ohnny Depp saunters in a hotel room with a floppy hat and round glasses, looking a bit wild. It's appropriate for the voice behind the lead male character in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, and he seems to fit in with his co-star Helena Bonham Carter, who's in a sweeping, flowing flowered dress, and director Tim Burton, with his explosive fly-away hair.
The trio is attending the Toronto International Film Festival promoting the stop-motion animated film, along with producer Allison Abbate, co-director Mike Johnson and composer Danny Elfman. The project is dark and uses the same animation as Burton's 1993 Nightmare Before Christmas.
This is Elfman's 12th collaboration with Burton and Depp's fifth. Bonham Carter and Burton have collaborated on every movie since they met on the Planet of the Apes remake, and they've also collaborated on a son, Billy, who's now 2.
Science Fiction Weeky was in Toronto with the cast and crew to discuss this unique film, which was being completed as they all were doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last year. The movie opened nationwide on Sept. 23, and in selected markets on Sept. 16.
Johnny Depp, this is the first time you've ever played an animated character. Why has it taken so long?
Depp: It's easier to play a puppet. Any actor with a semblance of sanity or insanity, probably our biggest fear is to go anywhere near who you are. ...
It was something that I wanted to do ever since having my first child. I've been watching nothing but animated films since then, and so I've kind of developed a love for them.
Did you get to see the puppets of the stop-motion creation before you created the voice of Victor?
Depp: The great luxury was that when I arrived that night to do the recording for the session, Victor was standing there. And so I got to meet the puppets. They were beautiful. Beautiful. Really inspiring.
I was just trying to save my own ass, basically, for being ill-prepared. Tim [Burton] was so helpful, as he always is. He's a character that's not so far away [from] other characters that I've played in the past for Tim, like Edward Scissorhands, or a little bit of an outsider. A bumbling, deeply insecure, nervous character. A lot like me in life.
Have your kids seen any of your recent films?
Depp: Well, Jack was real little when Pirates came out. He was sort of in the Neanderthal stage. Lilly Rose was there, and she loved it. It's interesting because they had come on the set of Pirates, so they were sort of used to seeing Papa as this weird, greasy pirate guy, and then when they knew that I was going to be playing Willy Wonka they were, of course, very excited about it because they knew the original film with Gene Wilder. My daughter is pretty familiar with the book, the story. So they came to visit me on the set, and, like I said, they're pretty used to that sort of thing. But they came to the set and they walked into my trailer, and there I was decked out in the tophat and the Prince Valiant hairdo and the cha-cha heels and the eyes and the teeth and the rubber gloves, and they just kind of froze and just stared at me for what felt like an eternity, about two minutes. And then they sort of got over it and wanted to try everything on, the tophat and glasses and stuff. I was so scared when they were going to see Charlie, and way more than the idea of being reviewed by a movie critic. I was sitting at home waiting for them to come back, and they arrived back and my son of 3 years old, Jack, walks in and looks up at me and quoted Wonka. He went, "You're really weird." [Laughs.] I felt suddenly liberated.
Have they seen Corpse Bride yet?
Depp: Yeah. They did. That was another amazing experience because, again, Lilly Rose was sort of ready for this kind of thing and just loved it. She really loved the ride. My boy of 3 years old, you know the attention span is quite short. You want to go break something and do stuff, run. He sat on my lap for the entire film and was just glued and riveted and loved it. He really reacted well to the music and was quoting lines and loved all the characters.
Do your kids think that it's cooler that you're a cartoon or a pirate?
Depp: You know what? I don't know. I'll ask them. The funny thing is that my kids—my daughter is 6, and my boy is 3. My daughter is sort of quite calm and ladylike and a princess, and so she can sit there and watch a movie and not get real antsy. And normally my boy will watch for about three and a half seconds and then sprint as fast as he can across the room to go and break something. With this film, we watched Corpse Bride together, and my boy sat on my lap and watched the entire film. He just didn't move. He was riveted. He loved it, which says a lot. It's pretty full, this movie.
Was it too scary for him?
Depp: No. He loved it. I mean, there were certainly moments where you get that kind of jolt, but so did I.
You seem to embody your characters. Do you have trouble leaving them behind?
Depp: What happens to me is that with every character, once you've clicked into that character and you really know the guy, you become very close with him, and you love him. You enjoy playing him. So it's always very, very difficult at the end. There is that week to 10 days before wrap where you can feel and hear the clock ticking, and then you go through sometimes a really nasty kind of depression afterwards. There's an odd separation anxiety, because you've just been this person for a pretty good length of time, and then they're suddenly gone. For me, with Captain Jack, I had a sneaking suspicion that I'd see him again, and when they said, "We'd like to do two and three together," I was all for it because I just wanted selfishly to be the guy again, just to see him again, play him.
It's weird, because some times separation is more emotional than others. I remember after Scissorhands—and I really feel like a dunce having to say this, but it's the truth—I remember the last day of that movie, it had been 89 days or something, and I remember after we did the makeup I looked into the mirror and [thought], "Well, this is it. This is the last time I'll see you." So it becomes very emotional. It's a weird, weird thing. I don't think that it's normal, and I don't think that it's particularly good for you.
Are there characters or movies that you've done that you cringe at?
