As part a lengthy AV Club interviewHenry Selick and the release of his new Netflix film, “The Great Netflix Film” “Wendell & Wild,”The filmmaker is adamant about the story behind his feature “The Nightmare Before Christmas”It has been almost taken from him as many believe it was directed to Tim Burton.
Let me explain: In the days leading up to the publication of “The Nightmare Before Christmas,”Disney’s parent company was becoming a bit agitated about the movie. Some shots were altered to make the movie look less twitchy. “dark”The movie features a moment in which a severed skull is passed around a hockey field like a puck. It was not a Disney movie. They made it a Touchstone movie.
It was once “The Nightmare Before Christmas”became “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Burton was at that time one of Hollywood’s most prominent directors, with hits such as “Beetlejuice,” “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” “Batman”His black-and-white stripes belt. The previous summer “Batman Returns”The film opened and made $266 million at box office. It strengthened Selick’s position as a heavyweight box office boxer. To add his name to the title made sense for marketing – but it came at the cost of diminishing Selick’s involvement.
“That was a little unfair because it wasn’t called ‘Tim Burton’s Nightmare’ until three weeks before the film came out. And I would have been fine with that, if that’s what I signed up for,”Selick explained it to the AV Club. “But Tim was in L.A. making two features while I directed that film, and I mean, Tim is a genius — or he certainly was in his most creative years. I always thought his story was perfect, and he designed the main characters. But it was really me and my team of people who brought that to life.”
Selick also noted that Burton wasn’t the only one claiming an oversized stake in the movie, either.
“Now, of course, if you ask Danny Elfman, well, that’s his movie,”Selick stated. “When we finished the film, it was so funny because he came up to me and shook my hand. ‘Henry, you’ve done a wonderful job illustrating my songs!’ And he was serious, and I loved it! Fine. But my thing was I’m going to hang in there long enough to where people actually say, ‘Oh, that guy Henry, he does stuff.’”
Still, if there’s one silver lining, he says, it’s that he’s won “many a bar bet,” when people don’t believe that he ActuallyDirected the film.
Selick was the rightful creator of animated films and animations, as anyone who has ever met him knows. “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” And Selick’s career since then, which includes “James and the Giant Peach,” “Coraline”Now! “Wendell & Wild,”His reputation as an imaginative mind of his generation has been largely cemented.
“Wendell & Wild”It is available on Netflix right now.
