As part of a lengthy AV Club interview with Henry Selick, tied into the release of his wonderful new Netflix film “Wendell & Wild,” the filmmaker bristles about how his feature “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has all but been taken away from him, since so many people think it was directed by producer Tim Burton.
To explain: in the lead-up to the release of “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” parent company Disney was getting a little twitchy about the movie. There were some shots that were changed to make the movie seem less “dark” (including a moment where a severed head is passed around a hockey rink like a puck), they switched the release from a Disney proper release to a Touchstone movie (even though there was a robust retail program at Disney Stores nationwide; the toys came packaged in little coffins) and they added a prefix to the title.
What was once “The Nightmare Before Christmas” became “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Burton was, at the time, one of the biggest directors working in Hollywood, with hits like “Beetlejuice,” “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” and “Batman” under his black-and-white striped belt. The previous summer “Batman Returns” opened; it grossed $266 million at the box office and reinforced his place as a box office heavyweight. 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 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 said. “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 actually directed the movie.
Anyone who knows Selick or has an understanding of animation or film knows that he was the rightful author of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” And Selick’s career since then, which includes “James and the Giant Peach,” “Coraline” and now “Wendell & Wild,” has largely cemented his standing as one of the most imaginative minds of his generation.
“Wendell & Wild” is on Netflix now.
