When Tim Burton was an eager young animator and filmmaker working at Disney Studios in the early 1980s, he made an inventive live-action short film inspired by his childhood in Burbank and the love of a family dog.
In a great piece by Anthony Breznican over at EW, Tim Burton reveals that the true inspiration for Frankenweenie was actually a fluffy white dog named Pepe that he had as a kid. In the photo above, you'll see that Pepe is the white dog sitting between Burton's mother and his kid brother.
Victor has to believe not only that Sparky can be revived the way the dead so often are in the Hollywood stories he has imitated in his home movies but also that he, a science whiz, is the ordained reanimator. Frankenweenie's message to the young: children should play with dead things.
Corpse Bride's Victor and Frankenweenie's have pretty much the same character design, with pointy chins, really big eyes, thin noses, dark shadows around the eyes, and small mouths, but they aren't the same character.
'Frankenweenie' is a story of a young boy whose dog is killed, and he is so upset over the loss of his pet that he decides to bring the dog back to life. This is a sad film with a comical twist - there were some funny scenes and some very sad/disturbing scenes too.
Frankenweenie borrows a lot of other things from his childhood. The animated film (a remake of his 1984 live-action short for Disney) was inspired by one of Burton's unusual early friendships—with a fluffy white mutt named Pepe, along with their counter-intuitively named gray dog Frosty.
"Frankenweenie" is another stop-motion animation by Tim Burton in black and white with a great tribute to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a happy ending.
Despite those similarities, Tim Burton actually had nothing whatsoever to do with Coraline's production. The filmmaker behind Coraline is Wendell & Wild director Henry Selick, but this hasn't stopped the beloved adaptation of the Neil Gaiman comic from being falsely attributed to Burton by far too many people.
Why did Tim Burton make Frankenweenie black and white?
"It had to be stop-motion and it had to be black and white. It's hard to put into words, but for me it makes it more emotional," says Burton. "I felt so strongly about it that if the studio had said: 'We'll do the movie but it has to be in colour', I just wouldn't have done it. It was that important."
In true Tim Burton fashion, the town doesn't find itself in any set time period and remains steadily ambiguos. Certain aesthetic places itself in the heart of the mid-late 1950s, while cultural and scripted references play out a time set more in the modern age.
After picking up the ball across the street, Sparky walks back to the field until a car accidentally hits Sparky, killing him. Victor is crushed by Sparky's death and desires to have him back.
Tim Burton's best film in years. This delightfully twisted story about a boy and his (dead) dog showcases precisely what Burton excels at: blending the macabre and the heartfelt in a perfect, if oddball, union. Frankenweenie is a love story between a boy and his dog.
Burton was born on August 25, 1958, in Burbank, California, the son of Jean Burton (née Erickson, 1933–2002), later the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and William "Bill" Burton (1930–2000), a former minor league baseball player who was working for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department.
Frankenweenie is a 2012 American 3D stop-motion animated science fiction horror comedy film directed by Tim Burton, written by John August, and starring Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Charlie Tahan, Atticus Shaffer, and Winona Ryder.
Parents need to know that Tim Burton's black-and-white, stop-motion animated film Frankenweenie is the feature-length version of a short he made early in his career. Like most of Burton's films, Frankenweenie's tone is dark and creepy and will likely scare kids who are sensitive to the macabre.
Shot in color but released in black and white, and animated using stop-motion figures, the film about a boy, Victor Frankenstein, and his (undead) dog actually has its roots in a 1984 short that director Tim Burton made before his career as a feature director took off.
