Categories: Technology

Tim Burton talks about his dread of AI as an exhibition of his work opens in London

LONDON — The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.

But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really disturbed me.”

“It wasn’t an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibition at London’s Design Museum. “I looked at those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are pretty good.’ … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside.”

Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you can do it, people will do it.” But he scoffed when asked if he’d use the technology in this work.

“To take over the world?” he laughed.

The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.

“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way of expressing myself.”

Decades later, after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton’s personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.

London is the exhibition’s final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” sign a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s also a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to the trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug full of pencils.

Alongside hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman Returns.”

“We had very generous access to Tim’s archive in London, stuffed full of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McLintock. “And how to synthesize such a wide ranging and meandering career within one exhibition was a fun challenge — but definitely a challenge.”

Seeing it has not been a wholly fun experience for Burton, who said he’s unable to look too closely at the items on display.

“It’s like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second series of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”

These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective — “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.

“Once you feel that way, it never leaves you,” he said.

“Each film I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” in 1988 received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each one leaves its emotional scars.”

McLintock said Burton “is a deeply emotional filmmaker.”

“I think that’s what drew me to his films as a child,” she said. “He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So it’s been quite a weird but fun experience spending so much time in his brain and his creative process.

“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t agree with that. And if they are dark, there’s a very much a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the darkness in his films.”

___

“The World of Tim Burton” opens Friday and runs until April 21, 2025.

___

Associated Press journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.

___

This story has corrected that the Catwoman costume is from “Batman Returns,” not “Batman.”

News Today

Recent Posts

Mark Robinson defeated in North Carolina governor’s race by Josh Stein

2024-11-06 14:05:03 North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein defeated scandal-plagued Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson…

4 mins ago

Election Day live updates: Trump wins Pennsylvania, GOP flips Senate : NPR

2024-11-06 13:55:02 North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein speaks during a Get Out the Vote…

14 mins ago

Who are the Republicans: the Republican party and its many factions

2024-11-06 13:45:03 With the world’s oldest democracy voting to elect its 47th President, let us…

24 mins ago

Amendment 4 is rejected by Florida voters, keeping state’s 6-week abortion ban in place, CBS News projects

2024-11-06 13:35:02 Amendment 4 has been rejected by Florida voters in the 2024 election, CBS…

34 mins ago

Amendment 3 and 4 fail to pass

2024-11-06 13:25:03 While the nation is anxiously awaiting election results that will tell them who…

44 mins ago

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wins a third term to the US Senate

2024-11-06 13:15:03 HOUSTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas won reelection Tuesday, defeating…

54 mins ago