2906 Burton fast final
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
J U L Y 2 0 2 0
CAESAR
Tim
Burton
Working with
Fantasy
Dark yet Colorful
How Burton uses
color
It‘s Showtime!
Insights in the Broadway
musical “Beetlejuice”
based on one of Burtons
movies
The Art of Tim Burton
Where his unique style
comes from
His Muse
Eva Green plays Miss
Peregrine in new movie
Creative Mind
What is going on inside
that head?
Johanna Kaiser
TH Nürnberg
Fakultät Design, 2020
CAESAR UK £10.84
“I felt like
an outcast”
CONTENTS
Photos Cover and Back: Denis Rouvre, Marc Hom
Go Inside the
Peculiar World
of Tim Burton
From an outsider to a
highly respected director
- a sneek peak in Tim
Burtons World.
4
The Artist before
The Filmmaker
Everything you need to
know about his inspirations.
10
Miss Peregrine
and Tim Burton:
The Making of
a Film Fable
See how Tim Burton turned
Ransom Riggs Novel into a
must-see-movie.
16
See how “Beetlejuice”
Set Designers
built a Habitat
for Demons
2018 the movie Beetlejuice
was turned into a musical.
Here‘s how they designed
the set.
22
3
The creators of
the “Beetlejuice”
musical ‘tried to
run toward
Burton’ visually
A lot of little details in
the set design are hinting
on Tim Burton.
28
An Analysis of Art
& Design in the
Movies of Tim
Burton
What is typical for Burton‘s
movies? Have a look at the
costumes, actors and worlds.
34
Masters of Color:
Tim Burton
An article about his use of
color, visuallized with color
schemes
40
Tim Burton,
at Home in His
Own Head
An Interview with the
director on his private life,
movies and legacy.
54
4
CAESAR 07/2020
5
Go Inside
the Peculiar
World of
Tim Burton
He grew up in the sun-drenched
suburbs of Burbank, California,
but much of Tim Burton’s childhood
was lived in the shadows —
quite literally.
He grew up in the sun-drenched suburbs of Burbank,
California, but much of Tim Burton’s childhood was
lived in the shadows—quite literally. His parents had
bricked up the two large windows in his bedroom, leaving just
one small aperture high up the wall. The atmosphere was somewhat
odd, his interior world very still. To peer out into the
brighter world, young Burton had to clamber onto his desk.
“It was something to do with insulation,” recalls the filmmaker,
now 58, “although we were living in Burbank—it’s like 80
degrees! Talk about being buried alive! I felt very Edgar Allan
Poe even before I knew who Edgar Allan Poe was.”
Through his childhood years, Burton developed a deep passion
for Poe, the author of such 19th-century gothic horrors as
“The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
although his hunger was for the film adaptations that blossomed
during the 1960s rather than for the written words.
“My parents used to say that I watched monster movies before
I could walk or talk,” he says. “I was always drawn to them
and I never found them scary.” He loved the films of director
Roger Corman and special-effects guru Ray Harryhausen. The
actors Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi were his heroes. As a
child, he wanted to be the man inside a Godzilla suit.
“I always felt an empathy with monsters,” he says. “In those
early films, the monsters were the most emotive characters.
The people were the scariest ones.” He adores the 1931 Frankenstein
film by director James Whale, where the frenzied ➤
Photo: Getty Images, Disclosur
Tim Burton with the plasticine dolls used in the movie
”The Nightmare before Christmas“
6
villagers pursue the monster to the windmill. Burton employed
that motif in 1990’s Edward Scissorhands and in his Frankenweenie
movies—the short film from 1984 and the feature in
2012.“With monsters it was often a case of, ‘Let’s try and kill
this thing that we don’t understand,’” he says. “It is a really
interesting and unfortunate human dynamic. King Kong, Frankenstein,
the Creature from the Black Lagoon—these creatures
are the most emotional things in the films. ‘I don’t understand
you, let’s put you in a cage. I don’t understand you, let’s kill
you.’ That’s a motto I have felt my whole life.”
Always the Outsider
Tim Burton with a mask as it appears in ”Miss
Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children“
Burton is a perennial outsider, always feeling like an oddball, a
peculiarity. This is a theme that runs throughout his work, his
filmmaking. A patron saint for waifs and strays, he regularly returns
to the theme of an unusual child or outsider bidding to
make his or her way in a hostile world.
Just consider his short film Vincent (1982), about a boy’s wild
imagination, or Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), in which an
“adult” behaves like a juvenile. The raffish sprite in Beetlejuice
(1988) has been compared to a rogue Peter Pan, while Edward
Scissorhands is Frankenstein’s monster packaged as a childlike
innocent. Each story is shaded by both light and dark.
The theme is persistent. On either side of Scissorhands,
Burton made Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). He
was never a great comic book fan but always loved Batman,
drawn to the idea of a hero with a dual personality, a light
side and a dark, which he struggles to reconcile. “It’s a character
I could relate to,” he says. He relates both to characters
with masks (Batman, Catwoman, a heavily made-up Joker)
and to repressed personalities like the Penguin, who are saddled
with the baggage of their troubled childhoods, as he is.
“There is just something about me. Going to high school was
one of the most terrifying things. You are put into a category.
And once you are deemed a weird person, you are in the weird
group. I had a feeling that I was some sort of alien that didn’t
quite fit. I did feel alone, lonely, and while I assume that most
people feel that way, it was quite heavy for me.
“I was afraid of my parents and my relatives and where I grew
up,” he says. “I didn’t feel I had a close relationship with my parents;
we seemed to not get along. I felt lonely and bad but it
forced me to take the reins myself.” At 18, he won a scholarship
to California Institute of the Arts, and three years later he was
working at Disney as an animator on The Fox and the Hound. “I
put myself through school; I got a job.”
That loneliness, isolation and pervasive feeling of peculiarity
got poured into Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Big Fish (2003),
which feature heroes traversing strange and fantastical lands.
It’s there among the misanthropes in Ed Wood (1994), in his
version of Planet of the Apes (2001), Corpse Bride (2005) and
Alice in Wonderland (2010). It’s there in his one published book,
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997).
And, not surprisingly, it is also present in his latest film, Miss
Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, opening Sept. 30.
Meet Miss Peregrine
The story takes its title from the New York Times best-selling
novel by Ransom Riggs (2011), but it seems as though it could
CAESAR 07/2020
7
easily have come from Burton himself. The adaptation features
rising star Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,
Hugo) as a teenager, Jake, who travels from Florida to a remote
Welsh island to join a group of children with odd abilities and
afflictions.
“One of the themes of the story is about celebrating your peculiarity
and your weirdness,” says Butterfield. “It is very surreal
and gothic and odd, which I think Tim is best at capturing, compared
to any other director. It feels like a Tim movie even when
you read the script.”
Indeed, it’s a story that will ring with familiarity to any Burton
devotee. It has a coterie of outsiders, children with immense
strength or who possess a fiery touch. There are twins who, like
mini-Medusas, can turn creatures to stone with just one look.
One boy is invisible. Another is full of bees. Jake’s love interest
(played by Ella Purnell from Never Let Me Go and Maleficent),
meanwhile, is lighter than air and needs iron boots to prevent
her from floating away. Their peculiarities extend into their personalities,”
Purnell says. “Miss Peregrine, who is the weirdest of
them all, leads them. She can change into a bird and she has a
real birdlike quality to her.”
Miss Peregrine (played by Burton’s latest muse, Eva Green)
is the pipe-smoking, time-watching and shape-shifting guardian
who protects the youngsters from their terrifying predators, the
Hollowgasts. Green sees echoes of Burton in all the children.
“They don’t fit in the outside world, and I think Tim felt like
this as a child,” Green says. “Lots of people feel like that and
identify with that. I still feel like this. This is a movie that says
that you just have to accept it, embrace it and celebrate it. It is
beautiful to be different.”
The book is certainly very singular, appealing to Burton not
only through its outlandish adventure story but also via its presentation.
Its author, Riggs, embellished his novel with a series
of haunting black-and-white photographs. “What I loved about
Ransom was his approach with the old photographs,” Burton
says. “They tell you a story without you knowing everything.
There is something very poetic, creepy, haunting and mysterious
about them. It reminded me why we like folktales and fables and
fairy tales. They describe something and there is a mystery to it.
It is not literal, necessarily. There’s something hidden about it.”
Burton’s film unfolds in a world brimming with fairy-tale tropes,
a realm that exists on the boundaries of our own. The story plays
out in a landscape studded with topiary centaurs, or gnarled and
misshapen trees. The children live in a gothic mansion. Even the
real world of Wales is magical, mysterious and misty.
And his highly individual stylistic embellishments shine through,
whether it’s via a stop-motion sequence with dueling toys or
through a nod to one of his favorite movie scenes of all time: the
fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
The Eyes Have It
peculiar children. The creatures are terrifying, but also
rather sad.
“They are like something out of a child’s nightmare,”
Burton says of the Hollowgasts. “I am a monster fan, so for
this film I tried to find something where there was still this
humanity to them.”
This is typical Burton, says Green, who also worked with
the director on Dark Shadows (2012). “He has such an understanding
of all outcasts,” she says. “All of them are beautiful.
Even the evil characters in his movies have humanity. There is
something very poetic about his work. Sometimes people say
that Tim’s work is dark. I don’t think so. It’s something actually
very beautiful, very sensitive.”
Burton has an aversion to categorization and has often felt
frustrated by accusations that his work isn’t light and lively
enough. “I always get accused of that,” he says. “It happens
over and over.
