Original subtitles

We're all afraid of death, but it's a fact of life.

There are millions of cemeteries. We're all going to end up in one form or

another. So it's kind of facing the truth and facing the reality and not

to pretend that it's not there.

The poetry of the dark side, the poetry of death and darkness was appealing to

Tim. He's drawn to the darkness, but what he finds in darkness is just... So

much poignancy and so much light.

Him as a disruptor, as an artist.

Having fun with a ghost. Having fun with a cemetery.

Having your female character be covered in scars.

He's poking at our cultural norms.

There is a lightness and a humor to it.

But at the same time, he's facing the truth.

The sadness, that intense emotion that goes along with death and darkness and

cemeteries, there's an elegance to it in terms of the value of life.

And that's why it's repeated in all his films.

It's fundamental to him as an artist.

He had a pet raccoon, Bonnie.

She was one of his first pets.

Bonnie was really, really mischievous, would turn the lights off when he was

doing his homework, and then he'd turn the lights on and then realize that

Bonnie peed on his homework.

And then one day, she put her little paw on his shoulder and then the other

shoulder and then gave him a kiss.

Practically snog, I think.

And then disappeared out the window and then went to the cemetery and...

He never saw her again.

He was one of his early loves. He was a pet raccoon.

I've heard Tim say every kid can be a fantastic artist because it's so pure.

They haven't learned yet to censor themselves or hold themselves back.

They have an idea they want to get down, and they just kind of go for it.

It's for Tim, his own style of working.

The feeling that he gets, the emotional response that he gets, it's no different

from any kid.

The part of being talented is to commit to that talent.

As earthlings, we get socialized and conventionalized and we abandon our

talents. But the really talented children commit to a life that is his

her own.

His authenticity is why he's gone so far.

He's from Burbank, California.

It's pretty slow there, and there's nothing to do.

He called it suburban hell. We had to create a place that he felt happy in.

I mean, thank God he was there, because then maybe he wouldn't have created

everything else for us.

The adult or grown -up decision that you have to make is whether

he follows his... that he's made as a child.

He had to be who he is.

When we were at Disney, they had screening rooms, and Tim and I could

any film that we wanted.

Tim would get Destroy All Monsters and all these Japanese monster movies,

television shows, like Dark Shadows.

It was an education for me because I had kind of steered clear of what in my

snobby way I thought of as kind of schlock.

Helping him in his grotesque work that he claims is for science.

And I could sort of appreciate it now through Tim's eyes. He had a deep and

genuine and abiding love for things that I would have not considered to be

necessarily great art, but then I could start to see what he loved about them.

Somehow he was able to keep that youthful exuberance and the naive

quality of his own work and the purity intact.

As you get older, it makes sense to be cognizant of mortality.

If you said, for the rest of your life, what do you want to do? There's not a

question. If he could do everything to stop motion, that would be a hit.

He loves, loves, loves that stuff.

In the animated movies, you get more of his extraordinary graphic

craftsmanship. His control over the image is even more

thorough and more comprehensive.

He can design the whole character rather than being tied down by the physiognomy

of an actor.

live action movies, animated movies.

I think in his mind he doesn't make that big of a difference between the two.

You can blur the difference and you start seeing real people like drawn

and drawn people like real people.

Stop motion animation has been in his veins since a child.

He grew up watching Ray Harryhausen films.

He really connected to the articulation of the stop -motion animated characters,

and he loved the tactileness of being able to manipulate these puppets.

There is a high that you get from working in stop -motion because you are

literally breathing life into inanimate objects.

His dog characters are all evocative of the spirit of dogs that he has loved.

He loved Pepe, so when Pepe passed, it really left a lasting impression on Tim.

I thought you were gone.

And it's resonated through his works.

I never want to leave you.

Sparky is the main character in Frankenweenie. In 1984, Tim directed the

-action short.

But he had always wanted to make it into a stop -motion animated film, and he

finally had the opportunity to do that in 2012.

We talked a lot about why to make a feature -length movie after the short,

because the short was so wonderful.

He wanted more performance from the dog that you couldn't get from a real dog.

Animation just has that way of hitting that emotional heart of a performance.

On the corpse part, we often were told it looked like CG because it was so

smooth, but that wasn't what we were going for. So on Frankenweenie, we

made an effort to put a little bit of that stop -motion -ness back in.

The texturing was a little rougher. The performances were a little less

polished.

There are things that Tim wanted to have that are evocative of his memory and of

his youth.

His mother had a cat shop in Burbank, so why wasn't he interested in cats? It

could be because he associated it with his mother. I don't know.

He's loved to hate cats, I think, all his life.

He called me a cat without the tail.

I think he has a secret admiration for cats, but he's terrified of them. Cats

are like, you know, they could take or leave you unless you're opening up a can

of food for them. Dogs are just all about loving you.

