Monday, April 02, 2007
/ 4:44 PM
I still haven't been able to go back into my regular mode of blogging.. My own com hasn't been fixed till now! But for now, I'll just share some extracts from a book entitled "Interviews with Tim Burton".. He directed "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "Big Fish" and so on.. The following extracts were the some of the most interesting bits to me! I grabbed the book from the National Library, so get it from there if this interests you!
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Q: Were you lonely?
A: I never felt...yeah. Yeah. I've always likened it to that feeling, when you're a teenager, that grand feeling--which is why I liked punk or some people like heavy metal or Gothic. You've got to go through some kind of drama. I've always seen people who are well adjusted, and actually, they're not that well adjusted. Everybody is going to blow at some moment or other. In fact, the ones that come across as the most well adjusted are like human time bombs, waiting to go off. I just think that kind of dark catharis, that kind of dark, dramatic, depressed, sad, moody thing, was kind of healthy. ... Grand drama. You've got to feel, you've got to go for the drama. Because if I didn't, I just felt like I would explode. I always felt it was healthy. I just felt that it was saving me. You deal with it, and you create, or you become it.
Q: When Edward Scissorhands came out, you said of your youth that you were "perfectly happy" alone, in your own little world. When I read that, I didn't really buy it.
A: I think my statement's a bit cavaliar. I think that was a broad-stroke statement. Lookit, nothing is ever one way or the other. But I relate to that more than anything. Part of the problem when I'm doing a movie is that I never see things simplistically. People ask me if I'm happy. I can never answer that kind of question, because it's always too mixed, in a way. Well, I'm never going to be happy, but I feel absurdly lucky to be here.
Q: You've said that you grew up at the end of the nuclear family experiment, and that it didn't work. Did you mean yours, or the whole idea?
A: I think the whole thing. There was no sense of connection to emotions. In our culture, what you were taught about America in school is the way things should be--success and family, what they call traditional family values--and you know, things are not that simple. So when it's not working, rather than going, "This isn't working, this is fucked,", people just feel like they're failures.
(Lyvia is thinking.. "So much for always desiring to go overseas.. But I did frequently try to scale down my biasness in wishing for an overseas environment, knowing that there is always the tendency to think 'the grass is greener somewhere else. But if you think abt it, the grass has to be greener some place out there in the world, it's just that I don't know where yet. Probability is high coz the world out there is BIG. And I just know that I wanna see more things, know more things. Do stuff on a big and amazing scale. To stir up excited feelings in myself; And maybe in others too. I dun wanna just do things for a living")
Q: And the last twelve years in Washington, they've been shoving that "family values" idea down our throats.
A: And it's completely frightening, because they don't understand. The same thing about "America". It's just bizarre to try to maintain this feeling about America. And you see it most strongly in Los Angeles. America to me always seems like a country that's based on a movie. Here you've got presidents sprouting lines from Clint Eastwood movies, and it's getting more and more that way. It's hard to find people to work with because nobody wants to be what they are. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not this, because I'm really -this-." This level of success that's thrust upon you--you've got to be successful and you've got to be a certain way--nobody is what they are, because of this dream. And it's great to have a dream, and none of that should be taken away from people, because that's all people have, but not this materialistic dream. That's the problem, and everybody is fucked up from it.
Q: And were your drawings stuck up on the fridge by your parents?
A: I got the normal parent routine. It's actually quite funny. You know, mom's reading a book, and you show her a drawing and she has X-ray vision through the book, where she can see your drawing without looking from her book. [Maniac laugh.] That's the classic routine. I don't know what the whole deal was. My father was also a baseball player, in the minors, so there was a slight pushing in that direction. And my mother pushed me into the whole musical instrument routine. I think I played the clarinet, but I was never any good at it. So my drawing was always more private. I feel kind of lucky, because I think if they had supported it, I probably wouldn't have done it. Lookit, every kid is reacting against their parents. If the parents are radical, the kid turns out to be a little accountant. It's not always the case, but the dynamic is pretty strong.
Q: How do you feel your background in animation shaped you as a director?