“I could wear white linen suits and dye my hair blond and
make happy movies and they’d still think, What is he doing?
Something is wrong. I could make The Sound of Music and
people would say, ‘It’s too dark.’ Once you get categorized,
that’s it. You get, ‘Oh, well, it’s very Burton.’ Well, who am I?
I don’t like thinking of myself as a thing.”
Burton’s desire to explore themes and worlds close to his
heart, his ability to make the mundane magical and the magical
mundane, has led to the coining of the term “Burtonesque.”
It seems that what makes Burton unique also binds him. He
smiles at the irony. “It is peculiar,” he says. “Even though it
makes my skin crawl, I will take that as a compliment. Really, I
got into film because I like making things. That was always my
primary concern.”
His life, like everyone’s, has been shaped by particular episodes—even
beyond the bricking of his windows, his penchant
for monster movies and his abhorrence of school cliques. He
recalls a nuisance telephone call that left him with a fear of
the phone. Growing up without seasons on the West Coast,
he’d search for Christmas ambience in the aisles of Kmart. During
Halloween, he decorated neighborhood houses in Burbank
with spiders and skeletons.
“You are a product of where you grew up,” he says. “Because
Burbank was a blank environment with no seasons, no change
of weather, it forced me to internalize. You create your own
kind of world because there is a blank canvas. And as much as
it terrified me, I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
Thanks to that blank canvas, we now have the peculiar world
of Tim Burton.
by Will Lawrence
Then there are the eyes. Eyes are always important to Burton—he
even made the film Big Eyes in 2014, about Margaret
Keane, the painter of saucer-eyed waifs—and some of the
monsters that hunt the children in Miss Peregrine have
lost their own eyes entirely and feast on the eyeballs of
Photo: Lea Gallo
The Maitlands Home from the
movie ”Beetlejuice“
Photos: Internet Movie Database
Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as
Adam and Barbara Maitland in
”Beetlejuice“
10
The Artist B
Filmmaker
From the very moving Edward Scissorhands to the
delirious Dark Shadows, Tim Burton has always been
able to carry the audience away into the depths of his
imagination.
CAESAR 07/2020
11
efore The
“Willy Wonka” by Tim
Burton (2004)
A
world full of contradictions, both
dark and light, frightening and
welcoming, cruel and tender. A
world where darkness cohabits with
bright colours, where weird-looking
people and monsters are brave and generous
and where the horrible becomes
poetic. Tim Burton has his own style
that remains inimitable and his extravagance
has become extremely popular.
The audience is more familiar with his
film work but few are aware of the origins
of his films and of his creativity in
general. Tim Burton is an artist before
anything else. He is a talented drawer
who expresses himself through his art.
With him a film is often born from a little
drawing at the corner of a page. The
drawing already sets up the tone of the
film, the colours of the set or the personality
of a main character. This article
pays tribute to the art of Tim Burton,
not always well-known but always so
rich and so meaningful.
A Compulsive Drawer
Drawing has always been part of Tim Burton’s
life. He expresses it as a need and a
way to communicate his feelings and ideas.
It is part of his everyday life and he always
travels with a pencil in his pocket. He draws
everywhere, at all time and on everything
he gets his hands on. In Leah Gallo’s and
Holly C. Kempf ’s wonderful book The Art
of Tim Burton (based on the exhibition at
the MOMA) many of Burton’s personal
acquaintances pick on this compulsive need
to draw and as his partner Helen Bonham
Carter states ‘with him, everything starts
with a drawing’. He draws on at least ten
notebooks at the same time and if he doesn’t
have paper he will use napkins, tissues,
tables or walls. Extremely diverse
and prolific, he uses different techniques
and material – crayons, paints (oil, acrylic,
watercolours), markers, pens, glitters
and pastels… And with this he succeeds ➤
Photo: Tim Burton
12
in creating whole worlds. His characters
are born on paper, marginal and
touching, misunderstood and passionate
just like their creator.
Burton describes this need to draw as
a way to focus and to unleash his imagination.
As a child, he often felt stifled
and different from the other children. He
drew monsters to escape the conformity
of the American suburb he lived in (Burbank
City) and art became his way out. He
identified with his characters, timid and
left out. Encouraged by his art teacher
at school, he developed his own style and
started to feel a true aversion for authority
and categorisation. Being unusual gave
him more artistic freedom and it became a
characteristic trait of his art. He started to
write and illustrate books for children and
became a visual storyteller. As Rick Heinrichs,
producer for Frankenweenie, says:
“I’ve had the good fortune to see the images
Tim dashes off to communicate an important
thought to his collaborators. Economically
but sublimely drawn, they often put across
one simple-but-great-idea. His narrative
temperament dictates an expressionistic visual
style that selectively reveals the emotional
heart of his story: one that entertains
without burying meaning beneath multiple
layers of expository clutter and gratuitous
business.”
Tim Burton entered the California Institute
of Art and worked in animation
for Disney but was soon disappointed by
the company’s style, which was very different
from his own. He was contrived
to imitate and create pale imitations of
Disney pencil traits with no soul and
no emotion. All his independent projects
were considered too bizarre to be
screened and not adapted for children. It
is only after leaving Disney studios that
Tim Burton was able to free himself
from artistic constrictions and focus on
his art which he developed by embracing
filmmaking. A film always starts with
a drawing. Intuitive, enthusiastic and
perfectionist, Tim Burton draws like he
breathes. He has never separated his art
work from his film work. Johnny Depp recalls
his first collaboration with Burton:
“All I had the first time I went to work with Tim
on Edward Scissorhands aside from the images
CAESAR 07/2020
13
arriving in my mind, was a tiny drawing
that Tim had made. One look at that drawing
was all I needed to understand what
Edward was about. It has been exactly the
same ever since.”
His Inspirations
People have often compared Burton’s
style to the gothic. The use of black, the
darkness of some of his drawings, the
heavy make-up, the paleness of the skins,
monsters and other ghostly creatures recall
Gothic literature and paintings but
also German Expressionism. The theme
of death is omnipresent in Burton’s art
often combined with poetry and derision.
The macabre becomes comic and poetic.
He finds inspiration in the authors he loves
like Edgar Allan Poe and Roald Dahl. He
admires them for the unconventionality of
their stories and the complexity of their
worlds far from being just black and white.
They are both funny and dark and close to
Burton’s own style.
True film buff, Burton’s inspiration
can also be linked to the films he used to
watch, mainly thrillers, low- budget films,
satires, science fiction movies and cartoons.
He identifies with Frankenstein and other
monsters who are both feared and rejected.
At the time he discovered those films, his
universe started to expand and his creativity
to grow. Watching Technicolor films
helped him develop his use of colour in his
drawings but also in his short films and
he influence can be observed in Edward
Scissorhands, with the profusion of pastel
colours. He also loved punk music which
expressed at the time his desire for rebellion
against conventions.
His art is truly representative of his
vision of the world and he also finds inspiration
in the people who surround
him. His drawings are often filled with
social commentaries. He reveals the absurdity
of our consumerist society and
its hierarchical organisation. In one drawing
he portrays the company Disney as
a powerful dehumanizing machine which
crushes any sense of singularity. He caricatures
people and their behaviour from
girls too obsessed by their physical appearance
to a perverse man undressing
a woman with his eyes, or a man covered
in blood going in a gun shop and asking
for more bullets. The suburbs he lived
in also inspired him a lot and are at the
heart of his film Edward Scissorhands.
His Aesthetic and Message
Tim Burton refuses to become a label or
a brand and doesn’t categorize his art
although others did it for him. His style
is very recognizable, full of whirlwinds,
stripes, seams, asymmetrical figures,
winding staircases, monsters with sad
eyes and weird hair. In terms of colours,
he often uses black, white, purple,
red and sometimes bright colours
too. Through his drawings he captures
feelings more quickly and efficiently
than through words. He bases his style
on simplicity, clarity, economy and
rapidity. Here is how Ian Mackinnon,
puppet creator and designer for Mars
Attacks!, has described Burton’s style:
“The real strength in Tim’s artwork is his
appreciation of form with strong shapes and
exaggerated proportions. Within a few seemingly
simple pen lines, he creates bold silhou-
ettes […] You would be mistaken for thinking
that some of Tim’s rough sketches are rudimentary,
loose or naïve, for they hold vital information,
demonstrate a great delicacy, sensitivity,
consistent keen eye, and a stunning vision.’
Tim Burton’s imaginary world has now
become a familiar one, a world everyone is
drawn to. A world which is welcoming and
heart-warming, filled with strange-looking
people and sad clowns more frightened than
frightening. His message is clear: people
are not defined by their appearances. To be
different does not mean to be excluded and
differences should be cultivated along with
singularity and creativity. His universe is
more appealing than scary even though it
is full of outcast characters. Their tragedy
inspires more pity than fear and monsters
become charming. He shows life as both
kind and tragic, beautiful and cruel, funny
and disturbing. The horrible becomes tender
and poignant and it is the beautiful that
becomes scary.
by Rachel Elfassy Bitoun
Original Tim Burton hand-drawn ink
storyboard for Vincent (top).
Concept for “Edward Scissorhands”,
1990 (left).
Photos: Tim Burton
Michael Keaton, Eva Green, Colin
Farrell, Nico Parker and Finley
Hobbins in “Dumbo” (2019)
Photos: Internet Movie Database
The animated Elephant Dumbo
in the same-named Movie
“Dumbo” (2019)
16
Miss Peregrine
and Tim Burton:
The Making of a
Film Fable
Ransom Riggs’s novel
“Miss Peregrine’s
Home for Peculiar
Children,” with its
haunting photos,
quirky outsiders and
feel for the macabre,
reads a bit like a Tim
Burton movie. And,
fittingly, it has now
become one.
