True Stories From Tim Burton's Childhood
Best known for his instantly recognizable dark visuals and maudlin sense of humor, it’s tempting to read Tim Burton’s odd childhood as a sort of key to his particularly off-kilter work. Growing up in the shadows of film studios and cemeteries in Burbank, CA, could his mother’s cat-themed gift shop have inspired his take on the Cheshire Cat? Or was it his earliest stop-motion animation films that set him on his path to Frankenweenie?
While Burton's formative years surely played some role in the artist he became, it was probably his insatiable appetite to create that helped him make it big. With a deep-dive into his backstory, the brilliantly nuanced dimensions of his work become clear.
He Wanted To Be A Magician As Kid, But Later Decided Against It
In a Los Angeles Times interview, Burton acknowledged his childhood fascination with magic and ventriloquism. But visiting Hollywood’s Magic Castle pushed him away from pursuing magic seriously.
Burton explained, “I saw how angry [the magicians] were - there's nothing worse than an angry magician. I realized that I had anger issues, and that if I became a magician it would be really bad."
Burton's First Brush With Fame Came By Way Of Burbank Garbage Trucks
Burton's art first received acclaim when the filmmaker was 14 years old. Burton won first prize in a contest to design a poster that discouraged littering for the city of Burbank. The prize-winning work displays a heavy-set garbage collector squashing a garbage can along with the tagline "Crush Litter," all in cartoonish black and white.
The following year, Burton's art was featured prominently on all Burbank's garbage trucks.
Burton Loved Hanging Out In Cemeteries
Young Burton found it difficult to make friends and spent a good deal of his free time among the deceased. He grew up near Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery and admitted in an interview with The Independent that he often thought about the internal lives of the employees, saying, “We lived near a cemetery, so I'd like to go there and wonder about the scary guy who dug graves.”
In addition to Valhalla Memorial Park, Burbank is home to a few other notable cemeteries, including Forest Lawn, the final resting place of such screen luminaries as Buster Keaton and Lucille Ball. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Burton recalled playing among the famous graves, too.
Despite Being An Outsider, Burton Was No Stranger To Team Sports
Burton's father, William “Bill” Burton, also grew up in Burbank, and played minor league baseball for the Fresno Cardinals before a physical issue prevented him from continuing. In part to appease his father, Burton also played baseball, despite his self-proclaimed gloomy nature and lack of natural athletic ability.
In a 2012 interview with The New York Times, the filmmaker recalled, “I did some sports. It was a bit frustrating. I wasn’t the greatest sports person.”
While Burton was clearly frustrated during that period of his life, he noted the pressure helped him identify with kids who were forced into positions they may not have chosen on their own.
He Regularly Consumed Macabre Horror
- Photo:
- Reynold Brown
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Burton claims he watched a ton of intense horror films as a kid.
Speaking to The New York Times, he recalled catching macabre fare on television regularly: "They’d show monster movies on regular TV then, which they wouldn’t show now... something where a guy gets his arm ripped off and is bleeding down the wall. My parents were a bit freaked out."
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He Attended CalArts, The Creative Incubator Conceived By Walt Disney
In 1961, Walt Disney established the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, CA, as a “community of the arts” dedicated to nurturing future generations of creative talent. In many regards, he triumphed, as its alumni roster boasts names such as Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), Mike Kelley (who created the album art for Sonic Youth's Dirty), and Frank Darabont (The Walking Dead, The Shawshank Redemption).
Burton’s peers are said to have sparked a renaissance in animation, as his contemporaries went on to make animated powerhouses like Toy Story and The Iron Giant. As a student, Burton learned to animate the “Disney way,” taking instruction from some of the studio’s most prominent artists. He focused on character animation, a defining feature of the school’s curriculum.
According To Legend, Burton Rebuilt His Dorm Room Door While At CalArts
In a promotional interview Burton did with MTV for his film Dark Shadows, the director addressed a long-standing rumor that he personally rebuilt his dorm room door. As the story goes, the original door was a fairly anonymous work painted in toothpaste-green. When Burton was finished with it, it featured a jagged crossbeam and hefty handle carve-out.
