Posts by Ron Magliozzi
Searching for Tim Burton
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. 1985. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Photo courtesy Warner Bros/Photofest. © 2010 Warner Bros.
The search for Tim Burton took us to four Hollywood studio archives, five independent production company collections, and four private lenders, exposing us to an interesting variety of archival situations. Studio archives are traditionally housed on the lots where their films and television programs are shot, or, if their collections are large enough and the demand great enough, in off-lot research centers and warehouses. When we visited Twentieth Century Fox and the Disney Corporate archives, we got to stroll the studio grounds, and we were hoping for a glimpse of a production in progress through the open door of a soundstage—readers who can recall Paul Reubens on a bicycle being chased around the Warner Bros lot at the end of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) will have a picture of the craziness we were expecting. But as it turned out, the lots were as quiet as an empty office park on summer weekends. Disney’s Animation Research Library is a sleek facility away from the studio, and the Warner Bros storage site is located in an industrial area. At each we were assigned teams of archive specialists who showed us carefully preserved art and film props. Half of the Los Angeles area sites we visited were in Tim’s hometown of Burbank, CA, which he used as a muse for such early films as Edward Scissorhands (1990) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), so we made a particular point of soaking up the atmosphere of that city. Read more
0 Comments | Tags: Chiodo Bros. Productions, Colleen Atwood, Disney Animation Research Library, Gentle Giant Studios, Grangel Studio, Legacy Effects, Mackinnon and Saunders Studio, Paul Reubens, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Rick Heinrichs, Ron Magid, studio archives, Tim Burton
Lights, Camera, Exhibition: Making Tim Burton
Installation view including Sandworm Jaws prop from the feature film Beetlejuice (1988)
I like to compare the process of organizing a large-scale museum exhibition like Tim Burton to the process of producing a film. (What can I say, I’m a film person!) You start with an idea, and then research the subject as if you were writing a script—in the case of a gallery show, this means determining what art, objects, media, and documentation are available, and how they can most effectively be used to tell a “story.” Ideally, you want your interpretation of the materials to seem fresh and relevant to a contemporary audience. Typically you negotiate for the loan of materials to your show from various archives around the world—sort of like signing “stars” to a film—and then work with teams of exhibition designers, graphic artists, lighting technicians, A/V folks, carpenters, and so forth to bring your show to life in a gallery, just as the director and producers collaborate with a production department on the lot of a film studio during the making of a movie. Read more
1 Comments | Tags: Jenny He, Rajendra Roy, Tim Burton
The Sixth Viewing: Deconstructing Burton
Edward Scissorhands. 1990. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Shown: Johnny Depp (as Edward Scissorhands). Twentieth Century Fox
Needless to say, coming up with the idea that a Tim Burton exhibition might be a worthwhile endeavor was not enough in itself to make it happen. The next step was to create a project proposal. So even before speaking to the Museum’s Exhibition Committee or to Burton himself, we set about the task of developing a thesis for the show. Read more
3 Comments | Tags: Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Lisa Marie, Tim Burton
Light Dawns on a Marble Head: How Tim Burton Came to MoMA
Installation view of Tim Burton exhibition entrance with Monster Mouth
If I were to begin with a formal history of the Museum’s eighty or so gallery exhibitions on filmmakers, film studios, and international filmmaking since 1939, this might make for a dull start to our Burton blogs. Instead, here’s my personal story of how MoMA’s Tim Burton began.
In fact I can tell you the precise moment when the idea popped into my head. It happened on July 31, 2005 (my birthday by the way), at an 11:00 a.m. screening of Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Kaufman Astoria Stadium 14 Cinema in Queens, NY. Today, now that all of the single-screen neighborhood movie theaters I spent my childhood in are gone, my favorite place and time to go to a movie is a large multiplex at the earliest morning screening when the melancholy of the deserted, over-sized spaces somehow speaks to my feelings of nostalgia for past movie-going experiences. Read more
3 Comments | Tags: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Danny Elfman, film, Johnny Depp, Kaufman Astoria Stadium 14 Cinema, Tim Burton
