Original subtitles

I had a dancing teacher who used to say to me, Chris, show me something I never

saw before.

And that's what Tim does every time.

Tim is a rare thing in cinema. He's an auteur. He's a visionary.

He's an artist with images and thoughts.

Got a lot going on in there.

Tim is a real thing.

Really the real, real thing.

He creates these spaces out of his own head, and they're giant playgrounds with

such a wide scope of things to be done.

He examines in a different way to make something that's scary beautiful at the

same time.

There is no separation between how Tim feels and how Tim sees the world.

I would love to take a trip inside his brain.

The kingdom that is his heart, where these characters live, they just roam

around and come out from sketches to film. My whole life is a dark room.

The fact that you can see him, the artist, behind the movie is very unique,

that's why it will really relate.

Tim has all the words inside. Sometimes they don't come out, so they come out in

other ways.

He's always drawing.

He's always working on something artistically.

And then sometimes something becomes the beginning of an idea that makes it into

his movie.

There is a real life in that line, as there is in himself, and he's the

constantly moving line.

They may not understand.

His brain is working so fast, much faster than the words want to come out.

He'll kind of literally go up and, like, walk around for a minute and then kind

of... Try to respond to what you were talking about.

Tim speaks in sort of fractalized parts of sentences, but kind of shuffles the

various parts.

You have to put them back in their place to form whole sentences.

That's how you learn to speak Timish.

Other directors, they take interest in certain aspects, whether it's the acting

or this or that. Tim is every single frame. It is like a painting.

where it's his touch in every single aspect. He will work on it until it's

ripped away from the fan, filling it in, coloring it in, you know, the last

detail.

What you've seen on screen is just the tip of the iceberg.

That kid landing from another planet to Burbank and growing up there, I can

only imagine what it was like for him.

Burbank is Tim Burton's first muse.

And it is a muse that he rebels against.

Burbank, California, as sunny and beautiful as it is, is a bit monotonous.

That whole kind of suburban, tract house kind of world that he grew up in with

very traditional parents.

His dad ran the rec department.

When you live in a world that is so intense on pretending everything's okay,

everyone's the same, there's a secret sauce of how to live and be successful,

and you know you're just never going to pull that off.

I think you look to the dark side. What else is there?

For a boy his age, he's considerate and nice.

But he wants to be just like Vincent Price. There's got to be something else

than this false positivity and false uniform way of living.

He doesn't mind living with his sister dog and cat, though he'd rather share a

home with his wife and dad.

Most people would not hang out in a cemetery.

Tim will walk right in and find peace and beauty in all that imagery.

It's just an example of how unique and different his view of the world is.

His parents thought he was some weird kid or whatever.

I guess we can't punish Victor for bringing Sparky back from the dead.

There was just a disconnect.

His mother said, you're not possessed and you're not almost dead.

These games that you play are all in your head.

I think a lot of people, especially at that age, you have a disconnect with

parents.

He thought it was a challenge to connect with other people.

He loves dogs.

Pepe was a childhood dog.

He's always felt at ease with dogs.

He likes to experiment on his dog, Abercrombie.

He said very early on in our relationship that he was a dog. So maybe

where he came from, dog land.

He already felt a little bit like a loner.

He enjoyed his own private time and doing his art and immersing himself in

things that he enjoys.

And I think that disconnect with the parents, it led him to want to live with

his grandmother.

I think a lot of us, if we had that opportunity, you know, we may have

escape somewhere at that age.

You can't run a chocolate factory with a family hanging over you like an old

dead goose.

No offense.

The grandmother was really understanding.

So he was able to kind of prosper in that environment and explore the things

that he wanted to explore with a lot of freedom.

Tim articulates his feelings through visual expression.

So when you're looking at his sketchbook, somehow he's transformed

into a feeling, into a creature, into a distortion, a body form.

And you understand, oh, in that moment, Tim was feeling that way.

It wasn't really until the holiday seasons where Tim saw any change in his

environment.

That's the only time in which he found any creative respite.

When houses were decorated, when it was transformed for Halloween, for

Christmastime, that's why holidays are so integral to his work. Without that

restriction of not finding creativity in his external environment, maybe it

wouldn't have compelled him to find it within himself.

He was very tenacious, even at a very young age.

He won a contest.

drawing a sign for the site of a Burbank trash truck. He had focus, and he

obviously had confidence.

