Original subtitles

In 1993,

the world's very first stop-motion feature-length movie hit the screens,

and helming this beautiful masterpiece

that is Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas

was director…

Henry Selick. Let's go.

In fact, the singular vision of one creative mastermind

was brought to life…

Eureka!

…by a ragtag team of highly specialized…

Oddball… Misfits.

But the decade-long struggle

to create the world's first stop-motion feature film

is a tale of stops and starts…

Take a picture.

…and stops and starts.

Picture. Picture.

It's a painful… Tedious process.

For some, it was… Professional.

So much blood, sweat and tears.

For some, it was personal. He just hated it.

And for others,

it involved property damage.

He kicked a hole in the wall.

With his big, you know, size 14 Doc Martens.

With over 100,000 shots…

You know, it created some tensions. …the pressure was on.

The date is the date is the date is the date.

With the odds against them… It's heartbreaking.

This was just a rude awakening.

…they'd need every ounce of… Eff it.

A Nightmare-Before-Christmas miracle.

It was catastrophic.

…to save the world's most beloved stop-motion animation.

****, this is really cool. And this is the story…

Bunny. …of how they did it.

I saved their butts.

These are The Holiday Movies That Made Us.

Just over the hill from Hollywood lies Burbank, California,

home to some of the biggest movies ever conceived,

filmed here on huge sound stages.

But just down the road,

in a neighborhood populated by people and horses,

lies a relatively smaller building, where, in 1991,

something else was conceived.

It's basically the birthplace of Jack Skellington.

It's also the birthplace of Sally.

You could say this is the Nightmare Before Christmas house.

And from this house, came the story of a discontent skeleton…

…from a land of ghouls and monsters

who kidnaps Santa,

ruins Christmas…

What did Santa bring? …saves Christmas…

Merry Christmas!

…all to find love and happiness.

Of course, this happy ending begins in a very happy place.

I love it here.

Nope, even happier.

In fact, we need to go to the happiest place on earth.

Ho, ho, ho.

No, it's…

It's not Santa's workshop.

No, our fairy tale begins in the workshop of Walt Disney,

where animation wizards crank out delightfully buoyant tales,

doused with positivity and happy endings.

All, that is, except for one animator.

He was slightly strange.

He was a little bit of a reclusive oddball.

And that reclusive oddball's name?

Tim Burton. He was signed up to a two-year contract

for the young animator's program at Disney.

This is Tim Burton. Hi, Tim.

But Tim Burton was an outsider.

Isn't he a gas?

He was a loner.

Harnessing all the adjectives…

Reclusive, slightly strange oddball.

…Tim Burton did... He was a loner.

All right, we get it.

Tim Burton did what he was best at.

What he did do was draw and imagine peculiar things.

What we think of as the Burton-esque style was there from the very beginning.

An exciting, promising beginning that led to…

well, an ending.

His sensibilities didn't match up

with the people who were running the studio

at that time, in the early '80s.

But Tim's time at Disney wasn't just spent

drawing aimlessly depressing doodles,

because the oddball from Burbank actually made some buddies.

And here's one.

I met Tim Burton about 1980.

I had just started at Disney, and we were both animation trainees.

And as can happen…

We both were struggling with drawing those cute Disney characters.

Bonded by a strong resistance to cuteness,

someone else joined the gang.

The artist who works in this room is a sculptor named Rick Heinrichs.

Rick Heinrichs was a kindred spirit.

Emphasis on spirit,

and morbid stuff in general.

That's the connection we made. Tim had these amazing drawings.

So amazing that Rick thought…

They will translate beautifully into 3D.

And as it happened… He could sculpt like crazy.

Sculpted rather well, if I do say so. So Rick…

Did a bunch of sculptures from his work. Suddenly was like, "This is really cool."

…having earned Tim's trust,

joined him on a new stop-motion project.

Nightmare Before Christmas.

He would tell this story of this character, Jack,

who would tunnel from Halloween Land into Christmas Land.

What would happen?

Well, Tim Burton really wanted to find out,

so he tunneled his way upstairs to the Disney higher-ups, who told him…

This isn't Disney.

But you sort of felt like Walt Disney himself would have gone,

"This is amazing, actually, and how do we work this into what we do?"

But Walt Disney was long gone,

and soon enough, so would be Tim, Henry and Rick.

That really brought the end of Burton's tenure at the studio.

