Tim Burton had just made “Batman” and “Beetlejuice” and Fox wanted in on his next hit so they did “Edward Scissorhands” as part of the deal to get Burton. They had done something similar with Director Chris Columbus and that was about to pay off big. But Burton was hot as a pistol in 1989. He was delivering stylish, eye-candy fantasy movies that filled seats. That’s what the studio and the money people ultimately want but the brightness that you see in Tim Burton films made after “Beetlejuice” seems first unleashed in “Edward Scissorhands”. The screen world of Batman and Beetlejuice is cloudy or in a cave but the locations for Scissorhands were shot in a real suburb in Florida. Pastel houses, big hair, poodles.
Zanuck Theatre
Booker walked me into Zanuck and he showed me the case upstairs, the Oscars. In the old days they used to give the Oscar to the studio, not to the actress, writer, etc. Only to the studio so the studio still had them and there they were. Statue upon statue, rows of golden capsules of immortality floating on glass shelves. They called out in ghostly echoes of a multi-layered past, movies like “How Green Was My Valley”and “The Grapes of Wrath”
We went into the booth which was as wide as the theater itself and had two beds and a fridge. “Scissorhands” was done in 70mm so the room has got this quadrupple-sized movie film going back and forth overhead off of enormous reels. The scale of the film makes me feel like I should be 2 feet tall. Each frame is like a postcard, like looking at panes of stained glass.
I dizzy’ed myself with the thought that I was in the theater where they did the final mix on “Star Wars” and “Jedi.” This was the ‘Abbey Road’ of “Star Wars.” The room where they first created and heard the final version of “The Sound of Music” that went on to become one of the most beloved films of all time. Sound gets locked after the picture track is locked so on every film pretty much, this is the room where the sound mix and therefore the final cut of the film that gets duped and becomes the one we all see and hear, was given birth to!
The film was great. The music and style really pulled it together. As much as I liked it, I understood much better after seeing the film itself, what the challenge was. How do you get people to say yes or no to the quirky charm on this film if you can’t get that quirky charm across to them in 30 seconds or less? The film just doesn’t sit in a nice neat box like “Batman” did. On top of that, the film really isn’t for everyone. Not everyone wants to pluck down $10 for a quirky fairytale. Again I liked the film from the get go but I got that part of the challenge.
I think the studio wanted to sell it as a date film. It was definitely skewing female and that was another change from the Tim Burton of “Batman.” Johnny Depp was at that time only well known to people who watched “21 Jump Street” the TV series he had done for the 3 years prior. Depp was not an A-list star then despite his fine work in Oliver Stone’s 1986 movie “Platoon” or even in 1984’s runaway hit “Nightmare on Elm Street.” After “Scissorhands” Depp’s next feature was another Freddie film which only added to the confusion around “Scissorhands.”
Depp had prepared for the character in part by studying Charlie Chaplin and Marcel Marceau, mostly Chaplin. The bit with the sheep dog and he cuts its bangs is pure Chaplin. Depp was happy to work with Vincent Price and Price is eerily well cast as this was the last film he made. (more…)
