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Inside “the mind of Tim Burton” at Las Vegas’ Neon Museum
Filmmaker Tim Burton has a love affair with the City of Light — not the new Las Vegas, but the old one. “I love the neon, you know, the old signs, and the beauty of them, and the sort of artistry of them are very important to me and part of my sort of artistic development in…
Filmmaker Tim Burton has a love affair with the City of Light — not the new Las Vegas, but the old one.
“I love the neon, you know, the old signs, and the beauty of them, and the sort of artistry of them are very important to me and part of my sort of artistic development in a way,” said Burton.
And so the brains behind films like “Batman,” “Beetlejuice” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” threw his artistic expression into the one place he says still represents it: the boneyard of the city's abandoned landscape.
In October, at the only museum in the nation dedicated to neon, Burton debuted his own artwork. The “Lost Vegas: Tim Burton @ The Neon Museum” includes an assortment of animatronic sculptures, holographic drawings and signs of all sizes, mixed in with the museums permanent collection.
“This exhibition is an immersive experience into the mind of Tim Burton,” said Jenny He, the “Lost Vegas” exhibition curator.
“What he puts on screen or on a page or in a sculpture is identifiable for all of his fans. So there's really no disconnect between Tim and his viewer or Tim and his visitor because of that intense emotional connection that he imbues into his work,” He said.
Burton directly nods to nostalgia by using actual footage of the 1995 demolition of the Landmark Tower. Burton said the event had a very distinct impression on him.
“It was like watching an ancient dinosaur being killed or something,” he said. “It's like after it happened, it was silent. Everybody couldn't speak. It was so kind of strangely powerful, sad, beautiful.”
Denise Truscello/Neon Museum
For more than three decades, Burton's films have ranged from delightfully dark to weirdly whimsical, grossing more than $4 billion worldwide.
“You have ‘Edward Scissorhands,' ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,' ‘Frankenweenie,' ‘Alice in Wonderland' — should it surprise anybody that there's this side of you?” asked “CBS This Morning: Saturday” co-host Michelle Miller.
“Well, no, because it kind of brings me back to where I started,” said Burton. “I've always liked to draw and make things.”
Burton's singular style was apparent early on. His short, “Stalk of the Celery Monster,” helped land him a job at Walt Disney Studios.
“I had a room when I was an animator. And I saw, from my room, where I felt trapped like Rapunzel, I could see the hospital where I was born, and then Forest Lawn, where all my family was buried, and I felt like I was in the Bermuda triangle, you know, this weird place of life and death,” said Burton.
Fired after a few years, he found his footing directing “Pee-wee's Big Adventure.” That began a string of hits that made Burton a household name.
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