Daily Batman: the crippling human inability to be alone

via.

“All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.”

(Jean de la Bruyere)

The headwaters of the river of pain.

12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies: The Nightmare Before Christmas

The third and final “Tim Burton” film in the 12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movie countdown is The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993). The guy has two favorite times of year and we all know what they are.

Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town, but doesn’t quite understand the concept.

(the imdb)

Regarding just how much of a Tim Burton film it really ended up being, Mr. Selick told Sight and Sound in 1994,

It’s as though he laid the egg, and I sat on it and hatched it. He wasn’t involved in a hands-on way, but his hand is in it. It was my job to make it look like “a Tim Burton film”, which is not so different from my own films. …

… I don’t want to take away from Tim, but he was not in San Francisco when we made it. He came up five times over two years, and spent no more than eight or ten days in total.”

Be that as it may, Burton had conceived the project while still working for Disney back in 1980. It was originally a narrative poem. He began toying with the idea of making something of it. Disney agreed, and they discussed a short film like Vincent, or maybe a televised holiday special.

He shared his vision with friend Rick Heinrichs in the mid-1980’s, and the two worked up some concept art, storyboards, and even early character sculptures. By the time Burton actually had a budget for the movie from Disney, he was overextended across the board with Ed Wood and Batman Returns. He brought in his friend Mike McDowell, with whom he’d worked on Beetlejuice, but they couldn’t agree on a direction for the screenplay.

Burton reimagined the story as a musical and put together the bare bones of it with Danny Elfman’s help, also collaborating on most of the music and lyrisc. Then Caroline Thompson, who Burton worked with on Batman Returns, came in as a writer. She has also written The Addams Family, Edward Scissorhands, and Corpse Bride. Caroline first came to Tim Burton’s attention because of a short story she wrote in the early ’80’s called First Born, in which an abortion comes back to life.

Director Henry Selick said in that same Sight and Sound article where he dissed Burton, “there are very few lines of dialogue that are Caroline’s. She became busy on other films and we were constantly rewriting, reconfiguring and developing the film visually.” Okay, Henry. We get it. You did it all, buddy.

In all honesty, the guy is an artistic auteur, with the attendant talent that entails, and it probably sucks for him to have to rely on other people so much in a project. And he probably did do more than anyone else. Hence: director.

In vino lepidopteras.

The stop-motion animation was produced by a crew of over 200 animators in San Francisco, headed up by Joe Ranft and Paul Berry. The production yielded some cool new inventions, including a silent alarm that went off if a light failed to go on during a shot.

For just one second of film, up to 12 stop-motion moves had to be made. Can you imagine this being done today? When even the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is done with CGI? I feel like there is an aesthetic suffering accompanying the automated innovations in the direction that film has been heading. I can’t see a production like The Nightmare Before Christmas, with the meticulous labor and attention to craft it requires, being approved and given a budget by Disney today.

Although that’s not totally fair, since they’ve been doing that 3-D re-release thing. I guess I should not be quite so cynical about The Mouse Who Sold the World. I just really, really dislike that company.

On the other hand, sourpuss Mr. Selick is something of a dear and mercurial curmudgeon to me. He has continued working in stop-motion since The Nightmare Before Christmas, and I have a deep respect for the artistry in his body of work.

He has directed Coraline and James and the Giant Peach, and worked with Wes Anderson on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Although I find it curious that he seems to have had nothing to do with Fantastic Mr. Fox if Life Aquatic was Anderson’s first foray in to stop-motion (which, once you see Fantastic Mr. Fox, you feel like it should have been his exclusive genre all along: the static stiltedness of Anderson’s compositions, against which his wildly inventive dialogue is such a perfect foil, are absolutely born for stop-motion).

I’m guessing from the stories about the rest of Mr. Selick’s projects that they probably stopped seeing eye to eye on something and Anderson went his separate way.

Collaborator Joe Ranft, the one who headed up production in the City, the 415, the sparkly town where we leave our hearts, for The Nightmare Before Christmas, said that Selick “has a rock’n’roll meets Da Vinci temperament,” with bursts of brilliance and, occasionally, the passionate need for solitude.

Mr. Selick is presently working on an adaptation of the YA mystery-comedy Bunnicula, which makes me want to cry with joy. I only hope it is successful enough that they can do one of the sequels: The Celery Stalks At Midnight, which I have believed since I was seven years old to be the greatest pun ever written in my native tongue.

If you want more of the backstory on all this Nightmare Before Christmas production shenanigans, pick up a copy of the Frank Thompson book Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Film – The Art – The Vision, to read all about it.

All photos via the Pumpkin Patch.

Movie Moment — 12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies: Batman Returns

When a corrupt businessman and the grotesque Penguin plot to take control of Gotham City, only Batman can stop them, while the Catwoman has her own agenda.

