Big Eyes wide open for Tim Burton’s tale of Margaret Keane

Tim Burton tells Kate Whiting why he made a film on the bizarre true story of Margaret Keane

TIM BURTON is best known for taking viewers on extraordinary flights of gothic fancy, in films like Alice In Wonderland, Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd. But his latest fantastical work is grounded in truth — which makes it even more alarming.

Big Eyes tells the little-known tale of American artist Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter took credit for her paintings of huge-eyed children in the late 1950s and early ’60suntil she finally fought for her name in court. A charismatic and canny businessman, Walter pioneered mass production of prints and made the Keanes very rich, at great personal cost to Margaret.

Burton, now 56, grew up seeing the ubiquitous paintings hanging in people’s living rooms and in doctors’ offices in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank.

“Even as a child, there was something about them that I found interesting and disturbing. They chilled me,” says the director, dressed uniformly in black, with a little laugh.

It was only in the 1990s that he learned from a friend the true story behind the images.

“Even though it was documented in newspapers at the time, it was under the radar. Like everyone else, I just thought Walter was the artist. It was shocking — one of those ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ kind of stories – this dysfunctional relationship. It spoke to me.”

Burton had long been a fan of Margaret Keane’s work and had commissioned portraits from her, so was excited when he discovered the writers he’d worked with on Ed Wood — Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski — had written a script about her life. He cast Amy Adams as Margaret and double Oscar winner Christoph Waltz as Walter and the film won Margaret’s seal of approval.

“When she saw it, the best compliments were, ‘Wow, that was Walter, that was the feeling’. She was very touched and a little freaked out.”

Burton admits that making a biopic is “like drunk history, there are a lot of grey areas going on”. However, the film portrays Margaret as a feminist who, after years of going along with Walter’s deception, eventually makes a stand to take credit for her own creations.

“He had a very demonstrative, big personality and she was the opposite,” explains Burton. “She’s one of the most private, shyest people I’ve ever met and back then, in the late 50s and 60s , at least in the suburban world, women didn’t work.

“She admits she went along with it, and even in the courtroom, she didn’t do it for vengeance, she needed this weight lifted. And when she wins, she’s not out there on her soapbox — she’s the most quiet, under the radar feminist. It wasn’t thrown in your face; she was very internal about it.

“It’s hard to put that on the page. And that’s what was amazing about Amy’s performance, she was able to show that conflict subtly.”

With the calibre of actors Burton had to work with (Adams has been nominated for five Oscars), you’d think he just had to stand back and let them get on with it.

“Little wind-up toys!” he says, chuckling. “It’s a combination of things. You try to gauge each actor. You try and get a sense of how each one works or likes to work.

“Christoph approaches something in a completely different way to how Amy does, so you just try and let them each breathe. I used to storyboard everything, but I got to the point where I thought, ‘We’ve got two great actors here...’. Sometimes it’s good to just let that energy happen.”

Burton has a reputation for working with the same actors over and over again, including most famously, his partner Helena Bonham-Carter, with whom he has two children, Billy Raymond, 11, and Nell, 7, and, of course, the children’s Godfather, Johnny Depp.

The pair have now made eight films together, from Edward Scissorhands in 1990, to 2012’s Dark Shadows, which also starred Bonham-Carter.

“He likes to try different things,” says Burton of Depp, who describes him as a “unique and brave soul”. “It’s fun to work with new people, but it’s also fun to work with the same people, to see if they’ll do something slightly different. It gives me an energy. It’s like a new chemistry set each time.

“We have a shorthand,” he adds of his connection with Depp. “As much as I’ve learnt how to speak, I still don’t like it, so the minimal amount of speaking I can do, the better!”

In person, Burton is warm, relaxed and deeply passionate about his work. With his shaggy main of salt and pepper hair, matching beard, and boundless energy, he’s like a loveable pup and it’s easy to see why Bonham-Carter is smitten.

His upbringing reads like something out of one of his films — his parents apparently bricked up his bedroom windows and he’d moved in with his grandmother by age 12. At 16, he was living on his own and holding down two jobs to get himself through college — the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, where he studied animation. After graduating, he was offered an apprenticeship at Walt Disney Productions, but a few years later, the company let him go after his short 1984 animation Frankenweenie , about a boy who tries to revive his dead dog, was deemed to be ’too dark’ for children.

Being criticised for his work is one of the reasons he identifies so strongly with Margaret Keane: “Most people, most critics didn’t really consider it art,” he says of her big eyes paintings.

“From the beginning of my career, I’ve experienced people loving and hating me. People’s perceptions of things fascinate me.”

His first break as a director came in 1985, when, at just 25, he was chosen to direct sequel Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Made on a meagre budget of $8m, it took $40m at the box office. It was followed by Beetlejuice in 1988 and Batman in 1989.

Burton and Bonham-Carter live with their kids in a pair of adjoining mews houses in North London and each have their own space to retreat to.

He says I’d have to ask Billy and Nell if he and Bonham-Carter are the world’s coolest parents, but he does try to be the father he would have wanted.

“Yeah, but you have to be careful with that too, because part of what drove me on was I had to do two jobs to get through college, so as negative as it was, there was a positive side to it — it forced you to become more proactive in getting things done.

“You do want to that be the ideal parent, but at the same time you don’t want to give them everything, so they have someone brushing their teeth when they’re 16-years-old.”

• Big Eyes is released in cinemas on St Stephen’s Day