TV & Film Profile

Tim Burton

American Goth Auteur By Eric Schneider

Burton inevitably gravitates towards the dark and the strange.

An auteur renowned for juggling the playful and the macabre, Tim Burton got his start in cinema as a Disney animator and gained a cult following with his horror-influenced early 1980s shorts, Vincent and Frankenweenie. Burton fully indulged in his quirky, stylized aesthetic with his feature directorial debut, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and its anarchic follow-up, Beetlejuice, before tackling the first big-screen adaptation of Batman in '89. Although Burton's career has been inconsistent in terms of critical and commercial success, he has largely remained true to his strange and bold visual approach (especially with Edwards Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas), making him a fan favorite, particularly among the goth-inclined. Also a prolific artist, Burton penned and illustrated a book version of Nightmare, along with The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories, and even got his own retrospective at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 2009.

 

TAGS: Animation, Artist, Auteur, Director, Fantasy, Goth, Horror, Producer, Writer,

FACTS: ; Location: Burbank, California, USA; The Official Tim Burton Website, The Tim Burton Collective

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Tim Burton at MoMA