(the imdb)

Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Ruebens and Diane Salinger, who was Simone in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, do the ol’ cameo-for-a-pal gig as the Penguin’s parents. Ms. Salinger has also appeared in Ghost World, Charmed, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

[Screenplay writer Daniel] Waters “came up with a social satire that had an evil mogul backing a bid for the Mayor’s office by the Penguin,” Waters reported. “I wanted to show that the true villains of our world don’t necessarily wear costumes.” The plot device of Penguin running for Mayor came from the 1960s TV series episodes “Hizzoner the Penguin” and “Dizzoner the Penguin”.

(the wiki)

Something about the filmmaker’s eccentric, surreal, childlike images seems to strike a deep chord in the mass psyche: he makes nightmares that taste like candy.

(David Ansen. “A Gotham Gothic.” June 22, 1992. Newsweek.)

Burton’s given this borderline schizoid an equally unsettled love interest: Catwoman also has a double life. Formerly Max Shreck’s gawky, lonely secretary, Selina Kyle, she’s hurled out a window by her boss when he discovers she’s on to his nefarious scheme, and emerges from near death as the whip-cracking, man-hating avenger Catwoman.

(Ibid.)

Waters’s script never makes the rules of Selina’s back-and-forth switches into Catwoman clear, but what twisted, dirty fun Pfeiffer has with this role! …

They’re doomed lovers for the age of alienation, turned on by each other’s kinkiness.

(Ibid.)

Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it.

But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it.

Mmm, no. Not really. Ingesting mistletoe is way worse. You can check it out, but I’m pretty sure the numbers will back me up.

All damaged children in disguise (none of them heroic), the dysfunctional half-menagerie can’t help but understand one another.

(Rita Kempley. “Batman Returns.” June 19, 1992. Washington Post.)

Even back in the days when Batman lived in comic books, his world was a little darker than, say, Superman’s. There was a shade of film noir in Gotham City, in contrast to the deco 1930s optimism of Superman’s Metropolis.

(Roger Ebert. “Batman Returns.” June 19, 1992. Chicago Sun-Times.)

You said you were only going to scare the Ice Princess.

She looked pretty scared to me!

Let me guess — rich goody-goody type?

But when it comes down to it, who’s holding the umbrella?

Click to enlarge the note. It reads, “Dear Penguin, The children regret they’re unable to attend.” I would have definitely guessed that Batman’s chosen handwriting style was printing in all caps, but I could not have predicted the personalized stationery. He is full of surprises.

Two lives left. I think I’ll save one for next Christmas.

I wish I could hand out World Peace and Unconditional Love, wrapped in a big bow.

You can’t go wrong with Christopher Walken! Crank it up while you’re wrapping gifts.

via.

For a movie that almost didn’t get made, Batman Returns did well for itself. It is a commercial sequel, yes, but as an entertaining and visually delighting film it’s a supreme success which rises head and shoulders above the dross and dreck like “Shrek the Halls.” A highly tolerable holiday film.

Daily Batman: The Bat Man (and his lady, Gossip Gerty)

“It took them a while to catch on that Batman would be the greatest.”

(Bob Kane, creator of Batman. October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998. R.I.P.)

Bonus factoid: Kane’s wife, Elizabeth Sanders, played Gossip Gerty in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995) and Batman and Robin (Schumacher, 1997), as well as portraying a “Gothamite” in Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992), on which set Bob Kane was a consultant.

Elizabeth Sanders as Gossip Gerty emceeing at the Charity Auction in Batman and Robin.

It would be a pretty cool gesture if Nolan contacted Kane’s widow to appear in one of his film adapatations, too, but anything kind of goes with him so we’ll see.

Daily Batman: Love madness edition

Drawing by ChOkOcristi on the deviantart.

Daily Batman: Movie Moment — Batman Returns

Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992). Screenplay by Daniel Waters.

Steamy couchy times with the Bat and the Cat. Who would predict, and what is that like?

SELINA
Well? Was “Vicki” right? About
your difficulty with duality?

BRUCE
If I said yes, then you might
think me a Norman Bates, or a Ted
Bundy type … and then you might
not let me kiss you.

SELINA
It’s the so-called “normal” guys
who always let you down. Sickos
never scare me. At least they’re
commited.

BRUCE
Then you’ve come to the
right lonely mansion.

BRUCE
I … never fool around on the
first date.

SELINA
Me neither, on the second.

BRUCE
So. What’re you doing three dates
from now?

Kicking some ass in the sewers.

All screencaps courtesy youdodoodletoo on the photobucket. Many hearfelt thanks!

Daily Batman: It happens, Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle edition

Every now and then it happens that a kitteh-lady is wired a little differently in the heat-between-the-upstairs-downstairs department.

“It’s the so-called ‘normal’ guys who always let you down. Sickos never scare me. At least they’re committed.” — Batman Returns (1992).

Freak fetishes. They are a Thing.

Daily Batman: Look, ma, no gag reflex! edition

Catwoman not only sez sucks to yer parakeet, she also sez: “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!”

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Daily Batman: Enter the Penguin (giant picture edition!)

Why was I not included in Monocle Monday?

Total oversight. Getcha next time, buddy!