He created an illustrated manuscript called The Giant's Lake, and he actually

sent it to Disney Publishing.

He got a very kind response, saying that this illustrated manuscript is perhaps

a little bit derivative of Dr. Seuss, but we encourage you to keep going.

Darth Adams, his art teacher, was an important aspect to his life.

He always sat in the same place in the back of the room, second row, last seat.

At first, these little creatures that he did seemed weird. Then as I looked at

them more, I saw more and more to them, and I encouraged him to continue.

She didn't say.

you can't draw or you got to do it like this.

He just drew everything you can't imagine he drew.

Tim calls her out as being someone really influential to continue following

and really embracing his own style, not conforming it into something else.

He lived literally under the shadows of Warner Brothers and Disney.

We were both movie kids. We both grew up in Los Angeles in an era where we lived

in movies.

We both loved Hammer Horror.

They brought in horror movies and science fiction movies from all over the

world. What's out there that we can see? I never saw a parent in the movie

theater. If you can imagine that, a movie theater just filled with boys

screaming. I mean, that was church. That was every weekend.

And it was a great era to kind of love that weird, offbeat

filmmaking.

Finding movies, particularly Vincent Price films, I think that made him feel

like, oh, maybe there are worlds out there that are more familiar for me.

Tim was making films.

in high school.

He was making films with his friends.

He was making them at home.

There's a series of shorts that he made, and a lot of them involve stop -motion

kind of approach to things.

You could see that he had an eye and kind of an off -center aesthetic.

It's a clear line to the movies he would go on to make.

When I started working for him, I don't think a lot of people knew at that time

how prolific he was in terms of artwork.

I was very fortunate.

One of my responsibilities is I helped as curator, archivist.

Just gather whatever art was left around and put it in a drawer, catalog it,

maybe scan it.

We're the only ones that know about all this stuff. This is insane.

Look at all this art. It's just sitting here. Nobody has even ever seen it

before.

And around that time, that's when some of the curators from MoMA reached out.

came up with the idea to craft an exhibition around Tim Burton's work.

We had no idea of the breadth of material that existed.

When we saw what the exhibition could be, we had to pivot in our thinking.

We went to his collaborators.

For example, Rick Heinrichs was important for Tim in the early 1980s.

create concept artworks, and Rick Heinrichs made them into three

form to pitch to the executives at the Disney Studios to convince them to make

this into a film.

One of the first times I got to know Tim was when I and some friends were going

to the Cinerama Dome to watch Apocalypse Now. We were picking Tim up.

When we pulled up, he was squatting down on the ground and he was looking at an

anthill. He was thoroughly engrossed and intent on this micro world. I could

only imagine what was going through his head at the time.

Perhaps he was just really interested in the social.

aspect of what the ants were doing, I don't really know. It was one of the

aspects I noticed about him, his intent and great gift for observation, this

boyish interest in what was going on in the ground that I thought was

fascinating. I'm sure that Ant Hill has somehow found its way into his films.

Tim Burton started at the California Institute of the Arts in 1976.

My beautiful monster, and they do well. Okay,

now you will go out and destroy all beautiful things like this painting,

hold in my hand. Go out and destroy all beauty, all beauty. You understand all

beauty. Now go and kill.

If I win, I receive your body. CalArts, he found people he could connect with.

I receive his.

I think he still embraced being a bit of an outsider, but it was full of

characters there.

He studied art history, romanticism, and Goya.

He trained as an animator, and then he just went completely into a different

stratosphere. There was a screening at the end of the year in which all the

students' films were put up.

And there were studio executives from Disney in attendance, and several of the

few and the chosen were lifted into the Disney studio.

And I realized there was a kind of a Hunger Games competition going on here.

But at this screening, the standout film of all these dudes was the

film Stock of the Celery Monster.

I think everybody else was trying to grapple with just the technical mastery

animation.

Tim had just kind of leaped over that whole thing and was actually

the audience with crazy, wild, lovable comic characters that were kind of drawn

from his interests.

Tim builds this world where it's the torture chamber of a mad scientist, and

then later on the punchline is that it's revealed that you're actually in a

dentist's office.

Next, please. There was such a clear...

The personality behind that filmmaking, it just made me really want to meet and

get to know the person behind it. On the strength of Stock of the Celery

Monster, Tim was hired at Disney.

He was given the opportunity to become an in -between artist and to help

animate, and he worked closely with some of the generation that was still there.

But his take on things didn't fit that mold of what they were animating.

