Tim Burton: Director, Producer, and Screenwriter
"I've always been more comfortable making my decisions from the subconscious level, or more emotionally, because I find it is more truthful to me. Intellectually, I don't think like that because I get uncomfortable. I'm more wary of my intellectual mind, of becoming delusional if I think of it too much." This quote from Tim Burton illustrates his thoughts and actions in his career. As children, the use of imagination can help any individual get through any predicament. Developmental psychology "studies the way humans develop and change over time." (Kowalski, 2005, p. 459)
This allows psychologists and researchers to measure and define why people behave and react the way they do. People are influenced at a young age and those influences are carried on through adulthood. Tim Burton has declared that there are "[many] things you see as a child [that] remain with youyou spend a lot of your life trying to recapture the experience." (B. Andac)
Timothy William Burton was born in Burbank, California in 1958, "quite literally, a child of Hollywoodalbeit a child who was considered by those around him, and by himself, a misfit who spent his days feeding on a steady diet of horror and science fiction." (B. Andac) Tim Burton was born and raised in conformity everything in his hometown of Burbank seemed the same, the same conformity he mocks in the movie Edward Scissorhands. "Burton-a withdrawn and naturally sensitive boy-was very much a part of this world at an early and... impressionable age... He made his own adjustments to the era. An unusually perceptive child, as is often the case with creative children who observe from the sidelines, Tim was quick to see the facade of his suburban existence." (Hanke, 1999, p. 29)
Tim Burton spent most of his time drawing and making short movies that he used to replace the essays that his teachers assigned him. According to Ken Hanke in his biography about Tim Burton he states, "There seems to have been little or no real sense of family in the Burton household, at least from Tim's perspective. When asked about his father in a 1991 interview for the New York Times Magazine, he commented, I'm not close to him. It's been a source of confusion. I'm just something of a remote person in some ways. I've had an incredible desire to get out of the house from an early age.' His feelings about his mother are equally detached: I don't know. It sort of freaked me out several years ago, realizing I don't know a whole lot about my parents; don't even know some of the basics, like where they were born' (Hanke, 1999, p. 26-27).
Tim Burton is emotionally withdrawn from his parents, although they played a major part in his life he just wasn't attached to them. In Tim Burton's case heredity and environment both affected him. First of all, Tim Burton's movies and art clearly illustrate how heredity and environment played significant roles. "Beetlejuice" is an example, where Tim includes two different characters that are strange and not ordinary, Lydia and Beetlejuice. Environment, the other factor that contributed to Tim Burton's life is growing up in a conformist suburban town where most young kids his age joined groups and participated in sports. Tim was quite the opposite, "the whole concept was one of belonging. And Burton was never much of a joiner. He admits to having played some sports... but the only evidence of him being a part of a group is during his sophomore and junior years at Burbank High, when he was on the Water Polo Foothill League" (Hanke, 1999, p. 28)
"The degree to which this vagueness about his family roots is literally true is certainly open to quesiton. However, there is no getting around the fact that Tim was an unusual and detached child." (Hanke, 1999, p. 26-27) Tim continued drawing and "it wasn't until he has spent some time at California Institute of the Arts, that he was given an opportunity that would change his life. Disney, after seeing Burton's artwork, hired him immediately. Amazingly, they didn't even have a job that specifically fit what he could do. He was hired on the basis that if Disney didn't hire him, someone else would" (B. Andac). He did animation for the Fox and the Hound and the Black Cauldron; however, it was not what he enjoyed doing.
Tim wanted to animate his ideas and not someone else's and Disney did not like Tim's ideas because they were unusual. For example, since Tim Burton had a lack of connection with his parents the majority of his main characters are shy, outcasts, who don't really belong or fit in the environment. Such films, like "Vincent," where a boy pretends to be Vincent Price; "Edward Scissorhands" about a man with scissors for hands who lived away from the town in an abandon house, alone. Tim's experiences allow him to create unique characters that resemble his characteristics and actions. The only relief Tim found to his existence in this land of ticky-tacky box houses and people playing at being "normal" lay in the horror films on television and in the second-run movie houses. Fantasy of all sorts appealed to him, especially the Japanese Godzilla films... and the Ray Hrryhausen stop-motion films like Jason and the Argonauts (1964).
However, what held the most attraction, what spoke to Burton directly was the array of colorful horror films of Vincent Price, especially the adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories that Price made for moviemaker Roger Corman. "Growing up in suburbia, in an atmosphere that was perceived as nice and normal (but which I had other feelings about), those movies were a way to certain feelings, and I related them to the place I was growing up in," explained Burton. "Vincent Price was somebody I could identify with. When you're younger things look bigger, you find your own mythology, you find what psychologically connects to you," he added. Indeed. It is particularly apt that Burton should refer to mythology, since in not too many years Tim would be crafting a mythology of his own, to which an astonishing number of people would psychologically connect, just as he had connected with the Price movies" (Hanke, 1999, p. 30-31).
In conclusion, this is the basic of Tim Burton's life from childhood to adulthood. "I am not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark," Burton declared. (Burton, 2003-2007) Everything is connected and tied to each other and the environment and heredity do affect how a person turns out as an adult.
References
Ben Andac. (February 2003), Tim Burton Biography. Retrieved November 6, 2007,
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/ burton.html.
Ken Hanke. Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker, Renaissance
Books: Los Angeles (1999), pages 26-123. Retrieved November 6, 2007,
http://www.adherents.com/people/pb/Tim_Burton.html.
R obin Kowalski, & Drew Westen. Psychology: 4th Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2005.
Tim Burton. (2003-2007), Quotes. Retrieved November 6, 2007,
http://www.quotesandpoem.com/quotes/listquotes/autho r/tim_burton.
Tim Burton. Biography. Retrieved November 6, 2007, http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=954243 1.