A: What I feel really good about, really happy about, is that I did not go to film school. I went to Cal Arts, and went through animation, where I got a very solid education. You learn design, you draw your own characters, you draw your own backgrounds, you draw your own scenes. You cut it, you shoot it. You learn the storyboarding process. It's everything, without the bullshit of film school. I can't even meet people from film school, because I feel like they've been in the industry for ten years. It's really frightening! Not to say that they are all that way, but I knew somebody who was at a studio and was going to look at a student's film, and then the student came in and said, "I'm not running this film, I need a -stereo- room!" The level of competition, of feeling like you're already in the industry, you don't get a chance to create.
Q: (Question relating to Tim Burton's being attached to Disney as an animator previously) Was the monotony your biggest enemy?
A: Number one is, I was just not Disney material. I could just not draw cute foxes for the life of me. I couldn't do it. I tried. I tried, tried. The unholy alliance of animation is: you are called upon to be an artist--especially at Disney, where you are perceived as the artist, pure and simple, where your work flows from the artistic pencil to the paper, the total artist--but on the other hand, you are called upon to be a zombie factory worker. And for me, I could not integrate the two. I could not find that balance.
Also, at that time they were making kind of shitty movies. And it took them five or six years to make a movie. There's that cold, hard fact: do you want to spend six years of your life working on 'The Fox and the Hound'? There's a soul-searching moment when the answer is pretty clear.
Q: Do you watch your films with audiences? Do you go to test screenings?
A: I have to. Those things are really hard for me. There's such importance placed on test screenings, by studios, and unrightly so, because they're complete bullshit. The reality of the situation is--and I don't care what anybody says--that if you show the movie to a group of people, you'll get an idea of what's working and what's not working. That's really all you need to do. You don't need to have this lab animal experiement, where you dissect the audience and dissect the film. That's complete one hundred percent bullshit! And they're completely locked into it. If you put the audience in a lab experiment scenario, they're gonna turn into critics and they're gonna turn into lab animals. So I believe, in the broad-stroke, in looking at a movie with an audience--and you don't have to ask them, who is your most favourite character, and who is your least favourite character? You can tell what's working and what's not. That's all you should do. And that's why I constantly try to fight this fucked system. It's so horrible. It doesn't help the movie.
But after the movie opens, I don't go. I get too freaked out. I can't enjoy it. It makes me wonder why I do it. I don't enjoy this, I don't enjoy that. I wish that I could, because I feel like I'm cutting myself out of part of it that's maybe nice. I get too nervous.
Q: When Frankenweenie got a PG rating instead of a G, Disney buried it in their vault, and from what I understand, they wouldn't even give you a copy of it.
A: That's absolutely true. They were very weird about it.
Q: (Cont'd from above qtn) And yet, now that you are a famous directorm they are releasing it on video, before "Batman Returns" comes out. It seems like Exhibit A of Hollywood cynicism.
A: Exactly! And you know what, though, I don't even get upset with this shit, because it's the way it is. I understand it. I'm cynical enough about things just to be happy enough that they are releasing it. I have plenty of other things to get upset about and paranoid about.
Q: But studios have the expectation that each film will be like one of those cookies coming off the cookie assembly line in "Edward Scissorhands", and that there are only three or four different shapes of cookies allowed.
A: Well, they're wrong! It's like with Warner Bros., because that's where my history has mainly been. I'm always amazed--movies that they fight tooth and nail, and are always the weirdest, those are the ones that end up making them all the money. All they have to do is look at their fucking slate of movies! The proof is there. Fuck! Fuck your system! Whoever's making the movie, give him a chance to make your movie, and you'll have a fifty percent chance of failing or succeeding, or working or not, and that's as good of a chance as you'll get on anything, and you're not going to do anything that's going to make it any better! So why not, if something is going to be flawed, why not have it be interestingly flawed, as opposed to boringly flawed? Why lower things? Why not let there be different things? Some people are better storytellers, some people are better at other things.
Q: So why not just use this machinery of Hollywood, but do your work more independently, as Cronenberg does?
A: Well, that's interesting, and I think I'm certainly in that area now to find out. See, I've never talked to somebody like him, and perhaps I should. I think I'm getting there, I do. The odd thing for me is that I grew up in the studio system. And it's been odd to feel like I could do what I want, and have had the ability to do what I want, in a system that doesn't seem to allow that very much. I always felt like, if you're not getting it from these guys, you're getting it from some French guy or something. There's always going to be some problem. But now I'm getting to the point where maybe it's time to deal with somebody else, because it's getting too retarded and inbred among these people. I can't hear these same things from these same people anymore. I'd rather hear it from some French guy!
