MoMA
Posts tagged ‘Johnny Depp’
December 16, 2009  |  Collection & Exhibitions, Film
The Sixth Viewing: Deconstructing Burton
Edward Scissorhands. 1990. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Shown: Johnny Depp (as Edward Scissorhands). Twentieth Century Fox

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.

December 2, 2009  |  Collection & Exhibitions, Film
Midnight at the Movies with Tim Burton
<i>Sleepy Hollow</i>. 1999. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Paramount Pictures

Sleepy Hollow. 1999. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Whenever Ron (Magliozzi, my co-organizer) recounts his “eureka” moment that spurred him to curate an exhibition on the work of Tim Burton—while watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on a Sunday in 2005, as described in Ron’s first Burton post—it always takes me back to that Monday, when he excitedly approached my desk to chat about his weekend. The first thing he said to me that morning was, “You know who we should do next? Tim Burton!”

November 18, 2009  |  Collection & Exhibitions, Film
Light Dawns on a Marble Head: How Tim Burton Came to MoMA
Installation view of <i>Tim Burton</i> exhibition entrance with Monster Mouth

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.