BurtonVerse: Stats & Trivia II: Behind the Camera
BurtonVerse: Statistics & Trivia II
Behind the Camera
Last week's post was all about statistics and trivia regarding BurtonVerse collaborators in front of the camera, the actors. Click here to read. This is about some other essential filmmaking components: writers, composers, studios and casting.
Some of this I already knew, some I discovered as I worked through, and none of it may be anything new to you...
The Writers' Room
Despite his distinctive visual style and similar themes, Tim Burton has relatively few writing credits. His only full "written by" credit is for Vincent. He has "original idea" credits for the Frankenweenie short and feature. Burton contributed story to ES and TNBC, and also characters to TNBC and CB. Here are a few other items of interest.
More than any other individual, John August has five writing credits on Burton films. He is the only credited screenwriter for three films: BF, CATCF, and Fw12, and additionally contributed to the screenplay of CB and story for DS.
The screenwriting team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski wrote both biopics directed by Burton, EW and BE.
They have written other films about enigmatic figures, and reportedly
coined the term "anti-biopic" to describe movies about people who do not
deserve one. They also have uncredited rewrites on MA!.
Even with the Frankenstein stories aside (Fw84, ES, and Fw12), adaptations of others' works to varying degrees make up a large portion of Burton's films. MA! is adapted from a 1962 Topps trading card series, including overall story and design of the Martians. SH is roughly based on the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving. POTA is adapted from the novel by Pierre Boulle and includes some elements from the eponymous 1968 film. BF, CATCF, and MP are adapted from the novels by Daniel Wallace, Roald Dahl, and Ransom Riggs, respectively. (Fun fact: The MP film switches the peculiarities of Emma and Olive, who is also aged up for the film; Emma is pyrokinetic in the novel and Olive is aerokinetic.) AIW is considered a reimagining and remake of the 1951 Disney animated classic of the same name along with Lewis Carroll's children's novels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Dumbo is also a remake/reimagining of Disney's 1941 animated feature. ST is a more or less direct adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's stage musical of the same name. DS is a one-off film remake of the gothic soap opera. Lastly, while Batman and BR do not have any direct source material, they do intentionally share darker tone with 1986's The Dark Knight Returns, the comic miniseries by Frank Miller. The Joker's origin of falling into a vat of chemicals is adapted directly from the 1988 influential graphic novel The Killing Joke by Alan Moore with art by Brian Bolland.
It's been said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned." There is truth in that, but sometimes one gets another go at it. Reportedly, Tim Burton originally envisioned Frankenweenie not as a live-action short, but as a stop-motion feature. He did not have the budget to complete this vision in 1984, but got the opportunity to remake it as such in 2012.
Score!
Paul Reubens and Tim Burton invited Danny Elfman to score PwBA because
of his work with his band, Oingo Boingo. He has since composed for
every feature directed by Burton (plus the Netflix series, Wednesday)
except three. He was additionally the singing voice of Jack Skellington
and voiced both Barrel and Clown with the Tear Away Face in TNBC. He also performed the singing voices of the Oompa-Loompas in CATCF and voiced Bonejangles in CB. He has gone on to score several of Sam Raimi's films, the Men in Black trilogy plus the fourth one, and multiple other films across multiple genres.
So, if Danny Elfman did not, who composed for the three "missing" films?
1) Howard Shore, probably most notable for scoring all six films of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth saga, composed Ed Wood. Burton and Elfman reportedly experienced "creative differences" during production of TNBC, creating some discord between them that had mended before MA!
2) As an adaptation of the musical, much of the original music by Stephen Sondheim is used in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Jonathan Tunick, the stage production's original orchestrator, revamped it with an orchestra nearly three times in size. Sondheim stated in Finishing the Hat, his book of collected lyrics, anecdotes, etc., that Burton's film is the only screen adaptation of one of his musicals "stamped" approved.
3) Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was co-composed by Mike Higham and Matthew Margeson. Elfman had a scheduling conflict with scoring Alice Through the Looking Glass at the time. Higham had worked as music editor and in related roles on other Burton features, and Margeson is credited as composing additional music for Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, produced by Burton.
Studio Involvement
Four of the five major studios have produced and/or distributed the films of the BurtonVerse, at least in North America. Walt Disney's holdings released seven of Tim Burton's films, both shorts and five of his features: Vincent and Fw84 were produced by Walt Disney Pictures and distributed by Buena Vista, TNBC and EW were released under the Touchstone Pictures banner and also distributed by Buena Vista, and AIW, Fw12, and Dumbo are all purely Disney. Warner Bros. distributed eight of his films: PwBA, Beetlejuice, Batman, BR, MA!, CATCF, CB, and DS. 2oth Century Fox distributed three: ES, POTA, and MP. Paramount Pictures distributed SH and ST, the latter internationally by Warner Bros. BF was produced by Columbia Pictures and distributed by its parent company, Sony. BE was distributed by The Weinstein Company, an independent studio now defunct for obvious reasons. I can't help but find what I call "messing with the logo" interesting, so I have listed instances of it below.
Tim Burton and...Adam Sandler?
While it may be true of any two who make films with repeat collaborators, I was struck by how often casting the same actors occurred with Tim Burton and Adam Sandler. Below is an alphabetic list of ten actors along with their Burton film(s) and role(s) and the film(s) and role(s) they appeared with Sandler. It may not be conclusive, as I have not seen every movie with Sandler in it.
Next week...another retro review!
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