Rick was our production designer.

He knew Tim, obviously, back in the day, and so he knew of his life in Burbank.

It was really fun trying to recreate a stylized version of their memory.

Tim really enjoyed the stucco houses and the lawns.

There's a little bit of that, there was your hands element to it that was really

fun. The 1950s, 60s, the grapes on the table.

Flifting ideas.

What was a meal in the 50s like fondue?

He loved the little tiny props.

It's magic that these artists can do it.

You need to be a chemist to know what materials will work, what can handle

people touching them.

You need to be a painter.

You have to be a costumer to know about fabrics and about sewing.

It is so many different disciplines that you need to have just mind -boggling.

The puppets are like actors.

You've got to pamper them and do their hair and makeup.

Sparky was a tough puppet because he was so tiny and lots of moving parts, just

really complicated.

There was a puppet hospital.

Sometimes an arm will break and someone has to... Fix it in the middle of a

shot.

It's a level of genius that McKinnon and Saunders possess, and like him, they

treat stop motion as a revered art form, one frame at a time.

He wanted to build out the school, Victor's world, and put those horror

icons in the other kids.

It recalls all of his early influences.

the universal horror monster catalog and he was able to expand the universe and

the stories frankenweenie is the manifestation of frankenstein the

monster with the heart of gold that people judge without knowing the

their heart their simplicity and innocence it's such

a perfect embodiment of that in this adorable little dog

The creature, he's struggling with things.

He's misunderstood.

He just can't communicate it. And people are judging him by the way he looks.

But then there's Victor.

Sorry, boy.

And the innocence of that love.

They may not understand. The short, the accident happens right at the beginning.

Whereas in our movie, he wanted to see this relationship before the accident.

You are in love with this dog and you're in love with this relationship. Easy,

boy. We're relating to it and leaning into it.

It is a sucker punch.

Your heart break.

He'll always be there for you. It is so hard seeing that horrible and abject

grief in a little child.

I want him here with me.

Oh boy, it's hard to even talk about Frankenweenie.

I had just lost my dog, the dog very close to my heart.

I don't want to get teary -eyed here on camera.

What would I do to bring that dog back?

Anything. Tim really tapped into what is very special about this Frankenstein

story.

A man's desire to fly in the face of death.

It's such a visceral desire that you can understand as a kid him feeling, and

then being able to transform that into sublime art is Tim's genius.

He sees the person in the dog, and he sees the dog in the person.

You're a liar!

Did you believe it? You're a liar!

His personality assists his art, and not the other way around.

That's exactly what a real artist does.

The Killers sent a song they wanted him to think about directing. He listened to

it, was like, I love this, I'm in.

We did Bones, Array, Harryhausen, Homage, and Stop Motion.

And then they did a song for Dark Shadows.

And the one with Winona.

Stepping out of the big Hollywood movie to go do this little pet project, we

just pulled together artisans and collected the people that we know to

He sent me this great old movie called Mad Love.

Years earlier, he'd walked into one of those, like, Madame

Trousseau. Like, that mannequin was real.

They had made that of me.

And that was in a museum. It's somewhere in England.

I flew to London and I went straight from the airport to his house.

And we were just like, you know, like talked for hours. He gave me a very

general idea.

I have that thing with him where he can do no wrong.

I got on the wheel for him. I'm like, only for you.

And then they played Tim's opening of his art exhibit in Vegas. This is your

long shot to ask this masterful person if he wanted to make a music video for

us. And you don't think he's going to say yes? He's very loyal to the art that

he embraces and the artists that he embraces as well.

He's very familiar with Las Vegas, and he has a similar romantic vision of old

Las Vegas that we share. He used to go there when he was a kid, and he loved

old neon.

Coincidentally, Tim was there for the implosion of the landmark.

They had multiple cameras on it, and it worked for Mars attacks.

I remember Tim explaining it like the dying of a dinosaur.

Maybe it's not worth mourning to some people that we've lost that stuff, but

some people it is. And Tim is one of those people, and we are some of those

people.

There's a huge continuity in Tim's work.

We shot.

Mars attacks at the neon graveyard, and then Tim did a little art show there.

He's like a creative machine.

It's all through this sort of very original soul.

It's like he's stimulated into getting another idea, sketching.

He has a shirt, pocket, stain, pen, pad.

It was like, receive, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw.

Tim's origin is in draftsmanship.

Drawings of his are extraordinary to a degree where really your eyes pop open.

There's one drawing, it's a woman in a fur coat.

That fur coat is drawn in a graphic masterful way that is really

extraordinary.

When I first started working for Tim, he was very quiet and he found solace in

his time to be able to do his art and get into his head.