Depp: Oh, I cringe at all of them. I'm not a particularly good judge of my own work, because I honestly do my best to avoid seeing the things, and with all due respect to the writers and the filmmakers and the technicians and the artists involved—it has nothing to do with them. I'm really proud of the experience most of the time, but I just can't stand seeing myself up there, because you start to second-guess yourself. You start to go, "Why didn't I do this? Why didn't I do that? God. Look at my nose. I hate myself." That kind of thing.
Is there something that you identify with in Victor?
Depp: Yeah. Feeling like a failure, I suppose. Feeling inept. Unable to be understood. That's a pretty consistent theme in a lot of people's lives. But it's like Victor kind of represented, in the same way that Scissorhands did, that emotion of not quite feeling comfortable in life.
How did you prepare for the character?
Depp: Well, everything for Corpse Bride happened very quick. It all happened in about 15 or 20 minutes, literally, because I had finished the day as Wonka and then, right after work, Tim and I were going into the studio for the session. So the process lasted about the length of the walk from the soundstage to the recording studio, which was pretty quick. I just went, "OK. Where's he from? What do you want him to sound like?" And then it was sort of born in that little bit of time, and I didn't hear it any of it until later. ...
When I read a script I get these sort of images and stuff that I've talked about before. It's like a set of ideas come to me. And then sometimes it's people who come to me, like in Sleepy Hollow. I kept seeing Roddy McDowell and Angela Lansbury. That kind of thing, and so it became the sort of inspiration for me. With Captain Jack, Keith [Richards] became the inspiration, because I started thinking of pirates as rock stars of their time. Their legends arrived months, maybe years, before they did. So it's taking the story and waiting for those images to use later.
What do you think about Tim Burton's Land of the Dead in this film?
Depp: It's the idea that in life there is this kind of constant fear and obsession with death and the mystery of what death is and all of that, to the point of where people are unbelievably tense about arriving there, even though we all know we're going to arrive there at some point. In fact, the Land of the Living in this thing is sort of super-uptight and gray and heavy as a place, and going down to the Land of the Dead, where it could be heaven or hell or it could be purgatory, and it's like 1920s Paris. Flappers and craziness. I thought that it was pretty amazing.
Do you think there is an afterlife?
Depp: It's a complete mystery to me. I mean, it'd be great if you woke up suddenly it was 1920s Paris. That'd be excellent. But I don't know, because it could just sort of be dirt and worms. I don't know.
Tim Burton, you've been dealing with the dead and undead since Frankenweenie, so what is the appeal?
Burton: Well, I think dealing with the undead comes from growing up in Burbank, sort of suburban, kind of like Night of the Living Dead during the day, in the bright sunlight. I don't know. I've just always liked monster movies, and I've actually been always fascinated by [it]—again, growing up in a culture where death is looked up [to] as sort of a dark subject. And then living so close to Mexico, where you see the Day of the Dead, with the skeletons and it's all humor and music and dancing.
Are you optimistic that there is an afterlife as colorful as you paint in this movie?
Burton: [Laughs.] Well, I mean, I have no idea what happens. But, like I said, I do respond to other cultures that treat it with a much more positive approach. I think this other form, especially when you are a child, it teaches so much being afraid of everything, and feeling like something bad is always going to happen. That other way just seems like a much more spiritual and positive approach. That's as far as I go, 'cause I, you know, I have really no idea what will happen. [Laughs.]
Helena Bonham Carter, why did you take on two animated roles so close together? You are in this and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit, coming out at nearly the same time?
Bonham Carter: It just tells you how long these take. I started both of them when I was pregnant with Billy. So I was sort of inappropriate for any kind of other part, with my body, so that's why I did this stop-motion animation. And I had to audition, even the one that Tim [Burton, her partner] was directing.
It wasn't a given that you'd get the role?
Bonham Carter: No. I hope I don't have to go sleep with a guy to get a part. But you know what? Actually, it's quite the opposite, because I had to audition. So it doesn't work for me.
He gave it to me to read, I think just because I'm a friend, obviously, one would hope. I have a child with him. But he just wanted me to read it, anyway, and just to see what I thought. I did think it was a beautiful script, and really moving, and he wanted me to play Victoria. ... I said, "You know, I want to play the Corpse Bride." ... I said, "You want me to audition, don't you?" And he said "Yeah." So I went off and did my audition, and luckily two weeks later ... there was nothing said between us for weeks, and he finally came up to me, very solemnly, to my house (we have the same house, it's just a weird house), and he came in—it was kind of like a sweet marriage proposal—and said, "We would be very honored if you would consider playing the role of the Corpse Bride."
How was it working with Danny Elfman on singing?
Bonham Carter: Oh, I loved it, I always wanted to do a musical, and no one would let me. So I had these two verses, and I've always been an admirer of Danny [Elfman] and his music. I just think he has genius. But he's such a nice, modest man, which is a great teacher. And he's a singer. I think he's not given enough credit. You forget sometimes he was in Oingo Boingo.
Did you like the eye popping out and the maggot in your head?
Bonham Carter: The eye! I wish my eye popped out. I do have maggots. I think we all have maggots. They don't necessarily pop out, but mine sort of chatter away.
There's something really romantic in this, even in regards to death, isn't there?
Bonham Carter: Yeah, love survives death. Oh I'm sure that's true, I mean, I hope that's true. I think we're going to meet the people that we miss, and the people that have gone before us, after. I dearly hope it would be true, yeah.
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