And the Festival Begins…
Tim Burton
- The Joker in Batman (1989)
A theater in Pune. 1989. The Machine Drawing exam in our second year of engineering, just by chance, happens to be the next day morning. And I’m sitting there watching Nicholson. Chewing. Digesting. Pulling it up again. Chewing more. Each and every word and line of Batman. Batman made his entry in India the very next week of its American release. I was there for Batman. Until that point, I didn’t know who Tim Burton was. Never heard of him. I was deep inside Indian movies. Rahul and Alka were the only theaters that would show English movies in Pune. Eros, New Excelsior, Sterling – my spots in Bombay to hit for the half yearly dope on foreign films. Until of course the VCR arrived on rentals and Patel bhai would keep englisss movies, having no idea what he was renting out.
For the next two days, the dark brooding atmosphere of Batman, was what played in my head. I’d never been exposed to such an environment, via movies before. There were many questions, firstly, why in the world would anyone think of creating an overtly dark atmosphere than what existed in the comic book then. I wanted to know more of this guy. What went on his head and what other stories came out. I wanted to know all about him. So I gobbled up the entire soundtrack Prince created for the movie. That’s the last album where I’ve the lyrics memorized for every song on the album from “Phone rings, its Vicki calling…”, “Partyman partyman”, “I’ve seen the future and it will be…”, “Love who do ya…” and yes even the madness of “Batdance”. The investigation about the man called Burton had begun.
Enter. Beetle Juice. It reaffirmed my belief that this guy, Burton, was a crazy man, who’d escaped from some mental institution and was now living under disguise making movies as a director. Someone over the chai in our college canteen laughed out loud at my comment. Watch Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, he said.
And I did. Now I didn’t know if Burton was crazy, I was going nuts or Pee-Wee was really a nice movie made for the kids. How could a guy who made Beetle Juice make Pee-Wee. This guy is nuts and bent on turning me into one!
All that this confusion did was, had me digging more. Then it happened. 1990. Edward Scissorhands. I think I damaged the rented (pirated ofcourse) video having watched it on constant loop some fifty many times.
Yet it was disturbing. How could I get sucked into the inane (to many) world of a crazy director, who I still believed had escaped from the mental institution. I had more and more intense debates… with myself, since the world around me didn’t care about a Burton. The engineering degree was much dear to them than a Burton / Shurton. So I would pour in a drink, put the mirror in front of my table delicately balanced against the big fat books on Thermodynamics and talk to myself. I guess that explains why I’m more at ease on a blog than talking in public. I’m such a pussy. Blame it on Burton Shurton.
So while the rest of the crowd was cracking the latest Automobile Gear design problems, I was shitting my pants trying to decipher the mind of Mr. Burton. Decades later I realized while talking to this filmmaker on PFC, that this could also be perhaps due to the movie germs left in some cornor of our college by that filmmaker. He graduated from our college the year I’d joined in. Damn you, Hansal Mehta.
The years followed with Ed Wood, Batman Returns and the hilarious but the world didn’t think so – Mars Attacks! Perhaps coming soon on the heels of another movie that shook the box office, Independence Day, many view Mars Attacks to be a clone of ID4. And while they laughed over it, I thought I needed to stop visiting Gupta-jee’s chai stall because these guys were idiots who were going Burton who?
It was Big Fish that I saw light in a Burton movie for the first time. And by saying “seeing light” I definitely do not mean the light you saw after watching Sawariya. It’s the other kind. The one which uplifts you. I admit the dark tunnels of the human mind that Burton mostly dwells in, and in which many of the upcoming storytellers and directors in Bombay these days are digging in, isn’t most of the time, my cup of tea. Yet Burton is one director I’ve never been able to rip off my to-watch list. The problem’s compounded by the fact that dear Biwijee loves the subjects Burton makes movies on and Sweeney Todd’s trailers on television would have her jumping around the house, each time, every time.
And now 9
Getting a worldwide release on September 9th, I was surprised to see the material and behind the scenes work on the movie. Pleasantly surprised. It would have been very easy to start a movie blog on 9.
But we wanted to hear people talk about Burton, and hear their stories. Hear Burton’s influence on their style, writing, film-making and dare I say even their tastes in cinema and life. This was the right time for us, to tell those un-initiated about Burton’s cinema.
So it’s a new round of discovery, to share and relish. Pratim, Sid and Tushar some of the biggest Burton fans on PFC will bring Burton to you via their blogs from today until September 9th, which is when 9 opens. Hop in the comments sections. Discuss your views, with all the insanity you can conjure up, ask any questions you may have about Burton or his movies, share your views, reviews and opinions and help the festival fire burning through out.
It’s the least we can do for cinema and help those who don’t know him realize what they’ve been missing so far… and of course offer our salutes to the man who I once thought had escaped the mental institution to become one of the greatest directors of our times.
Enjoy!
Parting Shot:
This town needs an enema
- The Joker, Batman (1989)
Tim Burton's 9 releases worldwide on September 9, 2009
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Cant wait for the man himself!!!
That Tim Burton is a genius & a maverick would be an understatement.I’ve always marveled at the kind of movie subjects that he gets into.Even I was blown away by Batman while still in school.I was completely sucked into the vortex that TB created later on with each of his simultaneous movies.its awesome to know that PFC now has a TB blogfest.
For me it would be a grave disservice to look at Tim Burton as merely a quirky and eccentric maverick who made visually stunning movies. His movies had a certain philosophy, a certain ethos. Most notably the sympathy for the outsider, his veiled critique on the American pop culture. Both Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands were an indictment of the shallow nature of the American suburbia.