A lot of the work of the team around him was to provide him with the space for

him to be able to create without interruption.

It's something of a lost art to be able to unplug from the world and just dream.

Unfortunately, when we get that opportunity, we're on our phone, we're

through stuff, we're being bombarded with imagery.

The importance of being able to switch off and look out the window and look at

the clouds going by.

When we travel, it's usually related to the work on the films. You're taken to

strange lands and you see interesting things, and a lot of the time he just

wants to kind of go into the shadows somewhere and just observe people.

And then it's his interpretation, not only of the strange and wonderful people

you see, but what the interactions may be with the people around them.

So a lot of what you see in the sketch pads.

Those are based off of real people that you may have seen in a restaurant or in

a concert hall or at a bar.

Those people are out there somewhere.

That is his records of his travels, of his experiences,

of his life.

Early on, I came across a sketch of his.

It was just like this huge head, and it wasn't flattering, with tons of question

marks. Maybe it was a precursor to the rogue queen.

And I thought, jeez, he's got it in for me, you know.

And I said, Tim, I'm just slightly worried because of the drawing, you

over your side.

For one moment, I guess he was irritated by me, and then he got it out, and it

was all fine.

Drawings. It's not like sentences.

It's just... It was like reading someone's diary and I shouldn't have

He literally draws his way through life.

There should be a home for the abandoned sentences of Tim Burton.

Even if he's with you, he would be sketching.

Even through momentous occasions.

I'd be having a child, he would still sketch.

Literally giving birth.

We've got our whole lives sketched.

It was definitely an adventure.

We went through thousands of drawings before we decided to call it a day.

For a lot of years, I've watched Tim religiously drawing.

We both live here in the south of France at the same joint, you know, this

little hamlet. He was preparing for that big show for Vegas.

I was looking around at some of the stuff, and then I found that painted on

canvas. I was blown away because I've only seen Tim do the, you know, the

cookie or the little drawing on watercolor paper or something.

He's got thousands of these creations that people haven't seen.

It truly starts from that pen to paper.

That is where the magic happens.

We pitched the idea of doing the art of Tim Burton to share some of his art with

the world.

That's like 400 or 500 pages. It's crazy.

Holly and Leah were proper guardians of his art, and Derek.

I'm so glad that he was looked after in that way, because if it wasn't for them,

I don't think this would have been unearthed.

What color, right? For somebody who wears black and white, it's kind of

extraordinary. It's really getting to the heart of what makes him who he is

why his work is so special.

A very early version of Jack Skellington can be seen doodled on the side of

storyboards for Vincent, decades before the film.

This emaciated character with round head and no eyeball.

could become the phenomenon that it is today.

Think about the tenacity that Tim had to have to hold on to that vision of this

character and everything that this character represented.

And that's just one of the numerous characters that could have that same

When he creates a character or he draws a character, you have an emotional

response to it.

And it's hard to pin down.

Before there's a voice to it, before there's a story behind it, when you look

these characters, when you look at his artwork, you want to know what that

is.

The melancholy death of Oyster Boy. Those kinds of stories, the art is

delicate and beautiful.

Stain Boy became an animated series for the Internet.

There are many more of those tragic tales that have never been seen before.

We even discovered a lost short that I don't think has ever been seen or a part

of anything.

These things keep kind of coming out of the woodwork, and there's still new

things to be discovered.

When we were developing the first exhibition at MoMA, one of the

that we had, we found hundreds and hundreds of drawings for

unrealized projects.

Projects that some people may be familiar with, such as Superman Lives,

stories that never saw the light of day.

Their trick -or -treat, this group of kids, went into this world where their

parents were monsters dressed as humans.

Another project called True Love was about a battle between two boys and

transformation into fighting machines.

With the MoMA show, or with the art book, it wasn't like he was seeking for

this. to be out there in the world.

There's actually people around him saying, this is something special, and

think people are going to love it.

He has said that the exhibitions made him feel a little bit exposed.

Tim is like most great artists where they don't like to analyze what they do

because it's almost like this kind of magical bubble that if they analyze it

much... Their process won't stay as pure.

He always said it's like showing my dirty laundry, like it's his diaries,

very personal.

So it took a little bit of arm wrestling, but he finally came around.

There's that dichotomy between this part of Tim Burton that he wants to put on

view and then this part of Tim Burton that we're sharing with the world that

not intended to be put on view.

We commissioned Tim to create a site -specific installation, Balloon Boy.

is a 22 -feet inflatable that was created through a maquette. This

was then 3 -D photographed and printed into this inflatable, and then Tim

painted it on site.

This installation very much reflected Tim's feeling of being shown in a

This creature was stitching, being fearful in the presence of Picasso and

Matisse and Monet.

