Another Halloween season, another reason to break outThe Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack Skellington and friendshave duly taken over the Haunted Mansion rideat Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, andDanny Elfmanisleading a 30th anniversary concert celebrationat the Hollywood Bowl. It’s quite the show of mainstream acceptance towards a movie that was once a cast-off to Disney’s Touchstone arm. But then,Nightmarehas always worked on long timetables. Just winning a chance to make the film was a nearly ten-year trek, with another two years in production. But the journey was worth it, given how meaningfulNightmarebecame for the three key creative forces behind the picture.
Nightmare Before ChristmasWas a Turning Point for Tim Burton and Danny Elfman
For creator-producerTim Burton,Nightmarewas among his earliest projects. Growing up in suburban Burbank, with its perpetually sunny weather, Burton felt disconnected from the seasons until the holidays came into town, bringing with them department store decorations. “It gave you some sort of texture all of a sudden that wasn’t there before,”he recalled. Halloween and Christmas were his favorites growing up; Halloween had monsters, and Christmas had TV specials likeHow the Grich Stole ChristmasandRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The latter was done in the stop-motion animation technique Burton already loved from the films ofRay Harryhausen. This was the form he chose to experiment with was an animator at Disney. Burton’s short film “Vincent,” narrated byVincent Pricehimself, gave him his first shot at directing, and he wanted to follow it up with another stop-motion project based on a poem he had written from those childhood holiday memories – “The Nightmare before Christmas.”
The tale picked up some thematic complexity on the way from boyhood observations. Jack Skellington wasn’t just an inverted Grinch; he was a king disillusioned with his realm of Halloweenland and completely oblivious to any consequences his plan to commandeer Christmas might have. “I like that kind of character that’s passionate but doesn’t know what he’s doing,” said Burton. “I think it’s a reaction against the kind of society you grow up with, where people don’t feel a lot or go out on a limb a lot.” Burton was certainly going out on a limb pitching the concept to the Disney of the early ‘80s; a stop motion passion project about a manic-depressive skeleton’s midlife crisis was like nothing else on their slate. To top it off, Burton deliberately subverted the unwritten “eyes for expression” rule of animation by designing Jack without eyeballs. He hoped initially for a more elaborate version of “Vincent,” narrated by Price. “Back then I think I would have done it as anything,” he told biographerMark Salisbury. “A television special, a short film – whatever would have gotten it done.” But Disney wouldn’t bite – not until Burton left the studio, won fame and fortune culminating inBatman, and started being referred to by the Hollywood press as “the leader in a post-Spielberg generation of filmmakers.” It wasn’t a position Burton sought or wanted; his production company, seen as a “younger, hipper version” of Amblin Entertainment, fizzled in a matter of years. But in the early 90s, he did use his newfound clout to coax Disney onto that stop-motion limb he developed a decade earlier.
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For composer Danny Elfman,Nightmarebecame an outlet for his own identity crisis. He was well into his second career as a film composer, but his first – front man for the rock group Oingo Boingo – still weighed on him. “[I was] king of my own world,”he said, but “I felt like Jack from where I was in life … I wanted out” (Oingo Boingo disbanded in 1995, two years afterNightmare’srelease). Film scoring was Elfman’s Christmastown, and he had already settled into the role of Burton’s composer of choice. ButNightmarewas the first musical for either man, and they didn’t know how to start. All they had to work with was Burton’s poem, his artwork, and an adaptation by screenwriterMichael McDowellthat wasn’t working.So they figured: “Let’s just start writing songs!” Burton would report to Elfman’s house with fresh drawings and tell him part of the story, prompting musical ideas in Elfman’s mind. He would shoo Burton out of the house and start writing. On Burton’s next visit, they would review Elfman’s work from last time, then move on to the next section of the story.
The result was a musical more akin toGilbert and Sullivanthan Broadway, an operetta that got over nearly every major character turn through song. As those songs came together through rewriting and demo tapes, Elfman grew more and more attached to the role of Jack Skellington – and loathe to hand it off to anyone else. “I hadn’t started out thinking it was for me, but by the end…I go up to [Tim], I go, ‘You know, Tim, I don’t know how to say this, but Jack – these songs -’ and he goes, ‘Danny, don’t worry. You’re doing it.’”