What they don't understand, no matter how anybody perceives me in Hollywood, is you're still trying to make something--film is still an art form. And you go through the same anguish as any artist does creating something. But this doesn't enter into their thinking. You can go along with it for a while, and laugh your way through it, but then you have to move along, because it gets redundant and you get angrier and angrier. Where I wouldn't get angry before, now I get angry and start to see red in a split second. I just fly off the handle now. It's anti-creative. It's not helping anything. It doesn't even help them get the movie made! I understand their goal, their goal is simple: take this movie, make it commercial, make it good, we want to make a lot of money on it! I understand that, that's fine. But I can't go through it anymore.
Q: There were a number of hours of discussion with Tom Cruise (!) about him playing Edward Scissorhands. And part of the issue was his concern about the virility, or lack thereof, of the character.
A: [Maniac laugh.] I thought that was a little odd. It kind of struck me from left field, because I certainly wasn't thinking about that. I didn't think it was worth writing a scene where Edward goes to a bar with a bunch of guys and ogles the babes! Or scores with the chicks! Or we see him watching a Raiders game! There comes a point where actors have too many fears--there's too much intellectualizing about the process. I understand him wanting to understand the character, wanting to understand me--you have to go through quite a lot to get that--but there comes a point where their fears are too great, and it makes you realize that they shouldn't do it. You need to work with people who will go, "Well, fuck it! Let's do it!" That's exciting.
-----
I'll stop here! The above is merely part of just session 1 of one of the interviews with Tim Burton.. The book contains much more.. Yeap yeap.. I'll be back with the next blog post!
-----
Q: Were you lonely?
A: I never felt...yeah. Yeah. I've always likened it to that feeling, when you're a teenager, that grand feeling--which is why I liked punk or some people like heavy metal or Gothic. You've got to go through some kind of drama. I've always seen people who are well adjusted, and actually, they're not that well adjusted. Everybody is going to blow at some moment or other. In fact, the ones that come across as the most well adjusted are like human time bombs, waiting to go off. I just think that kind of dark catharis, that kind of dark, dramatic, depressed, sad, moody thing, was kind of healthy. ... Grand drama. You've got to feel, you've got to go for the drama. Because if I didn't, I just felt like I would explode. I always felt it was healthy. I just felt that it was saving me. You deal with it, and you create, or you become it.
Q: When Edward Scissorhands came out, you said of your youth that you were "perfectly happy" alone, in your own little world. When I read that, I didn't really buy it.
A: I think my statement's a bit cavaliar. I think that was a broad-stroke statement. Lookit, nothing is ever one way or the other. But I relate to that more than anything. Part of the problem when I'm doing a movie is that I never see things simplistically. People ask me if I'm happy. I can never answer that kind of question, because it's always too mixed, in a way. Well, I'm never going to be happy, but I feel absurdly lucky to be here.
Q: You've said that you grew up at the end of the nuclear family experiment, and that it didn't work. Did you mean yours, or the whole idea?
A: I think the whole thing. There was no sense of connection to emotions. In our culture, what you were taught about America in school is the way things should be--success and family, what they call traditional family values--and you know, things are not that simple. So when it's not working, rather than going, "This isn't working, this is fucked,", people just feel like they're failures.
(Lyvia is thinking.. "So much for always desiring to go overseas.. But I did frequently try to scale down my biasness in wishing for an overseas environment, knowing that there is always the tendency to think 'the grass is greener somewhere else. But if you think abt it, the grass has to be greener some place out there in the world, it's just that I don't know where yet. Probability is high coz the world out there is BIG. And I just know that I wanna see more things, know more things. Do stuff on a big and amazing scale. To stir up excited feelings in myself; And maybe in others too. I dun wanna just do things for a living")
Q: And the last twelve years in Washington, they've been shoving that "family values" idea down our throats.