I liked when you see, through the sculpture garden, Picasso's she -goat

at Balloon Boy.

It was just very trippy juxtaposition.

He comes from a very modest point of view, and he's just embarrassed.

He can just hear the critics. We all walk around with critics in our head,

own critic. He feels that he shouldn't be taken seriously as an artist.

He genuinely feels that.

Margaret Keane, an artist that Tim could relate to. Here's someone whose art

became this huge sensation, critically not really received well.

People saw it as kitsch, but people were buying it. It was on walls everywhere.

It's a movement.

It became this big sensation that people were embracing.

Tim could relate to that with his art exhibit.

Some of the critics were hard on him. I think it's creepy modeling an

amateurish. But these weren't things ever meant to be seen. This is a part of

his process. So to try to stack it up against Picasso, that's probably not the

fairest thing.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because people showed up in

to see this exhibit. It actually ended up outnumbering some of the classic

artists. So it is that definition like where we go back to what is considered

art, what is considered good or bad.

what a critic sees versus what is accepted by popular culture.

Tim and I were talking a lot about that.

When looking at art or listening to music or reading literature,

that restrictive verdict about, well, this is crap,

this is kitsch, this is this, this is that. And then what?

Why are their eyes so big?

And then you just got rid of it for yourself.

But the interesting thing is to actually engage in an exchange.

The strict and harsh opinion, this is kitsch. It's an obstacle for your own

awareness and therefore a serious hindrance.

Do that slow.

Ed Wood is the compliment to Tim as the filmmaker.

Margaret Keene's story is the compliment to Tim as an artist.

Scott and Larry, who wrote the script for Ed Wood, thought, hey, there's a

here. We knew Tim was a fan because Tim had actually commissioned Margaret Keene

originals. There's like a gorgeous Lisa Marie and there's a couple others.

He even knew Margaret. He had met her back in the day and Tim really admired

Margaret.

Ed Wood was kind of a love fest.

We didn't make a nickel.

Big Eyes was a little different because it was independently financed with

Harvey Weinstein.

who was, you know, Harvey Weinstein. Harvey has a nickname, Harvey

He definitely wanted to be a little more scissorhands -y than Tim was happy

about. Harvey just started showing up in the cutting room, and the narration was

not our doing. It was Harvey pointing a gun at Tim, saying, we have to have

narration because audiences are stupid and don't understand.

Because Tim had final cut. Tim can do whatever he wants, but this ogre was on

him continuously.

Do you want to give back the money?

So Harvey's just like, I might not release your movie in as many theaters

doesn't have narration, which is just like, you don't treat an artist that

They beat you up before doing a film, and you're exhausted already because

you're having to deal with all these other issues.

Dick Zanuck was his gatekeeper and really protected him from the studio.

The first film he did without him was Big Eyes, and his absence on that was

huge.

It meant a lot to him that he had Dick Zanuck behind him and batting for him.

And he was such a gentleman, Dick.

He was so benign, but strong and wouldn't take bullshit.

Harvey's a big, loud bully.

I demand we strike it off the record. Well, now he's in prison, so there you

Tim had hardly any script notes.

He wanted Margaret's story to kind of start as a repressed 50s housewife and

then end in the early 70s as feminism is beginning.

She's a woman who lives behind her husband, and then by the end of the

she's putting herself forward.

This is the ultimate Me Too movie, and it was really empowering.

The thing about female art is that it's still a struggle.

There are still people who sign their names with their initials because they

know they get lower prices.

Any specialty dollars?

I'll give you one.

Tim talked about outsider art. In fancy art circles, it's called primitive art.

People are sort of just doing things their own way, and they're not following

what the art people say is the proper way to create art.

Margaret's art kind of fell into the kitsch category.

Obviously, Tim is enamored with kitsch.

That's no surprise, folks.

It was perceived as kitsch at the time because it was being presented by this

very masculine guy.

The war -wracked innocent.

Walter would do all these interviews and talk shows and talk about the crying

children in the concentration camps. That's when my life as a painter began

earnest.

So it kind of made the art seem ridiculous, but the truth was that

locked in the back room of a house and she was a sad person.

The paintings were autobiographical, but no one knew that. And so it completely

shifted the perception of what the work was.

It's very easy to mock Martyr Keen's art, but when you know it's coming from

this sense of pain, you get a whole different understanding of what it is.

Do you paint, too?

Um, I don't know.

She was shy.

She didn't like the limelight. She didn't like the PR aspect of the whole

business. And he reveled in it. He loved it. So that's what he did, which turned

into a commercial enterprise.

That's what market economy does to people. They just try to sell rather

excel.

Kitsch is a good topic.

Tim is always playing with kitsch, but he uses it. He's not falling into the

trap where he produces it.