Edward Scissorhands to me was one of his finest movies. A modern day reworking of the Beauty and the Beast, it was a total indictment of the dull, shallow nature of American suburbia. Especially the set design, showing the houses in the suburbs, all alike, so conformist. And then Scissorhands character, some one totally cut off from the world, leading his own life, his childlikle innocence, everything was just so touching. And that magical moment where the snowflakes fall around, Winona Ryder whirling around, so beautiful.
Edward Scissorhands has been aptly described by you. It happens to be one of my favourites. The ambience of the movie establishes the disparity between his and their world perfectly. It is one of those movies which you feel that should never end.
Wow, cheers to the joyous take on his cinema! It certainly would have been ecstatic to experience THE release of BATMAN! I can only imagine the madness in the air, only made worse by that supercool 80’s score by Prince.
Pee Wee had me feeling the same. And thanks for mentioning MARS ATTACKS! What a film.
Looking forward to dream month of talking Burton, and the grand finale of 9.
Mars Attacks was classic. I did not really like it when i saw the movie for the first time, but then later on it has become one of my favorites. And what an ensemble cast- Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Bening, Sarah Jessica Parker.
this is a fantastic idea. A blogfest on one of the greatest directors of all times.
The thing about Tim Burton is that there was a never a Tim Burton before him and there would never be a Tim Burton after him. Big Fish was the first Tim Burton movie i saw and i just could not believe what i had seen. It has to be the best tribute to the art of storytelling.
looking forward for more… thanks a million for this PFC! oz bhai good to read u a-la ‘desitrain’ days, once again. very refreshing! viva cinema.
Sleepy Hollow’s headless horseman and the tree from which he emerges and the sadness behind the seemingly ‘evil’ horseman cannot be captured by anyone except Tim Burton. Three cheers to the film maker who twists us all about in the roller coaster ride called movies.
Mars Attacks was good fun- initially I found it a bit strange but soon realised that the intention of Burton was just to spoof movies like ID & then I had a fantastic time with the rest of the movie.Trust Burton to come up with such out of the box themes.
Burton for me was ‘Edward Scissorhands’ first and then when I saw his ‘Batman’ version on TV, he just blew me with his unorthodox filming…..just looked liked he made the world in his dreams come true(Sometimes I feel like that)….
A few weeks back when I watched the pics of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I was awed(Excited to see Depp and Burton combo once again)….and now ‘9′ on Sept 9 is thrilling….
Wanna know more about ‘9′
Your wish is our command. You shall be suitably geeked out and ‘trivia’lized with Burton and 9. :-)
9 intrigues me in more ways than one. One is Burton’s claims and the other is the stellar voice cast.
Thanks Tushar…Waiting with bated breath
Unfortunately the first Burton movie which I saw was Planet of the Apes which left a bitter taste in me and since then I’ve been little dubious about Burton. Though, after that I’ve enjoyed most of his works, I’m far from being a fan of him but I’m looking forward to his forthcoming movies.
A little apprehensive about Alice in Wonderland though.. the cut the trailer really bad. It must be a difficult task trying to sum up the vision but this trailer just played the right cards with no sense of style.
I am yet to see it. Right now in 9 groove, so Alice has to wait. Hope she doesn’t have any tea.
Batman is my first ever theatre memory. My spine chilled as the lights went down and since then there’s been no turning back.
Wow!! Looks like Halloween party going on PFC!
I still remember watching ‘Batman’ trailer on Doordashans program ‘The World This Week,
And release in Pune, I was just 12 years old then.
And I remember a STIC fountain pen that I had, Batman edition. Orange and Black. Wow.
My old cupboard is still filled with stickers from the Burton Batman movie. Batman rescuing the girl, Joker’s evil laugh, the batmobile!!
I am surprised no other films for long time after Batman ever came up with this sort of merchandise sales!
Ya man, I was just reading about Nightmare Before X’mas and it’s merchandise sales also.
Wow! even I had a STIC Batman pen – orange & green I think.
On a slightly different note even Bollywood paid its tribute to Batman- in Hum remember the Govinda & Rajnikant fight scene in the disco?Govinda dancing to Batman’s music and fighting the baddies and Rajni doing the Joker’s act
My first Tim Burton memory was watching Edward’s scissors hands in India…and after a long gap I saw Big Fish…The great attribute about his film making is that…even though the characters are surreal and crazy they do behave like humans…the emotions and feelings are like any other common people..
Can’t wait to hear from the master himself….
“even though the characters are surreal and crazy they do behave like humans”
very rightly said, Varun.
I still remember Ratnakar’s fascinating series of articles on Burrton’s movies,
Is there any possibilities to bring those articles back on this Burtons Fest?
Hearing you Shekhar, I swear I saw all of Ratnakar’s posts in the related section… was it Tushar’s or Pratim’s post where they appeared.
Shekar thanks for rememembering my posts, though to be honest, considering what Pratim, Sid, Tushar have written, mine were more like a Dummies Guide to Burton,
BTW want to write soon on another favorite director of mine, Brian De Palma.
Whatever said and done, it is such a productive exercise, analyzing a film maker as influential as Burton with a group of like-minded film buffs like you all. Way to go. Gives one hope.
Ratnakar, De Palma would be awesome!
@ OZ!
Great POST!!
RAHUL & ALKA!! DUDE!! tottalllly nostalgic!
Now Rahul is multiplex! But still, thanks!
Btw, ALKA still rockkkss!!