Hollywood film director Tim Burton.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
“LEAVE ME ALONE, DAMN!”
One of Burton’s early masterpieces was called Edward Scissorhands. It was a story about a man artificially created by a brilliant scientist; instead of hands, he really had huge scissors, with which he could skillfully cut grass and comb women’s hair. It was “Edward” who first proved to everyone how talented actor Johnny Depp was (at that time he was the star of the TV series; later he became a close friend of Burton and starred in many of his films). . It was also partly autobiographical.
Tim grew up in Burbank; Hollywood was not far from him, and yet Burbank was still a typical provincial town, like the one where the action of “Edward” takes place. Tim had a few friends as a child, but he grew up quite lonely and immersed in fantasies, “as if he spread an aura around him: “Leave me alone, damn it!” And, like Edward, at Christmas and Halloween he decorated the houses of his neighbors, though not with tree sculptures, but with various drawings. Tim really liked to draw (but at the same time he didn’t like to read at all) and most of all he loved old horror movies. He wasn’t afraid of what was going on in them, but he was fascinated. In an interview with his biographer Mark Salisbury, Burton recalled that he particularly enjoyed The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, “where a man’s arm is torn off and he hits the wall on a bloody stump before dying, his head resting on a plate.” . and laughing at him.”
And while he was still at school, together with his friends he began to shoot the first puppet cartoons, terribly clumsy and unprofessional, but made with real inspiration. And at 18 he went to study at the California School of the Arts, founded by Walt Disney. Then he was taken to the Walt Disney studio of the same name to work as an animator, but nothing worked out: the cartoon was about funny foxes, and Burton’s animals looked like they were hit by a car. After much torment, he was given several tens of thousands of dollars by kind people for an animated short film “Vincent,” about a boy who adored horror movie star Vincent Price (and at the same time looked a lot like Tim himself). . Then there was a remake of “Hansel and Gretel” by the Grimm brothers in a Japanese spirit, then “Frankenweenie” – another short film, a variation on the theme of “Frankenstein”, but with a dog in the center of the plot. What to do with these Burton works, the studio didn’t really understand. But Frankenweenie was noticed by comedian Paul Reubens, fascinated, and gave Burton the opportunity to make the first feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure…
HEADS WITH SHOULDERS!
“I don’t understand how I became a director; I just got really lucky,” Burton later admitted. But just a few years after The Great Adventure came out, he was on the set of Batman, a big-budget comic book movie that he made into his own unique auteur project. He insisted on starring as Michael Keaton and didn’t care about 50,000 protest letters sent to Warner Bros. enraged Man-Bat fans (Keaton was considered a comedian, it was hard to imagine him as a superhero). Only the appointment of Jack Nicholson for the role of the Joker calmed the outrage of the fans: all agreed that at least this candidacy is ideal. And Nicholson himself helped Burton a lot on the set: he was deprived of star sickness and arrogance, he did not treat the young man with contempt.
Michael Keaton was perceived as a comedic actor and at first not everyone liked Burton’s choice.
Photo from: EASTERN NEWS
The enchanting “Batman” with its menacing dark streets and giant cave under a gothic mansion, with incredible music by Danny Elfman and plenty of dark humor, became one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. The sequel, Batman Returns, it turned out to be five times darker and more inventive, it was already the purest art of cinema, almost an art house with a huge budget. The villains, Penguin (Danny DeVito) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), operate without any clear plan and without understanding why they were born into the world in the first place. They are driven by anger and grief so intense that they are rarely seen in Hollywood movies. McDonald’s, which began selling Batman figure breakfasts, cut back on this entire campaign; they were horrified that the film turned out to be, in the words of one critic, “a vile nihilistic nightmare.” The studio did not allow Burton to direct the third Batman film; it was directed by Joel Schumacher… But today you watch Batman Returns as you walk through the museum, and all the works in this museum are generated by one’s fantasy. brilliant man, Tim Burton.
