NEW Burton Interview

[shadowbat69]

Original Source: http://www.zeenz.nl/at_the_movies/berichten/op-de-praatstoel-tim-burton-in-amsterdam/



About shooting in England:

TB: ?BEETLEJUICE made a fair amount of money I guess, and then they gave me BATMAN to do. That was the first 'big' film I ever worked on. I was lucky enough to be able to go and film it in London, to get away from all the hype involved. For some reason there was a big hype surrounding that project. But being away from all that in England I could focus more on the film and not so much the politics involved.?

"I came in early and read the script that Sam Hamm was working on at the time. I decided to do it as Batman was my favorite character of all of the comic book heroes because of his dark nature. At that point most comic book movies were bright colorerd. More campy, or whatever. So it felt more interesting to go back to the nature of the comic books.?


The interviewer states that he always thought that the movie was heavily influenced by Frank Millers take on The Batman, until he actually read Miller?s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.

TB: ?Well, in a way, you could say that it was more influenced by that than the 60's TV series. For most people that didn't know comics, that's what they thought Batman was. Brightly colored and campy. So, people who knew comics knew the other side of Batman. The movie ended up somewhere in the middle I guess. Currently everybody is trying to go back to the roots of a comic book when making a movie based on it, but back then the studio's weren't used to that. They were a bit nervous and would not let me go that far.?


About big budgets:

TB: ?The more money that's spent on a movie, the more people get involved and the more you have to deal with business that doesn't actually have anything to do with the filmmaking. With the second Batman film [BATMAN RETURNS], I remember sitting with some people from McDonalds that wanted to know what The Penguin was going to look like, ?Because we want to get our wrappers ready.? And then I had to answer we had to make the film first and did not know yet was he was going look like. And the fact is that they weren't going to like the way he was going to look anyway. He doesn't really fit in the Happy Meal mode. You get a lot of things like that when you enter the bigger budget things and it's quite unpleasant.?


About BATMAN BEGINS: TB: The Christopher Nolan movie I thought was actually really good. He really captured the ?real? spirit that these kind of movies are supposed to have nowadays. When I did BATMAN 20 years ago, in 1988 or something, it was a different time in comic book movies. You couldn't go into that ?dark side? of comics yet. The last couple of years that has become acceptable and Nolan certainly got more to the root of what the Batman comics are about.?


If he'd do another Batman movie if Johnny Depp would play The Joker:

TB: I don't think so. After the first two movies I went in to talk about a third one with Warner executives. And I realized halfway through that meeting that they really did not want me to do it. And I wasn't sure if I was interested myself. So I think I made my contribution to the Batman legacy and I just naturally moved on to other things.?

[Paul (ral)]

Not much new, but still great to hear from him. 

He thinks he made his contribution, but he didn't rule out ever doing anything else 

[shadowbat69]

Another thing I like about Burton is his consistency in his answers. They never seem to change in thru the years. I like that, it shows an honesty.


Thanks for uploading this in the News section Raleagh, I was in a hurry when I posted this earlier and was gonna try later to do that. 

[Paul (ral)]

They do say the truth is easy to remember, that's how liars get caught out.

Burton has always delivered what he set out to do and has never backtracked on his comments.  Like telling everyone that Returns was not a sequel before it came out.

[greggbray]

I'm sure many of you have read Burton's book?  I find his thoughts on BR quite inciteful, and real personal.


It's cool that he gives Nolan props.  A real gentleman. 

[Rebel]

Not much new, but still great to hear from him. 

He thinks he made his contribution, but he didn't rule out ever doing anything else 

Don't toy with me, man