Known for his dedication to his artistic style, he is certainly no stranger to difficult productions and studio demands. His first troubled production was the cult classic Beetlejuice, starring Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, Burton was offered the directing job after the success of his breakout film Pee Wee's Big Adventure, but found that the studio would not easily settle on either the casting or the script. It was his handling of the troubled production of the film that would shape his future dealings with big Hollywood studios.
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| Burton's original Frankenweenie was shelved after it received a PG rating. |
At this time Burton had already parted ways with Disney, where he worked as an animator, in order to pursue directing. However they also had notable creative differences. They parted ways after he directed a live action version of Frankenweenie, which was shelved by the studio when it received a PG rating for its dark tone. After this Burton left to pursue a directing career where he would be able to express his creativity.
After Pee Wee's success, Beetlejuice proved to be the first stumbling block in his pursuit of creative freedom. Anyone who has seen the film will know that the story is fairly unconventional, and that some of the events, such as Betelgeuse's attempted marriage to the teenage Lydia, come across as quite spontaneous. In interviews Burton revealed that Warner Bros were not altogether comfortable with this and said that there were many long meetings with producers about the script. Decisions regarding the story had to be continually justified. As a result the script underwent re-writes with a new writer that Burton had brought in. The previous writers penned a much darker story where Betelgeuse was a cold-blooded killer.
While the script was the main point of contention during the production, the studio also intervened in other ways. Burton wanted to cast Sammy Davis Jr. in the title role but was overruled. The studio also took issue with the films title, thinking that it was too obscure. They wanted a name that more accurately conveyed what the film was about, and said that 'House Ghosts' had been more popular with test audiences. Burton's response was his first real act of defiance against studio demands. Instead of 'House Ghosts', he jokingly suggested that the film be called 'Scared Sheetless' to reflect its comedic nature. In the end the name remained unchanged and Beetlejuice was a critical and commercial success.
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| The production of Beetlejuice was difficult, due to Warner Bros. being unsure of the script. |
The difficult experience of making Beetlejuice shaped Burton's career in many ways. The films success was enough for Warner Bros to green light Batman, which simultaneously made him a household name and allowed him more creative control over choosing his cast and crew. He was able to hire a relatively inexperienced writer, Sam Hamm, to work on the film.
After his time making Batman films for Warner Bros., Burton would shy away from making film deals with studios, instead shopping around for distributors that would buy the film he wanted to make. This was the case with his first passion project, Edward Scissorhands. He collaborated on the script with Caroline Thompson before pitching the film to studios as a finished product. This prevented the script meetings and re-writes that plagued Beetlejuice, and put Burton in a position to better defend his artistic choices. This was necessary when 20th Century Fox, who bought the script, wanted him to consider Tom Cruise for the lead role. Burton politely met with Cruise, but hired the man he thought best for the role, Johnny Depp.
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| Burton chose Johnny Depp over Tom Cruise for the role of Edward. |
The newfound assertiveness that Burton gained after the difficult production of Beetlejuice is arguably what started him on the path to having such a recognisable style. After this he began to be defiant of studio demands in a way that humoured them while he made his own decisions. If not for this his long-standing partnership with Depp, among others, may not have occurred. Likewise he was able to collaborate frequently with many crew members of his choosing, including producer Denise Di Novi, who he worked with on six films.
Many aspects of Burton's directorial style have re-emerged throughout his filmography, including the tendency to film on studio lots instead of on location, allowing the director to create huge sets that look removed from reality. The entire city of Gotham in Batman and its sequel takes the form of a twisted, sprawling metropolis straight out of an old German Expressionist film. The entire thing was designed by the late Anton Furst, who won an Oscar for the production design, and was built on the parking lot of Warner Bros. Pinewood Studio. Burton has utilised elaborate production design throughout his career. Even when filming Sleepy Hollow, with the studio wanting to find a real English town to film in, Burton made the most of sets to create the memorable tree of the dead.
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| Burton remade Frankenweenie using stop-motion animation. |
He would also not likely have had much success making a film with stop-motion animation if not for his renowned style and the cult status of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Stop-motion is an extremely time consuming method of animation and has therefore fallen out of favour with studios. Despite its' recent resurgence through the films of Canadian studio Laika, who made Coraline, 3D CGI has long been the dominant form of animation, and Disney and Pixar the dominant studios. The last two dimensional animation released by Disney was 2009's The Princess and the Frog, and even that was but a rare break from 3D before it made a return in Tangled. Burton's use of stop-motion is therefore a notable exception. If Burton had not been so successful and gained a reputation for making films in a certain style, it is doubtful that studios would have agreed to make his films in this way.
Now, Burton is known for his distinct style of filmmaking and for his dedication to that style, and it is for this reason that he is sought after by studios. His unique body of work has in a way brought his career full-circle. He once quit his animating job at Disney over creative differences, but over two decades later the studio would ask him to direct the live-action Alice in Wonderland. They also greenlit a feature length, animated Frankenweenie, the very same story that they previously shelved. Were it not for the difficult production of Beetlejuice, Burton arguably would not have developed the strong sense of defiance that allowed him to take creative control of his films and cemented his place as Hollywood's beloved gothic filmmaker.