Your masterpiece has an infinity of keen, which makes it an infinity of

Funny thing is, Margaret knew that I don't like her paintings.

And she was very gracious and generous about it.

I was very impressed by that magnanimous eye that she cast on me, to the

degree where I almost was tempted to refine my opinion.

A lot of critics need to just assert their expertise.

which is very boring, and now what?

But there are others who help you along or change your

perspective and make your eyes a little bigger.

What is that?

Dumbo is the first Disney outsider.

I already got fake freaks in the freak show.

I don't need a real one. He's got to overcome a lot of challenges.

He's got these big ears.

People are laughing at him.

He's put on stage, and people are paying tickets to see him.

He's being used for his talent.

I think there's a lot that Tim could identify with.

Tim,

he's done a lot of films with Disney, lots of experiences, ups and downs. It's

kind of like a nice parallel with the character of Dumbo.

Let's get ready for Dumbo!

I was actually working on Star Wars at the time and was getting a lot of

inquiries from the visual effects companies. Oh, you're doing Dumbo. And I

like, Tim hasn't talked to me about Dumbo. But then he did talk to me about

Dumbo. We loved the idea of revisiting a Disney classic, especially Dumbo.

I just remember thinking, wow, we get to dig into the Disney archives and go

through their references.

They would photograph animals, elephants.

Disney himself did whatever was necessary to do a proper job.

They've invented family entertainment as we know it. Do we really want to touch

this classic?

It's got some of the most powerful emotional work that they've done.

Artists were leaping over the technical issues and going straight to the heart

and to the character and to the story. That's what I appreciated and that's

we tried to do as well.

which is, once again, the thing with Tim and animals that he's so captivated by.

Animals serve a real purpose for him in his movies, that kind of innocence and

lovability.

There's such a coignancy to animals and what they struggle with and how they're

treated by human beings.

Move it!

You don't shy away from how these animals were treated.

It was horrible for them. They shouldn't be watered down.

Obviously, there is the abuse side that we depict.

The heaviness of the mistreatment with Mrs. Dumbo and Dumbo and the separation.

Elephants are intelligent beings, and they feel it when they're separated, as

many animals.

PETA had written a note. They were pleased with how we treated that story.

In the end, he's free and is able to live his life.

The studio saw early cuts, thought it was a little dark for the sensibilities

Disney, and they wanted to get involved more in the story.

The story...

was different for the live -action version.

It was clearly two parallel worlds.

The big top, the Medici Circus, has a kind of a slumped look to it, and yet

feel like they set it up every day, and they patch it, and the colors are faded,

and even though it's slightly shabby, there's a lot of love and emotion for

Contrast is the cold, hard, reflective surfaces of dreamland.

making sure that what was clear was there is a hollowness, a falseness.

I think Dumbo was undersold, personally.

I mean, it's so pretty, and there's so much to it.

It was the biggest movie I've done with Tim as far as every day we had 500

extras. We had a circus parade, we had the circus act, and all the crowd, which

was all dressed.

When you show up and you saw those sets, it was unbelievable.

That whole parade with horses, and they come down in that beautiful long shot.

You go, wow, I'm in a big spectacle right now.

We make the impossible possible.

This idea of twinning the fabulousness and the beauty with the dark side.

When you see Dumbo trying vaguely to look out, you realize he's trapped in a

little prison.

The studio couldn't embrace his vision, and they pushed him.

It's a business now more than ever.

It's very hard to say to an artist, here's your vision, this is your vision.

You could say, oh, this would be a great film for you to do next.

He doesn't really care.

His films are about him and his vision.

All the films he makes, he is compelled to make them.

Whatever part of his psyche that it is that plugs in or originates it, there is

an artistic compulsion to make it.

We grew up watching The Addams Family on TV.

And Dark Shadows on television.

They're all about death and darkness.

Nice, nice.

Can I play autopsy with it?

In a very beautiful way, not a horrific, violent way.

Dark Shadows was originally the fulfillment of doing something like

Family. He's always had a love and appreciation for it. You see, sometimes

we make up a fantasy world to help us erase horrible memories from our past.

The darkness and the shadow was the greatest contrast to Burbank, where

every house looked the same and every person looked the same, but the darker

side of things.

What have you done?

It's fun, it's beautiful, it's magical.

It's a large part of his genius, and it shouldn't be squandered by

conformity.

catch up to me.

You know, this scrumptious pate de bois reminds me of my childhood when, to earn

money, I was forced to get on all floors and imitate farming animals and do my

employer's bidding. Now I will have revenge by making you all do my bidding.

dream will be your nightmare. My pleasure will be your pain. My bread

butter. But wait, I'm getting off the subject of the destruction of your soul,

which I will ruthlessly rule over tomorrow.

