Tim tells some fishy tales

AN E-MAIL arrived at work recently, which achieved the great feat of rendering me speechless for at least two minutes, informing me that the great Tim Burton would be appearing in London to publicise his latest film Big Fish.

And the e-mail said that my humble self would be one of just eight or so journalists allowed to share room space with the man.

Tim Burton is the only director to whom I have a dedicated DVD section. Save for his treatment of Planet of the Apes, there hasn't been a single project he has worked on that I haven't loved.

From Beetlejuice through Batman, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow and the simply awe-inspiring Edward Scissorhands, his skewed fairytales and dark sense of story take an audience on a journey the likes of which doesn't come around very often.

He's at that stage now where his every new release is awaited anxiously - a dot of originality and genius in an otherwise somewhat predictable film calendar. And, yes, he has recently confirmed that his next project will, indeed, be a treatment of Roald Dahl's legendary Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, starring his long-time collaborative partner Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. I'm already chomping at the bit to see that one.

Burton has a reputation as somewhat of a weird character, given the eccentrics he chooses to populate his films with, and is forever pictured as a mysterious man clad in black, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

So, imagine my surprise when he walks casually into the room, in black but sunglasses-free. I'm on his side of the room, and when he looks directly at me and says "Good morning", I nearly faint into my chair with excitement.

His hair is dark and crazily curly, but he's much softer looking in the flesh and smiling happily at us all. It could be something to do with his happily-settled homelife now, as he recently married actress Helena Bonham Carter and celebrated the birth of their son Billy.

"People are offering congratulations to me - but he might be in for some trouble!" he begins. "No, it's exciting. You go through your whole life and people call you weird and all of this and then you go through that and it is the weirdest thing that can happen to anybody! It's an incredible experience.

"It's just the most surreal thing and you can't be prepared for it. It's exciting because it makes you see life the way you always want to see life. When they see their hand for the first time, you kinda wish you could see your own hand for the first time.

"In some ways I was mentally regressing anyway, so I find flatulence quite amusing now. I'm kind of there anyway. If I had the choice of going to a meeting at a studio or changing a nappy, I think I would change the nappy."

The fatherhood theme can't really be more pertinent. Big Fish tells the story of a father and son. Burton's own parents have both passed away in the last four years, and I find out by reading a tabloid that the day before this conference, Bonham Carter's father had died.

"I treat everything personally, but my father died shortly before I got the film and so I was thinking a lot about those issues and how abstract that relationship is, and how hard it is to communicate those feelings in that parent/child relationship.

"When I got the script I felt that it speaks to that directly, and it was amazing, in that way, to explore - to have that catharsis - and it was a semi-cheap form of therapy for me to go through this.

"I didn't come from a very communicative family. We maybe spoke 10 sentences within a couple of years to each other, more of an Ingmar Bergman family situation - vacant stares cross the table.

"But at the same time, this is something about my father I recall - he had another way of telling stories. He would pretend when a full moon would come out that he would turn into a werewolf. He could make his teeth go away so he'd have these sharp teeth and he'd go and scare all the kids. It was very magical, a sense of story that I always appreciated.

"I don't expect I'll be a good verbal storyteller but I like telling stories through drawings or films or play acting."

In Big Fish, Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor play the same character at different stages of his life. They don't really look very alike - how did that come about?

"The film couldn't have been made if it didn't have this dual casting and it was looking at a picture of Albert from around Tom Jones and looking at a picture of Ewan. It's not the physical, it's more this spiritual kind of connection.

"I don't know if it's because they are a certain type of actor, not so image-conscious, they do what they want to do. There is a similarity to them.

"Ewan's one of the few actors who can do that sort of heightened reality, humour, get some emotional qualities, he'll make it believable, all at the same time and you know, each actor had a particular dyn-amic that they needed to do and that was his. I find those kinds of actors exciting, those who are able to juggle all of those things in one package."

And of course, he also cast his wife in a role as a witch. They met on the set of Planet of the Apes, where she was playing a monkey.

"I said to her 'Who gets the opportunity to see how you're gonna look when you're 103 years old?' Take it while you can! It's hard when you know somebody. I think she might say that I had been mean to her in some ways. You know them, so you don't give them 'That was great', you just go 'That was fine. Let's move along'.

"But I think she enjoys hiding behind a role. I don't want to give her a complex by constantly casting her in roles which require heavy makeup. She's got a nice face!" One of the other casting coups of the film is Karl the Giant, played by Matthew McGrory, who is, incidentally, in the Guinness Book of World Records because he has the largest feet in the world - US size 28.5!

"I have met big people before, but there was something about him.

He just had it, when he spoke there was this sort of gravity, and here's a guy who knows what it is like to be this.

"Everyday, people are looking at him weirdly. Every step he takes is a struggle.

"Playing a giant, he knows what he's talking about and he had a sensitivity to him that was great. He used to be a bouncer in a nightclub and he had done other stuff, like playing a giant alien or a monster. So he'd had a few monster roles but this is the first time that he has got to speak."

Burton began his career at Disney, working as an animator on The Fox and The Hound, along with one John Lassiter, the man behind Pixar Studios and therefore Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo.

"There were a lot of people there who were really, really good. Everyone has gone out on different roads, but there were many years when they could have been making the kind of animated films they are making now, because there was this kind of great pool of talent there.

"I'm going back to do another animated piece in the style of The Nightmare Before Christmas this year, so that's good. I can't imagine going back to Disney though."

So finally, what can we expect from his Oompa Loompas?

"Something to scare all the children."

And he laughs loudly.

Big Fish is showing at cinemas now.