Movies: Big Fish In His Own Pond

Tim Burton, misfit child of Hollywood, has made a movie about incorrigible grownups. What could this mean?

Because he tends to dress like a mortician and has made a fair number of films that romanticize gloom, Tim Burton has emerged as one of those directors who are not just makers of myths but subjects of them too. The most prevalent Burton myth is that he is dark and possibly a little disturbed. In addition to his clothes and movies, there are eerie bits of biography to support this view, like the fact that Burton's parents blacked out the windows of his childhood bedroom, apparently to save on heating bills. (Burton grew up in Burbank, Calif.--not a notoriously difficult...

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