But the unhappy ending for Tim Burton was really only just beginning

because Disney still kept a hold

of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas idea.

But lurking in the shadows of Burton's unpromising future was a man.

Good morning, Pee-wee.

A Pee-wee Herman.

Well, Pee-wee Herman was the great-great-great-grandfather

of Nightmare Before Christmas.

Paul Reubens had a real nose for talent,

and his character Pee-wee Herman had some serious momentum,

so this goofy, colorful character had his pick of directors

for his upcoming goofy, colorful movie,

Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

So he chose everyone's favorite ray of sunshine…

Tim Burton. Of course.

Paul Reuben's nose and eye for talent also extended to his ears.

What? And here's proof…

Danny Elfman.

In 1985, I was in a rock band called Oingo Boingo,

and Paul Reubens was a big fan.

So, Tim and Paul gave Danny a call.

I, of course, assumed they were looking for songs.

Well… Tim Burton, he wanted more.

In fact… He's interested in a score.

How about some music? I'm like, "I don't write film scores."

That's what you think. Got a call from my manager saying,

"You got the job."

And thus began Danny Elfman's incredible rise to becoming…

I said, "Tell him I can't do it."

You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me.

I don't know how to score a film.

And his manager said… You call and say you don't wanna do it.

What?

What?

And I looked at the phone,

and I had one of those moments of, like, eff it.

And the story of my life revolves around those two words.

This partnership that Pee-wee created between Tim and…

Danny Elfman.

…turned out to be a career-changing one.

They surged to the top of the box office with Beetlejuice.

Then, the massively successful Warner Brothers film…

Batman.

And with a $400-million mega-hit under his utility belt,

by the end of 1989…

Tim Burton is the most successful director in Hollywood.

Really quite the rise for the former…

Reclusive oddball.

Slash awkward outcast animator.

Disney must have been thinking, "How did we let him get away?"

But fortunately for Disney, Tim Burton had his own one-that-got-away.

It played on his mind that,

"I still wanna do Nightmare Before Christmas."

And guess who still owned it.

He approached the company and said, "Will you sell my story and artwork back?"

And when… Hollywood's most successful director.

…wants to buy the rights to your movie, you say…

How about this?

"We'll make it with you. What do you wanna do?"

Well, The Nightmare Before Christmas, of course.

But given this change of tune from the company who told him…

This isn't Disney. …Tim needed some assurance…

That he would have full control over the movie.

And Disney said…

Whatever you want. Here's 18 million. Go make a movie.

And shooting a movie was exactly what Tim intended to do.

Look, Zero. Searchlights.

But as for which movie, he may have sent Disney the wrong signal.

At this point in his career, he's presented with the contract

to do the sequel to Batman.

And it turns out it wasn't just Disney telling Tim…

Whatever you want.

'Cause after Batman's success,

Warner Brothers handed Tim the keys to Batman Returns.

He wasn't subservient to producers and studio and marketing departments.

He could make Tim Burton's Batman film exactly how he wanted to make it.

So, Tim fell headlong, or maybe butt-first,

into Batman Returns, but don't worry.

Tim was absolutely thrilled with the idea

of bringing Nightmare Before Christmas back to life.

So he puts in place the people he can trust

to take the movie forward for him.

And someone he trusted more than anyone

was his old pal at Disney, Rick Heinrichs.

Now, I was also working on Batman Returns as an art director,

and having Nightmare happen at the same time

looked hugely challenging to me.

So, Rick was busy cracking the whip on Batman Returns.

But don't worry.

I got a mysterious call from Rick Heinrichs.

I'd been keeping track of Henry's career up in the Bay Area.

And I ended up pursuing lots and lots of stop-motion work,

because I found that was my favorite way of doing animation.

I did a lot of commercials.

Thanks for the crescent rolls, Mom.

A huge amount of work for MTV.

So, Tim and Rick headed to the Bay Area

to reconnect with their old buddy.

And basically, Tim asked if I would direct the film for him.

So, just to summarize, the world's hottest director

asked an old pal who made bits for MTV to direct a movie in his place.

Which was… amazing. Yeah. Pretty good.

So, anyway…

Then, it was on to putting together a studio

and, um… figuring out how to actually make the thing.

Leaving Henry to think about the $18 million budget

he was now responsible for,

Tim returned to LA to rope in Danny Elfman.

Tim came over.

I was living at my girlfriend's house 'cause my house was being remodeled.

It seems irrelevant.

