Tim Burton
An introverted, artistic, academically disinclined boy from Burbank, California, Tim Burton spent lots of time watching TV as a child. He reportedly favored horror and low budget movies, fostering an aesthetic that would lead him later to make the biopic Ed Wood (1994). He won a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts and became an animator with Disney. Working on The Fox and the Hound was not up his alley artistically, and Burton spent his non-Disney working hours creating illustrations and story ideas that would serve as the basis of the stop-animation film The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Burton’s first short film was the wonderful stop-motion animation Vincent (1982) about a boy who imagines himself as Vincent Price - with Price narrating. Another early work Frankenweenie caught the imagination of Paul Reubens who got Burton hired as director for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985). The box office success of this film allowed Burton to wait a few years until he finally settled on Beetlejuice (1988), and then Edward Scissorhands (1990), which he wrote and directed. Now an A-list director, Burton worked on the big-budget Batman and Batman Returns. Even with these mainstream movies Burton was able to infuse the set and characters with his brand of Gothic, melancholy imagery. Tim Burton continues to direct and produce - most recently, he directed Sweeney Todd.
