Death Becomes Him

MOMA CELEBRATES THE DARK ARTISTRY OF TIM BURTON

Attention, MoMA visitors: if you detect an increase in the appearance of black nail polish, complicated zippered jackets, pallid foundation makeup, and bed head among your fellow patrons, do not be alarmed. Opening November 22 and running through April 26, a major gallery show and film exhibition, "Tim Burton," offers an all-encompassing look at the blockbuster career of the filmmaker behind such whimsically disquieting modern-goth scarytales as Edward Scissorhands, Beedejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sweeney Todd, and Tim Burtons Corpse Bride. The director’s 14 features, which also include Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Ed Wood, will be screened (perhaps prompting a long-overdue critical re-appraisal of 1996’s campy Mars Attacks!), along with several homemade shorts Burton shot as an alienated teen and—the holy grail for Burton fanatics!—the television adaptation of Hansel and Gretel he made for the Disney Channel in 1983. (“I think they showed it once, at three A.M. on Halloween night, and never again,” says Burton, who is currently busy with his forthcoming adaptation of Alice in Wonderland) The bigger draw, however, will be the more than 700 visual works, most previously unseen —paintings, sculptures, storyboards, and drawings—culled primarily from Burton’s private archive. For the director, having his work shown in the Museum of Modern Art is “an out-of-body experience,” he says. “I didn’t grow up in a real museum culture,” he adds of his childhood in Burbank, California, “unless you count the Hollywood Wax Museum.” -AARON GELL