He had an outline and drawings, and just saying let's do a musical.

A musical? I'd never worked on a musical.

But Danny Elfman was prepared to put in the...

Eff it.

And so, while Danny effortlessly worked out

how to write musical numbers,

Tim would need to find someone to write the script,

and he wouldn't even need to leave Danny's girlfriend's house.

Wait a sec. Isn't this…

This is the Nightmare Before Christmas house.

Right. So then you must be…

My girlfriend, the writer of Edward Scissorhands.

Caroline Thompson.

That's true. It's all coming together now.

And like many of Tim's collaborators, these two went way back.

Not those two. These two.

Tim Burton and I were both represented at the same agency.

They did not know what to do with him. He was considered such an…

Oddball. All right.

They didn't know what to do with me either. Oddball, also.

And these oddballs quickly discovered

they bounced quite well off each other.

Once, he told me about a drawing he had made in high school

of this character with scissors instead of hands.

For the first and only time in my life, I knew exactly what to do with that image.

You look fine, just fine.

Wielding her powerful pen,

Caroline carefully transformed Tim's vision into a masterpiece.

Completely different. No kidding.

A cunning screenwriter writes the screenplay in such a way

that even the director sees the movie

as the screenwriter saw it in her mind's eye.

It seemed that the cunning Caroline Thompson...

"Cunning" is my middle name.

Caroline "Cunning" Thompson, then,

had cunning-ed her way into another job…

I mean, she knew Tim very well.

…when Tim hired the very talented screenwriter…

Michael McDowell…

Who?

…who wrote Beetlejuice. You think I'm qualified?

I was…

…furious. But not entirely surprised.

Interestingly, the first day I arrived on set

both Johnny Depp and Alan Arkin quickly ran up to me to say,

"We don't know what we're doing. We don't understand our characters.

Tim isn't talking to us. Can you please explain?"

… there's an idea.

So, I did. Sounds helpful.

No. No?

That is actually not cool for the writer to talk to the actors,

which I had no idea, since it was my first film.

I'll be darned.

We were never quite as close again as we had been before.

So the cunning Caroline…

Went off and rode horses while they were shooting.

For now.

Meanwhile, up north in San Francisco, there were plenty of jobs to go around,

and as it happens, plenty of people to do them.

So, in building his team of locals, Henry would need an…

Art director…

Whose vision informed a… Set designer…

Whose plans were executed by… Miniature set builder…

So a… Fabricator…

Made characters a… Stop-motion animator…

Would manipulate on camera. And they called themselves…

That San Francisco group. Aka…

Skellington Productions.

Where would all this take place?

Eureka!

Nope. Even though Disney had plenty of studio space in Burbank,

which was also right across the street from Warner Brothers,

where Tim was getting Batman into gear…

That's funny.

…Henry and his crew were more than happy to keep themselves at bay

in the Bay Area.

We were 500 miles away from anyone who was gonna really check on us.

You'd better check your facts.

Literally.

I was tasked early on with bringing the Tim Burton look to the project.

Rick was punching the clock on Batman,

so he'd have to divide his time.

Split, right down the center.

And he found a way to keep Skellington Productions dialed right in.

I was getting faxes from up north.

I would make my version of it, send it to them.

Everybody got inoculated with the Tim Burton virus.

Guess they weren't anti-faxers.

That being said, they hoped their lab work was done.

Come on into the lab and we'll get you all fixed up.

The intent was never to have a producer on the movie who came from Disney.

But, of course, Disney would have their own producer,

and that person was…

Me.

And she was game to come up here.

I actually didn't wanna go do it.

Okay. She gave them one condition.

"Tell them I want my desk."

What? "Tell 'em I want my desk."

Your desk?

And they shipped my desk up to San Francisco.

Cool. So, with the desk safely stowed in the baggage compartment…

It was a gigantic desk.

Kathleen got right to work, and as head of production…

You get the money. Eighteen million.

You get the schedule. Which was two years.

And you have to make it work. The thing is…

They don't merge very well, which is why I'd always get a lot of work.

If that was an easy task, no one needs me.

But when it came to stop motion,

Kathleen's experience was…

Zippo. Not a lot.

I knew nothing about stop motion.

So, Kathleen met with all the department, well, heads,

to see what… The plans.

…would be.

I would say, "How many Jack puppets do we need?

How many weeks of animation? How many scenes…

How many characters? How many heads to make?"