Eva Green as
Miss Peregrine
CAESAR 07/2020
17
Photos: Jay Maidment/20th Century Fox; Tim Burton
Milo Parker as Hugh in “Miss Peregrines
Home for Peculiar Children” in comparison
with Tim Burtons sketch (top)
The helmets of the experiment conducted
by the villain Barron (bottom)
Tim Burton was drawn to “Miss
Peregrine” (in theaters Sept. 30)
because it fell in line with the
themes he often explores: misfits struggling
to be understood and tales that
blend the comic and the tragic. The
“Peculiar Children” of the title possess
special abilities, like the power to reanimate
dead creatures or shoot fire from
their fingers. For this story of a teenage
boy (Asa Butterfield) who uncovers a
family mystery that involves a handful
of those children, invisible monsters
known as Hollows, and time travel, Mr.
Riggs built his narrative around vintage
photographs he collected.
“I liked Ransom’s approach with the
pictures,” Mr. Burton said in a phone
interview from Los Angeles. “It was an
interesting kind of way to create a story.
It made it feel like a weird old fable.”
For the production, Mr. Burton sketched
characters, props and more. Here,
he explains why he decided to put clothes
on evil creatures and how he came
to storyboard a feast of human eyeballs.
Conceiving the Peculiars
This is Hugh (Milo Parker), a Peculiar
who has a wild hive of bees living inside
of him. Mr. Burton’s simple sketch
shows the intensity of the character
using only dots to illustrate the bees.
“I didn’t do too many sketches of the
kids because I didn’t want to do three
drawings and try to cast the kids to look
like that,” he said. “This was just a little
more my process, my doodles really,”
Mr. Burton said. “Doodling these little
things helps me to get thoughts from the
inside out.”
Barron’s Experiment
This scene is from an experiment conducted
by the creepy villain, Barron
(Samuel L. Jackson), who has evolved
from a Hollow and is trying to achieve
immortality. The helmet has a sinister,
torturous medieval yet industrial look
that Mr. Burton came up with after earlier
designs left him dissatisfied.
“I had a lot of artists working on
things, and the helmets were looking
overly elaborate, overly cartoonish, like
from an old Disney movie,” Mr. Burton
18
said. “But I thought there was something
a bit more weird and scary about
a more simple helmet. This riveted simplicity
felt kind of cultish to me.”
The Hollows
These creatures are the biggest threat
to Peculiars, and all the more menacing
because they are invisible to most everyone.
In his sketch, Mr. Burton incorporated
mouth tentacles and other traits
described in the novel but also put his
stamp on this lanky figure, which could
be at home in his films “The Nightmare
Before Christmas” or “Corpse Bride.”
“Originally, we were doing things that
felt too much like monsters,” he said. “I
got back to the idea that they should
have a human quality. That made it feel
more like a folk tale kind of children’s
horror story. So I kept clothes on them
so they had a human aspect to them.”
Icky Treat: Eyeball Feast
To become more humanlike, Barron
must eat human eyeballs. In one scene,
he and other former Hollows enjoy an
eyeball feast. It’s a grisly, but also a kind
of funny, visual set piece that gets at the
children’s nightmare spirit of the novel.
Mr. Burton’s simple watercolor drawing
helped realize this moment. And
while he doesn’t make as many storyboards
for his movies as he used to, they
were necessary in this case.
“We had to do this scene in a montage
kind of a way,” Mr. Burton said, “so it is
one sequence that helped to storyboard.”
In the end, though the feast’s vibe is lifted
from in the book, he said, “it’s not as
literal as what we ended up with.”
In Miss Peregrine‘s Home For Peculiar
Children, eagle-eyed viewers will notice
that Tim Burton appears on-screen for a
split second during the film‘s boardwalkset
finale, so when I recently had the chance
to sit down with the director during the
movie‘s press day, I took the opportunity
to ask him about it. Burton explained
that he didn‘t have much of a choice in
the matter, because the production was
not only short on budget, but didn‘t have
a crew available and didn‘t even have official
permission to shoot in the location:
CAESAR 07/2020
Photos: Jay Maidment/20th Century Fox; Tim Burton
19
„This one was out of necessity, because what
happened was... this happened at the end. We
had no money; we had no crew; we had no permits,
so just a few of us snuck on to a couple of
rides. [We] got kicked of the pier a few times.
So it wasn‘t out of vanity, it was more out of
necessity.“
Following up, I decided to ask Tim Burton
why he has never really cameoed in his
movies before (the exception being Peewee‘s
Big Adventure), and his answer was
as straight forward and understandable as
it gets:
„I don‘t like looking at myself! That‘s one reason.“
If you haven‘t seen Miss Peregrine‘s
Home For Peculiar Children yet, be sure to
be on the lookout for Tim Burton‘s quick
appearance -- and if you‘ve seen the film,
hit the comments below to tell us whether
or not you spotted the director! You can see
the movie in theaters now, and be sure to
stay tuned for more from our interviews
with the cast and filmmakers!
by Merkado Murphy
Mekado Murphy is a senior staff editor with a focus
on movies coverage. He joined The New York Times
in 2006.
The `eyeball feast´ (right) compared
to the sketch by Burton.
The Hollows, threats to the kids
(bottom)
Winona Ryder, Jeffrey Jones, and
Catherine O‘Hara in “Beetlejuice”
(1988)
Photos: Internet Movie Database
Winona Ryder floating as Lydia
Deetz in the last seconds of
“Beetlejuice”
22
See how “Beetl
built a Habitat
for Demons
CAESAR 07/2020
23
Photo: Andre Chung
ejuice” Designers
Two families, one haunted house: The complicated set of the new
Broadway musical is a shape-shifter all its own. ➤
24
CAESAR 07/2020
25
Photo: Krista Schlueter
The house when Beetlejuice haunts it.
26
It almost takes longer to say “Beetlejuice!
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!” than for
some of the scene changes to take place
in the new Broadway musical based on the
1988 Tim Burton movie. Within minutes,
sometimes seconds, workers must morph
the traditional country home of the recently
deceased Maitlands to the kitsch
taste of the Deetzes, and then finally into a
demon-infested haunted play land.
Beetlejuice is a musical with music and
lyrics by Eddie Perfect and book by Scott
Brown and Anthony King. It is based on
the 1988 film of the same name. The story
concerns a deceased couple who try to
haunt the new inhabitants of their former
home and call for help from a devious bioexorcist
ghost named Betelgeuse (pronounced
„Beetlejuice“), who is summoned
by saying his name three times. One of the
new inhabitants is a young girl, Lydia, who
is dealing with her mother‘s death and her
neglectful father.
The eye-popping set is the brainchild of
the scenic designer David Korins and the
director Alex Timbers. Mr. Korins, who
counts “Hamilton” and “Dear Evan Hansen”
among his Broadway credits, said in
an interview at his Midtown studio that
“Beetlejuice,” which had a preliminary run
Concept for the
Maitland‘s House.
in Washington, D.C., was the most technically
complicated show he had ever worked
on. His task: making room for puppetry,
special effects, quick changes and dance
numbers while bringing Mr. Burton’s distinct
style to life on one stage, without the
film director’s ability to cut away.
Also a challenge: striking a balance between
imitation and innovation. “I didn’t
want to just put Tim Burton on stage,”
Mr. Korins said. “I wanted to lean into
the work but also put our own spin on it.”
Much of “Beetlejuice,” which is now in
previews and opens April 25 at the Winter
Garden Theater, takes place at the home
of the Maitlands, a kindhearted, cautious
couple who find themselves dead as a result
of a freak accident. The home is sleekly
redecorated when the new owners, the
Deetz family, settle in. Finally, sandworms
and demons roam the living room when
Beetlejuice, played by Alex Brightman,
takes over; at one point, the house even
hosts a game show.
Old record albums are
hidden away.
Concept for the
Maitland‘s House
Ready for that trip to the netherworld?
Here’s a deep dive into the transformations:
Country Bland to Haunted House
When the creators began work six years
ago, Mr. Korins said they set out to make the
home a multifaceted character in itself. “Every
single thing that is a telltale visual and architectural
element gets changed,” he explained.
“All the walls, all the window dressing,
every single light fixture and the fireplace.”
“The Maitlands are kind of country-fabulous
chic,” Mr. Korins said. “They then
basically have their world bleached and modernized
by the Deetzes.” And then, Beetlejuice
has free rein.
Look closely when he takes over the
home from the Deetzes: Flat walls contour
in contrasting directions. How? Stagehands
tack up undulating wall panels that bend
and twirl to create the impression of chaos.
Tim Burton, in Several Dimensions
Beyond the big changes, small decorative
details are traded in and out depending on
which iteration of the house we’re watching.
Mr. Burton was an animator before ma-
CAESAR 07/2020
27
king big budget live-action movies, and
his drawing style subtly helped in the
creation of the largely hand-painted
Maitland home.
Consulting Mr. Burton’s illustration
books, Mr. Korins was inspired by a flower
the director once drew. He resized
it, drew a new version as the pattern
for the wallpaper, and then made a digital
print. Then, he and his team drew
on the pattern to add more texture.
Who and What’s Hiding Upstairs?
Subtle clues to the Maitlands (played
by Kerry Butler and Rob McClure)
are housed in the attic walls, set pieces
which slide in and out of the wings.
