Vincent – A film by Tim Burton
Vincent Malloy, a polite 7-year-old boy and a fervent Vincent Price aficionado, has only one dream: to become like his idol. With this in mind and with the help of his unrestrained imagination, young Vincent relives his favourite actor’s movies and stories, performing strange experiments in the likes of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales. However, much to the boy’s irritation, somehow, his mother always manages to get in the way. Poor Vincent, no one understands you.
Credits
Written, designed, and directed by: Tim Burton
Narrated by: Vincent Price
Creation of sets and sculptures: Rick Heinrichs
Technical Director: Stephen Chiodo
Animation: Stephen Chiodo
Music by: Ken Hilton
Special Effects: Chiodo Brothers Production
Filming Locations: Disney Studios, Los Angeles
Produced by: Rick Heinrichs
Production Companies: Walt Disney Productions
Release date: 1982
Country: USA
Duration: 6 min
Production notes
Originally, Vincent was supposed to be a children’s book and I was supposed to publish it like that. But I had the opportunity at Disney to do it in stop-motion animated film.
I wanted to do stop-motion animation, because I feel there is a gravity to the three-dimensional figures, which should be the only format to use, for this story.
That’s a loophole
Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe, the monster movies, they are the ones who join me. You see someone going through some angst, some torture, things that you can relate to. And that’s a loophole. That’s what Vincent really is to me. The film comes and goes in Vincent’s reality. He believes he IS Vincent Price, and you see the world through his eyes. You come and go from your own reality and the film ends with a quote from The Raven. The people at Walt Disney thought he was dying, but he’s just lying on the ground. Who can tell if he’s really dead or just in his own little world? Funny, I like things best when they are left to your imagination. I’ve always seen happy endings as more psychotic in a way. They [Disney] wanted the light to come on and his dad to come in and say, “Come on son! We’re going to a game of football! “. This is my first experience with happy ending syndrome.
Awards
Ottawa International Animation Festival – 1984
Biography & Filmography
Timothy Walter Burton[a] (born August 25, 1958) is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist.
Known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Corpse Bride (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and Frankenweenie (2012).
Burton also directed the superhero films Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), the sci-fi film Planet of the Apes (2001), the fantasy-drama Big Fish (2003), the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and the fantasy films Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016).