Whether he truly reconstructed the door remains something of a mystery. When pressed by the interviewer, Burton dodged the question, mentioning how he went on to serve a short stint as an incompetent studio carpenter.
He Started Making Stop-Motion Animations At A Young Age
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- Corpse Bride
- Warner Bros. Pictures
Inspired by the innovative work of Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion effects wizard behind some of the most memorable sequences in Mighty Joe Young and Jason and the Argonauts, Burton began toying with his own animated films while still a teenager.
In 1971, Burton made a Super 8mm film using prehistoric dinosaur toys (the director was around 13 at the time). Burton never stopped honing his craft, which led to feature-length stop-motion films like The Corpse Bride.
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His Mother Ran A Cat-Themed Gift Shop
Dating back to some of his earliest stop-motion animated short films, cats have remained a major presence in Burton’s work. This could be because Burton's mother started a cat-themed gift shop when he was young.
Unfortunately, Jean Burton’s store wasn’t much of a hit. In an interview, Burton claimed it tanked, noting, “I found it more horrific than quirky but that's my opinion. Opening a cat store in Burbank was just a very strange idea.”
Burton’s Parents Bricked Up His Bedroom Windows
While sealing a child away by bricking their windows shut sounds like the sort of thing that might happen in one of Burton's films, it was no fictional contrivance for the young filmmaker. Growing up, Burton's bedroom windows overlooked his family’s lawn, up until - much to his surprise, and seemingly without reason - his parents sealed the majority of them up with brickwork.
Burton said, “My parents walled them up and gave me this little slit window that I had to climb up on my desk to see out of. To this day I never asked them why.”
'Frankenweenie' Was Inspired By One Of His Childhood Dogs
Burton’s 2012 stop-motion Frankenweenie harkens back to the earliest days of his career, both technically and personally. Before it was a feature-length film, Burton used the concept - in which a boy revives his beloved deceased pet - as inspiration for a live-action short for Disney in the 1980s.
In an interview with The Independent, Burton detailed his intimate connection to the concept, saying “Frankenweenie was based on my own childhood dog, Peppi. If I could have brought him back to life, I would [have]. I did it in film instead.”
He Had Intense Bonds With His Childhood Pets
A self-described outcast, the young Burton looked for companionship in his family pets. While speaking with The Independent, Burton recalled forging close bonds with his family’s animals growing up:
I like all dogs but, again, dogs are like people or animals are like people. I'm sure if you like cats, I'm sure you've had a favorite cat. I've had maybe two or three out of a series of pets that you really connect with. I think it's the same with people, you never quite know which one you're going to have that kind of emotional connection with.
He Identified With Monsters
- Photo:
- Universal Studios, NBCUniversal
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
In an interview with The Independent, Burton acknowledged feeling a particular connection to movie monsters, including the cobbled-together creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Burton noted:
I don't know why but I always related to characters like Frankenstein. I think a lot of kids do; it’s easier to relate to the monster in the sense of he's alone. Growing up, you could feel those feelings and the way you felt about your neighbors is like they're the angry villagers.
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He Got To Cast Vincent Price, A Childhood Idol
- Photo:
- Laura trailer screenshot
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
Vincent Price was a mainstay of '50s horror filmmaking, so it's no surprise he was a childhood hero of Burton’s. Burton distinguished himself from average fans by getting to work with his idol, though. In his early Disney short Vincent, Burton nabbed the star to do narration.
This was undoubtedly a highlight of Burton's career, as he's made his love for the actor exceedingly clear, saying:
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. And those movies, just the poetry of them, and this larger-than-life character who goes through a lot of torment - mostly imagined - just spoke to me.
Price later appeared in Burton's 1990 film Edward Scissorhands, playing the part of the inventor.
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