Texts - Tom Tykwer


NEWS BIOGRAPHY FILMOGRAPHY MUSIC PROJECTS

TEXTS
by T.T. about T.T.

TEAM PRODUCTS FORUM SPECIALS PRESS CONTACT EDITORIAL

SITEMAP

< back <

T.T. in conversation with Tim Burton

Tim Burton: Did you write the script for 'Perfume' yourself?

Tom Tykwer: Yes, I was involved in writing it, together with Bernd Eichinger, the producer and Andrew Birkin, a wonderful author, a mad man. He absorbed the entire chemical process of perfume manufacture. I also now know a whole lot about it, but he knows all the formula. It's incredible. But I can't actually talk about 'Perfume' here, because we haven't got the official go-ahead for the film.

Burton: The fact is that no studio has ever officially said to me: "yes, get on and do it." You only ever know it's okay when you are actually on the set. It always makes me pretty nervous, and sometimes things even collapse after you have already started shooting.

Tykwer: The language which is spoken in the world of studios is something of a non-language. An efficient system of maximum freedom from obligation.

Burton: I also thought it would get easier after having made a couple of more or less successful films. But it got more difficult after each film.

Tykwer: Is that more to do with you or with the system?

Burton: No idea. I consider myself to be pretty sensible, I'm not a maniac. Everyone has their problems when it comes to making a film, it's not a question of the budget.

Tykwer: After 'Beetlejuice' and 'Batman' it looked as though any film you touched wouldn't only turn out to be interesting, but also a successful. I remember watching 'Edward Scissorhands' and thinking: now he can do anything, they give him everything he wants and it works.

Burton: It was really pretty strange. Back then I had a contract with Warner Brothers, and I knew that regardless of my success, they didn't want to make 'Edward'. So I came up with some supposed fictitious projects, which in reality I didn't want to make, but which sounded more attractive for the studio. So they let me pull with 'Edward', and I was able to go to a different studio. That was my trick. When I then went back to Warner, in order to make 'Batman Returns', there was trouble because McDonalds got worked up and found it too dark. It was downhill from that point on (laughs).

Tykwer: I find this myth unbelievable: You see films and think it's obvious the filmmaker has made it, everything works, everything seems easy because earlier resistance has been broken down. Yet, and this is my experience, with each film, you start from the beginning. It doesn't get easier. On the contrary. Not with financing either, not even with high-profile projects like 'Perfume'. It's always a hard fight.

Burton: I can guarantee you, that if you took it to a studio, they would tell you to change the ending. But if you did that no-one would want to accept responsibility for it. The way they exert power over you is by making it seem as if no-one has the say. If there were somebody, at least you could talk to them, but you always end up sitting opposite someone different.

Tykwer: That's true. That's why I'm pretty happy that 'Perfume' is in, and will stay in German hands.

Burton: A typical example now is Mel Gibson's Jesus film. No-one bet, no-one expected such a crude film to become such a major hit. It utterly confuses the studio people, they don’t know what's up anymore. Luckily that kind of thing happens repeatedly.

Tykwer: Was it similar with 'Edward Scissorhands'?

Burton: You know how it is. They see your film, want to change this and then they change their minds, they just don't get it - and then they are afraid of you when it's a box-office hit. Because they don't understand why, because it doesn't correspond to their formula. But even after many years in the business they still try to suppress you, to turn your project on its head. I've experienced it over and over again.

Tykwer: The last time with 'Planet of the Apes'?

Burton: Yes, that was awful. The worst method of working in Hollywood is when they fix a release date before the script is even finished. The script is the last thing they are even thinking about, and moreover the time it can sometimes take to finish it. It was my big mistake to go along with it. I let myself be dragged along by the process, there was this electrified momentum with an undertow, which I didn't resist.

Tykwer: That's a typical phenomenon which is being made into an ideology: The religious belief in momentum. Everyone is infected by this energy, it's pretty irrational, you run off and everyone forgets that 80 percent of the basis isn't even finished.

Burton: It seems to me that they're holding a revolver to their own heads, in order to convince themselves that, to some extent, they are taking themselves as hostage.

Tykwer: How did you survive it?

Burton: I try to learn. Sometimes during production, there is such massive pressure that you completely lose the overview. I will never forget standing on the steps to the church tower during the 'Batman' shoot, when Jack Nicholson came to me and asked: "Tim, why should I go up the steps, what will happen then?" - "Jack", I said, "I don't know. I really don't know, but please just go up them, and by the time you get to the top, we will hopefully have found out what happens next."