And they said…

I don't know. There's... there's, um…

They said, "I don't know. We don't have a finished script."

We hadn't storyboarded anything.

No.

And so, she said…

You have to guess.

Seriously. I just want you to guess.

I'd listen to her.

They would look at me like I was nuts.

Yeah. Which is okay.

So, with no script in hand,

they would just have to roll the dice on the budget.

We had our 18 million,

but there was nothing to tell us whether 18 million could make that movie

and nothing to tell us how to distribute the 18 million.

They needed a script delivered…

Immediately.

Without that script, things were getting scary.

But then again, Michael McDowell was a horror writer so, you know…

Henry Selick had already set up a studio, but there wasn't a script.

Michael was writing a little slower than they would have hoped,

and that made Henry nervous.

He was like, "Guys, you know, it's getting late. I gotta start."

We needed to go into production to make the deadline.

And it wasn't just Henry.

We were like, "How do we start?"

But then, it hit him.

Let's just start with the songs.

So, Tim and Danny took matters into their own hands.

It's kinda backwards, but we know what the story is.

Let's see how much of it we can tell in the songs.

So, Tim started describing his ideas to Danny.

He'd be going, "Okay, so, Jack is wandering into the forest now,

and he comes across three doors."

He's showing me pictures, and I'm going, "I got it, I got it. Okay, that's good."

And I'd shoo him out.

I'd go work for three days in the back room of Caroline's garage.

I'd lay down all the vocals, all the parts.

I never wrote faster.

And as Danny recorded each of these songs,

they were sent up north to Henry and the crew,

who could finally begin production.

Henry was like, "Thank you!"

Fantastic! "I can start animating."

So, we storyboarded the first song and started building the sets and puppets…

And with everything in place to shoot their very first scene,

there was one question on everybody's mind.

What's this? What's what?

What's this?

It's a Netflix show about movies?

No.

The first scene that we shot

was that song, "What's This?"

It was kind of a standalone, if you will, part of the film.

And the design of this magical place was spearheaded by the art director,

who had the intimidating task

of converting Tim Burton's dark and twisted visions

into pleasant Christmassy things.

Christmas Town had

kind of an old-fashioned Christmas-card feel.

A little bit more Dr. Seuss and softer.

There was a certain whimsy.

There was a good reason to start with…

"What's This?" It's bright, it's cheery.

It's kinda Disney.

Oooh.

They knew Disney would be eager to see their progress,

so they wanted to start out on the right foot.

I may as well give them what they want.

If you show them the corpse kid with the eyes stapled shut and stuff

from the get-go, it's like, I don't know, maybe they'll balk on this

and, you know, pull the plug.

As they moved ahead, well,

many heads, and completed the first sequence,

there was only one creative head who had…

Full control over the movie.

And he was busy with Batman down in Burbank.

But when they sent him the dailies… Christmas Town stuff.

He just loved what we did. The crew was feeling good.

Laying it down there! Bam!

Riding the momentum, they sent Tim something else.

Deane Taylor.

Now, full of Christmas Town confidence,

he'd started sketching up Halloween Town, where most of the movie is set.

I met with Tim in his trailer…

What's your angle?

And I had about 40 or 50 pieces of artwork to do with Halloween Town,

and he started to look,

but he was flipping the drawings off the table,

and they were flying all around the trailer.

This is worse than I thought.

He wanted it darker. He wanted less choice of colors.

He said, "Look, there's one rule."

"Halloween Town is black, white and orange,

and that's it."

So, Deane headed back to San Francisco to make things darker,

and he wouldn't be traveling alone.

And that's when Rick Heinrichs came on.

But wasn't Rick tied up with Batman?

Things change.

As all eyes turned to Halloween Town,

Rick started making house calls.

I was going up to San Francisco every weekend.

He intended spending weekends…

Imbuing, translating, revealing my magic formula.

Taking Tim's 2D drawings

and putting them into a three-dimensional space.

I've got the plans for next Halloween.

There's no question that Rick had a good handle on Tim's senses.

Right. He was kinda like Tim's eyes and ears.

But he wasn't… Deane Taylor.

Henry's art director.

You know, it created some… tensions, on occasion.

Nevertheless,

Rick got right to work… Imbuing…

Tim's vision for Halloween Town.

Call a town meeting and I'll tell everyone all about it.

And it all started with… One rule.

Black-and-white rule. And orange.

Yeah. Always orange.

And that's it. Nope.

