Tim Burton and company head to the altar
Subtitle: Filmmaker collaborates with all his favorite people
on Corpse Bride
Copyright: Associated Press [author not listed]
2005.09.14
Source: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9316852/
The key players of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride [Picture: TORONTO
- The dead bride, Helena Bonham Carter, wore a brown sweater and frilly olive
skirt. Jittery groom Johnny Depp wore white pants and a gray T-shirt. Wedding
singer Danny Elfman was all in black. Matchmaker Tim Burton wore a blue shirt
and black slacks.] sat down at the Toronto International Film Festival to share
recollections of their strange and wondrous animated matrimonial fantasy and
ponder why it is they all collaborate so often.
“With all of these people here, it’s nice because it feels like a
real artistic collaboration,” Corpse Bride director Burton said
in an interview with The Associated Press, alongside co-director Mike Johnson,
voice stars Depp and Bonham Carter and composer Elfman, who also wrote the movie’s
songs and sang one of them.
“It’s a movie industry, it’s a business. It’s treated as
a business, but I think everybody here likes to think they’re making art.
You want to be creative, and you respond to people who have that spirit. That’s
a real joy, and that’s the reason that I like working with these people.”
“And trust,” adds Bonham Carter. “It takes a long time to trust
someone. You work with people, anybody you don’t know, it takes about a
film’s length to get to know each other. Then if you move on, you have
to start right back at the beginning. But if you carry on together and try doing
different things, you can all grow together.”
After playing the Toronto festival, Corpse Bride debuts in limited release
Friday and opens nationwide [Canada/USA] Sept. 23.
Burton enjoys collaboration
Burton and Elfman have collaborated on 12 films, among them Edward Scissorhands,
Batman and Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, Big Fish
and this summer’s hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Along with playing Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
Depp’s five Burton films include Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy
Hollow.
After getting his big Hollywood break as an assistant on the animated fantasy
Tim Burton’s the Nightmare Before Christmas, Johnson was invited
to co-direct the filmmaker’s latest stop-motion adventure.
Since co-starring in Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes, Bonham
Carter went on to appear in Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory.
“And they had a child,” Depp slyly adds, to round out Burton and
Bonham Carter’s collaborations.
After Burton and Bonham Carter met on Planet of the Apes, they became
a couple and had a son in 2003. They live in adjoining houses in London.
This time out, Depp provides the voice of Victor, the son of fish merchants
hoping to raise their social status by marrying their boy off to the daughter
(Emily Watson) of penniless but titled aristocrats.
Yet the nervous bridegroom, who can’t master his vows during wedding rehearsal,
inadvertently finds himself conjugally joined to the decomposing cadaver of
a woman (Bonham Carter) buried in her bridal gown, who has been waiting for
a hubby to come and claim her.
The film was created using intricate puppets shot in stop-motion animation,
one frame at a time, the same process used on Nightmare Before Christmas.
‘Lucky to have been along for the ride’
Elfman recalls Burton describing Corpse Bride about six years ago. As
with all of Burton’s fanciful tales, Elfman felt certain his musical approach
and the director’s storytelling style would click.
“Whatever it is, I know there’s going to be some sensibility that’s
a little bit askew and that enables me to catch ahold, and I know it’s
going to be a good ride,” Elfman said.
Since Edward Scissorhands, Depp has had a champion in Burton, who kept
coming back to the actor even though Hollywood had its doubts.
“I feel very lucky to have been along for the ride,” said Depp, whose
choice of odd and uncommercial roles had made him a tough star to cast until
he scored a blockbuster with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
Pearl.
“Lucky to get the gigs from him, because I know over the years, he has
had to have a great number of battles to get to cast me. Fighting the studio
heads. ‘You mean the weird guy who does the European art movies? No, he’s
box-office poison.’ Tim would go in and battle for me, so I feel very lucky.”
Burton no longer had to beg to cast Depp because of his sudden box-office success.
In fact, for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the studio bosses suggested
Depp for Willy Wonka “before I could even utter the words,” Burton
said. “I just thought, ‘What took you guys so long? It’s about
time.”’