Tim Burton Grilled on His LACMA Exhibition, Depp & 'Dark Shadows'
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Tim Burton Grilled on His LACMA Exhibition, Depp & 'Dark Shadows'
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By Jordan Riefe
Iconoclast filmmaker Tim Burton has an opening this week, but it’s not in theaters. After receiving over 800 thousand visitor’s at New York’s Moma,“Tim Burton!” arrives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this week, including hundreds of the filmmaker's drawings, paintings, sculptures and films.
Burton sat down with TheWrap to talk about his drawings, his struggle with the studios, his long-time collaborator, Johnny Depp, and his upcoming “Dark Shadows,” which he is currently filming in London.
Also see: A Look at 'Tim Burton!: The LACMA Exhibition (Slideshow)
Can you talk about the creature series, the untitled animation series, the number series; some of the more unfamiliar portions of the show?
A lot of these things came at a time when I was a student or working at Disney when I wasn’t really an animator, I just sort of had a lot of free time. There’s a period in my life when I wasn’t very social, and that’s how I spent my time, drawing and thinking of things, and it helped me. I think I was quite a depressed character at a certain point in life. This was kind of a catharsis for me, as a way to kind of explore and just get feelings out into the open nonverbally but just by doing things.
Is that something you commonly do to relax, just sit down and draw?
Yeah, it is. It’s a bit kind of like a Zen thing for me. It was a way for me to communicate with myself in a weird way, in a way to kind of explore things that I couldn’t quite intellectualize or verbalize. I found drawing was a way of finding a certain reality for me and exploring things. So yeah, it’s still important even if I’m busy doing other things.
When you were at Cal Arts, you felt you weren’t a good "life-drawer," but you had a revelation while sitting and drawing over at the Farmer’s Market.
I’ll never forget, it was like a mind-expanding moment. I was sitting at Farmer’s Market and we were there on a class trip, sketching. I was frustrated, and I just said, “**** it. I can’t do this so I’m just going to draw.” And at that moment, it just changed for me. Not that my drawings got any better, but it just did something that I truly felt like my mind expanded. It was like taking some kind of drug and it just did something. I’ll never forget it.
A character from “The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy,” Stain Boy is said to have come out of your experience trying to get “Superman” made at Warner Bros. How does he reflect that experience and can you talk about the struggles between Jon Peters, you and the studio?
Any filmmaker that’s had that happen will tell you, it’s kind of a scarring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad0LkqEGpRg&feature=player_embedded#t=0shttp://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/tim-burton-grilled-his-lacma-exhibition-johnny-depp-dark-shadows-27802?page=0,0&_r=true