I'm sorry? There was another rule.

No right angles.

Yeah. "A right angle is a wrong angle."

Or put another way…

If I was to be big enough to stand over Halloween Town

and run my hand across it,

I would cut it to bits.

So, playing all the angles,

and collecting any severed fingers in the process…

Cut it to bits.

…Rick Heinrichs cast a long shadow over proceedings,

at least on the weekends.

But as for the rest of the crew?

Well, the pressure was on Danny Elfman to keep churning out the tunes.

For the initial demos, which is what went to Henry,

I recorded all the voices. Every voice.

So, when it came time to record the masters,

they'd probably wanna bring in the masters.

There's better singers than me.

Don't mention that to Oingo Boingo fans.

Oingo Boingo!

But by the time Tim and I went into the studio

to officially record all the songs,

I was really attached to singing Jack's parts.

And for Danny, there was a good reason.

Jack was an extension of what I was feeling at the time.

A lead singer in a band is like a king of their own little world,

but I was at the point where I didn't wanna be in a band anymore.

So, as Danny was writing Jack's lyrics…

I was writing from my own heart.

He's got all these fans and people love him,

but he's not happy.

So, when it came time to choose the voice for Jack, Danny spoke up.

Tim, you know…

"Danny. Don't worry about it. You got the part."

With Danny now officially as the speaking voice of Jack,

it would be a nice change for one… Cunning screenwriter…

Who lived in the house with Danny.

I was very close to the song side of the creation of Nightmare.

Maybe too close.

She'd had to bear through listening to me do every single song

and play them for her. "What do you think?"

And she'd go, "It's great."

"What about the script?"

Yeah, good question.

We hit a wall with the original script by Michael McDowell.

In other words…

There was no script. There was literally no script.

It's time to sound the alarms!

Yeah. What's he been up to?

Dear Michael, gone now, had a love affair with cocaine,

took his salary up his nose and wrote nothing.

He was supposed to be writing lines, not… you know.

He even went so far as to format Danny's songs

as if they were his dialogue.

So, you won't be surprised to hear that Michael McDowell was sacked.

I don't wanna do business with you deadbeats anyway. Thank you.

But the script was still at a loss for words.

If only there was somebody…

In the next room… Who was…

Listening to all these songs… Who could write scripts…

…is Caroline.

Tim was like, "Yeah, we should bring Caroline on."

Good idea, Tim.

Caroline Thompson was brought in

to take what was useful from Michael McDowell…

Nothing. …and then start linking

Danny's songs together.

And on that front, Caroline had a lot of linking to do

because her boyfriend had been busy.

Danny's songs, if you analyze the movie, are so thorough in telling Jack's story…

Which basically only left room for lines like…

Where are we?

There's very little left to do in terms of a script for Jack's story.

But hang on, much like this story,

there's more than one character, and just like this story,

one particular character was late to the party.

The Sally character had not been well developed

and was very femme-fatale looking,

and as you can see from me, I don't really understand that.

I understand much more The Little Match Girl vision of the world.

So, in another cunning move, Caroline reinvented Sally.

She really put a lot of herself into Sally.

I made you with my own hands.

Typing like the cold wind of Halloween Town…

I just, like, blasted it out.

She went off and did her thing. When I showed it to Danny…

I guess it was the first finished draft, and…

He hated it. I loved it.

He said it's not at all what he had in mind.

Yes, this is exactly what I was hoping it would be.

Couples!

Well, in any case… Too bad, that's what I have.

It was a full script with a beginning, middle and ending.

And I saved their butts.

But Caroline's job wasn't even close to being finished.

I would fly up to San Francisco, probably every couple of weeks.

And she had a lot of learning to do.

She didn't know about the animation process.

Well, here to tell us is a young and energetic…

Henry Selick.

You take a puppet like this,

and we move him a little bit.

Take your hand away. Take a picture.

Well, as it's… Move him a little bit more.

…clear from Henry's description…

Take the hand away. Take a picture. We repeat that.

…Caroline did know one thing about stop motion.

Like this. It's a way to bring in our...

Stop-motion animation takes so darn long to create.

Which gave her plenty of time to perfect the script.

They would ask me questions

about transitions in a scene or in and out of a scene.

But somebody else was doing some perfecting of their own.

I would do whatever I had to to make something work.

I'd introduce things that weren't in her dialogue,

like the mistaken Easter Bunny brought back.

