We Sat Down With Tim Burton, Amy Adams And Christoph Waltz For A Chat About Their New Movie ‘Big Eyes’

A lot can change in three months! It was just before Christmas when I sat down with film director and all-‘round weird icon Tim Burton and the cast of his latest film Big Eyes. Since then, star Amy Adams has won a Golden Globe for her performance in the film, it’s been announced Burton is making a live-action remake of Dumbo (1941) and that he and wife Helena Bonham Carter are separating (what will happen to the bridge between their homes?). If only we’d known and been able to get the juicy scoop. Still, sitting down with one of cinema’s most oddball directors, a grumpy Christoph Waltz and Amy freakin’ Adams was not half bad, either.

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Turning Bad Art Into Good Art

Big Eyes is a biopic of 1960s art-world sensation Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) who was swindled out of recognition for her work by her smarmy husband Walter (Christoph Waltz). It wasn’t until six years after leaving the violently tempestuous conman that Margaret went to court for recognition as the real artist behind her paintings. Adams and Waltz are wonderfully supported by Jason Schwartzman, Krysten Ritter, and a scene-stealing Terence Stamp.

Despite the recent surge in sales, Keane’s famously kitschy works were never embraced by critics, which was definitely a story that attracted Burton. It’s been 20 years since working with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski on Ed Wood (2014) about another much-maligned artist. “They excel at finding these truth-is-stranger-than-fiction real life people,” Burton says of the project that thankfully steers clear of being another bad visual effects spectacle starring goofy Johnny Depp like Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Dark Shadows (2012).

Burton didn’t stumble upon the story of Big Eyes. Rather, his affiliation with Keane’s work goes back to his childhood where his and everyone else’s family in his suburban hometown had a big eyes poster. “It was in people’s living-rooms and offices and their kitchen,” Burton says before quoting pop art extraordinaire Andy Warhol: “If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it,” with a smattering of umms and aahs as if even he doesn’t quite buy what he’s selling. “You’d be in somebody’s living room and you’d ask ‘why do they have a picture of a child with big eyes on the wall?’ It’s kind of weird, you know?”

In the 1990s Burton even commissioned Keane to do a portrait of his then-fiancé Lisa Marie and their pet chihuahua. He commissioned another years later of wife Helena Bonham Carter and their child: “I couldn’t say I liked the painting, but I was disturbed and found it quite haunting, slightly nightmarish.” It’s a shame then that Burton couldn’t incorporate more of that disturbing milieu into the film, like in the film’s best scene where Margaret hallucinates that her paintings are becoming reality.

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Adams Family Value

“I’m tired” is the first thing Amy Adams says when I remind her that it’s been 15 years since her first acting gig in cult comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) and a decade since Junebug launched her into Oscar-nominated stardom. “It feels like a hundred years ago!” Now married with kids, plus five Oscar nominations for Junebug, Doubt (2008), The Fighter (2010), The Master (2012) and American Hustle (2013), she isn’t slowing down with sequels to Man of Steel (2013) as well as a proposed Janis Joplin biopic on the cards.

“I went through my 30s, which every woman will tell you is awesome… to be done with.” The more reflective tone in her responses continues when the topic of Margaret Keane and whether her story could happen again today. “I think we’re just more savvy with the media, and everyone’s more informed. Or, at least we think we’re informed.”

She’s less optimistic about Margaret’s relationship to her husband and whether that could still happen today. “I think this kind of relationship still exists where you have a dominating partner who manipulates and isolates. It happens with frequency.”

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Cranky Christoph

Christoph Waltz does not seem to be in a good mood the day of our interview. The two-time Oscar winner’s answers are short and he doesn’t seem to be in the mood to discuss much – a diversion to the subject of Quentin Tarantino, who he’s making another film with, leaves him baffled.

Nevertheless, he shakes my hand and we share a joke about how ironic it is that every room in the hotel has the same painting. He speaks of his childhood in Austria, echoing Burton’s sentiments of growing up with Keane’s odd images in people’s homes. He would go to a friend’s house to watch Bonanza and there “next to the TV there was a Keane print. A girl with a scrawny cat and I always wondered why anyone would put a picture in their living room. The big eyes didn’t disturb me, I just thought some generic American kid [did it].”

It’s fitting that Waltz has built a career in America, since growing up his neighbours called his family “The Americans” simply because they wore blue jeans. Nowadays, “it’s all American media. That was a very nifty device of the Americans after the war, to push their culture and their products.” He’s most animated is when he shouts “globalisation is Americanisation!” to the room.

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But What About Beetlejuice 2?

The recent news that Tim Burton will direct a live-action remake of Dumbo was not met with the greatest of receptions by fans – or even PETA. It once again positions the once truly unique director as just one a series of directors for hire by Disney – the same company that once dumped him from their roster when he was deemed too macabre. Big Eyes may not be a great movie, but it at least felt like something he was passionate about.

Please tell me why we need a love action film of Dumbo written by the guy who wrote 3 transformer movies and why is Tim Burton interested?

— Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) March 10, 2015

The second reason the Dumbo announcement was so disappointing is that it will likely mean Burton has to push aside a proposed sequel to Beetlejuice (1988). With the comeback of Michael Keaton in Birdman (2014) and his self-proclaimed desire to work again with original star Winona Ryder, it felt like the perfect time to resurrect the scheming ghoul and his Harry Belafonte records.

He remained cagey about the subject, but mentioned his work with Winona on The Killers’ “Here With Me” video in 2012. “I love most of the people I work with, whether its Winona or Michael Keaton…” before notably changing the subject as if not wanting to give anything away even though Keaton seemed to let slip earlier in the year. Go ahead, make our millennium.

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Big Eyes is out on March 19