A: And it's completely frightening, because they don't understand. The same thing about "America". It's just bizarre to try to maintain this feeling about America. And you see it most strongly in Los Angeles. America to me always seems like a country that's based on a movie. Here you've got presidents sprouting lines from Clint Eastwood movies, and it's getting more and more that way. It's hard to find people to work with because nobody wants to be what they are. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not this, because I'm really -this-." This level of success that's thrust upon you--you've got to be successful and you've got to be a certain way--nobody is what they are, because of this dream. And it's great to have a dream, and none of that should be taken away from people, because that's all people have, but not this materialistic dream. That's the problem, and everybody is fucked up from it.
Q: And were your drawings stuck up on the fridge by your parents?
A: I got the normal parent routine. It's actually quite funny. You know, mom's reading a book, and you show her a drawing and she has X-ray vision through the book, where she can see your drawing without looking from her book. [Maniac laugh.] That's the classic routine. I don't know what the whole deal was. My father was also a baseball player, in the minors, so there was a slight pushing in that direction. And my mother pushed me into the whole musical instrument routine. I think I played the clarinet, but I was never any good at it. So my drawing was always more private. I feel kind of lucky, because I think if they had supported it, I probably wouldn't have done it. Lookit, every kid is reacting against their parents. If the parents are radical, the kid turns out to be a little accountant. It's not always the case, but the dynamic is pretty strong.
Q: How do you feel your background in animation shaped you as a director?
A: What I feel really good about, really happy about, is that I did not go to film school. I went to Cal Arts, and went through animation, where I got a very solid education. You learn design, you draw your own characters, you draw your own backgrounds, you draw your own scenes. You cut it, you shoot it. You learn the storyboarding process. It's everything, without the bullshit of film school. I can't even meet people from film school, because I feel like they've been in the industry for ten years. It's really frightening! Not to say that they are all that way, but I knew somebody who was at a studio and was going to look at a student's film, and then the student came in and said, "I'm not running this film, I need a -stereo- room!" The level of competition, of feeling like you're already in the industry, you don't get a chance to create.
Q: (Question relating to Tim Burton's being attached to Disney as an animator previously) Was the monotony your biggest enemy?
A: Number one is, I was just not Disney material. I could just not draw cute foxes for the life of me. I couldn't do it. I tried. I tried, tried. The unholy alliance of animation is: you are called upon to be an artist--especially at Disney, where you are perceived as the artist, pure and simple, where your work flows from the artistic pencil to the paper, the total artist--but on the other hand, you are called upon to be a zombie factory worker. And for me, I could not integrate the two. I could not find that balance.
Also, at that time they were making kind of shitty movies. And it took them five or six years to make a movie. There's that cold, hard fact: do you want to spend six years of your life working on 'The Fox and the Hound'? There's a soul-searching moment when the answer is pretty clear.
Q: Do you watch your films with audiences? Do you go to test screenings?
A: I have to. Those things are really hard for me. There's such importance placed on test screenings, by studios, and unrightly so, because they're complete bullshit. The reality of the situation is--and I don't care what anybody says--that if you show the movie to a group of people, you'll get an idea of what's working and what's not working. That's really all you need to do. You don't need to have this lab animal experiement, where you dissect the audience and dissect the film. That's complete one hundred percent bullshit! And they're completely locked into it. If you put the audience in a lab experiment scenario, they're gonna turn into critics and they're gonna turn into lab animals. So I believe, in the broad-stroke, in looking at a movie with an audience--and you don't have to ask them, who is your most favourite character, and who is your least favourite character? You can tell what's working and what's not. That's all you should do. And that's why I constantly try to fight this fucked system. It's so horrible. It doesn't help the movie.
But after the movie opens, I don't go. I get too freaked out. I can't enjoy it. It makes me wonder why I do it. I don't enjoy this, I don't enjoy that. I wish that I could, because I feel like I'm cutting myself out of part of it that's maybe nice. I get too nervous.
Q: When Frankenweenie got a PG rating instead of a G, Disney buried it in their vault, and from what I understand, they wouldn't even give you a copy of it.
A: That's absolutely true. They were very weird about it.
Q: (Cont'd from above qtn) And yet, now that you are a famous directorm they are releasing it on video, before "Batman Returns" comes out. It seems like Exhibit A of Hollywood cynicism.
A: Exactly! And you know what, though, I don't even get upset with this shit, because it's the way it is. I understand it. I'm cynical enough about things just to be happy enough that they are releasing it. I have plenty of other things to get upset about and paranoid about.
