Playboy Interview: Tim Burton

It's odd that director Tim Burton keeps finding himself at the helm of big-budget studio blockbusters, because he's really not the type. Trained as a fine artist and described as a shy, withdrawn loner, he has indie filmmaker written all over him.

The potential blockbuster on his slate is Planet of the Apes, a "re-imagination," as Burton says, of the 1968 science fiction classic about an astronaut who lands on an alien world where apes talk and humans are second-rate primates. This upside-down simian society should be familiar territory for Burton, who has spent close to a decade exploring themes of social maladjustment in unconventional characters such as Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and the Headless Horseman.

Burton creates quirky movies that rake in tons of cash for the studios. And his method is deceptively simple: He makes children's movies for adults. Burton combines the visual sophistication and complex narrative nuances adults demand of movies with a child's love of spectacle and mystery. His debut film, 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure--which he directed at the age of 26--was made for $6 million and grossed $45 million. The 1988 follow-up, Beetlejuice, cost $13 million and brought in $80 million, and the following year Burton broke box-office records with Batman. The film--along with Burton's sequel Batman Returns--became a billion-dollar business.

Born in Burbank, California in 1958, Burton grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood he'd prefer to forget. He's been out of touch for more than two decades with his family--younger brother Danny and their mother, Jean, who works in a gift shop. His father, Bill Burton, died last year. Tim spent most of his time drawing, daydreaming, watching B movies and poring over issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. The loneliness and isolation Burton felt as a child--and his capacity to escape those feelings through fantasy--have influenced almost all his movies, which often deal with outsiders and estrangement.

Burton barely got through high school but on the basis of his obvious artistic gift was admitted into the animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, a school founded by Walt and Roy Disney in Valencia, California. Burton foundered there as well, when he discovered that animation isn't a good field for people who color outside the lines. But he was nonetheless hired by the Disney studio on the strength of his brief exercise in pencil-test animation, called Stalk of the Celery Monster. Disney put him to work on its 1981 film The Fox and the Hound.

In his spare time Burton worked on a children's book that was an homage to his childhood hero Vincent Price. The following year, when Disney gave him $60,000 to create something, he adapted it into a short film. The resulting six-minute film, Vincent, which he completed in 1982, and Frankenweenie, a short film made in 1984 about a young boy determined to revive his dead dog, launched Burton's career.

After Burton left Disney, writer Stephen King recommended Frankenweenie to a Warner Bros. executive, who screened it for Paul Reubens. Reubens, whose television series, Pee-wee's Playhouse, was hugely successful at the time, was looking for someone to direct him in his first film. Together, Burton and Reubens created a charming, visually captivating film. Contributing to the movie was composer Danny Elfman, whose quirky music subsequently became an essential companion to Burton's visuals. Elf-man scored Burton's next film, the offbeat ghost comedy Beetlejuice, and followed that up with Batman. While he was in England shooting Batman, Burton met German painter Lena Gieseke, whom he married in February 1989.

Following the phenomenal success of Batman, Burton made Edward Scissorhands, a modest fairy tale starring Johnny Depp. One of Burton's most admired films and his most personal, it's the story of a misfit who has scissors instead of hands and can't get close to people without accidentally hurting them.

A subtly observed, intimate film, Edward Scissorhands gave Burton a chance to catch his breath before diving into Batman Returns. By the time that film was released to mixed reviews in 1992, Burton's marriage to Gieseke was over, and he'd fallen in love with model Lisa Marie.

Burton cast Lisa Marie in a supporting role in his 1994 film, Ed Wood, a tribute to the Fifties cult filmmaker often described as the worst director of all time. Lisa Marie also appears in Burton's three subsequent films: Mars Attacks, Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes.

Although Burton assembled an amazing cast for Mars Attacks that included Glenn Close, Jack Nicholson and Annette Bening, the 1996 film was the most harshly reviewed of his career. Sleepy Hollow was praised for extraordinary art direction and broke the $100 million mark (a first for a film starring Depp).

Burton lives with Lisa Marie in the Hollywood hills, but freelance journalist Kristine McKenna--whose last Playboy Interview was with John Malkovich--tracked him down in New York City, where the 43-year-old filmmaker was holed up in the Brill Building, racing to complete a cut of Planet of the Apes. McKenna reports being surprised by the man she met. "Tim Burton has a reputation for being noncommunicative and remote, but I didn't find him that way at all. Though he invariably showed up for our meetings dressed in black--he has a goth--grunge thing going in terms of sartorial style--he was forthcoming, relaxed and downright sunny.

"He's no slick glad-hander, and I imagine that he squirms a lot when he's in the studio boardroom. Talking with him, you can understand why those studio guys keep giving him the keys to the car. He really loves the things he loves, and when he talks about them he shows an enthusiasm that's contagious and charming."

