Tim Burton - "The Gothic Stylist"

It should come as no shock to the fans of director Tim Burton that he spent his early years glued to the tube, watching old cartoons and horror flicks. Such early influences no doubt helped to form the deliciously ghoulish and artfully warped sensibility of a director who was to become known for his adventures into the bizarre outer regions of gothic-like film.

A native of Southern California, Burton was born in Burbank on August 25, 1958. He never really took to the suburban life, where he was raised, and instead of joining little league or selling lemonade like most kids did, he spent his time drawing, watching old horror movies, and reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe. When he won a scholarship in 1980 to the California Institute of the Arts, Burton went to work as an apprentice animator at Disney. It was an aesthetically and financially dead period for Disney animation (megahits like The Little Mermaid were years in the future), and Burton's most vivid memories of his time at the studio were of constant firings, ill-will, indecisiveness, and paranoia. He felt very out of place working on cartoons like The Fox and the Hound, later saying "I was just not Disney material. I could just not draw cute foxes for the life of me."

For their part, the Disney higher-ups weren't interested in any of Burton's independent ideas, and refused to release his 1984 short Frankenweenie on the grounds that it was "unsuitable" for children. His first animated short, Vincent - a 1982 tribute to his idol Vincent Price, who also narrated the film - was met with a cool reception from Disney executives.

After leaving Disney, Burton found both greater creative freedom and commercial success thanks in part to actor/comedian Paul Reubens, who was looking for someone to head a film about his alter-ego, Pee-Wee Herman. Reubens had watched Frankenweenie and impressed with what he saw, he helped to get Burton hired on as the director of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985). Burton wisely treated the whole project like a live-action Looney Tune, and the film, originally intended for limited release as a kid's picture, became one of Warner Bros.' biggest hits of the early '80s.

This led to Burton's next project, Beetlejuice (1988), a comedy/fantasy. Its success led to a job directing the 1989 big-budget version of Batman. It was a darkly lavish, gothic production, and was a huge hit, securing Burton a place on the roster of A-list directors. His next film, 1990's Edward Scissorhands, had a lot in common with Burton's earlier movie called Frankenweenie. It was the tale of an artificial boy put together by a scientist (Vincent Price again, in one of his last performances), who unfortunately dies before he can complete the boy; as a result, the fabricated boy has hedge clipper-like scissors for hands. Frightening, funny, and touching all in one, Edward Scissorhands proved that Burton could portray humanity and audience empathy into an otherwise unbelievable combination.

By this point Burton was able to write his own Hollywood ticket, which resulted in a rewarding contract arrangement with his previous employer, Disney. The company that once refused to release his work now practically tripped over itself giving him the opportunity to produce his next project, a stop-motion animated cartoon about the King of Halloween kidnapping Santa Claus. The film was 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas and although it wasn't the hit everyone hoped it would be, Nightmare was Burton's film and his film alone, from drawing board to final release. Disney also put Frankenweenie into mass-market distribution at long last, running the onetime "untouchable" film over and over again on cable's Disney Channel.

In addition to his series of successes, there have been a few mistakes in Burton's career, notably Family Dog (1993), a TV cartoon series co-produced by Steven Spielberg.

However, after producing the 1995 Batman sequel, Batman Forever, Burton returned returned to the animation style of Nightmare Before Christmas with a 1996 adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic James and the Giant Peach. Later that year, he had great fun using an all-star cast in his spoof/homage to 1950s horror movies, Mars Attacks!

In 1999, Burton returned to the director's chair with Sleepy Hollow. Starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, the film promised moviegoers another dose of the lush, gothic style that Burton served up with such flair. In 2001, Burton took to the director's chair in an attempt at reviving another dormant franchise, The Planet of the Apes. Promising a "re-imagination" of the ape planet concept rather than a straight remake, Burton's version of the film starred Mark Wahlberg as an astronaut stranded in unfamiliar ape territory.