CBS Sunday Morning segment about Tim Burton, 3/4/06 Transcribed by Deppraved (Just before going to commercial break) Coming up... (showing clip of Tim at CATCF L.A. premiere) Inside the world of Hollywood outsider, Tim Burton. (Commercial break) Video clip from Corpse Bride is showing. Here's Charles Osgood... (Osgood introduces the segment) There's no mistaking the offbeat touch of director Tim Burton. He's in Oscar competition tonight for his animated feature Corpse Bride. Our ______ went to visit this proud father of the bride as he awaits the Academy's call for "The Envelope, Please." Narration: An animated film about a shy boy who marries a dead girl by mistake. It's the latest from director Tim Burton using an old fashioned process called stop-action animation. (Shows the interviewer sitting across from Tim): Q: How does that work? TB: Well, I mean, it's...it's...they're puppets that are about this big (uses his hands to indicate size) and they're literally...we built sets and light them and the animators move them, the figure, one frame at a time, 24 frames per second. Narration: The movie is called Corpse Bride and its nominated for an Oscar tonight for best animated feature. Johnny Depp is the voice of Victor, the groom. (Clip from CB of Victor speaking to the bride.) Switch to video clip of Johnny on the beach in the Bahamas: JD: He's, um...bottled something magical.... (Clip of two skeletons pouring themselves a drink) ...and I plan on drinking it! (Johnny makes a face that resembles Capt. Jack's...raised eyebrow, bit of a squint and smile.) Narration: Corpse Bride is full of ghoulish glee, crumbling bones and dead people stealing the show. A strange theme, perhaps, but not to those who know Tim Burton's work. (Back to interviewer and Tim Burton): TB: I've always been interested in the juxtaposition of what people say is fantasy vs. reality or what's normal vs. abnormal. They always seem sort of different to me. Narration: It's a vision that's dark and oddly appealing just as Tim Burton is when you sit down with him as we did for a rare interview. (Back to interviewer and Tim Burton): TB: Well, I did have somebody say that their dog liked my work once, and I thought that was quite interesting. Interviewer: That's weird because I was watching Corpse Bride this morning and my dog kept going up...when that dog, Scraps... TB: Really? See, that's amazing to me. To me those are the best compliments. Interviewer: (Laughs) Yeah?? TB: 'Cause you know it's pure. Tell him thank you. I'll send him a couple of bones after this one. (Goes to voice of Roger Ebert over clips from Tim's films.) RE: Tim Burton is a little strange. Narration: Film critic Roger Ebert has been following Tim Burton's career ever since Burton made a very big splash 20 years ago as a young filmmaker. RE: If you go back through all of his pictures, you find nothing that is conventional. You find worlds that come completely out of his imagination as in Big Fish or Pee Wee's Big Adventure, one of his earlier films. You find that his Batman pictures had a very distinctive look and feel to them. Narration: And did we mention his movies make money? Batman is well up there on the list of Hollywood's top grossing films. (Goes to video clip of Danny DeVito): DD: Tim is visually astounding in the way he approaches material. (Clip of DeVito as The Penguin.) Narration: Danny DeVito plays The Penguin in Batman Returns. He's also the ringmaster in Burton's 2004 movie Big Fish. DD: Even when you read the script of Big Fish, which is a really terrific script, you don't really get the world that he's creating until you actually take that step with him - that first step into this world that is created in his mind. Narration: DeVito even cast Burton in one of his own movies, Hoffa. That's Burton - where else - in the coffin. (Clip of Tim lying in a coffin as a dead man.) (Goes to clip of fans waiting in a crowd.) Fan: He's amazing! He's like...God! Narration: Fans love Burton's creative, quirky, fantastical world along with his outsider take on life. Fan: No one else has come up with the ideas like he has. Fan: He has so much creativity. Fan: I don't know how he comes up with these things. He's amazing! Fan: He's just a great story teller. Fan moves her hair to show a tattoo behind her ear and says "This is Tim Burton." The tattoo is Jack Skellington's face. Narration: Among young adults who have grown up with Tim Burton, Burton is a cult hero with a kind of celebrity rare for a director. (Back to interviewer and Tim): Interviewer: And what makes you like that? What makes you look at things this way? Was somebody horrible to you? (laughs) TB: You mean besides all my teachers and parents and...no, no...I mean....