[Q] Playboy: Do you have to be a good liar to survive in the movie business?

[A] Burton: It's like being in the Army, in that you can't show people what you really think. I prefer not to think of myself as a liar and try to surround myself with people who can handle truth, but the truth is always subjective. In the movie business at the end of the day, it's all just people's opinions, because this isn't a precise science. Still, when you're making something you're like a shark maneuvering through all these opinions. Movies are an out-of-body experience. I'm always amused when certain money people enter the movie business expecting truth, logic and a clear-cut return on their investment, because there's a surreal aspect to this entire undertaking that's impossible to control.

[Q] Playboy:Planet of the Apes is a cult classic. How much license did you grant yourself to reinvent the story? For instance, the previous Apes movies all could be interpreted as cautionary tales about nuclear war.

[A] Burton: This one's a cautionary tale about trying to remake science fiction films from the late Sixties. Actually, we don't get into the nuclear thing too much because we weren't attempting to remake the original. The first Apes movie, directed by Franklin Schaffner, was such a classic that it wasn't ripe for remaking. The thing that may allow us to getaway with this film is that we aren't trying to make it the same thing. Let's face it, you can't beat certain aspects of the original. They say you should try to remake only bad movies, and Planet of the Apes wasn't a bad movie. For many of us the film had a lot of impact, and for reasons I can't explain it was a weird idea that just clicked. I have done several films that involved elaborate makeup, but there's something really powerful in the simple premise of talking apes that's so eerie it's almost Shakespearean. Unfortunately, there were talking apes checking into the Beverly Wilshire and going shopping by the time the third Apes film came out in 1971. The apes dressed like car mechanics in the fourth and fifth films. We won't dwell on that though, because the first one was pretty great.

[Q] Playboy: You can't talk about the original Planet of the Apes without mentioning Charlton Heston. What do you think of his work?

[A] Burton: I was a huge Charlton Heston fan when I was growing up--particularly during his Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, Soylent Green period--and he still fascinates me. Monster movies didn't scare me at all as a child, but Heston's films really did. Nobody ever mentions that The Ten Commandments is like a horror movie. Heston's character starts out like a normal guy and by the end of the film he's this weird zombie. There's tons of horrific imagery--it's like a monster movie and Heston has a presence in it that's terrifying. Because he communicated a belief in what he was doing, he had this uncanny ability to make you believe whatever bullshit was going on, and in Omega Man he comes across as the most serious person who ever lived. Heston's like Vincent Price, who's an actor I love in a completely different way. Both of them seem tortured somehow, and there's something really personal about what they do on-screen.

[Q] Playboy: The makeup for the original Apes movies consisted of rubber masks and Star Trek-type outfits. How have you improved on that?

[A] Burton: The problem is that if you strictly adhere to the basic premise and keep the apes naked and acting more like animals, it becomes another thing. We tried to get into ape behavior so it would feel like more than just people with ape masks on. The cast and crew spent a week at Ape School trying to get a feel for ape mannerisms. Some of what went on at Ape School was movement training, and some of it was interacting with live chimps. Being in Ape School was like flying on an airplane in that on some level everybody was terrified. There's an undercurrent of suppresed fear I feel on airplanes, and I sensed something similar at Ape School, which I think had to do with the fact that monkeys are completely unpredictable and intensely sexual.

[Q] Playboy: Sexual?

[A] Burton: Yes. They fall in love with you, and they're jealous and possessive. They would start humping my leg, and if I didn't pay attention to them, they'd spit at me or throw shit at me. They'll grab you wherever. They're very interested in the inside of your nose and your mouth, and they try to groom you. They have an extra three feet to their reach, and they don't know their own strength. One day one of them jumped on me from a 10-foot platform and completely took me out. He was just playing, but it was like having an anvil thrown at you. I love animals, but with these monkeys I felt like I was gazing into the unknown. It's interesting that culturally we've come to regard them as cute, but they're capable of ripping you in half. They have an insane, psycho quality. One day I caught one of them staring at me and I thought, Man, if a human ever looked at me that way I'd run in the other direction. I felt like I was in some weird gay bar and some sleazy person was checking me out.

[Q] Playboy: Bill Broyles wrote the screenplay for your Planet of the Apes. Then, at the 11th hour, you brought in the writing team of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal to rework the script. Why?

