Why Tim Burton Can’t Stand Most Biopics
Tim Burton has little time for most biopics, calling them fake and dull, but his film Ed Wood stands out as a rare exception, shaped by his personal admiration for its subject.
When you picture a Tim Burton film, you probably imagine Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter wandering through a shadowy, offbeat world, maybe with a few oddball kids singing in the background. That’s the signature style punters have come to expect. So, back in 1994, it caught many off guard when Burton took on a project about Edward D. Wood Jr., a bloke known for making some of the worst horror flicks in America. Ed Wood wasn’t your usual Burton gothic fantasy. Instead, it was a comedy-drama grounded in real life, with Depp in the lead and a cast that included Bill Murray and Sarah Jessica Parker.
What made this choice even more surprising was Burton’s well-known dislike for biographical films. He’s never been shy about it, either. In a chat with Mark Salisbury for the book Burton on Burton, he said,
“I hate most biopics. I find that most biopics are stodgy and really boring, because people, in my opinion, take too much of a reverential approach, and it’s fake.”
He went on,
“Every time I’ve seen a biopic, it just doesn’t feel real. There’s something about it, the sheer fact that it’s a movie and that an actor is portraying someone, means there’s a level of facade and fakery to it.”
Burton’s Take on Ed Wood
Determined to avoid the usual traps, Burton approached Ed Wood differently. Rather than aiming for a straight-laced documentary, he let his own respect for Wood shape the film’s tone. He mixed in his impressions of the director, drawing on his own experiences, including his meetings with horror legend Vincent Price, to help tell the story of Wood’s friendship with Bela Lugosi, one of the original Draculas. As Burton put it,
“In some ways I’m a purist. I wasn’t there with these people, I don’t know them, but I have a feeling about them. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing my feeling.”
Getting Ed Wood off the ground wasn’t easy. Some in the industry reckoned the story wouldn’t grab the average punter, and Burton’s insistence on shooting in black and white led Columbia to drop the project. In the end, the film struggled at the box office, losing about $5 million, even though critics gave it a fair bit of praise. It did manage to snag two Oscars, and Burton still rates it as one of his best efforts.
Burton’s Recent Work
In the past decade, Burton’s been fairly quiet on the directing front, with just two films to his name. He took on Dumbo, after which he said he was unlikely to work with Disney again, and then the much-hyped Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, bringing Michael Keaton back for a sequel to the 1980s hit. He’s also signed up to direct a new version of the 1950s sci-fi Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, with a script by Gillian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl.
On top of that, Burton’s been involved as a producer on the Netflix series Wednesday, a spin-off from The Addams Family. He directed eight episodes, and the show’s picked up four Emmys, with a cast featuring the likes of Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.