It reminds me once again of my tortured childhood when I was forced to be an

organ grinder's monkey and do humiliating dances against my will. I

your lives and make your pitiful lives filled with pain and destruction,

torturing your...

When he was a teenager, Tim had created this drawing in the style of Charles

Adams.

Decades later, he's working on Wednesday.

Seeing you in this uniform brings back so many terrible memories.

Wednesday's a perfect fit for him, really.

She's misunderstood, has parents that she doesn't identify with.

She's in a school that she doesn't want to be in.

Netflix reached out saying that Tim Burton would love to meet with me.

I had seen Beetlejuice when I was young.

Younger than I probably should have, but I remember being like, what the

whorehouse?

I was working on this horror set, and I had this big, nasty prosthetic on my

face. I just looked a mess.

It was a really, really weird time to be meeting somebody that you had looked up

to for such a long time. Probably added some character.

Suppose every artist needs a muse?

I studied all versions of Wednesday.

Christina Ricci did such a beautiful, wonderful, terrifying job.

It's a tradition.

One of us had to go.

She was 90s Wednesday, which I know that Tim was almost a part of.

Christina plays Wednesday's favorite teacher. Please, don't go making any

or perpetuating any outcast stereotypes.

It was terrifying shooting with her.

She'll always be Wednesday in my eyes.

And so to make her my own was a bit of a challenge.

I did a take where I didn't blink, and Tim said, okay, don't blink again. Oh,

Jenna, drop your chin a little bit.

He loved the Kubrick stare through the eyebrows, so it was always lower my

expression and then tilt my head down. All right, don't blink.

Chin down.

Try to be as still as possible.

We wanted a bit more of a modern take on her. You should really get on Insta,

Snapchat, and TikTok.

I find social media to be a soul -sucking void of meaningless

We would go through the sides, and he would say, how do you feel about this

joke, or how do you feel about this line? He had a quad over eye.

It's an emergency.

What is it that you don't like in the script so that we could change it? The

script is for people who hate themselves and know their lives have no real

purpose or meaning.

Or get rid of it.

But he has certain ideas that he sticks to.

When they play cello in the series, they sent me my first cello piece. It was a

version of Paint It Black that Danny had changed and switched around.

I never play cello. The thing about it is Danny is such an overachiever and so

artistically brilliant.

Technically should be played by two cellos, but because Wednesday is this

magical being, she just happens to play it on one.

I am one of those believers and it takes 10 ,000 hours of work to get really

good at something.

Wednesday was just fun.

I've never been more uncertain in my life.

Tim knew that I was nervous, and he said, oh, don't worry about it. Just as

as your chin is down and you do what you're doing, you're all good.

He sees things in his head, and he molds the rest of the scene around this idea.

It was super, super important to him that he got an overhead shot of

walking through a school of fish -like crowd and everybody parting ways.

There was a lot of references to Edward Scissorhands.

Him feeling like that outcast.

I remember secretly in my head being very excited because he was doing that

Burton thing.

This conflict between childhood and adulthood.

I'm not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in

underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago.

When Tim looks at adulthood, he's really looking at the destruction of

imagination.

and dampening down the freedom of being a child.

We see that tension playing out throughout this movie.

It's so unfortunate about society, how kids naturally have this imaginative,

creative instinct.

Schools and lessons and the pressures of becoming a functioning member of

society, pressures that I know more than you do. And that's scary for kids,

obviously. Do you even remember what it was like being a kid?

Oh, boy, do I. They grow up and realize that they have to become someone.

No son of mine. It's terrifying to be typecasted or thrown away. Then I'll run

away. Specifically for the things that inspire you artistically.

I don't think to this day that arts are celebrated in educational platforms.

It's not viewed with the same kind of respect.

It's really frustrating.

But he values people. He values their opinions.

You're going to do great things.

As long as they're not the kind to step on creativity or hold somebody back from

expressing themselves.

Sometimes adults don't know what they're talking about.

Him being so passionate and trusting himself to such an extent speaks to how

important it is to stay authentic to your interests and your passion.

I remember one time on set, one of the actors showed him these images from his

nephew's class.

And they were doing a choose your favorite Tim Burton character and try to

it as best as you can. And Tim was so excited that not only was drawing and

being encouraged in school, but also the fact that they were using his drawings

or his style. And I think that he ended up drawing or writing some sort of note

for the class because it genuinely excited him.

So to work with somebody like that is really empowering.

It kind of encouraged me to use my voice a little bit more than I had.

I improvised a little bit.

He was open to trying anything.

His work is really personal for him. If he sees a young person inspired to do

their own work, that resonates with him.

That has become just like a cultural phenomenon.

Now, across America, it's a Wednesday dance party.

It brought Tim into the spotlight for like a whole new younger generation.