[A] Burton: I don't know why this is--it's something you should probably ask the studios about--but with all the big movies I've done, the scripts are never ready when it's time to shoot. Never. When I came on board with the first Batman lots of people had been involved and loads of money had been sunk into the thing. I don't know why there's so much second-guessing in the movie business. I guess it's because people with a lot of money tend to be concerned about what might happen to their money, which is probably how they manage to accumulate it in the first place. But this is a funny business to be in if you want concrete answers. Movies are abstractions until they've been completed--and that's the beauty of them. So, I hear myself saying OK, we're going to start this film and we're going to get it into shape. I'm like Ed Wood--Mr. Optimistic. Bill Broyles had been working on the Planet of the Apes script for a long time before I got on it, and we worked with Bill for a while longer, but I think it was starting to drive him crazy. Sometimes you need a fresh perspective, and bringing in new writers is like going to a doctor for a second opinion. Larry Konner was on the set every day doing new pages as the shoot progressed, because dialogue that might sound good in a story conference isn't necessarily going to sound great when you get people in ape makeup saying it. Budget also played a role in the script rewrite. If we had adhered to Bill's script we'd still be shooting, and the film would have cost an extra $200 million.

[Q] Playboy: What made Mark Wahlberg right for the lead?

[A] Burton: Mark's a type of actor I really like. He's solid and there's not a lot of bullshit about him. When you're doing a film like this you need a person who can serve as an anchor, and Mark can do that. Before Imet him people were telling me he had all this baggage involving music, Calvin Klein underwear ads and so on. But the guy's good, so people should give him a fucking break. You'll have an actor who never shows up on time on one film, then he's right there like an angel on the next one. It's all chemistry, so I don't pay too much attention to people's reputations.

[A] Playboy: Have you ever had to fire an actor?

[Q] Burton: No, partly because I'm not sure what good acting is. I straddle a fine line of knowing what's what. With Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice I was working with actors like Paul Reubens, Michael Keaton and Catherine O'Hara. They're so good at improvisation that most of those movies wound up being improvised. I get excited by actors who can surprise you. The point is, I don't always assume I know best, particularly when I'm working with a talent like Bill Murray, who was just great in Ed Wood. I love people I don't understand, and there's something deeply puzzling about Bill. Prior to shooting he prepared for his character by having all the hair on his body waxed, and believe me, it looked extremely painful. I love him and that performance so much that I still daydream about doing a music video of the scene of Bill with the mariachis.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a sense if a movie is going to be a success?

[A] Burton: I'm always surprised by how movies do. With Batman, I thought it had a shot at making a modest profit. But ultimately I don't have any clue, because you're dealing with things that are organic. I'm like Ed Wood in that I go into every movie with the same mixture of optimism, enthusiasm and denial. You have to because you're devoting your time to it, so you get close to things and the movie becomes like one of your children. It may be ugly, but it's your child. Plus, there is no ultimate truth about the worth of a movie, and that's something I learned when Pee-wee's Big Adventure came out. It was on several lists as one of the worst films of 1985.Then when Beetlejuice came out in 1988, the same reviewers that gave Pee-wee minus 10 were talking about how great Pee-wee was and what a disappointment my new film Beetlejuice was. It's like high school the way critics trash you, then suddenly they're your best friend. I always think, Hey, you guys never talked to me in high school, so why start now?

[Q] Playboy: Directing a movie on the scale of Planet of the Apes is like being a general in the army--it demands leadership skills. Where did you acquire those?

[A] Burton: Maybe all those endless hours spent watching movies where the Army attacks the giant insects taught me how to maneuver troops and destroy all monsters. As a kid I was always able to get other kids to do things. I once got some kids to help me set up a bunch of debris and weird footprints in a park, and we convinced these other kids an alien ship had crashed in Burbank. I would stage fake fights in the neighborhood so it looked like somebody was killing somebody, and I once convinced a kid that a killer had fallen into a neighbor's pool after they'd just cleaned it and doused it with acid and chlorine. I threw some clothes in there and told this kid the guy had dissolved.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you've done a few big movies, do you feel like you know the drill? Is it getting easier?

[A] Burton: It's actually gotten harder. With the first Batman I was kind of flying below the radar, plus it was shot in England. I was eight hours away from the studio, the media and a lot of the pressure. At that point the pressures were just abstractions to me, but when the same things keep happening to you your tolerance goes down. I remember seeing people who looked like they were going to jump off a ledge and thinking, Gee, why is that person acting that way? After a few years you start climbing out on the ledge yourself. Working with a studio on a movie of this scale is an incredible journey because you don't have the option of not showing up. I plan to take a slightly deeper breath before I start the next movie, which will definitely be smaller.

[Q] Playboy: You've spoken about the terror you felt when you arrived in England in 1988 and saw the 95 acres of Batman sets that filled Pinewood Studios. How did you get through that experience?