“The Maitlands didn’t really live life
A light fixture in the
Deetz home and later
when Beetlejuice takes
over.
The wallpaper was based on a
Tim Burton illustration.
while they were alive,” Mr. Korins
explained. “They had a lot of hobbies
they abandoned because of their fear.”
He added, “We conceived of the attic
of almost a graveyard for their hopes
and dreams.”
Signs of these side projects — yarn
for knitting, a toolbox, picture frames,
LPs and tennis rackets — are haphazardly
squirreled away.
One item has a personal connection
to Mr. Korins himself: a battered cigar
box. His grandmother gave him one
and he would fill it with his childhood
treasures. He even keeps it in his office.
Mr. Korins requested that the attic
in “Beetlejuice” have one as well. Not
because Adam is a smoker: “I thought
it was cool to have a memento of my
childhood.”
A sculpture from the movie
was remade for the stage.
Photos: Krista Schlueter; Andre Chung; Scenic Art Studios
“There isn’t one piece of furniture
dressing or piece of architecture that doesn’t
have some kind of a handmade, homemade
quality to it,” Mr. Korins said.
Tacky art dots the Deetz living room:
In one case, a blocky black sculpture serves
as an Easter egg for fans of the original
film.
Sharp-eyed viewers may be able to
spot callouts to Mr. Burton’s designs
from work beyond “Beetlejuice.” A light
fixture in the demon’s home is modeled
after the bow tie worn by Jack Skellington
in the director’s animated 1993 movie
“The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
by Sopan Dep
Sopan Deb is a culture reporter, writing about the
intersection of politics and culture, among other
topics. His work has appeared on NBC, Al Jazeera
America and elsewhere.
Scan the code for the
official “Beetlejuice”
Trailer!
28
The creators of the “Beetlejuice” musical
‘tried to run toward Burton’ visually
“It’s the first film where you
really see his visual imprint,”
says director Alex Timbers,
in Washington getting “Beetlejuice”
on its feet following
his premiere of the new $28
million “Moulin Rouge”
musical in Boston. “Do you
try to make your own thing,
or run toward it? We sort of
did a little of both. We’ve
tried to make the story itself
as theatrical and emotional as
possible. But, visually, we’ve
tried to run toward Burton.”
We’re both fans of Tim Burton,”
set designer David Korins
says of the visionary
whose goth-comic range has extended
from “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and the
first two “Batman” movies to “Edward
Scissorhands” and the movie “Sweeney
Todd.” “We wanted right away to say,
‘We get it, we know it, we love it, too’
— but also to make our own take on it.”
Timbers has been chewing for eight
years on the challenge of making a
musical of “Beetlejuice,” which starred
Michael Keaton as a mischievous spook
trying to help a recently deceased smalltown
couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena
Davis) scare away gauche new tenants
from New York (Catherine O’Hara and
Jeffrey Jones, with a dewy Winona Ryder
as a teen so gloomy she can see the
ghosts). The musical is finally onstage
at the National Theatre, in previews and
with its official opening Nov. 4. Broadway
performances are scheduled to begin
in the spring at the Winter Garden.
It’s a lavish proposition, reportedly a
$21 million musical and a technological
product that Timbers and Korins, explaining
on the stage and then talking
in a lobby upstairs about the project, say
could not have been made five or 10 years
ago. The bar is always rising for spectacle
on Broadway, most recently with the
magic of “Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child” (still running) and the elaborate
cartoon vision of the underwater kids’
adventure “SpongeBob SquarePants”
(closed in September). The ingredients
“Beetlejuice” uses to whip up its eye candy
include projections, puppets, illusions
and special effects.
Yet, Timbers and Korins say, the show
will cling to the “do-it-yourself ” aesthetic
of Burton’s movie, which featured
stop-motion effects that, along with its
deadpan wit, made the picture such a
charmer. Their new technology mainly
involves projections and lighting effects,
not the physical structure, and not even
the magic.
“A lot of it is illusions you would have
seen in the vaudeville days — very simple,
practical effects,” Timbers says of the
show. “Jankiness” is the slangy, grungy
word he uses to evoke the lowdown vibe.
There are three versions of the set’s
haunted-house centerpiece — the simple
original, the tasteless version overdecorated
by the second couple and, ultimately,
the version controlled by the demonic
Beetlejuice. Yet the house is not something
that flies onstage from multiple directions
and assembles and reassembles
before your eyes. Instead, it’s a single
structure (redone three times) that rolls
downstage on a wagon. “It’s kind of oldschool
in that way,” Timbers says.
“Very old-school,” echoes Korins,
whose Broadway credits include the Revolutionary
War-era “Hamilton” and the
high-tech social-media-themed “Dear
Evan Hansen.”
The house is also a canvas that Korins
loads with tributes — “Easter eggs”
paying homage not just to “Beetlejuice,”
but to Burton’s body of work. He points
to several elements of the house as possessed
by Beetlejuice: The wallpaper, for
instance, is black and flaking, dipped in
sealants to give it a tar-like texture. A
black chandelier has a vague batlike shape
— an appropriate nod to the director
of two “Batman” movies, but derived
from a small carousel in the “Beetlejuice”
film that briefly spins on the head of the
gauche couple’s designer friend, Otho.
Korins says he also picked up the shapes
from the bow tie of Jack Skellington, the
skeletal character from the 1992 animated
film “The Nightmare Before Christmas,”
which Burton wrote and produced
The giant sandworm lurking in the
netherworld around the house is embedded
in the set’s walls — not the only time
it’s seen in the show. “It’s a constant threat
and pushing through the wall, breaking
through,” Korins says. “It’s essentially like
a boa constrictor. Beetlejuice has taken
control of the house. He’s thinking about
squeezing the life out of it.”
He points to a smaller detail, a lighting
sconce that’s a menacing open jaw. “It’s
modeled after the sandworm’s mouth,
with little teeth,” Korins says.
Burton’s animated style is reflected in
hand-drawn charcoal lines around the
ceiling’s molding and in the white fabric
of a couch that contains a hidden trampoline.
(Korins won’t say why.) There
are some direct appropriations, such as
the monstrous, nine-tendrilled sculpture
fashioned by Delia, the artsy half of
the New York couple. “When this thing
comes on stage, it actually gets entrance
applause,” Korins says, the morning after
the show’s third public performance.
Timbers gets philosophical as he talks
about how rare it is for comedies to get
what he calls “a ‘world creation’ treatment,”
while noting that the show is
not the kind of “immersive” experience
that wraps itself around audiences. Korins
says the do-it-yourself approach
“holds true with the gags we pull off,
and with the tricks. Everything is sort
of hand-done.”
“I know it seems like a lot of spectacle,”
Timbers says. “But there’s the version
we’ve chosen not to do, which is three
times as big.’’
by Nelson Pressley
Theater critic
CAESAR 07/2020
29
Kerry Butler
in the country
version of
the Maitland
home, with
its flowery
wallpaper.
Things get
sleeker
when the
Deetz family
moves in.
It all
reaches its
climax when
Beetlejuice
haunts the
house.
Photos: Krista Schlueter
30
Eight Facts About Tim Burton
You may know and love his films, but there‘s a lot about Tim
Burton you don‘t know. Meet the man behind the camera with
these fun facts!
1 2
Timothy Walter “Tim” Burton was born
August 25 1958 in Burbank,
California.
“Stalk of the Celery Monster” attracted
the attention of Walt Disney Productions’
animation division, which offered
Burton an animator’s apprenticeship.
5
Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter
have two children: a son, Billy Raymond,
born in 2003; and a daughter, Nell,
born in 2007.
6
Johnny Depp is godfather to both of Burton‘s
Kids.
CAESAR 07/2020
31
3
Tim frequently features a dinner scene in
his films.
4
Burton’s ability to produce hits with low
budgets impressed studio executives, and
he received his first big budget film,
“Batman.”
Photos: Dana Damato, Tim Burton, Thomas Smith, PIC PHOTOS/REX Shutterstock, Warner Bros Alan Levenson
7 8
Burton‘s favorite films are “Dracula A.D.
1972”, “The Wicker Man”, “The Golden
Voyage of Sinbad”, “The War of the Gargantuas
and “The Omega Man”.
He wears pinstriped socks for good luck
and hates apples.
Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton
as Lydia and Beetlejuice.
Photos: Internet Movie Database
Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) in
front of „Dante‘s Inferno Room“.
34
An Analysis of Art & Design in
The Films of Tim Burton
Tim Burton is one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers. He started out as an animator
at Disney and directed well-received short films such as “Vincent” (1982) and “Frankenweenie”
(1984), before making the leap into feature-length movies.
CAESAR 07/2020
35
Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd: The
Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Photo: respective film studios
He made his big screen debut in 1985 with “Pee-Wee’s
Big Adventure.” From that, Burton has built a remarkable
career. His visual style is unique, bringing together
19th and 20th century European art aesthetics and
American kitsch. Stories very often focused on freaks and
loners that should, in theory, make studio executives run a
mile. But they don’t. Burton’s brand of quirkiness connects
with millions and his films have universal appeal.
I have finally finished watching all of the films that Tim Burton
directed, and all of the ones he produced, except for Cabin
Boy which I cannot seem to find anywhere. Over the course of
watching the films Burton directed, I have discovered several
major similarities or themes and some minor ones. I will discuss
here a couple of the major ones that I found.
