Tim Burton turns 68: Remembering the most memorable quotes from the king of Gothic cinema
«I was always misunderstood»
Tim Burton celebrates his 68th birthday on August 25. The director and screenwriter is known as the «master of dark fairy tales».
Burton’s films are instantly recognizable from the very first frames: gloomy sets, eccentric characters, black humor, a touch of absurdity, themes of death, and heroes who seem to have accidentally found themselves in a world that is completely foreign to them.
Today, the director is regarded as the king of Gothic cinema. His filmography includes more than 25 feature films and 13 shorts, while his best-known works include «Beetlejuice», «Batman», «Edward Scissorhands», «Sleepy Hollow», «Charlie and the Chocolate Factory», «Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street», «Alice in Wonderland» and the series «Wednesday».
Burton’s love of dark stories began in childhood. Tim was born in Burbank in August 1958. His parents owned a small business called Cats Plus, a shop selling cat-themed goods. The family lived comfortably, but that did little to make the future director’s childhood any less gloomy.
While other children played outside, Burton chose a very different place for his walks. Instead of running around with the neighborhood kids, he would head to Valhalla Cemetery, not far from his family home.
There, the boy would sit on the graves and talk to himself about death, the dead and the difficult fate of gravediggers. When his parents discovered these excursions, they were horrified. To stop their son from escaping to the cemetery, they even boarded up the windows of his room, leaving only a small opening.
As a result, Burton’s childhood became even more secluded. He spent much of his time in his room, drawing his own strange characters and inventing entire worlds for them. Those drawings would later become a kind of foundation for his distinctive artistic style.
Burton began his career as an animator at Disney. He later created his own unmistakable cinematic universe, where darkness coexists effortlessly with humor, and Gothic aesthetics blend with fairy-tale elements. His characters became part of pop culture, while Burton himself became one of the few directors whose style can be recognized from just a handful of frames.
That is why, on his 68th birthday, we are looking back at some of the director’s most interesting quotes.
On himself
«I was always misunderstood. You know, I could dress up as a clown and laugh along with a cheerful crowd, and people would still say I was a gloomy guy.»
«I liked thinking that I perceived everything differently from other people.»
«If I had a choice between going to a meeting with studio executives or changing diapers, I would choose the diapers.»
«They told me you can’t kill Jack Nicholson. So I had to give him two roles and kill him twice.»
On cinema
«Making movies is an expensive form of therapy for me.»
«You have to feel like you’re creating the greatest masterpiece, even if it’s complete nonsense.»
«Actually, I don’t have a single film that would fit the classic «horror movie» category. And that’s rather funny, because I probably prefer that genre to all the others.»
«I think the ending will feel much more life-affirming if the audience is left to work it out for themselves. Artificial happy endings have always seemed like a form of psychosis to me.»
On freedom
«When you don’t have too many friends, you feel a strange kind of freedom.»
«Madness is, in some terrible way, the greatest freedom available to a person, because then they are no longer confined by the boundaries of society.»
On Hollywood and technology
«In Hollywood, they think hand-drawn animation is no longer needed and that everything should be done by computers. Pixar makes its animated films using computers, and everyone else tries to copy them. Everyone relies on technology and forgets about the artists.»
Photo: Depositphotos, Instagram @timburton