[A] Burton: Sometimes you get karmic lessons, and I guess that was one of mine. Throughout my life I'd never talked much or communicated well with people, and I think that's one of the reasons I like to draw and became an animator--you could show a picture instead of talking. Communicating with people was definitely one of the major challenges Batman presented. The first day of shooting I had an experience with Jack Palance that scared me to death--I literally saw white and left my body. It was the first shot and I figured we'd start simple with a shot of Jack Palance walking out of a bathroom. So he's in the bathroom and we're rolling camera, but when I call "action" nobody comes out. I say "cut" and walk over and say "OK, Mr. Palance, all you have to do is come out." So we start again, I say "action" and he still doesn't come out. I walk back over and say, "OK, Mr. Palance, all you've got to do is come out," and he starts breathing heavy and grabs me and screams, "Who are you to tell me what to do? I've done over a hundred movies!" I absolutely freaked out and one of the producers had to calm everybody down. I don't know what was going on in Palance's mind, and he apologized later, but it scared me to death. That movie was a trial by fire on every level, and Jack Nicholson really helped me get through it, simply by being who he is and supporting me. Having somebody like him on my side was so helpful. I'll never forget that Jack's a good man that way. It's also incredibly fun to watch him work because he has such an amazing command of his skills. He can come up with different approaches to a scene time after time, and I'd find myself wanting to do extra takes just to see what he'd do.

[A] Playboy: What was your life like in 1989 when Batman was breaking box office records?

[Q] Burton: It was so surreal it didn't really affect me. If there were dancing girls throwing money around I might have had a stronger feeling about it. Right after I finished Batman I went to make Edward Scissorhands, which we shot in a small town east of Tampa, Florida. When you're staying in a mosquito-infested condo in a third-rate golf resort and there's a plastic fish hanging on your wall, it's hard to feel like you're king of the world.

[A] Playboy: Unlike most directors, you're a recognizable personality. How do you like your celebrityhood?

[A] Burton: Being a so-called public figure is a lot to adjust to and there are many layers to it. For instance, if somebody approaches me on the street and tells me he's been touched by something in one of my films, that makes me feel really good. On the other hand, when people come up and hand me scripts, I always want to say, "Hey, why are you handing me a script? Have you read any reviews of my films? Every reviewer says my scripts are terrible!" We live in a world where everyone's privacy is subject to invasion, but I like mystery in life. I prefer to look at people and wonder about them, as opposed to knowing every stupid detail about their lives. Of course I, too, occasionally have those nosy feelings of wanting to know everything, but they aren't feelings I'm proud of and I don't think they deserve to be satisfied. Before I started making movies I used to go sit in the mall and draw, and I've always loved observing people. But that's not something I can do anymore. I've come full circle--now I am the observed and must reside in my own Twilight Zone. If I do something like this interview or go out to a dinner, it leaves me completely exhausted. I know I'm being looked at and I don't like it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a temper?

[A] Burton: Unfortunately I have a quicker temper than I used to. We went on location in Hawaii and everybody showed up for work in Hawaiian shirts, like they were on the Love Boat. Maybe it's because I was tired, but it really bothered me and I yelled, "We're not on vacation yet!" Hawaii has a strong current of primal energy, and the first time I went there I thought I was dying because I felt a way I'd never felt before. Then I learned that what I was feeling was relaxation.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most widely held misconception about the lives of the famous?

[A] Burton: One is that we all hang out together. I once went to a dinner where it was all famous people, and all I can remember is how uncomfortable everybody was. It was a weird evening.

[Q] Playboy: Is Hollywood a hard place to make friends?

[A] Burton: I've read things about myself like, "Tim disappears on people," but I'm in a business where people disappear. I recently went to the doctor and the dentist, and I was surprised when they both told me that I hadn't seen either of them in a few years. I felt like I'd just seen them. Maybe as you get older the passage of time accelerates and the time machine gets put on full speed ahead. I've always felt like a friendly person, but I don't have that many friends, and I don't know if I can pin the blame for that on Hollywood.

[Q] Playboy: Which of your films has been the most personal and revealing of you?

[A] Burton:Edward Scissorhands, which was self. generated way back. Alan Arkin was so good in that film that it was scary, because he really reminded me of my dad. I feel very close to The Nightmare Before Christmas and Ed Wood, too.

[Q] Playboy: Several critics have noted you avoid dealing with sexuality in your films. Do you avoid sex?

[A] Burton: I never thought of it that way--I consider Catwoman a sexual character, for instance. It's true, though, that I'm interested in manifestations of sexuality that are more subtle and difficult to define. Take Vincent Price. I always saw him as a heterosexual character, yet he was slightly ambiguous. That's one of the things that interested me about Ed Wood as well. He dressed in women's clothes but was neither gay nor hetero-sexual. He was something else that you couldn't quite define.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most difficult step in filmmaking?