Or "Haven't you heard of peace on earth…"

And goodwill toward men? No!

Which didn't go down too well at all

with the newly credited screenwriter.

Henry was not really allowed to have a voice in the script.

Yet he raised his voice anyway.

I mean, it wasn't hundreds of things, but it was scores of changes.

But why would he? Tim wrote,

"Great," exclamation, exclamation point,

and that was the full sum of his notes. But in Henry's defense…

She didn't know about the animation process.

He was a hard character for me.

I mean, she called me and said, "You don't change one note of Danny's music.

How dare you change one word of my script?"

Correct. Sorry, but that's just the process.

That's why he was so angry at me.

You can write the best script in the world,

but it's never gonna be the shooting script.

It wasn't my choice.

Okay, before things get ugly,

this situation clearly needs a higher authority.

And if not Batman, then… Tim Burton.

If not him… Nope.

Rick Heinrichs will get the facts straight.

I would say that the script and the original treatment…

Yes?

Go on.

In animation, you get things from story as well as from art department.

A definitive tie.

Confirmation that the writing process for stop motion

lies with both the screenwriter and the animators.

Storyboarding things, physically acting out, to the boards,

and presenting and re-presenting and shifting the drawings around,

it is a writing format.

It's just done with pictures as well as words.

With that settled, Henry and the crew forged ahead.

Take a picture. Slowly.

The crew was cranking out a whopping one minute of footage per week.

It's a painful… Tedious process.

At least now, with a completed script,

they wouldn't… Have to guess.

…what they needed to accomplish. These are the two seconds to shoot today.

Not only did they have a script…

We had a full year of shooting,

so we got a real understanding of what it would take to make the movie.

Well, hopefully less than 18 million.

To do that movie the way they wanted it done,

was gonna cost significantly more than 18 million.

It looked like the budget wasn't quite adding up.

But we can't go in and say we can't make the movie.

That's not gonna fly, because we've agreed to make a movie for 18 million.

And so, the heavyweight Disney producer with a heavyweight desk

said what any producer

with a powerful mouse as their boss would say…

Give me a list of cuts you would make.

One by one, scenes were cut with great resistance.

"We don't wanna cut anything." They're really important parts.

So, with a list of tear-soaked cuts in hand,

Kathleen dutifully marched down to Disney HQ…

You get the money, you get the schedule, and you have to make these things work.

It turns out, Caroline wasn't the only cunning character in this story.

What we need to do is show 'em the movie.

And so, the bigwig Disney executives sat down and watched.

'Twas a long time ago…

And even though it was largely incomplete and mostly storyboards…

They loved the movie.

Then Kathleen struck.

"That movie costs 24 million."

They were a little appalled.

Then Kathleen said…

If you insist upon our staying at 18 million,

we're gonna have to cut that and that and that.

That? And they're not gonna wanna do that.

That's splendid! No!

They know that that's gonna damage the movie they just saw.

The trap was sprung. The mouse really had no escape.

They gave us the extra six million, and we made the movie for 24 million.

With no scenes cut,

Kathleen returned to her beloved desk in San Francisco a hero.

I didn't realize how good she was,

but she was a Disney insider who loved our movie.

Yeah. So she could work it out.

And it seemed that an ending was in sight.

Or was it?

There was a discussion about changing the ending.

So long, Jack!

How dare you treat my friends so shamefully!

And as they approached the last sequence,

there was something that really bugged Henry a lot.

So he took matters into his and a storyboard artist's hands.

I came up with this idea that…

What?

Dr. Finkelstein!

Oogie Boogie was actually the evil scientist inside, puppeting him.

Excellent.

I am Oogie Boogie!

Although this end wrapped things up…

Classic Scooby-Doo ending. Like, whaddya know?

You meddlin' stick-figure! …this change was pretty big.

I'm sorry, but that's just the process.

There was only one man who could swoop in

and approve this new ending.

And his name?

Tim Burton.

It was royalty coming to visit us when Tim came.

Coming through.

He had an entourage and they would all move like…

That scene from Brazil,

with the leader of the factory walking and people following him.

We ended up calling them "The Burtonettes."

Tim and his…

whatever you call them ended up marching straight to Henry…

Here we are.

…who had a surprise to show him.

What? Dr. Finkelstein!

He just hated it. He hated it so much.

With Burtonettes and directors ducking for cover,

Tim Burton…

With these big size 14 Doc Martens…

He kicked a hole in the wall.

