival and which will arrive in Brussels on 20 October.
The monsters in the films I grew up with didn’t traumatise me, they calmed me down. I didn’t see them as bad. They were different and in them, I saw myself
A second reason is that there is also an awful lot to see. Life-sized colourful characters, obscure set elements, imaginative costumes, animations, detailed preparations, childhood drawings, photographs and paintings bear witness to an unstoppable creativity and craftsmanship that you no longer associate with Hollywood. How much imagination can one have? But Burton not only seemingly overflows with ideas every moment of every day, he also materialises them. Quick and fleeting in doodles on restaurant paper napkins. Or slow and careful in a Disney film hors catégorie.
Befriending Frankenstein
Burton grew up in Burbank. Even though this is the suburb of Los Angeles that houses the illustrious film studios of Warner Bros., Universal, and Disney, the introverted boy never felt at home in the petty-bourgeois, puritanical environment “with no history, no culture, no passion and with the same nice weather day in and day out. Horrible!”
Feeling like an outsider, he found solace in monster movies from an early age. He learns how to shake off feelings of disregard and oppression in drawings and stop-motion films. He combines humour with the grotesque and is attracted to fairground characters, clowns, masks, jesters, and the carnivalesque. There is no doubt in his case: the child is the father of the man.
All his films have something personal but Burton recognises himself in the character of Edward Scissorhands most of all.
“The films I grew up with are my biggest source of inspiration. Universal's monster movies at the top of the list. They didn't traumatise me, they in fact calmed me down. I didn't see those monsters as bad. They were different and in them, I saw myself,” he told us last year when he received a lifetime achievement award at the Lumière Festival in Lyon. “Frankenstein or the Creature from the Black Lagoon were my friends. The films in which they appeared were my refuge, my sanctuary, my form of therapy, my way of discovering the world, or experiencing a sense of belonging. Being able to give people an experience like that myself is what drives me.”
His journey has been unorthodox. “As a young man, I made Super8 films but becoming a film director never occurred to me. I knew with certainty that I wanted to create things. Because I loved that so much. But whether that was a drawing, an animation, or a film didn't really matter. It still doesn't.”
Dream and nightmare at once
At eighteen, Burton headed to the California Institute of the Arts, founded by Walt Disney, to study animation. “There were all sorts of eccentrics running around there. The students and teachers in the animation department in particular were weird and lonely oddballs. That created a special dynamic. I quite enjoyed interacting with so many other weirdos.” They spent most of their time searching for Walt Disney's frozen body that was rumoured to be in one of the cellars.
In 2012 Burton reworked his short film Frankenweenie into the feature-length Frankenstein homage of the same title.
In 1979, Burton was offered to join Disney, working as an animator and storyboard artist on the animated films The Black Cauldron and The Fox and the Hound. He made his mark with two macabre but gorgeous animated short films. In the melancholic Vincent, a young boy who identifies with horror legend Vincent Price delves a little too deep into the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven”. Burton managed to convince Price, his childhood idol, to be the narrator. The Frankenstein homage Frankenweenie is about a young boy who brings his dead dog back to life. Disney found the short films too morbid and let the young talent go. But that turned out to be a stroke of luck because it created the space for the start of his career as a film director. Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) was the first in a long line of cherished, quirky feature films such as Beetlejuice (1988) and Batman (1989) with Michael Keaton or Edward Scissorhands (1990), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) with Johnny Depp.
Burton's 1988 cult hit Beetlejuice is getting a sequel soon.
Dark yet soothing. With monsters but endearing. Dream and nightmare at once. Outsiders but popular. Inventing and developing fantasy worlds then kept this versatile creative director busy for years. Even though some of the sets and characters were filled with colour and humour was an essential ingredient, the penchant for the macabre and the love for the bizarre and deviant remained. He took his inspiration from pop culture, comics, cartoons, children's literature, monster movies from bygone eras or distant lands (Japan), circus attractions, kitsch, SF films, Expressionist cinema, and the stop-motion magic of pioneers such as Georges Méliès and Ray Harryhausen.
With a dark Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), he breathed new life into the comatose superhero film. The consequences were huge. Throughout his career, he continues to return regularly to his “true love”: stop-motion animated films. That gave us Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Frankenweenie.
I realise now that I was Dumbo. I was working in a horrible, big circus and I desperately needed to escape from it
Dumbo, c'est moi
All his films have something personal but Burton recognises himself in the character of Edward Scissorhands most of all: the black-clad pale man with knives as hands who means well but is regarded as a freak in a “very normal” American residential area. “I am not the most well-adjusted person in the world. Even if I would make myself be one by trying incredibly hard, sometimes I would still feel like an outsider. Stuff like that is in your DNA. You also immediately recognise it in others. Whether you like it or not, it is part of who you are. I thought I would be rid of it if I made a few films about outsiders. I was hoping for a catharsis that would drive away the demons for good. But that didn't happen. I am at peace with that now.”
Tim Burton: 'At Disney, I was working in a horrible, big circus and I desperately needed to escape from it. In that sense, Dumbo was autobiographical.'
Despite his very unique style and eccentric interests, Burton has always worked for major film studios such as Warner Bros. or Disney. “I am a strange phenomenon who had some degree of independence in that system. If only because they didn't really understand what 'that oddball' was doing but realised that audiences liked the films. The success did have a downside, it turned me into a thing. People started treating me as a commodity rather than a person or an artist.”
Burton went through a tough time after his divorce from Helena Bonham Carter, the British actress he met on the set of Planet of the Apes and starred in Alice in Wonderland. Another blow was the fact that his retelling of the Disney classic Dumbo (2019) flopped at the box office. “Disney has hired and fired me loads of times over the years. But I think my days at Disney are now definitely over. I realise now that it was I who was Dumbo. I was working in a horrible, big circus and I desperately needed to escape from it. In that sense, Dumbo was autobiographical. Do you know what it is about having success and flops? One of my own personal favourites, Ed Wood, is also one of my biggest flops. Ditto for Mars Attacks! I had so much fun making that film. It failed in America but it was a success in the rest of the world. So I never judge a film by how many people come to watch it.”
Jenna Ortega in Wednesday, Tim Burton's recent Netflix hit series: 'I have a soft spot for Wednesday. I felt the same way she does when I was a teenager.'
Last year, fortune returned. Burton helped Netflix to a massive hit with Wednesday, a series around the morbidly and fatally funny daughter from the Addams Family that appeared in comics, series, and films. “I wasn't on the lookout to redo The Addams Family but I do have a soft spot for Wednesday. I felt the same way she does when I was a teenager. Even though I was a boy, I could have been her. I loved her style, her attitude at school, her relationship with her parents, and her defiant attitude towards everything around her. I recognised that, I admire that in her.”
This summer, together with Michael Keaton, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, and Jenna Ortega, the actress that portrayed Wednesday, Burton shot Beetlejuice 2, a sequel to his wacky, ghoulish, gothic fairy tale about a poltergeist that took 1988 by surprise and turned it into a good year.
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