Tykwer: I guess it wasn't the same with 'Big Fish'.

Burton: No, that was the nicest experience I have had yet with a studio. And the film only had one author - not five who deliver a re-write - it can be explained in a couple of sentences, and there is no superstar.

Tykwer: I actually read the script for 'Big Fish' as it was doing the rounds.

Burton: I was probably number 20 or 30 on the list of directors to whom it was offered.

Tykwer: And I was probably number 140. Anyway, I read it and I had no idea what to do with it, how to deal with the sentimentality of the material. I thought to myself that the only person who might be able to make something of it, is Tim Burton. That's the honest truth - then two months later I heard that you were making the film. But nonetheless: didn't the massive kitsch aspect of the film bother you?

Burton: The reason that I made the film was the death of my father. The feelings which emerged in me during this experience totally shocked me, perhaps because my father and I were not especially close. But I didn't want to talk about it and I didn't want to go to a therapist either. What I liked about the script was that there was no structured reconciliation between father and son, none of those platitude scenes, in which they hug one another and say "I love you". And I liked the fact that each day you practically had to make a different film.

Tykwer: Yes. Essentially 'Big Fish' consists of two films, which are woven together. It's a film about a magical world of memories and a film about the world of emotional reality. Both worlds have their reliable, and their more fantastical parameters.

Burton: I like to keep moving, I'm happy to change filming location two or three times a day. I didn't want to turn the two stories on and off like a tap. The romanticised and distant nature of the stories, the twisting of elements, the stressing of the absurd is a part of the memory. But it's not only a question of special effects. Many colleagues tend to say: I've got a crazy idea, but let's do it later on the computer. I don't like that. The joy of making films comes in making them and not sitting in front of the computer.

Tykwer: The decision to make a film is often connected to personal experience, as you just described. Does this motivation, whether consciously or unconsciously, stay with you throughout the entire process?

Burton: Yes. Without the death of my father, I wouldn't have been able to make the film, because I didn't know the feelings dealt with here.

Tykwer: How do you find directing today compared with earlier, when you first began?

Burton: I still love it. I really like being on set, that doesn't change. But I hate all the meetings beforehand. It's a single battle and you completely wear yourself out, and you're totally exhausted by the time you start shooting the film.

Tykwer: That's right. I always aim to be fresh and ready to go on the first day of a shoot, but you're mostly already drained. But then happy hormones, which are only produced during a shoot, kick in to help out.

Burton: People should really treat us like star athletes. It's absolutely in their own interest for us to be strong and creative! A marathon runner isn't pushed to breaking point before a race, and then expected to win.

Tykwer: I also love the period after the shoot, the post production. The edit, the sound, the printing lab.

Burton: It's an incredible luxury to have time for it and not to have to hurry. I experience that terribly seldom.

Tykwer: Do you edit parallel to the shoot?

Burton: I have to, because financial constraints always make the time for post production so short. And I prefer to edit a scene or a moment out sooner rather than later.

Tykwer: That means you throw things out during the shoot? When do you do it, at weekends?

Burton: Yes. That's why I try to make a rule for myself only to shoot five days in the week, because during the shoot you end up working seven days anyway.

Tykwer: I think that with just five-day shoot weeks, the one hour on a Sunday afternoon can be used for reflection before the whole madness starts up again.

Burton: Exactly. And that is the most important hour of the week. If you don't have that, everything is terrible.

Tykwer: Has your access to filmmaking changed over the years? Has your growing success weakened the media enchantment? Do you still have the naïve primeval urge which pushes you to work, and which enables you to work in an instinctive way?

Burton: It's incredibly important, and fortunately I still feel it. Even with huge studio productions, there is this moment in which you realise: I'm in my own world, us creatives are swimming along and the others can't touch us. You are there, it's magical, and nobody can disenchant you.

Tykwer: It's a condition of great happiness, to ride through a film on a wave of inspiration, and in a mysterious way, you always open the right door to the next fantasy room.

Burton: That is what I loved so much about Fellini's films. He caught the magic which can be created in filmmaking. It’s not always what you shoot, it's all the moments around it: the lights, the technical carousel, an extra with an ape's mask, standing around eating a donut; people argue, fight and wrestle with each other, you feel the passion, the movement and always a certain absurdity. When you are asked at home later, "How was your day? What happened?" I never know what to say. If you try to describe it, you sound like a manic-depressive. Because filmmaking comes with such hellish ups and downs, you are extremely happy one minute, and want to kill yourself the next. Each about 20 times a day.

(Published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Newspaper on 28.03.2004)