My gosh!

And I went, "Tim, is your foot okay?"

He said, "Yeah, they're steel toes."

And soon, everyone was talkin' about it.

No comment about the hole in the wall.

Monday, when we all came to work, someone wrote…

"Tim kicked a hole here."

We did cut that part of the wall out and framed it…

Because it was a celebrity kicking.

That was one of our…

more colorful interactions.

In the end, they went with this ending

and that was the end of that.

So long… Tim Burton.

Motivated by a gaping steel-toe-shaped hole,

the crew put their heads down, or on and off,

and on again, constantly,

until the very last… Picture.

After two long years of stops and starts,

The Nightmare Before Christmas wrapped production.

Working furiously, they cut all 100,000 odd frames together

along with the songs and the final voices,

some of which weren't as final as they thought.

Perhaps it can be improved? No problem.

While Danny's performance of Jack truly sang,

that's about where it ended.

Ultimately, his acting chops were kind of wooden and a little stiff.

It wasn't working. I had to take it to Tim.

So Tim took me aside and said, "Well, you know, he can't do it.

Will you tell him?"

Instead of doing what I should have done and said, "You tell him,"

I went home and did the deed.

He was very hurt that Tim hadn't done it himself.

You know, I had to kind of swallow…

you know, some major pride there.

And so, singing Danny stayed but dialogue Danny was replaced…

Skip to the end. …by Prince Humperdinck himself.

And I was elated, to say the least.

Happily dealing with Jack's non-singing dialogue…

I feel so much better now.

…they finessed the finished cut and watched with a sense of completion.

I went up to Tim after the screening and said,

"With the ending of the movie, I thought,

'I can do better. I can write a better ending.'"

Again with the ending? He…

lost his… Shoe?

Mind.

How dare you?

He erupted into a screaming fit.

He attacked an editing machine.

And he was just, like, raging all over this machine

that was certainly going to outbox him.

As for Caroline's ending?

I did not get to rewrite the new ending.

And with that, the cut was ready for Disney,

who only had one question.

What's this?

Yes.

Wait. No. Genuinely, they wanted to know.

What's this?

They had another question.

Will kids like this movie?

Well, there's only one way to find out.

They had the preview for kids.

It was shown to a group of schoolkids at a small theater in Hollywood,

and the kids were very mystified by it.

Well, according to Danny it was a…

Disaster.

It was catastrophic.

And based on this screening, Disney decided…

It's peculiar. It's scary.

Well, it's not for kids.

Suddenly spooked by what they had…

They did not release Nightmare Before Christmas

as a kids movie.

Not with a friendly G rating under the mighty Disney banner,

but a PG rating with…

Sister organization Touchstone,

because they thought it would only appeal to teenagers.

And to help broaden that appeal,

The Nightmare Before Christmas was renamed…

Tim Burton's…

Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas.

Isn't that wonderful? It couldn't be more wonderful.

Well, maybe not for everyone.

It felt very much like, "We're being diminished."

I know how you feel.

Just in terms of perception of public…

Everyone thought Tim Burton directed it.

And Tim Burton did not.

What about Henry?

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, sir.

Henry has never gotten the credit for this film that he is due.

And not taking anything away from Tim Burton…

Is it all his vision? Yes, you bet.

But Henry's the one that carried that forward.

So, Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas…

From Tim Burton's imagination…

…directed by Henry Selick, was released by…

Touchstone Pictures.

…even though it was made by Disney.

What is this?

Perhaps unsurprisingly… Nobody quite knew what it was.

Open your mind.

There just wasn't a lot of understanding of it.

And when the film was released on October 13th, 1993,

the puzzlement continued.

Some people thought it was imaginative but the songs were terrible.

I heard, "The songs are amazing!"

But the story is disappointing. What was this all about?

The movie was not a huge smash hit.

Keep in mind we spent two and a half years making this movie,

and the release of the movie goes a couple weeks,

then it goes away and that's the end of it.

There's this weird sense of depression that sinks in after that.

It's heartbreaking.

Terrible news, folks!

The movie did break even,

and when it slipped uneventfully out of the theaters…

All right, it's not gonna do very well.

They did make $50 million.

Not bad, but you know…

not Aladdin.

Or Batman Returns for that matter.

Hear me roar.

And thus ended a ten-year journey that started here

and ended here.

And, really, it almost did end there.

Almost.

OJ Simpson is wanted…

A few years went past.

