Not that I have anything against Tim Burton, but today I had people either asking me how the new Tim Burton movie was or expressing their hesitation at seeing Coraline because they don’t like Tim Burton.
So, because I’m tired of people confusing Coraline as another Tim Burton film, and because I am also one of those people who was under the mistaken impression that The Nightmare Before Christmas was written and directed by Tim Burton (but mostly because I’m one of those annoying people who jump up on rooftops to tell everyone they’re wrong about some nit), I present you with the real story, as told by Neil Gaiman:
…Henry Selick, directed The Nightmare Before Christmas: he worked on the story with the screenwriter, Caroline Thompson (another person whose contribution tends to be forgotten), and the songwriter, Danny Elfman, to turn Tim’s character sketches and poem into a film script, then he spent years in a warehouse in San Francisco overseeing people moving dolls around a frame at a time, with Tim off making fine movies; and, then, a couple of weeks before the film came out, the title was changed to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Which tends to mean that people assume that Tim made the film and if they even notice Henry was involved as director, they assume it was in some strange kind of junior role. (Nope, he was the director. He grew Tim’s poem and character sketches into a movie. Tim produced it.)
So, there.