You know, that's the thing you have to appreciate about Tim.

And I think this is why Tim and Winona and Johnny bonded, is they're people who

knew they were different from a very early age, and they didn't try that hard

be normal or typical or like other people.

They thought, okay, if I have to fight this fight, I will, but I'm going to be

who I'm going to be.

connects with someone and brings them in to his world and decides to

open up and share his heart, especially in a creative way.

It's like birthing a child in a way. Is your mom Lydia Dietz?

Unfortunately. She's a legend.

Something that a lot of artists have in common, you know, they feel like freaks.

You know, freaks like to find a freak show.

Beetlejuice 2, it's something he's been curious about.

If the script was right, if the timing was right, if the cast was interested in

coming back into that fold.

Every couple of years, he and I might talk about it a little bit. I mean,

and years and years.

It was like that.

And then we'd talk about, again, an eight - or four -sentence exchange, the

amount of declarative sentences he used.

spoken where it starts with this has a noun and a subject and a period um i

there might be like eight of them in his entire life so we think we're doing

that again and mostly it was leave it alone leave it alone a script came

it was pretty good i called catherine i'd want to know what she thought i want

you two to know you're welcome in our house anytime you want to come over okay

let's go make this

And the story is really solid.

He always spoke of it as, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it like the

first one.

We're not reinventing this world. We're revisiting this world.

Let's see where these characters are so many years later.

It doesn't have to be a big budget affair.

That would spoil the fun of what makes Beetlejuice so special.

Feeling that artistic hand in there, then feeling like you're picking up

you left off.

Jenna totally, 100 % got it.

Got the tone, got what it was.

Death is hard.

Yeah, sometimes I think life is harder.

You care about her in the movie, you worry about her in the movie.

The juice is loose.

Michael is just, it's one of the most phenomenal performances, I think, ever

captured. in terms of just comedy, and it just works.

I'm going to make you so happy.

I remember the scene in the first movie where he has to put his hands over.

He was so worried. He didn't want to hurt my face. And I was like, well, but

can still talk.

And he was like, you can do it a little harder.

Beetlejuice.

Catherine.

She's such a goddess to me. She would say her lines like

this, and then, like, she wouldn't look at me.

Oh, you were miserable in New York City, and now you're going to be miserable

out here in the States.

Someone's life hasn't been upheaved. That was sweet to be able to sort of

revisit that.

Where's the obnoxious little goth girl who tormented me all those years ago?

There's a thing he did. Monica Belushi is stunning, and... Talented and

stunning.

And Italian.

Not like Italian from Jersey, but from Italy.

Well, you know, Tim's girlfriend.

I always wondered what that was like. Like when he said, I want to offer you

this role, let me talk to you about it. I wonder what that was like.

That in itself, I would like to see that.

Just her entrance is so great.

Everybody just got it.

What the?

People could say, well, we all know it. Everyone in the world knows it. We've

seen the movie. We've seen the costumes. We know the thing. But you don't

really. You don't.

It's really hard to pull off.

The thing that I loved and love about the first one is things were made by

and operated by hand.

The snake handrail, which is kind of ingenious, scares the shit out of me

The second one has that handmade feeling.

It's easy to throw around the word art, but you can't exactly hang it on a wall.

Have fun to be on a set and see somebody crocked in a corner or guys behind,

like, pushing things or somebody coming back in to paint something, you know?

It's so exhilarating. It's silly and ridiculous.

Is this a figment of your imagination?

It's fun to be in Tim Burton's head.

Tim is very brave in that he doesn't shy away from what he wants to create.

Tim is still drawing Jack Skellington to this day, whether it's on a cocktail

napkin or to a fan.

There are a lot of movies that are connected to Tim.

Whether he's a director or a producer or a creator, when you see a Tim Burton

movie, you know it is a Tim Burton movie.

Certainly when you look at The Nightmare Before Christmas, it's very much a Tim

Burton movie from the very beginning.

Yet, of course, he wasn't the director Henry Selick was, but it has Tim's

creative stamp.

Tim also co -directed Corpse Bride.

and shared directorial duties with Mike Johnson.

One of the corrections that we often have to make is that Coraline is very

Henry Selick, and it is not a Tim Burton movie.

I want to be with my real mom and dad.

Nine is an interesting story.

Tim had seen the short film and really wanted to help create a feature out of

it. So Tim, as a producer, shepherded the project. But the creative stamp is

from Tim's lens.

Friend? Friend.

Through the Looking Glass is a sequel to Alice in Wonderland, but he had less

creative input.

It's interesting how different producing roles for Tim can create such a

different output.

You need to have what makes that special brew to make a Tim Burton movie.

A lot of times there's films that are made that try to recreate that kind of

success, like whatever that magic is.

