Tim Burton: "I'm a foreigner anywhere"

At what point did that withdrawn, lonely child, who grew up watching hours and hours of television and became passionate about classic horror movies before starting to film his own shorts, become an inspiring artist for exhibitions and anthologies at MoMA? ?

"Well, I wonder that too," Tim Burton (Burbank, California, 64 years old) replies from his London home via telematics.

The filmmaker appears in form, amused, on account of the immersive exhibition that opens in Madrid on December 29, baptized, as it could not be less, as

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The event has been generated from 200 drawings donated for the occasion by the artist to create an interactive tour in rooms decorated with lights, technology, music, scenery and costumes from his films.

“It's funny, because I don't feel like there's a Burton filmmaker, another cartoonist and another... I don't know, animator.

For me, everything is part of a process that I love.

That's why I'm curious about the exhibition.

In my career I created and then that start was shaped into an artistic form, ”he says.

Of course, inside him still lives Oyster Boy, that

of a lonely boy with direct echoes of his childhood and adolescence who starred in the poems and drawings of his book

“Of course, although now I would tell you that he is my son [laughs]”.

He becomes more serious: “My psyche, my work, my effort… I haven't changed much over time.

So there goes Oyster Boy.

We should strive to remain curious and amazed at the new things we own as children.

In my case, I love that they challenge me, that they propose new things to me.

In return, many childhood traumas never leave you, they stay with you."

Before starting the interview, there are two topics on which, be warned, you can not ask: personal issues and Johnny Depp.

But the filmmaker does talk about Madrid and his possible appointment as Madrid's first ambassador (an honor that came to him after Mick Jagger rejected him) - it has not yet been approved in plenary session.

After arching his eyebrows and making a gesture as if that doesn't go with him, he insists: “I love Madrid.

In the end I've been quite a few times.

I have always felt a special artistic vibration there, a curious energy”.

Is it different from the rest of Europe?

“I have been living in Europe for many years... Although my culture is American, I feel like a foreigner anywhere, in any country.

And let alone in today's United States.

Let's say I feel more natural in Europe.

I am a foreigner by nature.

One of Burton's drawings loaned for the exhibition.

Back to the museums, to the sacrosanct precincts of art.

“It is curious that I have ended up being the object of an exhibition”, argues the director of

or

“I was already perplexed with the one at MoMA in New York.

I didn't exactly grow up in a museum culture.

That was too far for me.

Today certain ties have been broken that delimited what can be called art and what cannot.

Do you know what I'm passionate about?

That thanks to my work someone enters an exhibition space for the first time.

Is my work art?

Well, it's an intriguing question."

And by the way, he ends in his long dissertation, his childhood returns.

"These were years of a lot of drawing, of crossing means of expression and techniques, so I hope the exhibition will transport the viewer to those feelings."

From there it arose that in his cinema there has been room for flesh and blood actors and for

I have never considered myself a film director for children, teenagers or twenty-somethings.

I was an old child.

With age I have been rejuvenating myself”

If something possesses the work of Burton —who started in a big way at the beginning of the eighties, fulfilling his dream of working at the Disney factory, from where he was fired a couple of years later because the projects he proposed and the film concepts he developed were too sinister and dark for its children's audience—it is its characteristic imprint.

“I have made both films arising from my own ideas as well as adaptations and commissions, but I have always taken it to my field.

Perhaps because I have never seen myself as a typical filmmaker.

Quite simply, my work reflects my feelings”, he insists.

“That is why, for example, I have never considered myself a film director for children, teenagers or twenty-somethings.

I was an old child.

With age I have been rejuvenating myself [laughs].

And children like the dark.

I have never limited the age of my audience because I have never really created for anyone but myself.

Then, during the tour, I have found the fans who like my work”.

Tim Burton, at the beginning of September, during a visit to the exhibition assembly.Álvaro Hormiga

on Netflix , a

revisitation of the Addams family universe through the eyes of his teenage daughter.

He explains why he accepted the commission: “Years ago I was alarmed by the possibility that the platforms would end up with the cinemas, that

would eat them up.

Luckily, there is room for everyone, and right now I think we live in a balance between products suitable for television,

and theaters.

Each creator will seek his ground.

I grew up watching movies in theaters, my heart is there."

Behind the filmmaker's back is a large poster for

(1961), one of Elvis Presley's bad musical movies.

“Ugh, sure.

I have a huge collection of posters and who knows what is there [he turns and goes back to the screen].

Yes, Presley's."

Do you still feel a little lonely?

“As a filmmaker, I have found fellow travelers, and I do believe that I am part of an artistic community.”

That said, he is unable to name other close directors.

“Ah, I hate these questions because I'm slow and I don't come up with names... Don't ask me about my favorite song either.

Ray Harryhausen [mythical creator of special effects] is certainly in my DNA, because he belongs to what I treasured in my childhood”.

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