[A] Burton: I'm not good at business--in fact, I'm pretty bad at it. I'm a person who needs time to think and muse over things. Having a million things going on and constantly ringing cell phones don't bring out the best in me. The deal-making part seems to exist in a hermetically sealed world where people are prone to believe all kinds of crap, and I'm not comfortable in that environment and try not to spend too much time there. You feel at odds with yourself when you're making something, and if I'm looking out over a lake or at the ocean I often ask myself why I do what I do, because I don't get the pleasure from it that other filmmakers seem to get. The whole thing seems insurmountably difficult. I guess the thing that keeps me doing it is that I enjoy the people and I like the crew. They're not sitting around bullshitting in some boardroom, going over research about this or that--they're busting their asses to actually do something.

The most physically arduous part of the process is obviously the shoot itself, but that's also the best part, because there's movement. Emotionally you have to train like an athlete to shoot a big movie, and it's incredibly debilitating when the studio is still vacillating about giving the film a green light until you're halfway through shooting it--that really takes a lot out of everybody. This film was shot in 80 days, which is the fastest shoot I've ever done.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about your younger years. Did you do drugs in high school? You seem like the type.

[A]Burton: A little, but I've never done acid or anything like that. When I was a child, I felt like I was already really old, so I never had friends my own age and never had access to drugs. I wasn't in the loop of social or cultural peer pressure to do what everyone else was doing, and I even left high school a semester early. I don't know what was up with the school system that I was able to get out early, because I was a lousy student. In fact, I was completely unable to write anything in my last year of high school because I'd gotten in a fight during a sporting event and broken my hand. When I left school early, people told me I was going to miss the best time of my life, but when I went back for the graduation ceremony, everybody looked like they'd just done life in prison.

[Q] Playboy: Did your parents support your creativity?

[A] Burton: That's hard to say. My father actually liked to draw, but he didn't show that side of himself too much. He was an ex--baseball player, so I was kind of pushed into sports, though I was somewhat willing. I also played a musical instrument, and they tried to push me into the arts. The one thing they didn't push me into was drawing--and if they had, I probably wouldn't have gotten into it. My parents weren't particularly strict, but anyone who comes from suburbia can tell you that your parents don't have to be strict for you to feel strangled by that culture. We lived right by the Burbank airport and the planes flew so low that I could stick my ear right on the television set and turn it up as loud as it would go, and I still wouldn't be able to hear it. My parents tried to send me to church, but suburban religion is a bureaucratic setup where you're told things but you don't feel anything. I consider myself a spiritual person, but I don't place spirituality in any concrete form or place.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true your parents blocked out the windows in your bedroom?

[A] Burton: Yeah, they covered them up for insulation, supposedly, and they put a little slit at the top of the covering so some light could get in. It was a suburban thing of keeping the heat in or something--they said the windows were letting in too much air. I thought, What the fuck? This is California for Christ's sake! That's probably why I've always related to Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote several stories revolving around the theme of being buried alive.

[Q] playboy: Would you characterize yourself as a rebellious kid?

[A] Burton: I was quietly rebellious. I never spent too much time in the principal's office, but my grandmother told me that before I could walk I was trying to crawl out the door. I just remember wanting to go. When I was 10 I went to live with my grandmother, and I lived with her until I got out of high school. My grandfather was dead by then. My dad understood my wanting to live with my grandmother, but my mom was really upset, which was kind of the reason I wanted to go. My grandmother gave me sanctuary and she really saved me. She made sure I had food and left me alone. I didn't hate my parents, but I just never felt socialized in that way. As a child I always had Italian friends. I didn't consciously do this, but I'd befriend these sweet, wonderful Italian families who'd give me food and take me in. My parents were much more reserved--so much so, in fact, that until around10 years ago I always flinched whenever anyone touched me. Looking back on it now, it's pretty clear to me that my parents were depressed, and I always felt a deep, dark unhappiness permeating the air in their house. My dad was a baseball player who got injured, and he must have been unhappy about that. I don't know what was up with my mom, but she seemed real depressed. It's kind of scary, but I don't know much about them. I realized that when I was in my early 20s so I tried to ask them about their lives, but they didn't really want to tell me. One of the things I love about traveling is that you get to see other cultures where people relate to one another in an open way. It's so beautiful I almost start to cry thinking about it, because it's something I never had.

[Q] Playboy: Are you in contact with your parents now?

[A] Burton: My dad died last year. He had been ill for a while, and I made some little attempts to communicate with him and have some kind of resolution. His death wasn't a huge sense of loss, because I'd been grieving the absence of a relationship with him my whole life.

[Q] Playboy: Do you plan to have children?