We wrote a stop -motion Addams Family for Tim, which just didn't happen. The

studio went with the CG approach.

What's so great about being yourself?

When you can be like everyone else.

Even some of the sequels based off of things that he made, there's always like

something that feels just not right.

The George Clooney Batman had nipples

and his response was pretty

negative.

I did the other Catwoman, too.

I did the bad Catwoman and the good Catwoman. And that was defiled, and

hated it, and it wasn't successful. It just kind of is an example of how, you

know, don't mess with anything Tim Burton's ever done, because you're going

lose. For the record, I think this is insane.

The sad ending, the story will be me, like, at shopping center openings.

I've got a big gut.

You know, I'm, like, putting cigarettes out. Come on up and sit up on that old

Batman's lap.

You know, have my picture taken.

Come on down here, and I want to tell you, I'd do anything!

Part of me just wants to make that movie so badly.

But he and I used to riff on that a lot and laugh a lot about what was going to

happen down the road.

There's something so exquisite and creative and unusual about Tim's movies.

Every generation has people who redefine everything.

The whole of Tim is a tribute to being utterly unique and being true to

yourself.

He's just so real.

No bullshit, just straightforward.

And he gave me this incredible gift of encouraging me to be myself.

What if this is a dream? It was the first time I got reassured that I could

this weird girl that I was.

The most important filmmaker who changed my life completely is Tim.

I don't know why.

I can talk to him the way I can. I don't know why he can talk to me the way that

he can, but he's a huge part of my life, my brain, my experiences.

We were doing an interview together, and the journalist, she says, you guys have

been doing films for almost 10 decades.

I had a cup of coffee.

And as I went for the drink, Tim goes, Ten decades?

I need an IV. Roll the IV in for me, please. I'm feeling a bit faint.

It's an incredible family to be a part of.

People that are chosen by Tim. The great, incredible artistry of Colleen

Rick Heinrichs, Tim's old school pal.

various cinematographers and designers that Tim has aligned himself with.

Danny, the consistency of his understanding of Tim, it must

be on a similar level that Tim and I have arrived at.

How lucky in my life that this kind of weird, crazy collaboration just happened

out of the blue.

When they talked about doing Nightmare at the Hollywood Bowl, I said, the

Hollywood Bowl, you're crazy.

And I remember saying, it's on you.

It's going to feel pretty fucking empty in there.

1 ,500 people in a 17 ,000 -seat venue.

And I'll say, I told you so.

And, of course, it sold out, and it was like I had to eat my words.

I'd never imagined scoring films.

as a career option.

I owe that to Tim.

I was in a band. I had been a musician.

They wanted to be a painter.

I was just a kid.

My interests were cartooning and comics and animation and that sort of thing. My

relationship with Tim Burton evolved my interests and actually made me want to

become head of the art department and lead the design look of the film.

He gave me some great characters, including the children.

but he gave me the chance to create character where until then I probably

been given the chance to.

It's impossible for an artist to imagine what their impact is on

culture or history or anything like that.

He wasn't the first person to come up with the outsider, the monster, who's

actually the most sane person in a mad world.

But he took that concept and he's definitely made it his own.

He wasn't the first one to use expressive design to put across emotions

a visual narrative, but he combined it with all of his interests and obsessions

and turned it into a very Tim Burton look that everybody can recognize.

There were superhero movies before Tim came along.

Things change.

But Tim was really the first to create a whole new graphic novel look and feel

of what a superhero movie could be that echoes down to us today.

I am Catwoman.

Hear me roar.

Nobody did a feature length stop motion animated film before Tim.

Yeah, Christmas will be.

Not something that was as cinematic, filled with music, and was much more

sophisticated than had ever been done in the past.

What a wild dream that movie is. You know, you couldn't do that asleep.

Look, Mickey! Stepping back and looking at everything that we did.

Just like Tim and I were affected by what went before us, I hope that people

take what we did and make it their own as well.

There's still a lot of great places to take it.

He is the most understood, misunderstood person.

There's magic to what he does.

That's a brick in the cathedral that we can't miss.

We're all putting building blocks into this incredible cathedral of movies and

art, whether you're listening to the poetry of James Baldwin or you're

to the music of Coltrane or you're watching the movies of Tim Burton. And

there's an opportunity for everybody else to jump in, too.

If you feel it and that moves you, then, you know, come on and play.

He's not really at rest, Tim. You know, he's just, he dances in the air. So as

long as he can channel that energy into something, onto a line on the page,

that's his anchor.

But there is a real life in that line.

That's where he's happiest.

His symbols.

The curl, stitch marks, spots, stripes.

People relate to it, that's all he wants.

And all he wants is to carry on drawing or creating or making a phone or

scribbling on a napkin.

That's all we are.