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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