Catch of the day

That's what he's famous for. Movies like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas have shown an obsession with the quirky side of life. Even comic book hero Batman took on a darker aspect when Burton brought the caped crusader to the screen in Batman and its sequel Batman Returns.

Horror movie Sleepy Hollow, alien invasion film Mars Attack! and even the biopic Ed Wood, about the angora jumper-wearing Hollywood director, were out of the ordinary. Things have changed. Burton is wearing his trademark black but talking about fatherhood and changing nappies, topics you wouldn't normally associate with him.

Both are inevitable considering his latest productions - the film Big Fish, a tall tale that deals with a troubled father and son relationship, and the birth of his own child, Billy, in October.

His partner is British actress Helena Bonham Carter, whom he met when she played an ape in his Planet Of The Apes remake and who plays two roles - an old witch and a young woman - in Big Fish. The highly imaginative film weaves together stories, both real and exaggerated, as a son comes to terms with the life of his dying father.

Some might see it as 45-year-old Burton's most personal film, although he treats everything personally. "This had a few more themes and images," he admits. "My father died before I got the film, so I was thinking a lot about those issues and how abstract that relationship is, and how hard it is to communicate those feelings in that parent-child relationship. So when I got this script I thought it spoke to that directly. It was amazing to have that catharsis, and it was a semi-cheap form of therapy for me to be able to go through it."

Becoming a father is exciting. "You go through your whole life and people call you weird. Then you go through all that and you see that this is the weirdest thing that can happen to anybody. It's an incredible experience," explains Burton.

For him, it's the most surreal thing and one for which you can't prepare yourself. "I'm excited about it because it makes you see like how you always want to see life, which is new and fresh," he says.

"I try every day to look at things anew. People would say I was wasting my time, that I shouldn't be staring out at the clouds and should be working. But that's an important part of the day.

"So having that and seeing your child see their hand for the first time, it's amazing. You kind of wish you could see your hand for the first time. That's important for any artistic endeavours, to try to keep that openness."

The experience has changed the relationship between Burton and Bonham Carter, who live in adjoining houses in London. "It's incredible, she's got more beautiful. It's an amazing process that happens. You get closer, and it's quite beautiful," says Burton.

Casting her as a wrinkly old crone might be considered unfair, but he asks: "Who gets the opportunity to see how old you're going to look when you're 103 years old? It's hard when you know somebody. I think she might say that I was mean to her in some ways. But if you know them, you don't give them 'that was great', you give them 'that was fine' and move along."

He accepts that offering her a different kind of role would be a good thing next time. "It would be nice to do that, I don't want to give her a complex. She's got a nice face that's worth not covering up," he adds.

Burton studied animation, won a Disney fellowship and worked for that company on the 1981 full length cartoon The Fox And The Hound. His early personal projects included a short Vincent Price tribute animation and the live action Frankenweenie, which was judged unsuitable for children and never released.

Monster movies inspired him as a child as a reaction to his own environment. "You kind of see things that are dark and moody and emotional, which those kind of movies were for me. If there's a monster movie on late at night, I'll watch it even if I've seen it a hundred times," he says.

The storytelling father in Big Fish isn't drawn from his own experience. Quite the opposite, as he didn't come from a very communicative or story-telling family. "I wasn't a verbal person," he says.

"My family maybe spoke ten sentences within a couple of years. We were in more of an Ingmar Bergman situation, with vacant stares across the table.

"But I recall that my father had false teeth and when a full moon came out, he would pretend he was a werewolf. He could make his teeth go away, so all he had left were these sharp teeth that he'd go and try to scare all the kids in the neighbourhood with.

"So it was very magical, a sense of story and sense of magic that I always appreciated. I don't expect I'll be a good storyteller, but I like stories and there are many ways to tell a story through films and play acting."

Being a father isn't going to change the type of movies he makes. He considers he's always made kids' movies, and wouldn't have any problem showing his own children a creepy picture like Sleepy Hollow. "I grew up watching movies like that on TV, so I never personally had a problem with anything that I've done. But that's me," he adds.

The awards nominations coming his way for Big Fish indicate that Burton, once having been considered too weird for mainstream Hollywood, is now a more commercial director.

"I always felt strongly and pretty secure about my own ideas. I never questioned them too much. When you're naive and don't know to question things, it can be quite beneficial sometimes," he says.

He's currently in the early stages of preparing a new cinema version of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp playing Willy Wonka.

And what about his vision of the less-than-friendly Oompa Loompa characters? "We'll see, something to scare all the children," he replies, confirming that perhaps he hasn't changed entirely and that the dark and quirky Burton filmgoers know and love will continue to surface.

* Big Fish (PG) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: ??/??/2003