Outcast/Rebel main character: Nearly all of Tim Burton’s
films contained a main character that does not fit in with the
society in which they exist. I believe the best example of this
is Edward from Edward Scissorhands. The character of Edward
is both an outcast in the sense that he is not even human,
but is also a social outcast that has trouble fitting in with
the suburban society in which he is thrown into. Other good
examples of this theme include Sweeney Todd, Ichabod Crane,
and Batman. The movie Ed Wood is a biopic about the filmmaker
who refused to adhere to film conventions even in the
face of extreme criticism of his work. All of these characters
in some for are not fully accepted by society or choose not to
conform to the accepted norm. I also feel that these characters
represent Tim Burton’s experiences as a child and teenager, in
that he too did not fully fit in.
Use of bright, vibrant colors in contrast with bleak settings:
This is a fascinating trait of Burton’s film. While most of his
settings are rather bleak and contain few if any colors, when
there is color, it is usually very bright and stands out. The
color red is especially prevalent. Burton uses this for variety
of purposes. In the films Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow,
he uses (unrealistically) vivid red blood in order to emphasize
the bleakness of the setting as well as to enhance the violence
of the attacks presented. In Mars Attacks! the use of florescent
reds and greens provides an unnatural feel to the Martians
weapons as well the dead bodies that would not be present
if their bones were normally colored. In other movies there
seems to be no purpose to Burtons excessive use of vibrant
colors other than to add a surreal feel to the setting or to draw
the viewers attention to a particular item or section of the film.
Death: Although death occurs in the films of almost any
director, in Tim Burton’s films death is often highly significant.
In Batman, the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents is
what drives him to become Batman. The death of the scientist
in Edward Scissorhands represents a loss of innocence for
Edward and is what ultimately allows him to experience the
outside world. The thought of Lucy’s death drives Sweeney
Todd to murder, and those murders further represent Todd’s
cleansing of the evils of society. In Beetlejuice, death is the
basis of the movie and represents a second chance at life. Life
through death is also present in the film Corpse Bride, where
the afterlife is much more alive then the real world, and only by
entering it is Vincent able to truly learn to live his own life. ➤
36
In fact, it‘s almost impossible to say what „natural“ color looks
like. That bottle of Cabernet that looked blood-red in the kitchen
pantry the night before is gloriously rosy outdoors on the
picnic cloth the next day.
After the Hollywood studio love affair with saturated color,
cinematographers experimented with taking away the richness
of color for special effects or ironically exaggerating it even
more. As an example of the latter, Dick Tracy (1990) is a liveaction
movie with the bold coloring-book or Sunday-comics
primary colors to match the grotesque makeup of its comicbook
villains. The colors are rich and supersaturated.
Desaturated color can be found in Michelangelo Antonioni‘s
Red Desert (Deserto Rosso, Italy, 1964), whose very title
suggests that the film is about thematizing color-draining as
the absence of values. The title‘s desert is also the desert of
contemporary society.
In contrast, the „Ascot Opening Day“ sequence of My Fair
Lady (1964), though shot in color, photographs mainly black,
white, and gray objects for a paradoxically hard-edged nostalgic
effect. Suits, dresses, hats, furniture: All are black and white.
Many thrillers since the 1980s have been filmed in color, but
very darkly, in a style called „color noir.“ Films as disparate as
the murder mystery Body Heat (1981), the science fiction thriller
Blade Runner (1982), and the Tim Burton fantasy Batman
(1989) share this style. Some critics believe that it reflects the
same cultural anxiety that the original 1940s film noir style
denoted: an anxiety about cultural values in the middle of an
affluent but spiritually empty society.
Costumes
Anybody that has seen a Tim Burton film will recognise that
the director has a fondness for costumes with a 19th century
Victorian flavour, even if the story is set in more modern
times. But he is equally inspired by the famed stories and cartoon
drawings of Dr. Seuss. This can be seen time and time
again with characters wearing an array of clothing designed
in black-and-white stripes. Elsewhere, leading ladies and heroines
often sport flowing blonde locks, pale white faces and
exquisite gowns akin to Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Burton is a
man steeped in the history of art and his synthesising of different
periods and eras is humorous and striking.
German Expressionism
The director described the famous German art movement in
the book “Burton on Burton” (Mark Salisbury, 1995) as like “the
inside of somebody’s head, like an internalized state externalized.”
It’s not just chiaroscuro lighting effects, but also in the
production design and the wildly exaggerated sets and décor.
Just think of the Inventor’s castle in “Edward Scissorhands”
or the whole of Gotham City in “Batman Returns.” Burton’s
cinematic universe is indebted to German Expressionism.
in sunny Los Angeles. It shouldn’t work at all—a world of
darkness, wild moors and haunted castles crossed with pastel-coloured
bungalows, picket fences and verdant green lawns
as American as apple pie. And yet in merging these unlikely
worlds, Burton struck creative gold. The contrast is there in
nearly all his films. The ruined castle perched above suburbia in
“Edward Scissorhands” is a classic Burton touch. Gothic suburbia
is revisited again, in animated form, in “Frankenweenie.”
In “Dark Shadows,” the Gothic mansion owned by the Collins
family is hidden back in the trees above the fishing port of
Collinsport.
Johnny Depp
The American actor Johnny Depp, born in Kentucky, and Tim
Burton have made eight very successful films together. The
actor and the director formed a richly rewarding working relationship.
There is no doubt that when Depp is on screen playing
an array of weird and wonderful characters—the young
man with scissors for hands; the world’s worst director in “Ed
Wood”; bumbling cop Ichabod Crane (“Sleepy Hollow”); Willy
Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”; Victor in
“Corpse Bride” (voice only); the murderous barber in “Sweeney
Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”; The Mad Hatter
(“Alice in Wonderland”), or vampire Barnabas Collins in “Dark
Shadows”—there is undoubtedly an element of Burton’s persona
in there. Depp is effectively the director’s on-screen
alter-ego. They last worked together on “Dark Shadows” in
2012 and will no doubt collaborate again in the near future.
Signature Camera Style
There is a lot of camera movement in the films of Tim Burton.
It is used expressively and the effect is pure mastery of cinematic
craft. The camera is often attached to a dolly, a crane, sometimes
even a helicopter, or the traditional Steadicam device.
Sometimes, it feels like one is on a rollercoaster or ghost train.
One of the signature Burton camera moves is the high-angled
tracking shot that glides and weaves. It is employed to show
off the sets and achieve the maximum cinematic potential of
the imagery. Examples of this camera aesthetic can be seen
in every single film. Burton especially deploys the high-angled
roaming camera in his opening credits sequences. For fine
examples, check out: “Ed Wood,” “Batman” (1989) and “Beetlejuice”
(1988).
by Martyn Conterio
Martyn Conterio is a freelance film writer.
Gothic meets Suburbia
The director’s visual imagination often sees Gothic architecture
and atmosphere brought together with his own upbringing
CAESAR 07/2020
37
Black and white stripes, Victorian
costumes and heroines with blonde
hair and pale faces are some of the
re-occurring costume designs and
makeup in the films of Tim Burton.
Tim Burton successfully brought
together Gothic atmosphere and
art to the American suburbs.
On the right: Michael Keaton as
the lead role in “Beetlejuice”
Burton often uses high-angled
tracking shots to show off the beautifully
designed sets and spaces.
Photos: respective film studios
Johnny Depp and Alan Arkin in
“Edward Scissorhands” (1990)
Photos: Internet Movie Database
Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder
star in “Edward Scissorhands”
40
Masters Of
Color:
Tim Burton
There are two sides to Tim Burton that come across
in most of his work. Through the use of a variety
of light sources, color tones, and his hand-painted
characters he expressively creates two separate,
colorful worlds that captivate viewers and tickle
their imaginations: a dark, grey scale Gothic world,
and a goofy world, filled with pastels and striped
patterns.
An examination of how color, light, and dark have been
used in Tim Burton’s films to reflect the view points
of his characters and the observance of the mundane
vs the outrageous. Specifically looking at how Miss Peregrine’s
Home for Peculiar Children differs from many of of Tim
Burton’s other films by providing more „grey“ spaces that are
neither colorful „dream worlds“ nor colorless „realities“. It
would also be interesting to include an analysis of the film
Edward Scissorhands and how the „normal“/suburban world
is portrayed as the „dream world“ through color reflecting Edwards
viewpoint.
The greatest directors of our time often have a “trademark”
style that audience members come to recognize and connect
with them. Tim Burton is among such directors along with
JJ Abrams and Oliver Stone; both of which have a brilliantly
unique style. The protagonist in Burton’s films frequently
reveal his emotions and the way he sees the world. In his
films he creates a recurring theme about outsiders and how
they fit in this crazy, mixed up place. It is clear in Edward
Scissor Hands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse
Bride, that people fear change and the great unknown.
Burton gives light to vastly suppressed outsider perspectives
and teaches an important lesson about difference and all
that it brings. He uses cinematic techniques such as emotional
close-ups, contrasted lighting, and non-diegetic music in
order to create gothic fairy tales revealing the cliche that not
everything is the way it seems. ?In many of Tim Burton’s
films, he uses close-up shots to resonate with his audience
that a deep emotion or personal connection with the character
is being made.
This is shown numerous times in Edward Scissor Hands,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride. This
technique is most often used in what’s believed to be Burton’s
most personal film, Edward Scissor Hands. More specifically
with the young Edward and Kim. The close-ups allow the audience
to not only see, but to feel the forbidden love the two
characters share. For example, when Edward first see’s her
photos, it’s as if time stops. Burton uses a close up in order for
the audience to see emotion deeper past Edwards frightening
exterior.