Q: But studios have the expectation that each film will be like one of those cookies coming off the cookie assembly line in "Edward Scissorhands", and that there are only three or four different shapes of cookies allowed.
A: Well, they're wrong! It's like with Warner Bros., because that's where my history has mainly been. I'm always amazed--movies that they fight tooth and nail, and are always the weirdest, those are the ones that end up making them all the money. All they have to do is look at their fucking slate of movies! The proof is there. Fuck! Fuck your system! Whoever's making the movie, give him a chance to make your movie, and you'll have a fifty percent chance of failing or succeeding, or working or not, and that's as good of a chance as you'll get on anything, and you're not going to do anything that's going to make it any better! So why not, if something is going to be flawed, why not have it be interestingly flawed, as opposed to boringly flawed? Why lower things? Why not let there be different things? Some people are better storytellers, some people are better at other things.
Q: So why not just use this machinery of Hollywood, but do your work more independently, as Cronenberg does?
A: Well, that's interesting, and I think I'm certainly in that area now to find out. See, I've never talked to somebody like him, and perhaps I should. I think I'm getting there, I do. The odd thing for me is that I grew up in the studio system. And it's been odd to feel like I could do what I want, and have had the ability to do what I want, in a system that doesn't seem to allow that very much. I always felt like, if you're not getting it from these guys, you're getting it from some French guy or something. There's always going to be some problem. But now I'm getting to the point where maybe it's time to deal with somebody else, because it's getting too retarded and inbred among these people. I can't hear these same things from these same people anymore. I'd rather hear it from some French guy!
What they don't understand, no matter how anybody perceives me in Hollywood, is you're still trying to make something--film is still an art form. And you go through the same anguish as any artist does creating something. But this doesn't enter into their thinking. You can go along with it for a while, and laugh your way through it, but then you have to move along, because it gets redundant and you get angrier and angrier. Where I wouldn't get angry before, now I get angry and start to see red in a split second. I just fly off the handle now. It's anti-creative. It's not helping anything. It doesn't even help them get the movie made! I understand their goal, their goal is simple: take this movie, make it commercial, make it good, we want to make a lot of money on it! I understand that, that's fine. But I can't go through it anymore.
Q: There were a number of hours of discussion with Tom Cruise (!) about him playing Edward Scissorhands. And part of the issue was his concern about the virility, or lack thereof, of the character.
A: [Maniac laugh.] I thought that was a little odd. It kind of struck me from left field, because I certainly wasn't thinking about that. I didn't think it was worth writing a scene where Edward goes to a bar with a bunch of guys and ogles the babes! Or scores with the chicks! Or we see him watching a Raiders game! There comes a point where actors have too many fears--there's too much intellectualizing about the process. I understand him wanting to understand the character, wanting to understand me--you have to go through quite a lot to get that--but there comes a point where their fears are too great, and it makes you realize that they shouldn't do it. You need to work with people who will go, "Well, fuck it! Let's do it!" That's exciting.
-----
I'll stop here! The above is merely part of just session 1 of one of the interviews with Tim Burton.. The book contains much more.. Yeap yeap.. I'll be back with the next blog post!
We know life's hard, truth is hard, lies are hard, they are all hard to accept when they have been
found out, and i'm rushing history homework on the Abyissian Crisis about Italy and Abyssia going into war and that the League Of Nations cannot stop this from happening, and beacuse they are formed by means to stop war and
peace-keep the countries together, they have thus failed to achieve that. I think i tend to hold a class for history instead of telling you about me, i'm basically a what subject-realted lover (humanities) and thus
I am more analytical and critical about things, and likes to study about dead people, haha. lol. it's history what can you expect and also geography, it amazes me. I really like it alot, so what have you? Again to find this answer
you need to enter into your own reality and reflect
it's amazing. amzing how people change the way of things, like how I used to hate outdoors in Band
felt it was a complete waste of time, i've acquired to like it more, i guess people change, their thereotical means and applications in life just goes on into a new direction, and see things in another perspective, i guess- it's
all in the mind. It really amazes me how these comes into action, from someone so pessimistic has changed his own view of things, and thus my friend is scoring much better, being more optimisitc and not think of his old way of suicidal
thoughts, which are pretty daunting. and thus we need to see things, in another light, another perspective and another new way, to enable us to open up our minds, and make more new things, the new way it is. 