Vincent & 9

Hello.

My name is Vincent Malloy and I am seven years old, SEVEN, oh that's almost nine. I might as well start digging my grave now. I am smart, I get good grades, and I have a stupid sister. My favorite person in the entire world is Vincent Price, that's why my name is, obviously, Vincent. Often when I am alone I think about torturing my sister, my parents, or my god-awfully rotund aunt. I prefer Edgar Allen Poe to my everyday, ordinary, obnoxiously warm and fuzzy feeling reading that they give me in school, don't they know that's not how life is? Anyway, about Tim. I am an experiment, much as I expected, I don't really exist and I won't ever die. Some animator executives up at the Walt Disney company gave Tim $60,000 to create anything he wanted; since Tim had already written my story and my life existed already in the form of pages and scratch drawings, it was easy for him to switch gears. Tim felt that it would be appropriate to drag my scraggly weak and barely there body from the pages of my book and turn me into clay, every day he played with me like a puppet for hours on end. He "Wanted it to feel real." I was very tired of saying the same few words, and I had memorized my entire life story in a poem. The Disney executives called me a "test in stop animation," Tim called me his masterpiece. Tim and I share a very close connection; we like the same things, we think the same way, people have even said I look just like him, although my vision has been too clouded by morbid thoughts to remember his face. For two excruciatingly long months Tim played with my clay figure, everything in my world was black and white, apparently the film was too. Two months he worked and all he came out with was a five-minute film. Who was going to watch a five minute film? Thanks Tim, I really appreciate the sudden rush to stardom you gave me. The end of my life story is wonderful; "Everyone at Disney thought he died, but he's just laying there, who's to say he's really dead or beautiful in his own little dream world. It really spoke to me." To my surprise my love and other self Vincent Price was the dear and wonderful narrator for my film. I have to say, the second he came to look at my clay figure I was warm and fuzzy inside, starstuck maybe? No. never me. "It's a scary proposition meeting somebody who helped you through childhood, who had that affect on you." Disney ended up really enjoying my film, and they even showed it on the big screen, It is such an incredibly strange feeling to see yourself on the big screen for the first time; exhilarating maybe? I was so happy to hear it won awards in Chicago, and in France...but no one knew what to do with it, or with me when the movie's two week showing ended. My life story was locked into a film canister never to resurface from the depths of the disney vaults. Did I die? Or am I just laying there in some beautiful dream?

Tim's conceptualization & drawings for the book, then the film

Disney

Hi! I'm Vixey, star of Disney's Fox and the Hound, well not that fox... the other fox. I am a gorgeous, smart, tough, and temperamental, ever wonder where the term "foxy" came from? Tim's least favorite character. He worked on me for three years while he was working as animator at Disney. They hired him out of the Cal-Art Disney program, out of necessity, see the company was in a state of flux at the time, and they couldn't find anyone better. He didn't like Disney and Disney didn't like him, but, nonetheless he was my animator. "Like water torture," he said "drawing cute fox scenes voiced by Sandy Duncan isn't something that's very relatable." When he started drawing me he just couldn't make my figure look like a lady's, I looked like a badly drawn male fox! He told his fellow animators the he felt like he was drawing road kill! I don't like when people call me road kill, it's not nice. His boss told him that it was okay Vixey's not in the movie very long. I didn't think it was very fair that I had to stay away from the movie shooting, when I should be a star! Tim drew me into scenes far away from everybody so he didn't have to draw my lady like details. Tim got bored with me, he didn't want to draw me anymore so he started doing work in other parts of the company. People have told me that he went on to be a conceptual artist, whatever that is, as long as he wasn't going to have to draw any more lady foxes he'd be fine!!

Tim's Work, conceptually, on Disney's The Black Cauldron

Childhood in Burbank-Cal Arts

I grew up loving Dr. Seuss. The rhythm of his stuff spoke to me very clearly. Dr Seuss's books were perfect: right number of words, the right rhythm, great subversive stories. He was incredible, he was the greatest definitely. He probably saved a bunch of kids who nobody will ever know about." Tim Burton

Tim: an introduction

Born August 25 1958, Burbank

A city he thought really stank.

His mom ran a shop about a kitty

His dad worked for the city.

He’d lay in the grass and watch the planes

Here in his grandmother’s attic he remains.

He loved weird triple bill movies,

He liked B monster films,

He has a soft spot for monsters’ feelings

and he didn’t feel badly about their killings.

Not fond of the violence fairy tales unveils

More interested in nails, impales, scales, and wails.

He loved Godzilla and Vincent Price

If he had to choose it’d always be their advice.

He liked Edgar Allen Poe

He liked the Raven, not The Sparrow or The Crow.

He loved Ray Harryhausen movies

not things meant for ninnies.

He started at Disney, not only an animator

but a world class creator

and He didn’t like to read, he made movies instead

If he was asked to read them he’d rather be dead.

General Information

Three days ago I had a revelation, and it made me change my entire google project. I was so inspired by a peer's paper on fairy tales that I just couldn't find any reason not to change my topic. I have always loved movies, all kinds of movies. I love certain sets of actors and directors, like the Judd Apatow; superbad cast set, but my all time favorite group of people in the film industry is Tim Burton; Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Danny Elfman. I started rolling around a lot of ideas and sort of doodled my way into, what I think, is going to be an awesome project that will be a lot of fun. I want to create a blog, that will eventually be Tim Burton's life story, and all the people connected to him. The problem I ran into here was, how do you explain a man like Tim Burton? I could repeat verbatim his autobiography, he knows himself best right? Wrong. I wanted to think like him, anything about him has to be like him. Who REALLY knows Tim Burton best? His characters, of course. His intimate relationship that he built with each and every single one of his characters is a little chunk of who he is, his childhood Edward Scissorhands, his pre-teens; Vincent so on and so forth. So the idea is that I will use artwork (his own) to provide visual aid to the reader of the characters speaking. Each blog will have a piece of artwork a little narrative spoken from the perspective of the character, about Tim, and have a video clip either with Tim interacting with the character or just the character in action. By the end of the blog the reader will have read through the entire world of Tim from the people who understand him best. The text I will be using as his concrete life story, the control, will be "Burton on Burton," an autobiography written many years ago. I'm going to have to be a little bit more creative and use more resources to piece together his life post autobiography, and to work with those characters. I will explore his relationships with actor Johnny Depp, actress Helena Bonham Carter and composer Danny Elfman. I'm very excited to begin work. :)

"I have never seen someone so obviously out of place fit right in. His way." -Johnny Depp