[A] Burton: I'm still so attuned to the feelings I had as a child that I think I've resisted it so far. I'm kind of a late bloomer, probably because there were a lot of issues I kept repressed for a long time. I don't know if I've really dealt wit those things yet. It's like seasons, and I think you go through waves. You kind of think you've dealt with something, then you find yourself regressing into it.

[Q] Playboy: Yes, but one likes to think that some things can be fully healed. For instance, you mentioned you no longer flinch when people touch you.

[A] Burton: Certain studio executives still make me flinch when they touch me. If I were kissed by Jon Peters again I might flinch.

[Q] Playboy: Do you envision the day when you'll have worked through all th emotional and creative material generated by your childhood?

[A] Burton: Are you asking if I'm going to get tapped out? I don't know. Maybe that will happen and I'll revert to some kind of amoeba state. There is an element of catharsis to doing something creative--you can work out certain things and move on. So if you were able to make movies reasonably quickly, I guess they could work as some sort of therapy and you could use them to work through a lot of stuff. But the problem with movies, especially these kinds of movies, is that they take so long it's like a painful birth, a rough life and a bitter death, and the whole experience winds up generating more psychological material.

[Q] Playboy: Is the world a better place now than it was when you were a child?

[A] Burton: It's hard to say if things get worse as we get older or if they just seem worse. You read about people dying of leprosy at the age of 30 or having to have their fingers cut off, and you think obviously things are better now. Nonetheless, there's so much overstimulation now that I find myself longing for the time when you couldn't be contacted every second of the day by cell phone. I have one and admit there's a slight James Bond aspect to it that appeals to me, but I rarely use it and Lisa is the only person who has the number. Seeing two people sitting across from each other in a romantic restaurant having conversations on their cell phones with other people is so freakish. I find the Internet depressing, too, largely because so much of it is gossip. The Internet has amazing capabilities, but it also takes gossip, innuendo and the printed word and disseminates them at an incredibly rapid rate. It doesn't matter what's true because once it's out there gossip takes on a life of its own, and that's kind of evil. When somebody says something incorrect about an area of my life that is or was painful, that's not cool and it leaves me feeling as if I've been robbed.

[Q] Playboy: Back when you were learning to draw, who were your favorites?

[A] Burton: Dr. Seuss was my favorite by far. His books are so beautiful and subversive, and they work on so many levels. Like any good folktale, Dr. Seuss' stories are timeless and they have cultural and sociological meaning that will always hold true. That work was so much of what he was, that I've always left it alone as far as trying to turn one of his books into a film. As far as the work that influenced me, I'm a child of television and I grew up on monster movies. The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. I still get a warm glow from a television set because for me it's always been the hearth, the parents, the womb and a friend, so I just like having it on. Now I mostly watch the movie channels and cooking shows like Iron Chef, but the main things I like are the soft waves of light and the sound a television gives off.

[Q] Playboy: What about books?

[A] Burton: One of the problems of being part of the television generation is that I don't read much and it's not easy for me to read--in fact, in order to read a book I'd almost have to not do anything else. I spend a lot of time flying but I never read then. I can't do anything when I'm on a plane because the minute I start to focus on something there's turbulence, so I just stop everything and I sit there like my dog. I've tried drinking but that doesn't help. When you see a plane take off it just doesn't look like something that should be happening. The thing that drives me most crazy on planes is people who go up there and pull down the shade! As long as you're up there you might as well appreciate the view. You're in the heavens! You can seed things! Why create more claustrophobia in a thing that's already a claustrophobic nightmare?

[Q] Playboy: What made you fall in love with Lisa Marie?

[A] Burton: It was unexpected, which seems to be the way these things happen. I felt something on a level that was amazing to me, and I'll never forget it. It was kind of shocking, actually, because like a lot of people, I'd reached the point of believing it was never going to happen for me and that maybe I was expecting too much. Then I got this feeling that was bizarre and amazing--no matter what your intellectual mind tells you, when you experience a real feeling you know it, and it's a beautiful thing. It had additional meaning because it showed me I wasn't some kind of crazy monster incapable of having normal human feelings. I experienced a strong sense of connection the minute we met and it wasn't until later that I learned how much we had in common. Like me, she had left her parents' home at an early age, and the minute I saw her I sort of flashed on her as a young girl, as an old woman--I could see it all in her. It was like a weird special effect that felt really good and pure. She was someone I. could share the things I do with, and I love working with her.

[Q] Playboy: She's had small parts in several of your films; do you plan to cast her in a leading role?

