San Francisco Frontiers - Tim Burton, Hollywood's Goth soul, heads to Venice

From "Edward Scissorhands" (1990) to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005), Burton's films are instant classics, ageless works seen and re-seen from generation to generation without losing any of their eerie magic.

Slated to kick off the prestigious festival Wednesday in an out-of-competition screening, Burton's "Beetlejuice" sequel is "the happy confirmation of the extraordinary visionary talent" of its director, in the words of festival head Alberto Barbera.

It's a taste for monsters and the dark that non-conformist Burton has cultivated since his childhood spent in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, over the hill from Hollywood and home to the major film studios including Disney.

A loner as a child, but saved by a love of drawing, Burton -- who turned 66 Sunday -- says he always felt apart from others, one of those "weirdos" others consider strange.

"I liked everything that was a little different, strange. I didn't fit into the classic categories," he has said.

But the fantasy films and horror flicks that Burton turned to became a refuge, fuelling his nascent interest in the creepy, kooky and fantastical.

Decades later, Burton remains rather taciturn, preferring to create rather than explain his world populated by skeletons, ghosts and headless horsemen.

He has cited "the element of mystery", saying he prefers his work to speak for itself.

- Pee-Wee, Batman and Scissorhands -

A fan of "stop motion", a rudimentary frame-by-frame animation technique, Burton joined Disney on a scholarship, working on the studio's 1981 cartoon, "The Fox and the Hound".

But the eccentric Burton left, finding himself a poor fit with Disney's sunny, family-friendly fare -- gravitating instead to a cinematic vision that plays up the imperfect, the handmade, the cobbled-together.

That quirky charm was on display in his 1985 directorial debut, "Pee-wee's Big Adventure", but perhaps felt most acutely in "Beetlejuice" three years later, a gothic tale where dying seems like a big joke, and where the peaceful coexistence between ghosts and humans seems almost possible.

In 1989, Burton again tapped "Beetlejuice" star Michael Keaton for "Batman", ushering in a new era for flawed superheroes in the film the director has described as "a complete duel of the freaks".

Burton's other favourite actors have included Helena Bonham Carter -- the mother of his two sons -- and Johnny Depp, the star of "Edward Scissorhands", an anti-fairy tale in which a creature with scissors instead of hands, Edward, destroys what he touches.

Burton and Depp went on to collaborate on another seven films, including "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Sleepy Hollow" and "Ed Wood", a black-and-white ode to the cult filmmaker.

Burton also delved into science fiction comedy with "Mars Attacks!" in 1996, a delirious homage to alien invasion films with an all-star cast including Jack Nicholson and Pierce Brosnan.

Back with Disney for some non-conventional family entertainment, Burton produced stop-motion cult classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in 1993, while he directed the live-action adaptations of "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010 and "Dumbo" in 2019.

Burton's universe shows no signs of ageing -- his latest Netflix series "Wednesday", inspired by The Addams Family's pigtailed daughter, was a success with viewers while garnering a Golden Globe nomination last year for its young star, Jenna Ortega.

Ortega, 21, is expected in Venice on Wednesday for the premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice".

The film reunites original stars Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara in a sequel that Venice's Barbera has said features "a surprising swing of creative imagination and driving hallucinatory rhythm."

Z.Phillips--SFF