Tim Burton - Life and Career Before Beetlejuice Timothy "Tim" Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, author, animator, and illustrator. Known for his pioneering Gothic cinematic culture, Burton is known for the fantastical, eccentric, and dark aspects he presents in his works. He has received numerous awards, including an Emmy Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and three BAFTA Awards. He was honored with the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for lifetime achievement in 2007 and received the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Minister of Culture in 2010. Tim Burton was born in Burbank, California, on August 25, 1958, the eldest of two sons of Bill Burton (1930–2000) and Jean Erickson (1933–2002). His father was a former baseball player who worked for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department, while his mother owned a cat-themed gift shop. The baseball field at the Olive Recreation Center in Burbank, California, is named after Bill Burton. Burton spent his childhood alone, considered an introspective and lonely child by his family. Burton always stated that he disliked his childhood and had a troubled relationship with his parents. Shy, he always felt different from other young people, dedicating his time to drawing and watching horror films, his favorite genre. The 2012 version of "Frankenweenie" is the film that best captures Tim Burton's adolescence and his school experience. A fan of German Expressionism, Universal Monsters and Hammer Films films, actors Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, and writers such as Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and Edgar Allan Poe, Burton would be heavily influenced by all these artists and works in his future career as a filmmaker. German Expressionism was an artistic and cinematic movement of the early 20th century. Its peak was in the 1920s and was characterized by the subjective expression of the artist's emotions and anxieties through distorted visual elements, such as exaggerated sets and makeup, and narratives that explored dark themes such as madness, betrayal, and despair. The movement reflected the social and economic crisis in post-World War I Germany and profoundly influenced horror and science fiction cinema, with iconic films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. Universal Monsters are Universal Studios' horror films from the 1930s to 1950s. It was the first film series in a shared fictional universe. After the success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera in the 1920s, Universal would adapt Dracula and Frankenstein, which, along with The Mummy, The Invisible Man (1933), and The Wolfman, would receive several sequels in which the monsters would encounter each other. The cast of monsters also includes the Creature from the Black Lagoon, star of three films. Stars of the films included Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, and Bela Lugosi. Hammer Film Productions is a British film company specializing in horror films. Burton attended Providencia Elementary School, Luther Burbank Middle School, and Burbank High School, but was not considered a good student; he even played on the Burbank High water polo team. As a preteen, Burton made short films in his backyard, using rudimentary stop-motion animation techniques or filming on silent 8mm film, inspired by the work of Ray Harryhausen (Los Angeles, June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013), a professional in the field of stop-motion animation, a technique in which models are photographed frame by frame. In the mid-20th century, he became the leading technician in this field in the American film industry. One of his earliest films for young people is *The Island of Doctor Agor*, adapted from H.G. Wells's novel *The Island of Doctor Moreau*, which he made when he was 13. After graduating from Burbank High School in 1976, Burton attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Santa Clarita, to study character animation until 1979. As a CalArts student, Burton made the short films Stalk of the Celery Monster and King and Octopus. Stalk of the Celery Monster, shot on 8mm film, was long considered lost until fragments of it were screened in 2006. Currently, excerpts from the film are archived at the Library of Congress. It attracted the attention of Walt Disney Productions, which offered Burton an internship as an animator at its Burbank headquarters. He worked as an animator, storyboard artist, graphic designer, art director, and concept artist on films such as The Fox and the Hound (1981), Tron (1982), and The Black Cauldron (1985), although his art never made it into the finished films. While at Disney in 1982, Burton made his first film, Vincent, a six-minute black-and-white animation based on a poem he wrote, which portrays a boy who fantasizes about being his hero, Vincent Price, with Price himself providing narration. The film was produced by Rick Heinrichs, whom Burton befriended while working at Disney. The film screened at the Chicago Film Festival and was released, along with the teen drama Tex, for two weeks in a Los Angeles theater. Tex is a 1982 coming-of-age drama film directed by Tim Hunter in his directorial debut, from a screenplay by Charles S. Haas, based on the bestselling 1979 novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. The film follows two teenage brothers in rural Oklahoma as they struggle to grow up after their mother's death and their father's departure. The film stars Matt Dillon in the title role, with Jim Metzler, Meg Tilly, Emilio Estevez, in his feature film debut, Bill McKinney, Frances Lee McCain, and Ben Johnson in supporting roles. Metzler was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. "Tex" is seen as one of Walt Disney Productions' first efforts to include adult content in its films and received positive reviews for its realism and content. This was followed by Burton's first live-action production, "Hansel and Gretel," a Japanese-themed adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale for the Disney Channel, which culminates in a kung fu fight between Hansel, Gretel, and the witch. The short aired only once on Halloween 1983 before being shelved for years, becoming extremely rare and fueling rumors that the project never even existed. The short film was finally shown to the public in 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art, and again in 2011 as part of the Tim Burton art exhibition at LACMA. It was screened again at the National Museum of Korea in 2012. Burton's next live-action short film, Frankenweenie, was released in 1984. In 2012, Burton directed a stop-motion animated feature-length remake. Frankenweenie tells the story of a young man who tries to resuscitate his dog after it is hit by a car. Filmed in black and white, it stars Barret Oliver, Shelley Duvall (with whom he would work again in 1986, directing an episode of her TV series Faerie Tale Theatre), and Daniel Stern. After Frankenweenie was completed, Disney fired Burton, claiming he was wasting company resources on films too dark and scary for children to watch. Regarding this experience, Burton recounted: "It's not a fond memory. Their vision of drawing wasn't mine. I felt trapped in a mold that didn't fit who I was. But [...] thanks to them, I was able to work on my first short films on the side." Actor Paul Reubens saw Frankenweenie and chose Burton to direct the film spin-off of his popular character Pee-wee Herman. The film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, produced by Warner Bros., was made on a budget of $8 million and grossed over $40 million at the US box office. Paul Reubens, stage name Paul Rubenfeld (Peekskill, August 27, 1952 – Los Angeles, July 30, 2023), was an American actor, comedian, television host, producer, screenwriter, and voice actor. He is best known for creating and portraying Pee-wee Herman, a children's character that became a hit in the 1980s and became an icon of American culture. Burton, a fan of the eccentric band Oingo Boingo, asked composer Danny Elfman to produce the film's soundtrack. Since then, the two have become close friends, with Elfman having composed the scores for every Tim Burton-directed film except Ed Wood (1994), Sweeney Todd (2008), and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). Oingo Boingo was an American rock band formed by composer Danny Elfman in 1979. Oingo Boingo was known for their high-energy live shows and experimental music, which can be described as a combination of musical elements such as new wave, art-punk, ska, pop, jazz, and world music. The band is known for "Weird Science," their most successful song, which reached number 45 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In addition, Burton directed an episode of the 1985 revival of the 1950s/60s horror anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The episode directed by Tim Burton is called "The Jar," based on the short story by Ray Bradbury, and aired in 1986. The story follows a struggling artist who acquires a mysterious jar with a bizarre "something" inside. The object becomes an instant hit at his exhibition, but the fascination it generates leads to increasingly strange and dark consequences. The script was written by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson, screenwriters who also collaborated with Burton on Beetlejuice. Alex