And then a few more, until 13 years later.

I'm in Tokyo with Tim for the opening of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

We spent a whole day going to toy stores.

There was all this Jack and Sally and Nightmare stuff.

He said, "I've never seen these before."

It's starting to sink in that this thing's not dead.

Not anymore, at least.

I was in Spain to visit a cousin who lives there,

and lo and behold, in the main plaza is a Jack Skellington on stilts.

You could see that there was this abiding fascination

that was growing.

Well, Rick hit it right on the head

because over a decade later, the movie was growing in momentum,

growing in popularity, and growing in late fees.

Because VHS and DVD rentals

really resurrected The Nightmare Before Christmas.

And as for Touchstone,

well, Nightmare became un-touchstoned,

and it was off to work Disney went, turning this moderate success

into an iconic cultural touchstone.

The merchandise on this thing over these many years…

Jewelry, and T-shirts and key chains. Beach towels.

It just grew and grew.

Thank you, everyone.

Raised from the depths by a fiercely loyal fan base

and Disney, who worked their magic,

Nightmare Before Christmas has become more than just a movie.

I can't tell you how many young people have come up to me

and have said, "This movie saved my life."

And very often they're kids who are outsiders.

And it's a film made for outsiders by outsiders.

There were 200 of us artist misfits that found each other.

There's no better feeling than being a part of something

that so many people grew to embrace.

And in this case,

Henry and his crew were more than just a part of something.

We're the people who made it, who brought it to life.

You know, it's kinda like, you could say, in a way,

Tim and Danny were the fathers,

and we were the mother.

We grew that baby

and nurtured that baby, and, um…

it's got all of our genes in the baby.

Um… But we... we birthed that baby.

In many ways, Henry's genetic amalgamation baby…

is the perfect analogy for this slightly odd concept

made by self-professed oddballs.

But where exactly was this baby born?

Back when Tim had the idea at Walt Disney Animation?

Or was it up on set in San Francisco? Or maybe it was here in Caroline's house.

And my house was built by Walt Disney for his sisters in 1939,

and I moved here so I could have my horse living in my garden.

I have always loved horses.

Riding horses is not about control or power. It's about cooperation.

It's about learning to see the world through a whole other being's eyes.

A lesson that Caroline drew upon when writing her scripts.

Every movie I write is about that.

Putting yourself into the embodiment of someone who isn't you.

And in this case, that someone was Sally.

The Sally character has the ability to look after herself

and plots and plans and…

Perhaps a little cunning.

…um, an understanding that nobody's gonna do it for her.

So, that would have been me at that time.

I think she really put a lot of depth and tragedy into Sally.

She really fleshed her out.

And as for Jack,

well, there's not much doubt whose voice that is.

And when Jack opened his mouth to sing, it was me,

and…

and I need to…

sing, from my own heart.

That's what I created from my own self

and was expressing, and I reached a point where I said,

"No, I'm not the best singer, or even close to it,

but for this character I am."

And it was these characters, formed in the images of these characters,

in this house, that touched on something truly special.

Because even though Danny and Caroline eventually went their separate ways,

as for Jack and Sally, well, just ask the director.

There's so much of me, personally, in Jack's performance.

I think he's my favorite character,

but I love Sally the most.

In a way she represents my wife

and all the stuff she's put up with with me over the years.

There was times, like when I was doing MTV station IDs,

I wasn't making a good living,

but she didn't care that I broke even or even lost a little money

'cause I was trying to do something incredible.

I wanted to do amazing things.

And just like Henry's wife…

Sally has this belief in Jack which I think is kind of blind.

It's almost based on something that isn't there,

but because she believes in him so much, it is there.

And he finally becomes what she believed him to be.

Well, wherever this movie was born and to whichever parents,

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a special and very beloved creation.

It's so unique.

It was creating something that hadn't been done before.

This Halloween-Christmas classic,

like its creators,

doesn't quite fit neatly into any box.

It has so many components that are so magical.

And it delicately straddles the line

between kids movie and not kids movie…

…Christmas movie and Halloween movie.

Made by Hollywood royalty far from Hollywood.

Made decades ago, yet still meaningful today.

So, now when someone asks, "What's this?"

Well, the answer is obviously

a cult-classic, mega-hit, stop-motion masterpiece

collectively made by hundreds of incredibly talented oddballs,

and most importantly…

…a timeless holiday classic. That's it!

Now that's an ending everyone can be happy with.