We were working on The Fox and the Hound. I got to know Tim better because

doing in -betweens of his breakdowns of Glen Keane's animation, this whole

system.

He hated his time at Disney.

The sharpies, or the equivalent of whatever he drew with, made him high, so

he'd fall asleep.

Tim says... Well, I can't draw in the Disney style. I can't draw these cute

foxes.

It's not that he's unable to draw in that style. It's that he doesn't want to

draw in that style.

In a way, he rebelled against the classic Disney style.

He admits that everything he would draw looked like roadkill.

It wasn't the right fit.

His early days at Disney.

His teeth came out. He just encouraged it, caused the hemorrhage and loved it.

Really unattractive.

I remember him trying to woo me with that.

I was just like, geez.

It's amazing, actually, what he has done with Disney, considering his own

sensibility and aesthetic is so different.

When he was supposed to be working as an animator at Disney, He also did a

series of cartoons, just pencil on paper.

They were just a form of diversion for Tim.

Never shoot a constipated poodle.

Little Mary Cemetery.

There was a drawing of eyes wandering out of this man's head.

He's giving his eyes a rest.

Goodness, he could have been a New Yorker cartoonist.

I think it was a tough time for him.

And it was for many of us.

We'd gone to CalArts and started to think like filmmakers.

I am the most powerful force in the universe. You are here to do my bidding.

And here we were on the assembly lines, bending our will down to get out the

acquired footage every week. We're talking about the Disney studio of the

70s, early 80s.

A hundred rhymes go in the trash.

The studio was paralyzed after Walt passed.

They kind of ossified around a sense of what would Walt want.

They ended up with these very safe, conservative choices, maintaining what

thought was the legacy. But Disney himself was an enormous risk taker.

The banker, I think, was losing more sleep than I was.

He had a very inventive mind in terms of how to approach this idea of making

films with drawings.

It's better than the magic we're making today, but we can't help that.

The studio was in the hands of kind of middle manager, not the brightest kids

the class, trying to manage this unruly group of youngsters.

You had your fun in college, but now it's time to get down to the heavy

here at the studio.

It was kind of a dark time in many respects and a bit of a letdown. Is this

really what it's going to be like for the rest of our careers?

And looking around at the animators who were still there at Disney, it seemed

like, yes, in fact, it is going to be like that.

Ironically, some of the biggest support that the young CalArts people got were

from the nine old men.

There was a weird kind of a connection between the old guys and the new guys.

So many amazingly creative people that were there in that period of the late

70s. John Lasseter, our cameraman, went on to become really successful,

kind of next wave at Disney. It was a really special time there.

When they were looking ahead at their next project of the Black Cauldron, they

thought, well, let's give this kid a chance.

So they put Tim in his own office, drawing characters and environments for

Black Cauldron.

He had created all these different designs, hundreds of drawings of these

fantastical creatures using babies as projectiles.

Creatures that are anthropomorphic. They're a dungeon, but they're also

creatures that come alive.

and the film used none of his ideas.

The word from them was that it was a little weird and wasn't Disney enough

dimensional the way Disney animation was.

First of all, that's not true.

I felt it was very dimensional. It just was much more cool and graphic -looking.

So I took it upon myself to make some sculptures from Tim's work. I realized

I was working, and Tim realized, that, wow, something really interesting is

happening.

His more graphic and theatrical and two -dimensional style with this dimensional

aspect that I was bringing to it.

That was when he and I started to work together.

It's really during this early period in the early 1980s where Tim honed in on

his style that we all know now as Burton F.

Tom Wilhite, the head of production at Disney at the time, kind of took us

his wing.

And Tim had done this amazing book that had a rhyming text. It had a sort of a

bit of a Dr. Seuss feel.

And it was called Vincent, about a little boy who is enamored of the films

Vincent Price.

While other kids read books like Go, Jane, Go, Vincent's favorite author is

Edgar Allan Poe.

So obviously not at all autobiographical here. And it comes from my childhood

experiences as I had sort of an identification, I thought, with Vincent

and that I really responded to his torment and anguish and insanity.

I built all the sets and the puppets and the armatures.

Tim did all of the storyboards and directed the animation.

As you can see, they don't have heads with it. That was part of it from the

child's point of view. We never went much past their shoulders.

You're not Vincent Price. You're Vincent Malloy.

You're not tormented or insane. You're just a young boy. It was obviously a

personal thing for Tim.

When he was able to work with Vincent Price, oh my goodness, that was...

fulfilling every dream that Tim had at that point.

When Vincent wrapped, it went out to about five theaters nationwide.

So we got to see the product of this collaboration out in the theaters.

It was pretty, pretty amazing to see.

I remember seeing on his desk, he'd left, and I would look at his desk.

back in 1981, I think, seeing this skeleton wearing a Santa outfit

and his little ghost dog friend.

And it was such a great contrast of holidays and the intent

of the emotion for Christmas overlaid on top of the intent for Halloween.

We tried to sell it as a TV special.

They didn't really get it.

So that went back to the cover.

In the meantime, we had done a martial arts version of Hansel and Gretel. It's

going to be live action with some stop -motion animation and some puppets. He

really wanted to pay homage to the Japanese kaiju monsters and the kung fu

that he grew up loving.

He also said, you don't have to think about something that you've seen before

the same way.

When he encountered obstacles, when he had ideas that were not made into films

or book projects, he just kept going. And he didn't change his style. He

say, let me conform to what the studios want at that time. What is that creative

climate? Let me go that direction so that I can get my projects made.

No, he just kept being Tim.

Let's see what happens when we introduce electricity into his system. The next

kind of watershed moment was getting to do Frankenweenie at Disney as well.

Pulling from the playbook of beloved monster films and science fiction,

the story of Frankenstein itself filtered through the Tim Burton lens

own interests and fascinations.

A recurring theme for Tim, he loves animals, particularly dogs.

That was very clear with Tim in his drawings.

Dogs wear their doggy heart on their sleeve. Their faces are just all about

loving you. The purity of that creature is something that Tim always tries to

get into his sympathetic characters.

See, he still loves you.

When you think of Edward Scissorhands, for instance, there's an animal -like

quality to him as well, and I think that's what Tim responds to and what

makes him want to do films, to portray that emotion, that feeling that he gets.

We were making a live -action film. We were talking about Daniel Stern and

Shelley Duvall, professional and great actors.

We needed a real dog.

The dog's name was weirdly Sparky.

And that was so kismet. I don't think that he's ever needed to make a dog

act as much as he needed the dog in Frankenweenie to act. There was a

curve involved with working with animals, how far you could push an

what they're not necessarily naturally inclined to do. They don't know they're

being filmed, so you want them to lick somebody's cheek, you have to put a

little peanut butter on it.

Sort of thing that dogs will respond to. And when it came down to it, Tim was

not going to make them work any harder than they absolutely needed to.

Some of it was frustrating and may have spurred Tim in the

future to do a stop -motion animated version.

It was kind of an interesting development to see Tim go from one to

Hansel and Gretel.

I think aired once on Halloween night. I think that was the 82 or 83, never to

be seen again. And Frankenweenie was that for a short period of time.

And then it was kind of locked away as well.

That became kind of a recurring thing at Disney where they gave him a little bit

of room to explore and do his own stuff.

He'd create, but then it wouldn't really have the forum to be able to be seen

because it was seen as too dark or too weird or too off -putting or not family

friendly.

I think if you asked him, he would say, I was fired.

Let Goofy and Minnie show you.

There's a nice, beautiful exit with little cherubs on it.

I'll go out the magic forest door.

They're going to have Mickey.

Fire!

When Paul Reuben saw Frankenweenie, I think he saw a sly wit, a take

on the world and on life that kind of coincided with his own eccentric

and view, and realized that Tim was the right guy to direct Pee -wee's Big

Adventure. Paul had worked on a fairytale theater with Shelley Duvall,

Shelley was like, oh my gosh, you have to meet Tim. He's perfect.

So he took that name back to Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers was like,

you're not going to get Tim. We've sent him eight scripts.

He's turned them all down. I don't know if that's true, but that's Paul's take

on it. Not for $100 billion million trillion dollars.

Paul sent the draft to Tim, and Tim responded very quickly and said, I'm in.

Deal. This is phenomenal.

Let's make it.

Pee Wee was a very low -budget film. What?

And they did a lot with that low budget. No!

And when it came to finding a composer, Tim thought, well, Danny.

Well, son, let me tell you, I'm so pleased to meet you.

I'd done this underground film from my brother called Forbidden Zone, and Paul

Rubens really loved that. So when it came time to talk music, Paul had

Zone in his mind, and he was like, oh, you ought to check this guy out. And Tim

used to come see my band.

Tim was a fan of Oingo Boingo.

We go see Oingo Boingo in clubs.

Got a call from my manager about meeting about a Pee Wee Herman movie. Now, I

knew who Pee Wee Herman was, and I was already kind of a fan, really. I used to

go see Paul Reubens do the Pee Wee character with the Groundlings, which

improvisational comedy group in Los Angeles. But a Pee Wee movie?

I didn't know who, you know, they said.

Probably told me Tim Burton's name, but, of course, that didn't mean anything to

me at that point.

They just had a young animator doing this for a feature film.

Hey, man, you're new to this turf. We don't take kindly to strangers coming

around here.

My first thought when I went in was they were looking for a song.

All right.

Here you come.

I'm in a band. I've done a couple of songs for films already. I just assumed

that's what it was about.

I didn't quite understand until after a little bit that it's like, no, I'm

looking for a score.

Why me?

And he was like, well, I just think you could probably do a score.

I always felt like a misfit my whole life.

I always felt like a real outsider.

And when I met Tim, I could see that in him very quickly, that he also was

someone who lived in his own head and his own way and was far from hip.

At first, I said no.

I don't want to mess up their film. I don't know how to score.

I don't understand.

You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me.

And then at a certain point, it was just like, fuck it.

What do I got to lose?

They do a bad job. They still don't hang composers for doing bad scores.

They don't have firing squads yet.

Then we hang them! Yeah!

And then we kill them! Yeah!

I went home, and I had a little four -track tape player, and I did a demo and

sent it back over to them and didn't expect to hear from anybody again ever.

And about a week later, I got a call from my manager saying, you got the job.

I was really dumbstruck. And that little demo tape of that piece of music became

the main titles through Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

I wanted to bring a vibe of, like, an older European quirky comedy.

I was inspired by Nino Roda, the Italian composer who wrote for Fellini.

They had a lot of the same kind of interest.

in classic film scores, and they really connected on that level. I just didn't

give a shit.

The fact that I came out of the punk era, I don't care what anybody thinks

than Tim.

The rest of the world, they may like it, they may hate it. I don't care. My

whole life has been most people hate so much of what I do.

I was kind of used to that. All I cared about was that Tim, who I was

collaborating with, liked the music, and he did.

There's so much more to Pee Wee.

There's no basement at the Alamo. People maybe look at that character and maybe

disregard it to some degree.

But as a film, the art that's in that film, the music, the vision of it is

pretty amazing.

It kind of is for like a wide audience, right? I know you're right, but... But

what?

Everyone I know has a big butt.

It's not really a kid's film at all.

Come on, Simone, let's...

Talk about your big butt.

It is something of its own.

It was kind of the perfect movie for him, and when I saw that movie, I was

wow, this artist, this person is the real thing.

There's a childlike quality, but there was a lot more to this director.

Yeah, I mean, come on. The tequila thong above the dancing, the large marge

thing, that was something we were replaying in school in the lunchroom

day. It looked like this.

There was a shadow side. There was a depth. There was an edge of darkness

was expressed in a very different way than other artists.

It was a box office success, and it was critically reviewed really well. I know

Tim will comment, like, back then it may not have felt that way, right? It may

have felt like they were being harder on it, but it became a phenomenon, and it

kind of came out of nowhere, too.

It was this unexpected thing. It feels very confident for people that are just

starting out.

to come through with something so distinct and unique.

Tim took the time to select what the next film would be, and he knew it had

be something that engaged him on that artistic level and spoke to that

that he was still cultivating. Most of these scripts were like...

A to B to C, all tied up in a neat little packet. Then I get this script

makes no sense. It has no real story.

I said, how about we start with... And

then in a minor key...

Just to kind of pre -echo what's coming later.

He tried to explain Beetlejuice to me, which, can you imagine

trying to explain Beetlejuice to anyone before you see it? Try to explain it

now.

Beetlegeist, the bio -exorcist. It's such a well -known and well -received

now, but it was so esoteric at the time. Bio -exorcist, I don't get it.

Goodness, thinking about the idea of transforming this house.

into something that becomes Beetlejuice's playground or creating all

ridiculous characters.

He had said he may live under rocks or something. You know, he kind of is this

thing, this force, this presence. There's no time for him. There's no

time when he exists.

He could be anywhere. He's everywhere, and I feel like I'm talking like Tim

And he would show me some sketches.

Kind of beautiful and wild, you know. He would have to really explain

basically what he created, which was the fun part of it.

Because Tim's style is very unique.

And reading the script is one thing. Seeing how he presents it is something

different.

I sort of think, oh, this is about something larger than just this.

This character.

It's showtime.

I showed up, hit the ground running, and we never stopped.

We never rehearsed anything, I'd say.

What do you think of this?

You like it? And he says, yes, do that, and also do that.

Sure, sure, sure, go ahead. I collaborate all the time, but this was

another level.

It was great. It was like unbelievable freedom.

In each of Tim's works, there's a character that stands out. That is the

personification of Tim. They're the representation of Tim in the film.

They're the outsider.

I wasn't that far off from Lydia in real life.

I'd been dyeing my hair blue -black since I was 12, and I was very much that

sort of goth kid when goth was a baby.

Well, how is it that you see us and nobody else can? She just had so much

insight. Well, I read through that handbook for the recently deceased.

It says, live people ignore the strange and unusual.

I myself am strange and unusual.

She dressed like a 30s gangster when she was 12.

She just was so unique and so brilliant.

Having jumped.

And so many overlapping interests with Tim, the kind of darker side of things.

Things that push the envelope that wouldn't seem normal to other people she

fascinated by.

Like Tim, I think it's the same thing with Winona, that she just kind of

on the planet who she was and had to slowly find her people.

Remember, I went into the studios in Culver City, and I was in this waiting

area. This guy came in who I thought was either a messenger or, like,

worked in the art department.

And he sat down, and we were just talking for 45 minutes, an hour, about,

like... weird, random, like, old movies and music and art and Edward Gorey. I

was like, God, like, do you know where this Tim Burton guy is?

And he's like, oh, that's me.

And I was like, oh.

He's like, I'd love you to do it. And I was like, what?

I mean, it was kind of mind -blowing because I was nobody.

To be 15 and have someone like Tim, it

brought peace to my mind because I felt like such a freak.

It's like, no, you're good. Like, you don't have to change or don't worry

what other people think.

My weirdness was cool.

And that really had a deep, deep impact on me.

Like, I will get, I swear I'll start crying. Like, it was so meaningful and

profound for me.

And I think it really shaped me in so many ways.

This is the thing with people like that. They're rare, and you have to ride the

train.

The day of a scene that could only come from Tim's mind. I mean, how do you

describe that scene to anyone?

With all the wild characters that Tim creates, to see them all in something

everybody can relate to, like that place at the dinner table.

It was absurd, but it worked.

The thing with the carousel that spins around in my head.

There was plywood.

It's handmade.

I had to hold it and hold my head up. I was part of making it work.

Like, if some kid's parents gave him a whole lot of money and stuck him down in

the basement, and some creative kid just went nuts, we had to hold things and

pretend things as opposed to just letting technology do it. And I think

really can feel this kind of... You know, the art of it, you know, you

can kind of feel it. You can't describe Beetlejuice. He created his own genre.

And it wasn't like this ambition of his.

That's his imagination.

Tim Burton, this wunderkind director, is having this amazing run, artistic

visionary, right? I remember at the time reading articles about him and the

sensation and this kind of fresh take on things.

Kiwi's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, they were all movies that were flying under

the radar up until Batman.

That was the first film that kind of went over the radar and suddenly I was

like, oh, I get it.

There's producers in the studio and other elements suddenly involved.

Nobody wanted to bank on a superhero movie. Nobody wanted to bank on comic

movies. That was a risk at that time for Tim and for the studio to follow Tim's

creative vision.

Now this big movie, like the biggest movie Tim's ever been involved with,

important studio film, this is before the comic book action hero movies. We

enough problems in this movie without worrying about ghosts and goblins.

He said he was going to show me something, and then we met.

I'd read it, and I said, well, they're not going to probably make a movie with

the character that we see.

And he said, exactly.

He definitely knew what he wanted, and we were neither of us obvious choices.

I was the low -budget comedy guy.

And Michael Keaton, he was the same.

Can you imagine the actor playing Beetlejuice is now going to be the

Batman?

It was a battle with the studio. I know they had a number of names, leading men

type. There was a fight for Michael.

There was a lot of backlash from the studio, from fans. Are they not going to

take Batman seriously?

This alluded that it was going to be something more jokey and fun.

Is this going to be Adam West again?

The studio and the producers were very skeptical.

Both of us coming in to do a dark film, an action film, a big budget film.

If I were them, I wouldn't have hired me. There were some of the studio people

who were showing some concern. And then there were, I guess, the public.

Fred.

After 110 films, that's still the hardest.

A lot of risk. And that was one of the reasons why it was so difficult. I was

against a lot of elements trying to push into different directions that I didn't

want to go in.

When they were exploring doing a score with Prince, there was a point where

wanted us to collaborate.

But as much as I loved and admired Prince, we wouldn't really be

He'd be giving me stuff and I'd be orchestrating it.

I mean, there was actually a point where I had to step back from the movie for a

while. It was one of the most depressing months of my life.

Tim Burton actually didn't grow up reading comic books. He wasn't this

book nerd.

But what he identified with was the loneliness of having to put on a mask,

of not being able to reveal your true identity.

It was never really about Batman.

It was about Bruce Wayne.

That was always the trick. That was the key.

But who's Bruce Wayne?

Could you tell me which of these guys is Bruce Wayne?

Well, I'm not sure.

You know, a guy who found a way to do what he had to do because he had to do

but at the same time, even he probably thought his life was really unusual.

And when you feel like that, you probably feel lonely.

The scene with Vicki Vale where I have her over for dinner, he should notice

room almost for the first time. Do you like eating in here?

Oh, yeah.

You want to know the truth? I don't think I've ever been in this room

It says a whole lot about him.

Look, sometimes I don't know what to think about this.

It's just something I have to do.

Why?

Because nobody else can.

We should see the transformation.

Like, what happens?

He's out there right now.

I'm not going to go to work.

That's not a thing like, oh, yeah, I got to jump in the suit and go out and kick

some ass. It wasn't like that. It was like, what happens to a person that

what's that almost schizophrenic thing that happens where you go, I got to go

this other thing and then come back to Wayne Manor and come out of that thing?

And that was very clear dual personality psychotic.

Some people say the same thing about you. He looked at Batman as this, like,

freaky guy and very strange, complicated guy. That's why he cast Michael Keaton.

You're not exactly normal, are you?

The eyes were so important because Michael's eyes are so intense, they seem

crazy.

They really invented that character together.

I think working with him from the get -go was like a weird shorthand.

I don't analyze why, it just was.

He gets all energized and he'll throw his hands up and his hair will fly

and he'll kind of make a loop around the room and then kind of re -engage in the

conversation.

And I'm just used to it. I go, yeah, he really wants to talk about this. I'll

just wait until he comes kind of right.

Or I'll just follow him around and talk about it.

We like kind of the darkish stuff sometimes, so we would find things

funny that were kind of just so odd. That really wasn't the way 99

% of people would have gone at all and had everyone obviously very concerned.

It's a big studio movie.

Pressures are high.

Got producers breathing down your neck.

Telling you what they think you should be doing.

Jack Nicholson. Me? Been in the industry for decades, and then the young

directors directing Batman.

You feeling that pressure?

Better be sure.

How are we even going to do this?

Jack and Kim and everybody all in on the same tone, which he created,

you know.

There you go.

Let's hope this works because if it doesn't work, ooh, this could be bad,

bad.

Jack's been a director himself, so he understands.

Jack connected with Tim, saw that talent, saw what he had, trusted him.

I'm thinking, Jesus, guys, in his early 20s, he got the biggest budget in

history. It's not even a factor.

You know, he just goes about his business and does it.

That's gone to some pretty far off places, but the Joker, I mean, Tim saw

character as one to push that envelope.

Wait till they get a load of me.

I see a lot of Tim in that character.

The Joker is an artist.

He's an anarchist. He's a nonconformist.

He's a rebel.

When he's changing society and getting the smiles, that

is an artistic expression.

He's in that art gallery.

He's not there to destroy the art. He thinks he's improving it, right? He's

putting splashes of paint on.

It's an artist unleashed.

That's what makes it exciting and makes it a Tim Burton movie.

But if the forces of evil should rise again to cast a shadow on the heart of

city, call me.

Because of Tim, I was called back in again.

He flew me to England and I spent the day on Gotham City.

And even though they were still shooting, it was enough to, like, give

To go and, like, possibly step back.

Even to this day, when I think about that, it's like the riskiest, craziest

move.

He did the ultimate Batman. It was participating and experiencing art at

And that's why it's different, satisfying and exhilarating to be

flow. Everybody reacts to that.

Michael Keaton brought passage to this character. And it doesn't have to be the

superficial, just straight adaptation of comic book lore. But you can have

characters that are deep and that can communicate.

complexities of an emotional spectrum.

So that serious actors would want to play these characters.

And I think that really started with Michael Keaton playing Batman.

I want you to tell all your friends about me. What are you?

I'm Batman. And it was a phenomenon.

Holy Hollywood premiere.

It's the L .A. opening of Batman the Movie.

Maybe the almost full moon Monday night made the thousands of fans waiting

outside the Westwood Theater batty.

Some staked out choice viewing spots days earlier.

Batman jump -started everything we know now about how viable superhero movies

can be.

Now, of course, they're going to do Batman 77, and some guy will get to play

so how about it? That's for you, 11 -year -old kid who's going to be

Another bad man someday.

But whatever he saw to say, I wanted that guy in that role that made the

go crazy. I don't know.

The more I talk about it, the more I think, geez, he and I just scratched the

surface of that guy.

You could not compare him really to anybody.

I mean, that's what our business loves to do. Oh, he's the new Scorsese. He's

the new Tarantino. The new Jane Campion.

No, you could not say that about Tim. You know, his career was exploding.

Tim was looking for a producer to work with or a partner.

His agents at the time, they were imagining some kind of important

and that's not what Tim wanted.

Heather's is where I had met Winona Ryder.

She was friends with Tim from Beetlejuice, and she actually introduced

potential partners.

The great thing about working with Tim is that he will paint or draw what he

sees in his mind. And his drawings are so special and so unique that even the

simplest drawing will give you a very strong idea.

So when I saw the first image of Edward Scissorhands, not even knowing

anything about it, this character just...

felt so powerful and poignant to me.

And every actor in town wanted to be Edward Scissorhands, and we met with

big movie stars.

And we knew that they didn't really connect in the way that we wanted to the

character. And we were starting to despair a little bit when Ona Ryder

up Johnny.

He wasn't a movie star.

He was a miserable TV star.

In all honesty, I was doing my best for probably the last two years to get

fired.

Suddenly I was pigeonholed, so I knew I had to fight it.

I knew how important the choice of Crybaby with John Waters was, which

gave me the opportunity to make fun of this arena that I'd been placed in. So

that was, for me, my first solid step.

in the direction that I wanted to go.

My agent sets up this meeting with Tim Burton after Crybaby.

I was sent the screenplay for Edward Scissorhands.

What I felt from reading that screenplay was...

was... it had passed

through every...

Everything, anything, saw it and went to the very core of whatever I

am. He got to finish the man he invented.

The writing was beautiful.

So the man was left by himself, incomplete and all alone.

The character was beautiful.

Did he have a name?

Of course he had a name.

His name was Edward.

What I suppose attacked me emotionally

was that Edward was me.

It's exactly what I should be doing.

Tim got phone calls from Michael Jackson.

saying, I'm perfect for the part, Tim. I can do it, man.

Tom Hanks, everybody.

Tom Cruise was not far away from actually playing Edward Scissorhands.

story. He's never going to cast me, man. Everyone in Hollywood's after the part.

Everyone. He's also dealing with 20th Century Fox.

Tim's really juggling because he's getting hit by his agent. He's getting

the studio.

I mean, everybody. So I called my agent after I read the screenplay, and I said,

just cancel the meeting.

You know, I'm not going.

She's like, are you fucking nuts?

It was weird because, like, you know, there's always that bastard in your

that goes, come on, man.

Hey, man, what are you, nuts?

You're on a TV show. You're a TV actor guy because at that time it was sort of.

It was almost kind of either or.

He would, you know, finally gave in and said, all right, all right, I'll go have

the meeting at the Gap.

There used to be this hotel just off of Sunset Boulevard called the Bell Island.

Now I get over to the joint, and I'm thinking, I have no idea what this guy

looks like.

I have no idea. I went sort of off to the side a little, and I just looked

around the joint.

And then I saw these sprigs of hair sticking out, and he seemed fidgety and

nervous, just out of sorts.

And I went, that's definitely him.

So I went over and said, hi, I'm Johnny.

He encourages everyone, hey, just hold on to your identity because that's

all you have. Tim has said that whether you are a costume designer, whether

you're a musician, whether you are a filmmaker, whether you are a book writer

a screenplay writer, no matter what form your creative expression takes,

just keep doing it because it's really about holding on to yourself.