"The Master and His Muse Return"

Tim Burton has scored huge hits with films like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Batman, its sequel Batman Returns. The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Planet Of The Apes. Most of his biggest films often featured Johnny Depp like Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, and Alice In Wonderland.

Now the 53 year-old teams up with Depp once again in his latest film, the horror comedy-drama Dark Shadows, based on the late 1960’s ABC TV soap opera. However, unlike previous films where Burton had to lobby for Depp to star, the director reveals it was Depp who this time came to him.

“Yes, we had talked about it for many years, but this was the first project where Johnny, I think, he wanted to play this ever since he was a little boy,” Tim says, “He knew Barnabas Collins before he knew his own father. It’s one of those kind of things where the show had a lot of impact. Johnny, Michelle [Pfeiffer], and I were kind of there at the time it came out, so we just recall it being a very strong, interesting property. But it was something that Johnny had wanted for a long time.”

Also, reuniting with Tim this time out is Michelle Pfeiffer, who previously played Catwoman on the director’s Batman Returns.

“It really reminded me of how much I enjoyed working with Michelle, even though it was a long time ago,” Burton says of her, “But it just flooded back, because I never really watched the movies again, how much I was impressed, being with Michelle. She learned how to use a whip and jump around on roofs in high heeled-shoes, let live birds fly out of her mouth, let cats eat her, I mean, very impressive stuff. So it was a real joy to get a call from Michelle and find out she was a closet Dark Shadows fan.”

“I knew she was

"The Master and His Muse Return"

a little weird, but now confirmed the whole situation, which was great because between Michelle and John and I, we were the only ones of the cast who knew Dark Shadows,” he adds, “I don’t know if I showed it to anybody else, but you can’t really show Dark Shadows to anybody that doesn’t know it, because they’d probably run screaming out of the room. But, so it was nice that Michelle, playing the head of the family, it just made me realize that I enjoyed working with her. She did have trouble walking down the stairs.”

Burton also talks about how the film’s soundtrack of period pop was just as significant as the costume and set design.

“Setting it in 1972 was important,” he says, “We just went through all the music of that year and just doing that research, it reminded me of being…I must have been quite ill that year of ’72. I just remember being sick and having a fever and hearing all that kind of music on AM radio over and over again. That’s why it was so strange. It felt strange at the time and it still feels strange. That’s the weird thing about that. The quality of music, the kind of going through everything from really kind of cheesy pop to really kind of hardcore stuff, it was a weird year for music.”

“I remember Alice Cooper being a kind of strong influence for me and he looks exactly the same now, which is really scary,” Tim adds, “I mean, really, Arizona must do wonders for him. But it was important to me, so there was a lot of interesting music in 1972. We tried to treat it like score. We didn’t try to treat it like, let’s just throw in some pop songs.”

Tim was particularly asked why the Superfly theme was chosen as one of the songs

“That was the year, Blacula was ’72. That was a good one,” Burton answers,

"The Master and His Muse Return"

“I think that was one of the only movie references that I talked to [director of photography] Bruno [Delbonnel], the DP, was Blacula. That was a good year. Actually, ’72 was a good year for vampires. That was like Dracula A.D. ’72. That was Christopher Lee’s I think last Dracula and Blacula.”

Another seemingly left-field performer that Burton chose was Barry White.

“He wasn’t a vampire,” Tim says of him, “He might’ve been. We tried to pick music that, just like I said, fit the era and fit the score. Because a lot of the sounds and the pop sounds were deemed as kind of cheesy, we tried to find ones that fit the vibe of the story, musical almost.”

Tim was asked how he managed to whittle down a TV series of over a 1,000 episodes into a feature film.

“Barnabas didn’t come in until the 300th episode,” Burton points out, “You’d kill yourself trying to watch the whole thing.”

Burton talks about the origin he created for the current Collins family who lives in Barnabas’ old mansion where he emerges in the 1970’s after being cursed by a witch.

“They are cousins,” Tim says, “They had come to take advantage of what Barnabas and his family had built after they had come to America, just inbreeding.”

Tim talked about the difficulty of turning what was a mixture of horror and soap opera and adding comedy to it.

“Well, it was a tricky tone,” he recalls, “When we talked about Dark Shadows, the appeal was all the weird nature of the elements that came into it. It was very serious, it was on in the afternoon on a daily basis, so there were certain elements of why we love the show, but you couldn’t necessarily adopt to a film. So the weirdest challenge was to get the acting tone. Sort of soap opera nature of the tone, it’s a weird thing to go for in a Hollywood movie, so it’s not like

"The Master and His Muse Return"

you go to a studio and go, ‘You want to do a kind of weird soap opera acting? Oh, great, whatever that means.’”

“So it was our challenge and that’s why I’m so grateful for the cast, because even the ones who didn’t know the show got into the spirit of it, was what made it Dark Shadows was trying to capture what the show was,” Burton adds, “Going into this movie, you don’t go, Dark Shadows, what a great, easy-peasy idea. You don’t go into it thinking that it’s actually a much more strange challenge. That’s going to go onto my gravestone, he was famous for directing so many unwanted, cultural movies.”

Burton was asked about what deleted scenes were cut from the film.

“There’s stuff that we cut out,” Tim says, “Each actor will have all of their best scenes that I’ve cut out of the film in there. No. I think there will be some stuff on it because, with the nature of it being a soap opera, we cut out stuff, but all the actors were great, so I think I’m going to look at having scenes that aren’t in the film. Because the actors did such a great job and because of the soap opera nature of it, we’ll probably have some stuff on there.

Tim talks about having put the recently departed Jonathan Frid and the rest of the original cast in cameo roles for the film.

“It’s like having the Pope come visit,” Burton says, “For us, part of the reason we were there was because those people inspired us, so it was nice to see them back in their early ‘70s clothing.”

Burton was also asked if there was a sequel planned and if there was pressure to reach an audience beyond just the fans of the original TV series.

“I think it’s because of the nature of it being kind of like a soap opera, I think that was

"The Master and His Muse Return"

the structure,” Tim answers, “It wasn’t so much of a conscious decision to say, ‘Oh.’ First of all, it’s a bit presumptuous to think that anything, if something works out that’s one thing, but you can’t ever predict that so that had more to do with the fact of the sort of soap opera kind of structure of it.”

“In terms of making the movie, you make it for, like I said, there’s Dark Shadows fans and then there’s everybody else and you can’t really make it projecting what you think it’s going to be,” he continues, “You just try to make a movie. First of all we make a movie that we wanted to see, and then you just hope for the best.”