Burton on the set of Batman, 1989
Photo from: EASTERN NEWS
Almost all of his films later became a great event. For example, the charming and macabre comedy “Mars Attacks!” based on cards issued in the early 60’s (the cards were creepy, the martians were real sadists to the terrestrial population there, but Burton greatly lightened the mood of this story). “Sleepy Hollow”, by contrast, was filmed based on a light humor Washington Irving story, and in Burton’s version it became a terrible story with a natural Headless Horseman, lopping off everyone’s heads in a row. .. His The bloodiest story was “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet-Street”, the tragedy of the avenger, in which Johnny Depp slit the throats of ordinary Londoners, and his girlfriend (Helena Bonham Carter) baked pies from his meat. Even in the almost childish “Alice in Wonderland” there were severed heads: the Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Carter, did not favor her subjects.
Burton with Johnny Depp on the set of Sweeney Todd: The Devil Barber of Fleet Street.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
FALL IN LOVE WITH A GIRL WHO WATCHES A UFO WITH HER
By the way, Helena Bonham Carter, who was filming with Burton on Sweeney Todd, was already her lifelong friend. They met in the early 2000s while working together on Planet of the Apes. Before that, Burton was married to German artist Lena Gieseke and later had an affair with actress Lisa Marie (they reportedly fell in love when they saw UFOs circling in the California sky together). But it was Helena who gave birth to two children, a son and a daughter. Johnny Depp, speaking of his children (and Burton’s son became his godson), recalled: “Who would have thought that our children would spend time together on playgrounds: swings, share toy cars, toy monsters, even Would you risk getting chickenpox from a friend? Of a friend? I couldn’t even imagine this part of my life. Seeing Tim as a happy father is enough to make me burst into uncontrollable tears. As almost always, Tim’s feelings are easy to read in his eyes. They had shone before, without a doubt, those worried, sad, tired eyes, always radiating light. But now old Tim’s eyes have turned into real lasers!
Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter in 2010.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
And yet, in 2014, Tim and Helena divorced (they used this very word, although they were never formally married). He met a new girlfriend recently, in October 2022, the famous actress Monica Bellucci became her. They confirmed the novel just six months ago. February 2023. Monica said in an interview with Elle magazine: “This is one of those meetings that rarely happens in life… I know this man, I love him, and now another adventure will begin: I will meet him as a director. “
Except that Burton is currently filming the sequel to another of those movies that once made him famous: Beetlejuice (1988). In it, in addition to Bellucci, Winona Ryder will appear again, and also Michael Keaton in the role of a “bioexorcist”, who helps the ghosts of recently deceased people to scare the living, those who occupied the apartments and mansions that were left. empty after the death of the former owners. A typical Burtonian fantasy and, of course, the director’s fans cross their fingers that he succeeds this time as well.
Tim Burton: “I don’t understand how I got to be a director, I’m just so lucky.”
Photo from: EASTERN NEWS
BY THE WAY
After “Batman” he was able to shoot “Superman”
Tim Burton, like many great Hollywood directors, is full of unfulfilled projects. For example, he seriously considered directing Catwoman with Michelle Pfeiffer. The heroine after the events of “Batman Returns” had to lose her memory and go on vacation to the city of Oasis City, similar to Las Vegas for superheroes. But the project ultimately failed. Burton could also stage The Addams Family (he didn’t stage it because he was working on the second Batman), Jurassic Park (the rights to Michael Crichton’s novel were bought by another studio and he ceded the project to Steven Spielberg), The fall of Edgar Allan Poe’s House of Usher (he chose to shoot Mars Attacks!), Hugo’s Notre Dame, Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent, The Monsterpocalypse about giant kaiju sea monsters (the project was canceled because Guillermo del Toro went ahead with a competitive film about the same theme “Rim of the Pacific”). The most annoying thing was that Superman Lives! it was cancelled. A comic book adaptation starring Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel. In the late ’90s, Burton threatened him with a year of his life, even finding locations to shoot, but Warner Bros. demanded a rewrite of the script, and Burton fell out with the producers. Cage appears as Superman in the recent movie The Flash.
