Jack Skellington Goes Hollywood

By: SCOTT COLLURA
Date: Thursday, October 24, 2002

There are certain films that have come to be recognized as true holiday classics, required viewing every time a treasured day like Christmas or Halloween comes along, but most such pictures tend to have originated decades agoIT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, or the Rankin/Bass animated specials, for example. One exception to this rule is Tim Burton's beloved mishmash of holidays, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

The stop-motion animated feature was only released nine years ago, but in that time it's very quickly become a must-see at Halloween time, ranked up there with other October classics such as IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN and Rankin/Bass' MAD MONSTER PARTY? For those lucky enough to live in the Los Angeles area, NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS can be viewed this year on the big screen in all its creepy glory at Hollywood's legendary movie palace, The El Capitan Theatre. Playing along with NIGHTMARE are two of Burton's short films, "Frankenweenie" and "Vincent."

The run

Cover art for Neil Gaiman's CORALINE

begins this Friday, October 25 and will continue until midnight on Halloween (of course). Additionally, two filmmaker panels will be offered on the 25^th, featuring Henry Selick, the animator-turned-director who helmed NIGHTMARE for Burton, "Frankenweenie" co-star Shelley Duvall, and Nightmare co-star Glenn Shadix.

"I've done this once or twice before. They started running the film a few years ago every Halloween," says Selick, who offers his take on why the film's popularity has not only persisted, but grown. "The timelessness to it... it's not going to ever date. It's an old-fashioned technique; stop-motion was used to create it, so even when it was brand new it kind of felt old, like it might have been around. [And] Tim's idea of combining two holidays, a collision of Halloween and Christmas, is brilliant. And then, you know, Danny Elfman's songs really, really work well."

For the unlucky few among our readers who are not familiar with the film, NIGHTMARE tells the tale of Jack Skellington, Halloween Town's Pumpkin King, who decides to take over the running of Christmas one year. To that end, he arranges to have Santa Claus kidnapped so that he can take the famous gift-giver's place, but eventually Jack sees the error of his ways and realizes he must restore Christmas to its correct state. First, however, he must face the nasty Oogie Boogie, who's the real bad guy of the piece.

Selick for his part admits that despite the fairly unconventionalby today's standardsuse of stop-motion animation in NIGHTMARE, he wasn't all that surprised that the film was a success.

"I didn't

Things aren't going well for Santa in THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

have any particular hopes [for the film's success]," he says. "I worked on it more than three years and we knew that it was a beautifully made film, all handmade. I had faith that people would discover it, if not right away... that the craft and the story would find an audience."

The filmmaker, who followed NIGHTMARE with another stop-motion fest in 1996, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, clearly has a great love for that particular style of animation. At the same time, he recognizes that Hollywood is very much an industry that caters to "what's hot," and therefore he is realistic about what types of animated films are getting made these days.

"If you want to get funding for an animated feature right now, you're going to most easily get funding for a CG movie," says Selick. "[It's just that] those have been the most successful films in the last [few] years, starting with TOY STORY and [up through] ICE AGE. I'd say that at the beginning [the look of CG] made it stand out. It was different looking, but if TOY STORY had been a bad film, its being CG wouldn't have saved it. So CG's amazing, it can do anything, although it's still very poorly used at times. It often has that kind of plastic surface that's a little like moving textures that don't feel natural. But everything comes and goes in fashion. Probably one of the top three animated films of all time is out right now; it's called SPIRITED AWAY by Miyazaki. It's done primarily all traditional hand drawn like old Disney films. So I believe that all the techniques will always be there, but CG for the time being is what's popular."

Since his

Henry Selick, director of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

work on NIGHTMARE and JAMES AND THE GIANT peach, Selick has entered the world of live-action (with an animated twist) with 2001's MONKEYBONE and the project he's currently at work on, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's children's book Coraline. As for future fully animated outings, he says that he is currently in early talks about bringing another stop-motion feature to the big screen. He can't divulge any details about the project at this time, but he does acknowledge that there has been talk of a NIGHTMARE sequel from time to time.

"It's come up a few times," he says. "Even last spring for a few weeks I was actually talking to Disney about doing a sequel and there was a couple of ideas. But Tim wasn't really interested at that time, so it sort of started to heat up, and then it went away."

Regardless of whether or not we ever get to see the further adventures of Jack Skellington, Selick finds that he is very content with the stature NIGHTMARE has achieved.

"It's a real nice feeling," he says when asked about the film's popularity, adding that the picture continues to have an effect on his family life as well. "I have a couple of boys and our youngest is just four years old, and we're going to show it to him for the first time this year. I'm excited to see how he reacts. Our oldest boy Harry was born during production. He kind of grew up, his first few years, when he was exposed to all the characters and sets. And he still has a set of NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS sheets!"

Selick has

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

also noticed a difference in recent years in how the film is treated by the studio that sponsored it, Disney.

"Disney was always kind of... I don't know if you want to call it afraid of the movie, but they always sort of pushed it off to the side," says the director. "At the time it was a gift to Tim Burton to get him to come back to Disney and make movies for them. So they didn't really get behind it in a big way at the time. It's just taken many, many years for Disney to get what they had. And they finally, like two years ago and they did it again this year, at Disneyland they redecorated the haunted house as NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. So I think it's kind of like their first acknowledgment that it's a Disney movie."

For those who are lucky enough to be in the vicinity of The El Capitan over the next week, do yourself a favor and check out THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. In addition to the opening night panels, the entire run features an exhibit with NIGHTMARE props and sets on display in the theatre's lobby. Here's a rundown of the schedule: