My parents were in town recently and we paid a visit to the Tim Burton exhibition at LACMA, which is a treasure-trove of his sketches, illustrations, paintings, and short films, as well as a collection of models, props and costumes from his various feature films. It’s abundantly clear the guy has always been bursting with dark, mischievous imagination, even from a very young age.
After getting a taste of Mr. Burton’s macabre aesthetic, and having read more than a few of my stories and scripts over the years, my dad sensed we might be kindred spirits and asked me if he’d been an influence. I answered with an unequivocal “Yes.”
I saw “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” when it opened in 1985 and enjoyed it, but it was “Beetlejuice” three years later that really made an impression on me. I’d never seen anything like it before, and it remains my favorite Burton film. Working from a brilliantly original screenplay by the late Michael McDowall and the late Warren Skarren (story by McDowall and Larry Wilson), Burton let loose his talent for mixing the morbid and the banal into something twisted and humorous, and yet somehow still tenderhearted, and created a world where the humans not the monsters are the real horror show.
Burton achieved similar results with “Edward Scissorhands” (scripted by Caroline Thompson, who also wrote the script for “The Nightmare Before Christmas”). One of its first images is of Edward’s home, a crumbling gothic manor on a hill overlooking a suburban neighborhood stocked with cookie-cutter houses painted in sickening pastels. Edward with his literal scissors for hands is brought into this society, and some people accept him, some people even love him, but ultimately the fear and prejudices of a vocal minority drive him back to the castle.
It’s these more personal, idiosyncratic projects that I respond to, more so than “Batman” or “Planet of the Apes” or “Alice in Wonderland.” However, for the record, I am a devoted fan of “Batman Returns,” in my opinion the weirdest and darkest studio summer film ever made. It’s obvious Warner Brothers took the leash off, and Burton and his collaborators delivered something more inspired and challenging than its predecessor. Absolutely not what most people were expecting. In an interview the film’s screenwriter Daniel Waters (another influence, his script for “Heathers” is exceptional) described people coming out of a screening looking like they’d just been punched in the face. Fantastic!
Although my stories are ultimately more sinister in tone than Burton’s, probably much closer to David Lynch territory in fact (another influence I’ll get to in a separate post), Burton’s influence is definitely present in the fairytale sequences I devised for my psychological thriller screenplay “The Wrinkleman,” and in the setting and characters in “The Creeps,” my horror-fantasy script about an orphan girl and a nightmare salesman. And we both share a general love for turning innocence on its ear, finding the humor in the grotesque, and placing our sympathies with the monster rather than the ordinary man.
Are you a Tim Burton fan? If you’re a writer, director, artist, etc., has he influenced or inspired you? What’s your favorite Burton film?