“Guys, we’re making a movie!”

“Where are we going to get the money for it?”

“Never mind the money! Money is for unimaginative capitalist pigs like Harvey Weinstein! This is…”

“…genius. Yeah, let’s hear it, Terry…”

“So there’s this ollllld man. And he thinks he’s outlived his prime, right?! He has all these great ideas, and nobody will fund them, least of all that unimaginative capitalist pig…”

“…Harvey Weinstein. Yeah, yeah.”

“Anyway, he has a beautiful daughter! Who’s just as full of imagination as he is! But nobody will give them money! But then, at the end, the power of imagination triumphs over everything!”

“Uh huh. Who do you want me to call?”

“I want Johnny Depp as the handsome but evil intruder who tries to take MY DAUGHTER AWAY FROM ME and CORRUPT HER INNOCENCE”

“Settle down there. He’s working on a project with Tim Burton right now.”

“Unimaginative capitalist pig! Fine, what about Hea…oh.

Ultimately what I see with Tim Burton is a studio director trying to balance creativity with commerce. Burton the artist vs. Burton the Brand studio and corporate execs. no doubt see him as. Something he has commented on in the past. Like Lucas he occupies a very unique position few creators get, where the merch produced is sometimes more important than the art created.

A really good profile on Burton is up on Flickeringmyth.com. Part III (of IV) was recently posted and it gives a great overview of what happened to Burton from Mars Attacks! to Planet of the Apes. It’s no fanboy piece and gives a great picture into the difficulties of the every changing & never stable Hollywood Studio world.

http://flickeringmyth.blogspot.com/2010/03/freakishly-clever-tim-burton-profile_10.html

This was a standout for me…it just nails it…

“…A major drawback for working on a big budget Hollywood picture for Tim Burton is all the studio craziness that happens off the movie set. “Sometimes I feel like the film gets in the way of the merchandising,” revealed the California-native. “There were people over in Taiwan making Planet of the Apes swords before we’d even shot the thing.” Burton did not entirely begrudge the experience. “I’ve been very lucky. Making a movie is tough by nature, whether it’s an independent film or whatever. As the world gets more corporate, you just want to protect that artistic feeling as much as you can. I don’t want to create a me-versus-them, because that’s not what it’s about. It’s a large operation – a lot of people, a lot of money – so I take it very seriously. I feel like I’m in the army sometimes.”…”

A few tracks, but not many, do sound like his earlier film scores. “Nasty Habits”, being a good example.

Need I quote the fallen prophet Biggie Smalls with this example?

Burton is a brilliant dude, but like most brilliant people, I think he produced his best work under pressure. Okay, fine, 7 million bucks isn’t exactly “pressure”, but it proves that he can make a movie uniquely his own without a kings ransom of CGI dumped into it. I forget who said it first, and I won’t take credit for the saying, but when you have special effects in almost every shot in your film, that no longer make them ‘special’ effects. I’ll remember the second and a half shot of Large Marge for the rest of my life, but I can’t for the life of me remember a single shot in any of the film’s he’s made in the past decade that hit me that hard.

Lately he’s just been handed a blank cheque and the freedom to shoot whatever, cast whoever, and make literally anything he wants. On paper that sounds great, but the restrictions he had to endure with his earlier work forced him to adapt, grow, and find his voice. This is probably just a symptom of a greater problem, mainly of course being studio involvement and the fact that his style is a huge money making brand that no studio would dare squander on somthing as ‘unmarketable’ as Ed Wood again. I don’t condemn the guy for getting popular, but I’d love to see what he could do now without more money than God.

…Also, every now and again, I like to think that when I see the name “Danny Elfman” in a films opening credits, that perhaps they mean that the music was created on a machine called The Danny Elfman, and that the “la la la la, la la la la, bum bum bum bum” preset button somewho got stuck. I love the guy too much, and I’ll play dumb forever to live in that happy little bubble of delusion for his sake.

Somewhat blasphemous, but while I respect his obvious talents and influence, I’ve never found much of Burton’s work that appealing, for a lot of the reasons satirized above. There are a few exceptions (Nightmare Before Christmas) and this is more personal taste than an artistic judgement. The same sketch could be made about Guy Ritchie’s filmmaking aesthetic, which I happen to like better, though I’d be hard-pressed to argue that Ritchie is as good a director.

Ironically, I think that my favorite Burton film in many years, Sweeney Todd, drew much of its strength from the fact that while bringing plenty of his own vision, some of his tendencies were balanced by having to work with an established story. Heck, at one point Burton even seemed in on the joke about his own formula.