Burton uses a similar concept in The Corpse Bride, when
Victor and Victoria meet for the first time. The close-up on
CAESAR 07/2020
41
Tim Burton and Mia
Wazikowska behind
the scenes of “Alice
in Wonderland”
Photo: MoviestillsDB.com
both individuals who are forcefully to be wed show the audience
the true connection they share despite the circumstance.
This foreshadows a genuine relationship progressing.
Though it is common, love is not the only emotion
displayed with close-up shots. Burton zooms into Emily’s
face as she sees Victor and Victoria together to show the
audience utter hatred. In yet another Burton film, Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, when Willy Wonka is asked
about his father there’s a close-up on him to present the
pain it brings Willy to discuss such a personal matter, thus
immediately telling our audience that he suffers from an
emotional problem with his past and family. Burton very
efficiently uses’ this camera movement to detach his protagonist
from the other characters. This isn’t always a physical
separation but often a mental and social detachment
as well. ?It’s safe to say that an audience can almost always
spot a “Burton Film” within the first few moments of a
preview. He is well known for his use of low key lighting
to create a dark, ominous, and mildly disturbing picture.
This is a technique that plays a major role in setting Burton
apart from your average director. While being a strong
believer in the use of low key lighting, he very frequently
uses it in contrast to high key lighting, often with bold
colors to coincide with the use of cheerful and upbeat music
to display a sense of utopia. In Edward Scissor Hands
Burton presents the seemingly “perfect” town painted with
bright pastel colors and a kind setting; then contrasts it
with an isolated castle shown in the distance that is showered
in darkness.
From the first time the audience is presented with the
eerie castle, an image of separation between Edward and
the townspeople is created along with a preconceived idea
of the mysterious protagonist. This technique is used in
many other Tim Burton Films, such as Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory. He shows the audience a grey town
riddled with a glum vibe, while Willy Wonka’s factory is
unveiled to be a wild array of color and creativity. The factory
is certainly not what it appears to be on the outside.
While unordinary to the public eye, only a select few are
granted with the view of the amazement that lies inside. ➤
This seems to be a recurring theme within the films under
Burton’s direction. Twisting things around in Corpse Bride, ➤
42
Burton displays a town overruled with morbdity that isn’t
contrasted with a factory or castle, but the beautiful land
of the dead. It seems ironic that the dead are shown as
the most joyous and “lively”, but is it really? The gothic
mannerisms are almost always the most unique and
wonderful places to be when it comes to a Tim Burton
film. The point Burton is trying to prove is that a life of
difference can be filled with happiness and that nothing is
really what it at first seems.?
Another technique Tim Burton uses very precisely that
is often overlooked is his use of non-diegetic music. In Edward
Scissor Hands, Burton uses a wide variation of music.
For example, whenever Edward saw Kim a light and whimsical
song is played, thus foreshadowing to the audience the
progressing feelings Edward has for Kim. In Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, the music is used to create a contrast between
the depressing life of Charlie Bucket, and the magical
factory. Sorrowful music is played whenever Charlie’s home
is being shown, creating a sympathetic mood. While the factory
is accompanied with upbeat music whenever presented.
A similar style is displayed in Corpse Bride. The living
world is set with dreary ominous music while the land
of the dead is filled with a dancing jazz town that is
bursting with “life”! This of course is a humorous take
on death that plays very well into the themes seen most
often in Tim Burton’s films. Tim Burton’s trademark
style wouldn’t be complete without his use of music to
construct a particular mood and tone for his audience.
?Tim Burton wouldn’t be known as such a film genius
in this generation if it wasn’t for his use of cinematic
techniques such as close up shots, contrasted lighting,
and non-diegetic music. while they may seem like small
details, they all play a very large role to create the ‘in
between the lines’ message Burton strives to convey:
not everything is what is seems and a lonely life isn’t
necessarily an unhappy one. Burton shows an uncommon
perspective that a life of difference can be bliss in
this own misunderstood. No one will ever completely be
able to explain the stylistic techniques of such a unique
director, but that’s just the way Tim Burton likes it. ➤
CAESAR 07/2020
Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder,
and Tim Burton in “Edward
Scissorhands” (1990)
43
44
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Color is another huge element in Burton‘s films, created by
careful lighting and, in the case of his puppet films, pensively
hand-painting... Besides granting „Nightmare“ a Gothic
flair, the lights and colors contribute to the film‘s symbolism.
In Halloween Land, everything appears in gloomy shades
because the characters there lack the sincerity, hope,
and imagination of a warmer atmosphere. In Christmas
Land, the landscape buzzes with all the festive colors traditionally
associated with the holidays; the waves of red,
green, and gold allude to cheer and optimism. The Real
World, where Jack goes to deliver presents, though, is
much blander; the houses, the cars, the people--everything
is a neutral tone or a humdrum pastel. In other words,
reality hovers somewhere between Halloween Land and
Christmas Land in terms of faith and rosy sentiments.
This is Halloween, this is Halloween … okay, I know it’s
only the beginning of September but according to Starbucks
and Pinterest, it’s Halloween. And if you go by the
craft store calendar, Halloween started in June. So I figured
it’s not to early for my latest Poster Palette, based on
Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas! I have seen a
few NBC themed Disney weddings and they have all been
moody and dramatic and fabulous. I was excited to make
this board and bring these non-traditional colors together.
Of course when you think Nightmare Before Christmas you
always think black, purple, and orange! But the lighter shades
of yellow adds a coolness to the dramatic darker shades.
CAESAR 07/2020
45
Corpse Bride
Photos: Impawards, Gaby Smith
Returning to the painstaking stop-motion animation he
employed with amazing success in The Nightmare Before
Christmas, Tim Burton presents a hair-raising legend based
on a 19th-century Russian folktale, in which a young
man mistakenly weds a corpse while on a two-day trek to
the village of his real bride-to-be. It is up to the groom‘s
flesh-and-blood fiancée, who has been pining for the arrival
of her intended, to face her wraith-like rival and make peace
with her by promising to live her dreams for her and by
vowing to remember her always. Only then are the living
bride and groom free to proceed with their own wedding
ceremony in the warmhearted fable Tim Burton‘s Corpse
Bride.
Just as the color palette is very precise in „Nightmare“-
-with all its carefully chosen shades, „Corpse Bride“ also
features two main color families that help contrast two
worlds through the use of diligent lighting and hand-painting.
Life scenes show everything in grays, like tintypes,
while Death scenes are much more flamboyant (Burton
2008). The Life scenes therefore come across as uptight
and dreary, whereas the Death scenes read as significantly
more relaxed and fun.
46
Edward Scissorhands
A modern day fairy tale which tells the story of Edward, a
man created by an inventor who died before finishing him
and left him with scissors where he should have hands. One
day when the local Avon representative calls at the historic
mansion where he has been living alone, she takes him home
to stay with her family. He has to adapt to the new life and
environment that he isn‘t used to. Soon he shows a talent in
cutting hair and hedges and wins every body‘s heart. But life
isn‘t always so sweet.
The first thing that strikes the viewer is the use of colours.
The small mountain and the mansion on top of it are
set in a dark grey shade that strongly contrast to the pastel
colours of the suburb below. This can also be found in the
clothing of people. While Edward’s colours are black and
white the others are dressed in soft pastels. Since black is
the traditional colour signifying the bad guys we of course
assume at first glance that Edward is evil. this is also emphasised
by his hands. If we imagine this film with Edward
dressed in white or some shade of pastel it would not have
the same effect.
The suburb is, as I have already mentioned, set in pastel
colours; cars, houses and inhabitants. I associate pastel with
things like My Little Pony and dresses with puffed sleeves
and lace. These are very harmless colours making the suburb
look like a utopia from the 60‘s, in contrast to the dark
nightmare image of the mansion lurking in the background.
This use of pastel and black distances Edward from the others
and shows that he is an outsider. This contrast between
him and the residents of the suburb is used throughout the
movie.
Toward the end of the film there is a slight change in the
colours. Kim and Edward forms a unit because she is now
dressed in white, which reflects both her innocence and that
she is the only one that still believes that he is good and that
he does not mean any harm.
CAESAR 07/2020
47
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Photos: Impawards, Gaby Smith
Charlie Bucket comes from a poor family, and spends most of
his time dreaming about the chocolate that he loves but usually
can‘t afford. Things change when Willy Wonka, head of the
very popular Wonka Chocolate empire, announces a contest
in which five gold tickets have been hidden in chocolate bars
and sent throughout the country. The kids who find the tickets
will be taken on a tour of Wonka‘s chocolate factory and get
a special glimpse of the wonders within. Charlie miraculously
finds a ticket, along with four other children much naughtier
than him. The tour of the factory will hold more than a few
surprises for this bunch.
Color is also often used to denote a mood or make the viewer
feel a specific way. The color palette of Tim Burton’s Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory emphasizes the film’s underlying
creepy vibe, in a more subtle way. Burton’s already stylized
filmmaking prepares the viewer for bright colors. However,
there is something very unsettling about the brightness surrounding
the otherwise pale and subdued characters.
48
Sweeney Todd
Color used in Sweeney Todd is very limited; at first glance,
the film appears to be almost completely black-and-white,
with the exception of a few high-saturation sequences, and
copious amounts of scarlet blood. Though much of the film is
monochromatic, color is always present, and plays a large part
in the visual story. The three main hues used are red, yelloworange,
and cyan-blue.