[A] Burton: Oh yeah, I absolutely want to work with her in that way, but here's the problem. I've been trying to make kind of an independent movie since Edward Scissorhands, and I had to walk away from quite a few things to make that film. Once you've made a movie like Batman, people want to charge you $100,000 a month to rent you a house, and you wind up penalized for being associated with something you're not actually getting much benefit from. I'm not getting a financial benefit from Batman, and that's been one of the worst aspects of having done that film. When I did Ed Wood nobody believed I would work for scale, and I felt like I was being looked upon as kind of an idiot for doing it. The point I'm making is that you have to find a way out and I don't know what that way is.

[Q] Playboy: Was it a goal of yours to make big studio movies?

[A] Burton: No, and I've always felt it's been one of my saving graces that it wasn't. I've never had one goal I was obsessed with, and having known people who have, I can see it's just a way to set yourself up for failure.

[Q] Playboy: Paul Reubens was a huge star when you directed him in your first feature, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, but he disappeared from public view for several years following his 1991 arrest for a sexual misadventure. Did the entertainment industry ostracize Reubens or was it his choice not to work?

[A] Burton: That episode with Paul seemed to mark the beginning of a new era of "let's tear people down." America has a history of tearing people down and then resurrecting them, and it's a sick ritual that's a complete waste of time and makes me deeply angry. If a mobster did things that people in the movie business do every day, he'd be killed. Paul is talented, resourceful and creative, so he survived, but that entire episode was a waste of his time.

[Q] Playboy: What's the basis of the bond between you and Johnny Depp that enables you to work together so successfully?

[A] Burton: I realized something about Johnny when he played Edward Scissor-hands, which is that he has baggage too. He looks a certain way, but who he is goes far beyond his appearance. There's a lot going on with Johnny. I think I respond to the fact that he's perceived a certain way but isn't really that way, and I also love that as an actor he doesn't care how he looks--he has a real freedom in that regard. We've done three films together--Scissorhands in 1990, Ed Wood in 1994, and Sleepy Hollow in 1999--and he's been completely different in all of them. I'm excited by the possibilities with Johnny.

[Q] Playboy: Martin Landau won an Academy Award for his performance as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. What made you cast Landau as Lugosi?

[A] Burton: I knew he'd understand the part. Here's a guy who's done all this great stuff and worked with Hitchcock, but he was also on Gilligan's Island with the Harlem Globetrotters. I knew he'd relate to Bela Lugosi's ups and downs, and he did. I was thrilled when he won the Oscar, but I've never gone to the Academy Awards and can't even be around that stuff. I like to be working when that's going on. This year I was in Hawaii, and although we finished shooting the day before the Awards, I stayed there an extra day to miss them. Have you ever seen that cheesy movie from 1966, The Oscar? Unfortunately it's pretty close to the truth as far as what the Academy Awards are about. There's this weird current of politics and maneuvering that surrounds them. The whole thing feels like a high school popularity contest. Don't stand in line for hours to talk to Joan Rivers, then pretend you don't want to talk to her once you get up there.

[Q] Playboy: That's one aspect of Hollywood that you don't like. How about doing publicity--like this interview?

[A] Burton: As far as promotion, I always question the value of doing press to help make a movie a success, because I really don't have anything to say. I'm basically an idiot and I don't have any funny stories about the set, so what good am I? Still, the studios make you feel like you're neglecting the movie if you don't do press. Generally I don't like reading about myself, and if I see my name in print or I see my picture I don't get anything out of it. I don't hold it against the studios that they "encourage" me to go out and promote the film, because they're just doing what studios do. Still, I've always found it odd that I ended up in this situation because I don't know what a hit movie is. Movies like Planet of the Apes are basically businesses, and they involve words like franchise and saturation that make my skin crawl. This one will be heavily merchandised, but that's not something I have any control over. They ask my opinion, of course, but sometimes I feel like the film gets in the way of te merchandising. There were people over in Taiwan making Planet of the Apes swords before we'd even shot the thing, and the film is being aggressively presold. Personally, I don't want to know too much about a movie before I go see it. When I went to see a movie as a kid I would know a little about it beforehand, and I'd go enter a world the surprised me. These days you know how much it cost andit's been picked apart in the press before audiences have seen it. It takes the humanity, the magic and the surprise out of the experience, and that's sad.

[Q] Playboy: Is the relationship between businesspeople and artists, writers, actors and directors an adversarial one?

[A] Burton: At the end of the day, those relationships feel adversarial. With movies, businesspeople give artists a lot of money to make things, and that's something I've never taken lightly. However, the thing they don't understand is that at the end of it all, they're asking me and everyone else on the film to put in incredibly long hours. We don't see our families, and regardless of how well everyone is being paid, we still need emotional support from the studio in order to do the job we're being paid to do. By the end of a lot of those meetings you feel bloodied, wounded and left for dead, and by the time you actually get down to making the movie, you feel like you've had the shit beat out of you and need to spend a few months recovering in a hospital.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think businesspeople are threatened by creative types?

