The Tim Burton Discussion Thread

Burton is great! I love Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow, and Nightmare Before Christmas...
Some parts of his films make me think of Surrealist paintings, like Dali's The Persistance of Memory, or Kriegelstein's REM.

 

mastadge,

you have to see ed wood and pee wee! here's why.
martin landau was amazing. he really deserved that oscar 100%. the second reason isjohnny depp. i'm a fan of his becuse, although he is super good looking he dosn't take pretty-boy roles like tom cruise or someone like that. depp actually acts! thirdly, bill murray - need i say more?

ahh pee wee. my favorite scene is when he and a woman are ina dinosuar talking. she tells him of her dreams but that she's afraid. pee wee looks her in the eye and says, "simone, everyone has a big but. let's talk about your big but simone". her boyfrined, a huge guy, overhears this and begins to chace pee wee. how did he ever say that line with a straight face. its too funny, wonderfully silly!

 

thirdly, bill murray - need i say more?

"goodbye, penis!"

almost everyone in that movie turns in Oscar-level performances, but Murray gets to ham it up to just absurd degrees while maintaining his placid, prissy demeanor. i love it. the scene at the wrap party for Bride of the Atom where he's explaining how he got rescued by the mariachi band is just completely priceless. i always end up laughing until i hurt myself at that.

"Mexico...was... a disaster."

and there's always:

"I'd like to hear him call Boris Karloff a [expletive]"

Ed Wood is my pick for best Tim Burton movie by leaps and bounds. one of my favorite movies ever.

 

exchanges of this type are also make ed wood the classic that it is.

Ed: yes and we even have Bela Lugosi.
Producer: i thought he was dead?
Ed: no he's very much alive and starring in my new movie.

i swear this has to happen at least 3 times in the movie!

and let's not forget that sarah jessica parker is refered to as "horse face".

 

I wish Tim would do more with his website.
It just SITS there. It's at timburton.com

With all the great stuff he's done, both with his movies and his artwork it could be a fantastic site.

Wake up Tim! Get the hair out of your eyes!

 

...another Burton fan chiming in..

Awesome thread!


My favourite Burton flick is, by far, "Edward Scissorhands"..

"Ed Wood" is one of those movies that gets funnier everytime you watch it..

"Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" is a pseudo-classic.. ("It was 10 years ago... On a night not unlike this one....")


"Planet of the Apes" was my least favourite Burton movie, although i disagree that it didn't 'look' Burton.. (The dark lighting.. The bizarre gothic-touches to the set and costume designs.. I dunno, it 'felt' like a Burton movie, visually.. It was just crappily-written)


How many of you people have picked up Burton's book of poetry, "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy"? Some really interesting, disturbing stuff in there.....



Edit: Oh yeah, as for "Mars Attacks!": I enjoyed it.. It definitely isn't for ALL tastes, but c'mon! How can you not find aliens who's heads explode to the stylings of Slim Whitman funny? )

 

Today is Tim Burton's 43rd birthday.

I wonder what the cake looks like.
Probably no perpendicular lines, LOL

 

I read Big Fish while I was on vacation. Superb material for a Burton flick.

 

Welcome back Carter!

Could you give us some idea as to how the story unfolds without overtly spoiling it? Thanks.

~PAd

 

I can only assume you're referring to me, but. . .my name is not Carter.

Anyway, Big Fish is about a Father from the point of view of his son. It's not really a story so much as a collection of anecdotes about his father's life, in roughly chronological order, interspersed with looks at his Father's death. You see, his father always wanted to be a Great Man, the Big Fish, and all the stories are so much larger than life, so funny and yet so tragic. Here's the opening:

On one of our last car trips, near the end of my father's life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree.

After a couple of minutes my father took off his shoes and his socks and placed his feet in the clear-running water, and he looked at them there. Then he closed his eyes and smiled. I hadn't seen him smile like that in a while.

Suddenly he took a deep breath and said, "This reminds me."

And then he stopped, and thought some more. Things came slow for him then if they ever came at all, and I guessed he was thinking of some joke to tell, because he always had some joke to tell. Or he might tell me a story that would celebrate his adventurous and heroic life. And I wondered, What does this remind him of? Does it remind him of the duck in the hardware store? The horse in the bar? The boy who was knee-high to a grasshopper? Did it remind him of the dinosaur egg he found one day, then lost, or the country he once ruled for the better part of a week?

