By Alex Hudson
August 6, 2003
Precious few directors rise above the Hollywood formulae and show us unseen worlds. Worlds that are extensions of their experience and personality. Fewer still can populate their worlds with characters who make us feel and make us care.
Time and again, Tim Burton has created startlingly distinctive movie worlds and filled his worlds with distinctly startling characters.
Brooding Superhero
Of all these characters, none reveals the unmistakable qualities of the Burton hero as memorably as Batman. Though the creation of DC Comics and Bob Kane, Batman possesses the defining characteristics of the Burton hero: obsessive determination, physical oddity, and social introversion. So, too, does Batman’s realm, Gotham City, reveal the ideal Tim Burton universe.
"Hell had erupted through the sidewalks" describes Gotham City in Sam Hamm’s Batman script. Burton delivers, creating an amalgamation of cinematic cityscapes from Lang’s Metropolis to Vidor’s The Crowd. Burton’s retro-future Gotham City is oppressive, dark, and vice-filled; the perfect playground for the most complex of the superheroes.
Entrusted with the blueprints for a blockbuster, a then-sizable $35 million budget, and the responsibility to honor a cultural icon, Burton returned a bleak but memorable vision of Gotham City and the Dark Knight that would make over $400 million worldwide.
Bike Riding Man-Child
Pee-wee Herman, of all people, cast the eccentric mold of the Burton archetype. His outsider plagued by stunted adolescence but blessed with a pure soul established the strange breed of Burton protagonist. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure would herald the arrival of Tim Burton in an oversized, over-colored calling card impossible to ignore.
Burton constructs Pee-wee’s world as he constructed Gotham City, down to the smallest detail for his hero to lose himself in. Pee-wee obsesses over finding his stolen bike - his beloved Red Racer - spending the duration of the movie on a zany, sometimes charming search. Wearing his red bow tie and gray suit always, Pee-wee’s physical differentness, obsessive determination - his search for his bike leads him halfway across the country - and social unawareness mold the Burton outsider.
That these traits bear resemblance to Burton is no fluke; his characters reflect upon him and incrementally reveal layers of his persona in an ever-expanding cinematic self-portrait. To understand Burton’s characters, then, is to understand Tim Burton. Outwardly, Burton’s heroes are all physically marked. They stand out by their marking just as Burton, black clad with trademark mussed hair, is instantly recognizable. Inwardly, his characters are introverted, not unlike Burton the child of suburbia who felt the sting of alienation early. He retreated within himself, honing his drawing and adoring monster movies, sympathizing with the monsters more than the heroes.
Burton pursued both loves at once, winning a fellowship with Disney, where he would eventually become an animator. He worked on The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron but his talents were mostly wasted as his darker-than-dark animations clashed with the pristine beauty of the Disney aesthetic. Aware that he didn’t belong but mindful of his ability, Disney allowed Burton to make two short films. Vincent, an animated ode to his idol Vincent Price, and Frankenweenie, a live-action children's film, impressed Paul Reubens (Pee-wee) and Warner Bros enough to land Burton his directorial debut.
Haunting Ghoul
Beetlejuice, Burton’s follow-up to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, is a movie unlike other movies. Essentially a talent show for Burton’s creativity, Beetlejuice glimpses a playfully frightful afterlife. Burton turns the morbid story of the death of a young couple into a dark comedy with his good nature preventing the movie from ever becoming grim. Rather, a subtle poignancy shrouds the doomed ghost couple as they try but fail to rid their home of its new inhabitants.
From the stop-motion animation to the set design, it’s impossible to imagine Beetlejuice made by any other filmmaker. Utterly characteristic of Burton’s artistic sensibility, the creative impulse behind every decision is stamped by Burton’s imprint with no decision more important than the inspired casting of Michael Keaton as the eponymous bio-exorcist with a malevolent streak. Keaton’s off-the-wall improvisations lend the film its unforgettable allure. So enamored with Keaton’s outlandish antics as Beetlejuice, Burton insisted on Michael Keaton being his Batman, despite studio and fan reservations.
Cross-dressing B-Moviemaker
With success of every kind fueling his rapid ascent, Tim Burton had the freedom to make any movie he wanted. He chose to make a movie about "The Worst Filmmaker of All Time." Between 1953 and 1971, Edward D. Wood Jr. somehow directed a string of movies noteworthy only for their inappropriate use of stock footage, lack of production value, inept acting and general badness.
But Ed Wood loved movies and loved making movies. Burton connects on this basic level, telling his film about filmmaking in a matter of fact way, extolling Wood’s good-hearted earnestness without ridiculing his incompetence. Again with pinpoint accuracy in casting, Burton relied on Johnny Depp to bring warmth and unintentional humor to the wonderful maker of bad cinema. Depp proves more than capable, exuding pathos as the go-getter dreamer in a deceptively affecting performance.
Loving tribute to Wood, cinema, the craft of filmmaking, and determination, Ed Wood reveals the inherent tenderness of Tim Burton. Nonjudgmental towards the cross-dressing, aesthetically challenged director of legendary bad movies such as Plan 9 From Outer Space and Bride of the Monster, Burton instead finds kinship in the memory of his fellow filmmaker, horror movie lover, and outsider.
Landscaping Android
At the heart of Ed Wood was the relationship between director (Wood) and actor (Bela Lugosi). Burton drew upon his own friendship with Vincent Price for inspiration. Burton’s adoration for Price, the noblest of screen icons, materialized in his most personal film, Edward Scissorhands.
Edward is a cinematic stand-in for Tim Burton. Both men make art with their hands/scissors. Both men were cast asunder in suburbia. Both men wear their oddity. Vincent Price, as the inventor, creates Edward just as Price’s art had sparked a young Tim Burton. A character is as sympathetic as his suffering, and Edward suffers more than any of Burton’s oddball outsiders. Used then discarded, the goodness of Edward entices exploitation. Brilliantly played by Johnny Depp, the sympathetic Edward embodies the truest virtues of Tim Burton and the inevitable fate of his heroes.
Johnny Depp and Tim Burton would blossom together as artists. Before our eyes, the raw and unformed talents of Depp and Burton would symbiotically coalesce into an artistic nirvana of indescribable depth yet altogether graspable emotion. Each man found in the other a kindred soul understanding of not being understood.
Burton had saved Depp from a fate of teenybopper stardom. Depp, in return, gave Burton’s outsiders their angelic face and pure soul. Depp’s portrayal of Edward is especially moving as he latches onto Edward’s childlike innocence, bringing a purity and poignancy to the unfinished son of a lonely creator.
Beautiful Monsters
As if cast out of the heavens, Burton’s heroes plunge to unforgiving worlds of conformity. Pure in heart, they must suffer for their oddity. Without fail, these forsaken outcasts, these beautiful monsters meet equal fates of rejection, hurt and ultimately exiled to their towers of loneliness.
Edward. Ed Wood. Pee-wee. Batman. None quite human yet all ridiculously human. Burton makes us care about these people because he cares. Because in them he can hold up a mirror and reflect the artistry that lives within him and the compassion that lives within us.
View other columns by Alex Hudson
