THE AUTEUR AS MARKETING CONCEPT



Over the last few years a number of films has been released bearing the original author's name in the title: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina. This use of the author's name seems to be intended as a kind of endorsement: after many unauthentic versions of the story, here we have the definitive film version. How closely these "authentic" adaptations actually adhere to the original work is another matter, but the intention is clear. Amongst this barrage of authenticated "author's films" there is one film that could not justify the use of the author's name in the title as easily: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. For unlike, say, Andy Warhol's Dracula, there have been no previous versions of this story from which Tim Burton's name would set it apart, nor is he an accomplished author whose name would lend the authentic feel of for instance Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And yet, certain studio executives at Disney, the studio responsible for the film's production, thought the use of Burton's name within the title would place the film within a certain context.

Tim Burton is certainly a director whose films have been uniquely recognizable and consistent, thematically as well as visually. From his first short Vincent up to and including his most recent feature Ed Wood there have been a number of recurring themes, making his name a sort of trademark for a certain style and content. Besides that, there has been a stable and recognizable image of Tim Burton The Director since the release of Batman (1989). He is always portrayed as a strange, quiet outsider with a love for the dark and bizarre. Publicity photos show him to be a thoughtful artist with unkempt hairdo, while interviewers always stress his fascination for split personalities, outsiders and an unusual visual design.

The tale of how he started off as a Disney animator, but left because he couldn't get into the Disney concept and design has by now become a Hollywood myth. It is an imaginative story similar to the recent mythology surrounding Quentin Tarantino: the American Dream of being plucked out of working at a video store to direct your own film and earn immediate world-wide fame and fortune. This kind of image-building works by picking up certain aspects of a person's career, personality or appearance and blowing them up until the name becomes synonymous with the image built up around it. The huge advantage this kind of image building delivers is that people will want to see film because of the personality that is attached to it; one feels one "knows" the Man Behind the Film, and perhaps share his Vision. The name Tim Burton comes to stand for stylized, cartoonish films about outsiders with a recognizable gothic design, just like the name Woody Allen has come to stand for angst-ridden urban comedies with a mousy intellectual who is instantly and totally identified with the director as main character.

A term often used for this kind of image building is the rock star director, meaning that the director is considered to be the real star of the film, whether or not he actually appears in the film. Fans will be interested in anything the rock star director's name is attached to, even in such remote cases as Tarantino's involvement with Roger Avary's Killing Zoe. Even though his involvement was nothing more than the vanity credit of executive producer, the film was marketed primarily under his name, almost certainly with more than success than it would have had without this name-generate interest.

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas might have more to do with Tim Burton than Killing Zoe does with Quentin Tarantino, it is still a film made by another director, based on an idea and a look created by Tim Burton. Even so, all the familiar Burton ingredients are on prominent display: the main character is an outsider living in a split world, in an animated film designed with a clear fascination for the morbid, with a recognizably dark, gothic look. The combination of these distinctive elements has come to be associated with the name of Tim Burton, and it is therefore these elements that are associated with the appearance of his name in the title.

But of course the name Tim Burton stands for a lot more than just the involvement, decisive though it may be, of this one particular individual. One might say that the name stands equally for the work of the people who have made considerable contributions to what is associated with his name. People like production designer Bo Welch, composer Danny Elfman and graphic designer Rick Heinrichs have been of huge importance to the final product and the Burton concept that has grown from there. However, all the elements that make his films distinguishable from any other movies are often reduced to a cult of personality around an individual artist of genius.

In an industry in which every possible angle is used to sell a product, a director can thus turn into a marketing concept, a brand name that is instantly recognizable and that has a guaranteed audience as long as certain distinctive elements are present in the product. One possible reason for the lack of financial success of Ed Wood is the absence of certain elements that are typically associated with a Tim Burton film..