Tim Burton was born in Burbank, a typical suburbanized area around
Hollywood. Quite early in his life Burton was making horror films with a
Super 8 camera, but he felt more like an artist than a filmmaker. He received
a scholarship from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), a school
founded for the training of talented young artists as animators for the
Disney studio.
That is where Tim Burton began his Hollywood career, an assistant animator
on Disney feature films. The first film he worked on was The Fox and
the Hound, but neither Burton nor his employers were happy with his
designs, so his position at Disney was modified. As conceptual artist it
was his job to draw anything that came into his head, but none of his designs
were used. The studio felt they were not in line with the "Disney-concept."
There was no doubt at the studio concerning Burton's talents as an artist
and an animator, they just found it difficult to get it in line with the
image of the studio.
In the years he spent at Disney Burton did not contribute much of consequence
to its productions, but he did write and direct two black-and-white short
films of his own: Vincent, a stop-motion animated
fairy tale about a young boy who dreams he is Vincent Price, and Frankenweenie,
a 25-minute variation on James Whale's Frankenstein, in which a ten-year-old
boy revives his dog Sparky after it has been hit by a car. Both films were
drenched in the atmosphere and style of the old Hollywood horror film, and
were equally influenced by the sensitive expressionism of James Whale and
the hectic crazy scientist movie of the fifties. They both received an extremely
limited release, as Disney did not really know what to do with them. Frankenweenie
was released on video in the United States when Batman
Returns appeared in 1992. Word got around within the industry about
these remarkable two shorts, so it was not long before Burton was offered
his first feature film as a director.
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), an infectious,
beautifully designed road movie built around TV personality Pee-Wee Herman,
received poor reviews but made a good deal of money. This commercial success
gave Burton a little more freedom in his selection of screenplays. He finally
opted for Beetlejuice (1988), a black comedy
about a dead couple disturbed in the haunting of their house by a snobbish
city family intent on redecorating. Despite many bad reviews --just like
Pee-Wee, Beetlejuice was mentioned in
many lists of "worst films of the year"-- it became one of 1988's
sizeable hits. Suddenly Burton was considered a hot property, a hip and
bankable young director whom a major studio could entrust with a big project.
By that time, Burton had been involved with the development of a Batman
script for the past few years, and after the success of Beetlejuice
the project was finally green-lighted by Warner Bros. Batman
(1989) went on to become one of the top-grossing films of all time, a phenomenon
that turned into a media event of which the film was only a comparatively
small part. The movie's incredible financial success can certainly not be
detached from the media frenzy that preceded its release; the marketing
strategy around the yellow and black Batman logo was at least as carefully
orchestrated as the hype surrounding the first modern blockbuster, Jaws
(1975). And huge though the box office proceeds may have been, they stand
in no comparison to the enormous cash flow generated by the sales of anything
that featured the logo, ranging from t-shirts to key hangers to Prince albums.
The movie's success was primarily a triumph for the Warner Bros. marketing
department, though at the time most of the honors went to super- producers
Jon Peters and Peter Guber, and not to the director.
However, it cannot be denied that the film has a clear vision of Batman's
cartoon world, and it did manage to capture the imagination of the general
public in the United States (the movie didn't do as well in Europe). The
neo-gothic, extremely dark look at New York City was new for a Hollywood
blockbuster of this size; Blade Runner is its precursor in that aspect,
but that didn't do well at the time, though it did set the trend for later
films. Also the relative psychological depth with which the main characters
and their split personalities were portrayed was uncommon in a super hero
movie. Burton himself says he ended up having little true involvement
with the production, in part because of the studio's meddling and the
sheer size of a calculated blockbuster like this one.
After Batman, Burton was free to take on more
or less any project he was interested in, though Warners did of course prefer
to see him starting on a sequel as soon as possible.
He was set on directing a pet project based on an idea he had been developing
for a while based on a sketch of a man with scissors instead of hands. Warner
Bros. wasn't interested, so he took the project to Twentieth Century Fox,
where he co-produced Edward Scissorhands (1990),
a gentle fairy tale starring teen idol Johnny Depp and Burton's own idol,
Vincent Price. This film also did very well, thanks in large part to the
fortuitous casting of Depp and popular young actress Winona Ryder.
Burton finally did agree to direct a Batman sequel
for Warner, but only if he would have complete creative control over the
entire production. Batman Returns (1992) was another
hit, and it generally received better reviews than its predecessor, but
it came in for a lot of criticism because of the overwhelmingly dark atmosphere;
many parents found the film far too intense for children, even though the
film was marketed through McDonald's children meals and numerous toy package
tie-ins. By this time many critics regarded Burton as a veritable auteur,
and his films were being regarded as "Tim Burton films" as well
as pre-packaged blockbusters.
Burton had been busy producing Tim Burton's The Nightmare
Before Christmas (1993) since late 1990. This stop-motion animated musical
was based on an idea he had first developed while working at Disney, so
the Disney studio owned the rights, and agreed to go into production with
him. Disney had undergone a severe change since the success of The Little
Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991), and was now willing
to take on projects that had seemed too daring in the past. Henry Selick
came on board as director, and Burton himself took on production duties
along with Denise DiNovi, his regular co-producer since 1990. When it was
finally finished, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before
Christmas made a very respectable $52 million between Halloween and
Christmas, in spite of more criticism about the movie being too dark and
scary for children.
Burton's next film was a project based on the life of "Worst Director
of All Time" Edward D. Wood Jr. But in spite of Burton's impressive
resume, it was difficult to find a studio that would take it on, especially
since Burton insisted the film be shot in black and white. Finally the project
went into production at Touchstone Pictures, Disney's adult branch which
had also taken on The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Ed Wood (1994) turned out to be the first commercial
failure in Tim Burton's career, in spite of the unanimous praise heaped
on the film by the critics. Ed Wood only made
$2 million, and fared only slightly better in Europe, where the attempts
to launch an Ed Wood hype never really caught on either. It did receive
two Academy Awards, for Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, and for Rick Baker,
for his special make-up effects. But the first Burton film to be accepted
without reservation by the critics was abandoned by the public.
For its third Batman-film Warner Bros. wanted a change of director, to bring
a lighter touch to the Caped Crusader franchise. Burton was still vaguely
involved as executive producer, while Joel Schumacher gave Batman Forever
a flashier, more colorful atmosphere that was a little closed to the Superman
movies, but which felt to many like watching MTV for two hours without volumje
control. Burton still expressed an interest in doing a spin-off Catwoman
movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, but no definite plans have been made so far.
Burton's most recent project is a part computer-animated, part live-action
feature film of the trading card series Mars Attacks!.
It stars Jack Nicholson in two roles as well as host of stars in near-cameo
roles. Fiancially, it was another disppointment for Burton, and in the United
States it was also disliked by the critics, who felt the squandering of
expensive special effects and stars on such a messy picture was rather decadent.
The picture fared slightly better in Europe, where audiences as well as
critics were more in tune with Burton's black sense of humor and unAmerican
sensibilities.
Rumors abound about Burton's next project: most voices say it will be a
new version of Superman.
