I met Tim Burton earlier this week at a site that feels like the setting of a Tim Burton movie. We sat in a dim room at the McKittrick Hotel, a once-abandoned tavern that used to attract Manhattans upper crust and now plays host to the macabre interactive-theater project Sleep No More. Its dim corridors could house any of the peculiarities from Burtons 31-year career, during which he has directed such contemporary classics as Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissohrands and Ed Wood.Burtons latest, Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children, opens in theaters this weekend. Based on the Ransom Riggs novel about a teenage boy (played by Asa Butterfield) who befriends a tribe of shape-shifting eccentrics at an abandoned orphanage, Miss Peregrine is right at home in the pastel fantasies of the Burton oeuvre.So, we talked about exactly that.I live a few blocks over from the Tim Burtonthemed bar.Oh, really'Oh, shit! I heard about it, but Id be too scared. Ill have to send a pre-scout to see what its like.Imagine if the patrons saw Tim Burton walk in the door.Its too scary, even for me.Because its too much of your own work in other peoples hands'Yeah, I dont even like watching my own movies. I am curious about it. And its still open. Thats amazing!I feel your movies have gotten a bit more family-friendly in the last decade.Really'Things like Miss Peregrine, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows retain your aesthetic, but theyre not quite as edgy as some of your previous work.Do you think having children has influenced that'No, I dont. Its a possibility, but its certainly not something conscious. I did show my 5-year-old Sweeney Todd. Is that family-friendly'I wouldnt call that one family-friendly. Its the post-Sweeney Todd Tim Burton. What did she think'She liked it. Im a weird person to ask because I grew up watching weird movies all the time. Who am I to know' But its a possibility, even though Ive never consciously thought of that.Theres a lot of chatter right now right now about studios reliance on reboots, sequels and adaptations. Yes, Ive done my fare share of those.Is it harder now than when you first started to get a Frankenweenie or an Edward Scissorhands made'Maybe, yeah, its possible. It feels entering a new era. The rebooting or the redoing used to be infrequent, but now they basically reboot things every year. They do the same stories, just with different actors, which is a new phenomenon. Spider-Man is the same Spider-Man with a different cast.In thinking about the evolution of blockbusters, its hard to deny that Batman is one of the most influential movies of the past few decades. It helped to usher in a new model for commercial filmmaking.Well, I do feel lucky to be part of something that felt new at the time. That was the days when the project felt like a new way of doing a superhero film, but also youd never heard the term franchise before. Ah, it was so pleasant not to hear that word. Is it a movie' Is it a fast-food chain' What are we talking about' What does franchise mean'You didnt even know there would be a sequel.No, we had trouble even to begin with. Warner Bros.obviously was into it, but it was different territory.It was an early example of fan acrimony emerging before the product has even been shelved, which is ubiquitous now. People were so upset that Michael Keaton wasnt a buff hero type.Oh, yeah! No, I know, and it was so funny, over the years, because when the movie came out, it was financially successful, but it was not a critical success.Oh, I dont know ...Believe me, I was there. And then there was a lot of criticism about Michael Keaton, as you said, even by other actors. And then, all of a sudden, you see every Batman, they all [deep Batman voice] talk like this ' and its like, what is this, some kind of Elvis imitator' You guys hated it, then why do you sound like him'You could argue that, in Hollywood, theres pre-Batman and post-Batman. Are you a fan of the superhero saturation thats taken hold'Eh, I liked Batman. That was my favorite character, just because I liked the fact that he was human and I liked the fact that he had the dual, split personality ' the light and the dark. Thats why I like Michael Keaton. You look at his eyes and hes crazy. And he alsoneeds to dress up like a bat, so theres all that psychological underpinning, which I loved about him.You love those dual worlds. Thats a recurring theme in your movies. Its in Batman, Corpse Bride, Big Fish, Edward Scissorhands, Miss Peregrine, the list goes on.But thats life, you know' People are always trying to categorize, like, well, this is real, and thats not real, or this is fantasy, thats reality. Its like, really' Turn on the news. If you described real events, youd say theyre fantasies, or youd describe these fantastical things and theyd be real. People try to categorize and separate the two, when in fact theyre not. Everything is a weird combination of the two. Thats what dreams are, thats what movies could be. It always makes me laugh when people try to separate the two.Do you think thats a symptom of adulthood'Yeah, I dont know. Its something I resisted my whole life, this categorization. Thats why being labeled a peculiar child or a weird child ' I never felt weird. I felt like a kid. And thats what I liked about this. If you didnt know what their peculiarities are, theyre just kids. And I do think youre right ' I think as you get older, maybe youre trying to grasp onto things in a crazy world. Youre trying to put things in a box, and certainly where I grew up, in the time I grew up, in Burbank, there was a real strong sense of trying to pigeonhole people, and I just never liked that.Does having a distinct aesthetic palette become limiting as a director' People have a fixed idea of the types of projects you do.Yes, now, it gets a bit limiting. At the beginning, it was all a surprise, Pee-wees Big Adventure and Beetlejuice. When I got Beetlejuice, I thought, Really' A studio wants to make this movie' They didnt know what it was. So the element of surprise with Batman was similar. Its like, whoa. And as that goes on, it becomes more of a thing, you know what I mean' Instead of a human being, youre some kind of thing.Youre an idea.Yeah, people say, This would be perfect for you, and I go, I dont think that way. I dont think, Oh, this is my kind of thing. I just respond to whatever I respond to. It does get a bit strange. Thats why I dont go on the internet much. Thats why I dont read much about myself or think of myself. I always try to respond to things emotionally and not like, Oh, this is my kind of thing.I think of Alice in Wonderland as the ultimate Tim Burton project, like your career was building to it. The dual worlds, the trippy characters, the protagonists restlessness. But it was so computerized, which is different.Oh, yeah, that movie was the most backward movie I ever made. We used computers, but we used lots of different elements. We really used a mixture of things,making peoples eyes bigger or their heads bigger. There was never any one element on the set at any time. It was the biggest puzzle Ive ever been involved with.Your list of unrealized projects is long. I was really surprised to learn you were briefly attached to Jurassic Park.Was I' [Laughs] That was the quickest one ever. It was like, [motions picking up phone] Can we' Oh' No' Spielbergs doing it' [motions putting down phone]. I was attached maybe for 10 seconds. [Laughs]Your entire career could be different. What would a Tim Burton Jurassic Park look like'I dont know. That was so quick I didnt even have a chance to think about it.If you had to pick one of your movies for the proverbial canon, what would it be'I dont know, its hard to say. I guess probably Scissorhands or The Nightmare Before Christmas. Those are the ones that are real close to me. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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