The opening scene is dark (it is nighttime), very desaturated,
and completely cold cyan-blue. Characters look almost
dead, with no warmth or natural skin-tones visible, and the
atmosphere created is gothic and brooding. As Sweeney
steps off the boat he has arrived on, and begins to think about
his life before his arrest, he steps into the golden glow
of a streetlamp. This introduces an association between the
past and the color yellow which carries through the whole
film. As Sweeney sings about his wife, a flashback begins,
and there is a dramatic change in color. Though there is
still strong affinity of color, the flashback is warm and saturated.
The predominant color is orange-yellow, present
in Lucy‘s hair, Barker‘s cravat, and the general hue of the
image. The song progresses, the flashback-Barker is arrested,
and a new character is introduced: Judge Turpin.
CAESAR 07/2020
49
Dumbo
Photos: Impawards, Gaby Smith
Ever since I first heard that Disney was working on a live action
Dumbo, I have been anxiously awaiting its arrival, gobbling
up every piece of concept art, every teaser trailer, and
every tiny clip we were teased with before Dumbo once again
graced the big screen. Finally, last Saturday, I got to see my
favorite Disney character take flight again, and steal away my
heart once more.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge Dumbo fan. He’s my number 1
buddy and I literally don’t remember not loving him. Beyond
personal bias toward Dumbo, I feel like his story was a good
choice to re-tell with a live-action adaptation. The original
Dumbo holds the award of shortest Disney film, clocking in
at a mere 64-minute run time. The story was beautiful, but it
was truncated and audiences were left with a half-story for 78
years.
Directed by Tim Burton, I expected this movie to be bizarre,
dark, and a bit scary. Instead, I found it to be beautiful, uplifting,
and inclusive. While there is a semi-spooky scene (there’s
a location called “Nightmare Island”), and the film does
recognize the poor treatment of performance animals, I was
not brought down by this movie. Quite the opposite, actually.
All-in-all, I really enjoyed Tim Burton’s Dumbo, and would
gladly go see it again. The CGI was spectacular (I fell in love
with Dumbo all over again), the acting was entertaining (even
though Colin Farrell’s southern accent is amusing at best), and
the movie left me feeling the full rainbow of emotions — joy,
hope, sadness, heartache, nervousness, and triumph. The film
was digitally stunning, kept me engaged, and had a great score
to help tie the whole thing together.
50
Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice is a great movie about death, decisions, and acceptance.
The colors in this movie are specifically situated. I want to look at
the colors in this movie through traditional archetypes.
During the first scene of Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena
Davis) in their house after their death, the light appears to be
an orange hue. Orange represents energy and adventure. Although
the characters do not know it yet, they are about to embark on a
long adventure alongside the living.
When in Saturn with the Sand Worms, the prominent color is
yellow. While this color can represent happy things, it traditionally
represents more negative images: disease, death, alienation, and
madness. In the movie, Adam and Barbara are dead for most of it
and are alienated from the world outside and other people. When
Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) acts like a circus attraction towards
the end, yellow is behind him. Madness at its best. Also, he kills
Charles Deetz’s (Jeffrey Jones) boss and his boss’s wife.
After Adam and Barbara draw the door to get help, they enter the
afterlife services office. The first color shown is green. Universally,
green represents nature. It is natural for people to die; thus, this
color makes sense in this setting. Also, I would argue it is natural
for most people to ask for help, which also makes the color an appropriate
choice.
Most often, Betelgeuse is represented in or around black. He wears
black and white clothes, appears as a black snake on the staircase,
and lusts after the girl in black. Black is darkness, fear, and mystery.
Our main character embraces all of these characteristics.
The other major color that surrounds Betelgeuse is red. After he
goes back to the model, he crashes a red truck. He wears a red shirt
or vest throughout the entire movie. Also, when he goes to “Dante’s
Inferno Room”, the building is glowing red. This color represents
love, passion, anger, and sacrifice. Betelgeuse is passionate about
scaring the living and gets angry when the couple stops him. Both
Betelgeuse and Lydia (Winona Ryder) wear red at their wedding.
Here, she is the sacrifice for Adam and Barbera’s souls. When resurrecting
the two ghosts, the color surrounding the living is blue. Blue
has many, many meanings. It can mean cleansing, rebirth, strength,
CAESAR 07/2020
51
and trust. The people in the room trust Otho (Glenn Shadix). They
are basically cleansing the house and the couple experiences a kind
of rebirth.
This rainbow of colors in this movie show that these characters
are not cut and dry. They are complicated. I could have chosen one
color, like red, and analyzed it throughout the movie. However, looking
at many colors adds complications to what some might think is
a straightforward movie. The other site I pulled from for color representations
was off of a teacher’s lesson on the internet. Have a look
at the costumes in this movie are wonderful. Here is an analysis of
the different wardrobes and how they represent each character. Here
is an interpretation of one scene in this movie and how it shows you
everything you need to know about the movie. Interesting idea.
Photos: Impawards, Gaby Smith
by Michael Maher
Michael is an all-around tech and movie nerd who enjoys shooting, editing, and
especially watching films.
Mia Wasikowska in “Alice in Wonderland”
(2010)
Photos: Internet Movie Database
Anne Hathaway in “Alice in Wonderland”
(2010)
54
Tim
Burton,
at Home
in His
Own
Head
On a recent morning Mr. Burton,
dressed entirely in black,
was talking about his new animated
feature, “Frankenweenie,”
which will be released
by Walt Disney on Oct. 5.,
and which tells the charming
story of a young boy (named
Victor Frankenstein) who
reanimates the corpse of his
dead pet dog.
Not only does “Frankenweenie” hark back
to the start of your career, it seems torefer
to many of the features you’ve made since
the original short. Is that by design?
If I really thought about it, that’s something
I would probably not do. [Laughs.]
I don’t consciously make those points of:
I did this, I’m going to put that in there
as a reference to myself. Things that
I grew up with stay with me. You start
a certain way, and then you spend your
whole life trying to find a certain simplicity
that you had. It’s less about staying
in childhood than keeping a certain
spirit of seeing things in a different way.
How much of your childhood are we seeing
in Victor’s isolation?
I felt like an outcast. At the same time
I felt quite normal. I think a lot of kids
Mr. Burton with accessories at his
home in London, including a picture
of the actor Larry Hagman.
feel alone and slightly isolated and in
their own world. I don’t believe the
feelings I had were unique. You can
sit in a classroom and feel like no one
understands you, and you’re Vincent
Price in “House of Usher.”
I would imagine, if you talk to every
single kid, most of them probably
felt similarly. But I felt very tortured
as a teenager. That’s where “Edward
Scissorhands” came from. I was probably
clinically depressed and didn’t
know it.
Were you encouraged to try sports?
My dad was a professional baseball
player. He got injured early in his career,
so he didn’t fulfill that dream of
his. He ended up working for the sports
department of the city of Burbank. I
did some sports. It was a bit frustrating.
I wasn’t the greatest sports person.
CAESAR 07/2020
55
Photos: Steve Forrest; Lucas Jackson/Reuters
That can be deeply disheartening at that
age, to learn that you’re bad at something.
It’s the same with drawing. If you look at
children’s drawings, they’re all great. And
then at a certain point, even when they’re
about 7 or 8 or 9, they go, “Oh, I can’t
draw.” Well, yes, you can. I went through
that same thing, even when I started to
go to CalArts, and a couple of teachers
said: “Don’t worry about it. If you like to
draw, just draw.” And that just liberated
me. My mother wasn’t an artist, but she
made these weird owls out of pine cones,
or cat needlepoint things. There’s an outlet
for everyone, you know?
Were horror films and B movies easily accessible
when you were growing up?
They’d show monster movies on regular
TV then, which they wouldn’t show now.
Some of them were pretty hard core, like
“The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” or something
where a guy gets his arm ripped
off and is bleeding down the wall. My
parents were a bit freaked out. [Laughs.]
But better that I’m watching TV than
them having to watch me or deal with
me.
There are emotions and experiences in
“Frankenweenie” that audiences don’t often
associate with Disney features.
People get worried and they go, “Oh my
God, the dog gets hit by a car.” It’s funny
how people are afraid of their emotions.
I remember the original short was supposed
to go out with “Pinocchio,” and
they got all freaked out about it, like kids
would be running, screaming, from the
theater.
The Vampire’s Bite
Do you find poetic justice in the fact that,
after all that, Disney is the studio that’s releasing
“Frankenweenie”?
I feel like I’ve been through a revolving
door over the years, and from my first
time there as an animator to “Frankenweenie”
to “Nightmare” and “Ed Wood,”
it’s always been the same reaction: “Come
back,” and then “Hmmm, I don’t know.”
After I stopped working on “The Fox
and the Hound” and trying to be a Disney
animator — which was useless —
they gave me the opportunity, for a year
or two, to draw whatever I wanted. I felt
quite grateful for it. At the same time I
felt like Rapunzel, a princess trapped in a
tower. I had everything I needed except
the light of day. I felt they didn’t really
want me, and luckily Warner Brothers
and Paul Reubens and the producers of
“Pee-wee” saw the movie and gave me a
chance.
If “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and “Beetlejuice”
hadn’t been hits, would that have been
the end of your filmmaking career?
I always felt bad for people whose first
movie is a gigantic hit. [Laughs.] They
were movies that were under the radar
in a certain way. They’re both low-budget
in terms of studio movies. Both were
moderate hits, and were on some of the
“10 worst movies of the year” lists. I learned
quite early on: don’t get too excited,
don’t get too complacent, don’t get
too egotistical.
When you see, 23 years after “Batman,” the
extent to which superhero movies have
become the backbone of Hollywood, do you
feel a sense of pride or ownership?