(laughs) Narration: In a way, Burton's drawings tell the story. By his own account, he was an odd and solitary kid growing up in Burbank, CA with little use for school or parents. He lived with his grandmother as a teenager and spent his days drawing and dreaming and watching old monster movies. (Back to interviewer and Tim): Interviewer: You lived near a cemetery? TB: Yeah. Interviewer: Ok, is this...does it play into all the... TB: Well, I mean, yeah...yeah...I mean, I did enjoy...I did grow up watching monster movies and enjoy playing...uh, I didn't feel any...but I thought most of the kids did...it didn't seem that strange to me. Interviewer: Are you lashing back from being a tortured child? TB: Well, of course, you know, I mean....I think...that's part of what's great about doing, you know...having whatever or music or drawing or writing as an outlet. It's a good way to sort of exorcise those things. Narration: Burton's drawing talent won him a scholarship to nearby Cal Arts, founded by Walt and Roy Disney. And after that, a job as an animator working on Disney classics like The Fox and the Hound. (Clip from that animated film.) He says he found the work tedious and dull. (Clip of Frankenweenie) Disney let him make a short film of his own - Frankenweenie (another clip) about a little boy's efforts to revive his dead dog. Disney felt it was too scary to release, but its unique style opened doors. (Clip of Pee Wee's Big Adventure) Narration: Next came Pee Wee's Big Adventure which became a cult classic and that led to.... (clip from Beetlejuice) Beetlejuice - a sleeper hit. Critical raves and tons of money for Warner Bros. Then came Burton's first really big budget movie, Batman. It was a smash. (Clip from Batman) Suddenly, Tim Burton had Hollywood clout. The movie he chose to make next was Edward Scissorhands, probably Burton's most personal film, about a creative misfit in a world that oddly mirrors the one Burton grew up in. (Photo of one of Tim's drawings of Edward, then a clip from the film.) A small film, but one that almost didn't get made despite that newly-acquired Hollywood clout. (Back to interviewer and Tim) TB: What they like about you, they fear about you - you know, they think you're somewhat of a strange person, so they're always a little bit worried about what you want to do even if it seems to do OK. Interviewer (teasing): They're thinking...I'm giving control to this guy?? TB: Exactly! You know... Interviewer: He doesn't even brush his hair! (laughs) TB: Yeah...so how is he going to do a movie? Interviewer: Ha! Ha! Well, I think you've proved... TB: Exactly! You see, I think you've been listening to some of those conversations! Narration: To play Edward Scissorhands, Burton chose Johnny Depp (photo of Johnny as Edward) who is now shooting Disney's sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean in the Bahamas. We asked him to send along his thoughts. (Narration over photo of Johnny as Capt. Jack running through the surf with natives chasing him.) (Back to Johnny on the beach) JD: We connected on...on a number of levels, you know, it was, ah...yeah...it was a kind of a beginning of that sort of interesting shorthand that exists between Tim and I. (Photo of Tim and Johnny together.) TB: He's just somebody that like to transform...and he's more like an old fashioned, like, Boris Karloff or Lon Chaney-style actor than he is like the leading man, and so I enjoy that...people like that...they're always surprising. In fact, with those kind of people, you have to fight them to not cover themselves up too completely because, you know, their instinct is to become something completely different. (Clip of Johnny as Willy Wonka saying, "You're weird!") Narration: Depp and Burton have gone on to make many movies together including Ed Wood... (clip from film)...Burton's loving tribute to the man considered by many Hollywood insiders to be the worst director of all time. (Back to Johnny on the beach) JD: He deserves to be loved...Ed Wood. There's a kind of purity, um...um...to Ed Wood that I would say is, in terms of intent, is not dissimilar from Tim. TB: I definitely identified with him. I mean, I grew up seeing his movies and seeing how special they were and, you know, just being in the industry, you know that there's a real fine line between what can be a failure and a success, and what makes an artist or not. (Still photo of the real Ed Wood in cashmere sweater & skirt) Narration: Ed Wood may or may not have been a cinematic genius, but he was a character. (Clip from actual Ed Wood films) His movie Plan 9 From Outer Space, featured a very old Bela Lugosi, who died while it was being made. (Clip of Bela in the movie) Wood got his dentist to fill in. Roger Ebert: The reason he wanted to make Ed Wood...and Ed Wood made the worst films ever made...was because Ed Wood had so much FUN making those films and threw himself into them with such abandon and that's where Ed Wood and Tim Burton connect. Tim Burton makes films that are a lot better, but he doesn't make them with any more love. Narration: Tim Burton's real life these days seems almost...dare we say it...normal. He lives in England with actress Helena Bonham Carter and their young son, Billy. (Photos of Tim & Helena) The two often work together. She played a witch in Big Fish, Charlie Bucket's mother in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and she's the voice of the Corpse Bride. (Photos of Helena in each of these roles, and video of Helena doing the Corpse Bride voice recording) TB: It's actually...it's quite nice...she knows what it's all about and so there's no ego, no...uh, problem whatsoever. So it's just actually pretty easy. Interviewer: And your life now...um...you could argue has sort of a fairy tale aspect (Tim laughs) to it? TB: You mean happily ever after? Interviewer: You're happy, aren't you? TB: Oh, now I'm going to turn into a frog and jump off stage now. (Clips from Corpse Bride) Narration: Tonight he may find himself jumping onto a stage...at the Oscars. (Back to Johnny on the beach) JD: Well, 'cuz he's overdue...um, 'cuz he deserves it! (Back to interviewer and Tim) Interviewer: You going to go? TB: Yeah, if I can...I'm having my white leisure suit cleaned at the moment. If the stains come through, I'll be OK. Yeah. (laughs). ***