Tim Burton names his favourite movie from his own filmography: “The last one is probably my worst one”
Ask any fan for their favourite Tim Burton film, and the answers will probably differ. Since his breakout, the writer and director has been prolific in bringing his singular style to a variety of projects, gathering global acclaim and a cultishly dedicated following. He’s made box office smash after box office smash, but his own favourite project is a left-field one.
Burton exists in the class of directors with a clear and instantly recognisable style. Much like the work of Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola or Stanley Kubrick, any fan could see any scene still from any film and guess who was behind it. His projects all drip with the gothic aesthetic he’s come to define, carving out his own space in the world of dark humour mixed with rich sentiment and emotion. Even when he wades deep into the weird or spooky, his work is still heartening.
That’s felt so clearly in the likes of Edward Scissorhands or The Corpse Bride, where love stories are given their own unique makeover. Or in Beetlejuice or The Nightmare Before Christmas, where frights are balanced with humour in equal measure. As he’s navigated seemingly every genre, from superhero flicks to art biopics, every project is given the same distinctly Burton-esque treatment.
With such a varied but rich filmography, selecting a favourite is hard, even for a casual watcher or typical fan. But the director himself didn’t seem to have an issue. In conversation with BBC Films, the classic question came up, and he had his answer right there at hand.
“My favourite movie is probably the furthest one away – Pee-Wee Herman,” he said, selecting his debut project, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Made in 1985, it was Burton’s first feature film and the first movie ever made with the infamous character of Pee-Wee Herman, crafted by Paul Reubens.
Burton felt like a strange choice for the project. The comedic character, crafted on stage and then made famous by an HBO special, was a family-friendly figure. Like a bratty child leaning into slap-stick humour, there’s very little edge to Herman, unlike all the rest of Burton’s characters and projects. However, as the first feature he made that launched him into the movie world, the director has to respect it as an important jumping-off point.
In hindsight, he loves the project more. “The more time I have away from movies, the better I like them,” he explains. Needing time to distance himself from the process of making the film and to allow his critical brain to quieten down after the film was canned, he admitted it’s only with time that he can enjoy his projects. “It literally takes me five years to look at something and be slightly objective about it,” he continued, “So by that, the last one is probably the worst one!”
Despite his opinion, it’s doubtful that many Burton fans would pick the film as their favourite. With the character not being his own and the content being worlds away from the type of stories he would go on to write later in his career, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is a strange little introduction to the director that feels like an isolated thing from the rest of his body of work.
However, the movie performed incredibly well thanks to the profile of the character. This box office success, followed swiftly by his 1988 classic Beetlejuice, quickly shot Burton into the big leagues and made the powers that be pay attention. It was these two films that prompted Warner to hire him to direct Batman, propelling him forward into an incredible career and all the other amazing movies the world knows and loves.