No, not ownership. At the time it felt like
the first attempt at a darker version of a
comic book. Now it looks like a lighthearted
romp. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t
the greatest-received critical movie. So I
do feel strange for getting such a bad rap
on some level, and nobody mentions, oh,
maybe it helped start something.
Among the Living on Screen
When you worked with Johnny Depp for the
first time, on “Edward Scissorhands,” what
was it that connected you to him?
Here was a guy who was perceived as
this thing — this Tiger Beat teen idol.
But just meeting him, I could tell, without
knowing the guy, he wasn’t that as
a person. Very simply, he fit the profile
of the character. We were in Florida
in 90-degree heat, and he couldn’t use
his hands, and he was wearing a leather
outfit and covered head to toe with makeup.
I was impressed by his strength
and stamina. I remember Jack Nicholson
showed me this book about mask
acting and how it unleashes something
else in a person. I’ve always been impressed
by anybody that was willing to
do that. Because a lot of actors don’t
want to cover [theatrical voice] “the
instrument.”
Has your relationship with Johnny changed
as your careers have evolved?
There’s always been a shorthand. He’s
always been able to decipher my ramblings.
To me he’s more like a Boris Karloff-type
actor, a character actor, than a
leading man. The only thing that changes
— and this is something I try not to
pay any attention to — is how the outside
world perceives it. [Snidely] “Oh,
you’re working with Johnny again?” “Oh,
how come you’re not working with him
this time?” You can’t win. I give up.
You don’t have a formal repertory company,
but there seem to be certain actors you come
back to.
[Sighs.] I don’t want to respond to criticism
I hear. People that go, “Oh, he’s using
her again,” or “He’s using him again.” I’ve
Mr. Burton with his partner, the
actress Helena Bonham Carter.
enjoyed pretty much everybody I’ve worked
with. But it’s good to mix it up. If
somebody’s right for the part — I’ve worked
with them? Fine. Haven’t? Fine.
Having a life with Helena Bonham Carter,
do you have to be more careful about how
you use her in your films?
The great thing about her is that, long
before I met her, she had a full career.
She’s also willing to do things that
aren’t necessarily glamorous or attractive
[Laughs], and I admire her for
that. We’ve learned how to leave things
at home, make it more of a sanctuary.
But I probably take a slight, extra moment ➤
56
to think about it. On “Sweeney Todd” it
was quite rough. Nobody was a singer, so
I looked at lots of people. Everybody had
to audition for it; she did as well. That one
was a struggle, because I felt like, jeez, there’s
a lot of great singers, and it’s going to
look like I gave this one to my girlfriend.
She really went through an extra process.
In your last couple of movies you’ve burned
her to a crisp, you’ve dumped her at the
bottom of the ocean ——
I know. But she’s getting it on other movies.
She’s being burned up alive a lot
lately, or she’s getting set on fire quite a
lot. Again, I’ve set another trend.
Phantom of the Adaptation
Your “Planet of the Apes” remake introduced
you to Helena, but was it otherwise a
professional low for you?
Yeah. I’ve tried to learn my lesson. It usually
happens on bigger-budget movies.
You go into it, and there’s something
about it I like, the studio wants to do it.
Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, center,
and Anne Hathaway in “Alice in
Wonderland” (2010)
But the budget’s not set and the script’s
not set. So you’ve got this moving train.
You’re working on it, and you’re cutting
this because the budget’s too big, and you
feel like an accountant. It’s certainly perceived
as one of my least successful films.
But at the same time I met with and worked
with a lot of people that I loved.
Will you ever explain its ending?
I had it all worked out. But it’s my own
private thing. Someday we’ll go take
some LSD and we’ll talk about it.
Your recent films, like “Sweeney Todd,”
“Alice in Wonderland” and “Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory,“ have all in some way
been based on existing properties.
I’ve heard that, but a lot of things are, in
a way. Even “Alice,” there’s a book, there’s
lots of different versions. But there was
no movie I would look to and go, “Ooh,
we’re going to have to top that ‘Alice.’ ”
Is it harder to put your personal stamp
on something you didn’t create from the
ground up?
For me, no. It may be perceived that
way, but I have to personalize everything,
whether or not it comes from me.
If I were to cherry-pick things, even “Ed
Wood” was based on a book, it’s based
on a person. “Sweeney Todd” is one of
my more personal movies, because the
Sweeney Todd character is a character I
completely related to. Even in “Planet of
the Apes” there are things I have to relate
to, otherwise I just can’t do it. “Frankenweenie”
is a bit more pure that way.
But you could argue it’s based on a short
which is based on lots of other movies.
Burtonesque, Burtonesque!
Is it a danger when you have a style that’s
so distinctive it becomes boilerplate and
imitated?
It does bother me a bit. People thought
I made “Coraline.” Henry [Selick, who
directed “Coraline” and “The Nightmare
Before Christmas“] is a great filmmaker,
but when they say something, they
should have to say the person’s name.
“From the producer of „ — well, there’s
eight producers. It’s slightly misleading.
Not slightly, it’s very misleading,
and that’s not fair to the consumer.
Have the courage to go out under your
own name. But I don’t have any control
over that, and it’s not going to make me
change. I can’t change my personality.
Sometimes I wish I could, but I can’t.
Do you think that overfamiliarity might
have been a problem with “Dark Shadows,”
that people saw it was you, and
Johnny, and monsters, and they thought,
“I’ve seen this before”?
Even the fact that it was deemed a failure
— financially, it wasn’t really. It
may not have set the world on fire, but
it made its money back plus some, so I
can tick that off as not being a total disaster.
There’s some people that I talk to
that liked it. “Alice” got critically panned.
It made over a billion, I guess, whatever.
“Ed Wood” got a lot of critical
acclaim, it was a complete bomb. It all
has a weird way of balancing itself out.
When you’ve had your own retrospective
at the Museum of Modern Art, do you feel
bulletproof after that?
That was surreal. A lot of people
thought I manufactured that, which I
didn’t. They came to me and I was actually
quite freaked out about it. To me,
it was all private. It was never meant
as, like, great art. It’s like hanging your
laundry on the wall. “Oh, look, there’s
his dirty socks and underwear.” But with
the curators I felt I was in good hands,
and they were just presenting it like,
this is his process, this is what he does.
CAESAR 07/2020
57
This may seem strange to ask someone with
many years of work still ahead, but what
would you want your legacy to be?
What do I want on my gravestone?
It sounds like something you’ve thought
about.
I do. I think it’s wise to plan ahead. Start
early — plan your funeral now. It’s not a
morbid thought. If you want something to
happen in a certain way, especially the last
thing, you might as well.
The thing that I care about most — that
you did something that really had an impact
on them. People come up on the street,
and they have a “Nightmare” tattoo, or little
girls saying they love “Sweeney Todd,”
and you’re like, “How were you able to see
it?” Or you see people, especially around
Halloween, dressed up in costume, as Corpse
Bride or the Mad Hatter or Sally. It’s
not critics, it’s not box office. Things that
you know are connecting with real people.
Is there something unrepentantly crowdpleasing
that you’ll admit to enjoying? Now
that “Downton Abbey” is back on in Britain,
will you watch it?
No. Helena, that’s more her kind of
thing. That one I don’t quite get. To me
that’s like getting a morphine injection
on a Sunday night. And that can have its
positives. But not my cup of tea. There’s
shows like “MasterChef,” which I cry at. I
don’t know why. I find it quite emotional
when they cook something, and it doesn’t
work out. Movies, I can’t quite think of,
but especially if I’m on an airplane — I
don’t know why, maybe because you constantly
think you’re going to die — I find
every movie, I cry if I watch it on a plane.
I had that reaction to “Love Actually.”
[Draws a breath.] Ooh, no, no. I saw that
with Helena, and I’ll never forget the ad
campaign on that one. It was like, “If you
don’t love this movie, there’s something
wrong with you.” And we saw it, and we
got into a fight and argued all the way
home. It was the same with “Mamma
Mia!” For a feel-good movie, I’ve never
been so depressed.
Photos: Walt Disney Pictures; Steve Forrest
by Dave Itzkoff
Dave Itzkoff is a culture reporter for The New York
Times who writes frequently about film, television
and comedy.
58
SOURCES
Go Inside the Peculiar World of Tim Burton:
https://parade.com/509732/willlawrence/the-peculiar-world-of-tim-burton/
The Artist before the Filmmaker:
https://the-artifice.com/art-tim-burton/
Facts:
https://www.uselessdaily.com/movies/tim-burton-trivia-57-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-director/
See how „Beetlejuice“ Designers built a habitat for Demons:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/theater/beetlejuice-broadway-set-design.html
Miss Peregrine and Tim Burton:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/movies/tim-burton-interview-miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiarchildren.html
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1562019/the-hilarious-reason-tim-burton-had-to-cameo-in-missperegrine
The Creators of the „Beetlejuice“ musical tried to run towards Burton visually:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/the-creators-of-the-beetlejuice-musical-tried-to-run-toward-burton-visually/2018/10/25/14a7a6aa-d623-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.
html
An Analysis of Art and Design:
https://scene360.com/art/75828/tim-burton-film-analysis/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Depp
Masters of Color:
https://the-artifice.com/dark-light-and-color-in-tim-burtons-films/
https://graduateway.com/tim-burton-cinematic-techniques/
https://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2010/01/04/masters-of-color-tim-burton
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099487/plotsummary
https://kbr08.weebly.com/film-explorer/colors-in-beetlejuice
Tim Burton at Home in his own head:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/movies/tim-burton-at-home-in-his-own-head.html
CAESAR 07/2020
Photos: Leah Gallo