"This reminds me," he said, "of when I was a boy."

I looked at this old man, my old man with his old white feet in this clear-running stream, these moments among the very last in his life, and I thought of him suddenly, and simply, as a boy, a child, a youth, with his whole life ahead of him, much as mine was ahead of me. I'd never done that before. And this images--the now and then of my father--converged, and at that moment he turned into a weird creature, wild, concurrently young and old, dying and newborn.

My father became a myth.

The book is about the relationship between fathers and sons, and although it's very short it's both very funny and very touching. Worth reading if you can find it.

 

I can't wait for Tim Burton's next film.

 

Mastadge, yes I was refering to you and welcoming you back while making an allusion to an old t.v. show called "Welcome Back, Carter." Sorry for the confusion.

Anyway, thanks for the details, it sounds like a great project for Tim, also a bit of a depature.

~PAd

 

Kotter. Kotter!

For the love of God,
the name of that old TV show
was WELCOME BACK KOTTER,

NOT Carter!

This was driving me insane.

 

This news came out Friday! It was originally in the New York Post. I found it at ananova.com

TIM BURTON SET TO DIRECT STAGE MUSICAL BATMAN

"Tim Burton is to direct a musical stage version of Batman.

Burton has directed two of the Batman movies.

Jim Steinman, who has worked with the likes of Meat Loaf, is to compose the music for the show.

He told www.nypost.com Burton "has already got a list of 20 designers from all over the world he wants to talk to about the production."

Burton will begin working on the musical full-time next year and it is expected to arrive on Broadway in 2005.

In addition to Batman and Robin, the musical will feature the characters The Joker and Cat Woman."


It should be interesting to see Tim bring his talents to Broadway and live musical theatre. Does anyone know if Burton has ever directed for the stage before?

 

Now I'm wondering, who will Tim cast in this musical? He's got at least six parts to consider and I'm guessing they'll have to be able to sing.

BATMAN
ROBIN
ALFRED
THE JOKER
CATWOMAN
COMMISSIONER GORDON

 

I'm curious if Tim will use any of the actors from the BATMAN movies in the Broadway musical.

 

Why didn't he use Elfman to write the music for the Batman musical?
Steinman is a bit of a dinosaur now and Elfman did a fantastic job for The Nightmare before Xmas.

 

That's an excellent question. I think Elfman is fantastic.

I think Steinman was already working on the project before Burton joined it, so that may be why Elfman is not involved.

 

I'm really surprised this thread hasn't generated a lot more discussion. Tim Burton moving to Broadway to direct a major musical based on his own films is a HUGE CAREER MOVE and very gutsy considering he's never directed live theatre before.

 

I'd like to see Burton interviewed by James Lipton on the Actor's Studio on Bravo.

So Tim, I've always wanted to gush to you what a monumental achievement you scored in
Pee Wee's Big Adventure!

So Tim, exactly what prompted you to make Beetlejuice such a revolting, over-sexed wicked character? Why does Edward have Scissors for hands? Why doesn't most of Jack Nicholson's dialogue as the Joker in Batman make no sense? Why did you choose to make a film about the world's worst director? Who developed the language for the aliens in Mars Attacks! Why didn't your signature style show up in Planet of the Apes? Was it kidnapped and taken to the Planet of Controlling Movie Executives?

EXTRAORDINARY!!!!!

 

So Tim, I've always wanted to gush to you what a monumental achievement you scored in Pee Wee's Big Adventure!

I thought Elfman scored that! [face_shocked]

Why does Edward have Scissors for hands?

Perhaps Tim's most personal film, it was to tackle the idea of someone who loved to create but in the midst of society could only destroy. The scissors are the outward manifestation of his inner character.

Why doesn't most of Jack Nicholson's dialogue as the Joker in Batman make no sense?

If I remember correctly, Jack improvised a bit, and knowing the wako the Jack is, he really got into the Jokers mind!

Why didn't your signature style show up in Planet of the Apes?

It's there, but you have to look for it. It's not Nightmare Before Christmas head on, more like, how would an alien or even apeish Tim interpret this? I sure hope he doesn't make a sequel...

~PAd

 

why doesn't most of the Joker's dialogue make no sense?

Therefore, if it does not make no sense, then it does make sense, correct?

 

Rogue, you caught me. I put "doesn't" when I should have put "does" and I caught it AFTER the editing function expired.