[A] Burton: Yes, I believe there is a subconscious jealousy that partly has to do with the fact that it's a very American thing to assume everybody else has it better than you do. People in independent film think people who get to make studio films have it easier, and if you work with (concluded on page 40) Tim Burton (continued from page 66) studios you long to do an independent film. And listen, if I were in an office all day being tortured and feeling the pressure of a board and all that stuff, I'd go crazy too. Some of those studio gigs are difficult, thankless jobs and I'd be shocked if there weren't feelings of jealousy.

[Q] Playboy: Have your interests changed over the course of your life?

[A] Burton: It's kind of sad, but I still love monster movies. I can watch them any time, and when they're actually on TV, as opposed to being on a video or DVD, there's a weird energy they give off. Maybe it's because you know other people are watching it at the same time, so it becomes this odd kind of shared experience. Monster movies are part of an age-old tradition that includes fairy tales and fables, and that tradition is not going to disappear.

[Q] Playboy: Who inspires you?

[A] Burton: Lisa inspires me, so that keeps a certain heartbeat going in my life. I was lucky enough to work with Vincent Price, who was also inspiring. While he was working on Edward Scissorhands I got an idea to do a documentary called Conversations With Vincent that he agreed to narrate and was completely cool about. I felt like he got what it was about, that it was more than just a tribute to him, and it meant a lot tome. It was about the internal life of a child and how adults tend to overlook the fact that children are supremely intelligent in a unique way. They have instincts that should be taken seriously, and Vincent understood that. He was in his early 80s when we met, and it was great to meet someone so old who'd been through so much but was still so cool. The film has never been seen because it became a nightmare trying to get all the rights and clearances we needed. But it's not over yet. A little time has passed, and there are some great things in it--Vincent died in 1993, so it has some of his last footage. I haven't given up on it.

[Q] Playboy: What are you incapable of being sensible about?

[A] Burton: I don't respond well to authority and have an aversion to anyone telling me what to do. Those kinds of seeds are planted early in life. I wasn't a good student, and I discovered in school that instead of reading an 800-page book, I could make a little Super-8 film and get by. I never wanted to do what people told me to do, and I've always tried to find my own way of doing things. As soon as somebody tells m what to do, my mind flip-flops to another place. To this day, when Sunday night rolls around, I get depressed because I feel like I have to go to school the next day, and if I walk onto any campus I feel that way. It's weird. Every month I get a letter in the mail saying I'm getting kicked out of the Directors Guild of America. and that brings up those anti-authority feelings, too. I paid my dues! I guess I got caught up in some form-letter cycle when I forgot to pay my dues one month, but getting that letter immediately throws me back to high school or to Cal-Arts, where I was fighting with authorities every day about this, that or the other thing.

[Q] Playboy: One would imagine that there aren't many authority figures ordering you around these days.

[A] Burton: It still happens. I remember going to the premiere for Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and the security people didn't know who I was and refused to let me in. I still have a hard time getting on movie lots, and the studio guards always stop me. Scarily enough, I've been around long enough to see the studios change over five or six times, and when I drive onto the lots the guards always stop me, and I always have to ask the guard, "What's this studio called now?"

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel you're pigeonholed as an oddball, eccentric director?

[A] Burton: School is your first taste of categorization and social hierarchies, and you don't have to do much to be put into a weird category. I felt very lonely in school, and Edward Scissorhands was based on the feelings of loneliness I experienced as a kid. I knew I wasn't a badperson and I didn't feel weird, yet that's how I was perceived. It was sad and it made me feel like I was crazy. I can remember walking around thinking, What's wrong with me? They tell me I'm weird so I guess I must be, but I don't feel weird. In retrospect, I can see that it was the people who had a strong quality of individuality who were ganged up on and treated like freaks, probably because people who don't have personal power like to torture those who have it.

[Q] Playboy: If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

[A] Burton: I wouldn't change anything, because the more pain you endure when you're young, the richer your adult life will be. I remember going to my 10-year high school reunion, and when I looked around the room it was obvious that the people who'd done the most with their lives were the ones who'd been troubled in school. People who were satisfied with themselves in high school and thought they had it all had stopped growing. Going to that reunion was a shock. The one good thing about having that kind of childhood is that it gives you time on your own. Because you're not popular you're not out socially, so you have time to think and to be quietly angry and emotional. And if you're lucky, you'll develop a creative outlet to exorcise those feelings.

I was a huge Charlton Heston fan when I was growing up. Monster movies didn't scare me at all, but Heston's films really did

People in Taiwan were making Planet of the Apes swords before we'd even shot the thing.