NightmareLaunched Henry Selick’s Feature Film Career
For directorHenry Selick,Nightmarewas his first feature film. Like Burton, he studied at CalArts and was drafted by Disney in the early 80s. Also like Burton, Selick was frustrated and underutilized by the management of the time. A fellow devotee of stop-motion but possessed with enough patience to routinely work with the technique, Selick established a base in San Francisco, directing segments for music videos and television commercials. He built up a core team of top animators who were ready, willing, and able to take on a full-length project. Burton was committed toBatman Returns(and not keen for the length and intensity directing an animated project would entail) and put in the call: would Selick be interested? Selick didn’t need much convincing; he’d seen the development work forNightmareat Disney and loved it.
“Henry is a real artist,” Burton told Salisbury. “He’s truly the best.” With no more knowledge of how to start a musical than his producer and composer, Selick happily dove into production withjust three of Elfman’s songs. He and his story team fleshed the film out in visual terms while his animators labored to meet the (in animation terms) tight schedule and budget. All the while, Burton’s clout – and geography – kept studio interference at bay. “It was important for me to stay away from Los Angeles,” Selick insisted. “I think that if Disney and even Tim had too much access to us, they would have gotten too nervous and gummed up the works.” Speaking of the working relationship he had with his producer,Selick said that“it’s as though [Burton] laid the egg, and I sat on it and hatched it.” Burton told Salisbury that his main concern was “that Henry, being an artist in his own right, wouldn’t do the things I wanted … [b]ut it wasn’t like that. He was great.”
Which isn’t to say there was never tension over the two years of production. Burton’s hope of involving Vincent Price fell apart when Price, sick and despondent over his wife’s passing, couldn’t manage the role of Santa Claus in Selick’s estimation (the role went toEd Ivoryinstead). Selick also felt that Elfman, while excellent as Jack’s singing voice, didn’t have the same energy in straight dialogue. Replacing Elfman withChris Sarandonrequired Burton’s approval, and there were hurt feelings when Burton sided with his director. And an attempt by Selick to throw in a twist at the end regarding the identity of Oogie Boogiesaw Burton put his foot through a wall.
The Writing ofNightmareWas Contentious
It was the plotting and screenwriting ofNightmarethat seems to have been the most contentious process, one that took its toll on everyone involved. ScreenwriterCaroline Thompson, Burton’s writer onEdward Scissorhandsand Elfman’s then-girlfriend, was brought in to write the script, but only after most of the songs were completed and animation had begun. She has claimed that what little work McDowell had done prior to her hiring was unusable bordering on nonexistent; “he took his salary up his nose and wrote nothing,“she toldThe Holiday Movies That Made Us.
Just how much of the finished story and dialogue can be credited to Thompson is a little fuzzy. She’s concededthat Elfman’s songs do much of the storytelling, at least as far as Jack is concerned. She and Elfmanhave conflicting memoriesof how he reacted to the first draft. And Selick once claimed toSight & Soundmagazine that “there are very few lines of dialogue that are Caroline’s. She became busy on other films and we were constantly re-writing.” But Thompson has also said that she is largely responsible for the character of Sally, who was thinly sketched in earlier material with a more voluptuous design. Thompson pulled Sally in a more sensitive direction, inspired by the fairy tale of the Little Match Girl, and Elfman later added “Sally’s Song” to his work.
There Was More Fighting in Post-production
Reflecting after the fact, Burton told Salisbury that the late stages ofNightmare’sproduction saw him, Selick, Elfman, and Thompson acting like “a bunch of kids, fighting.” Besides his argument with Selick over Oogie Boogie, he got into a row with Thompson over what was needed for Jack and Sally’s romance andtook his frustrations out on an editing machine. Selick, who as since been more complimentary to Thompson’s work, at one point accused her of ruining the movie. And Thompson had her own concerns aboutOogie Boogie. To this day, shethinks the villain has uncomfortable racist overtonesin looks (she sees a Ku Klux Klan hood in his design) and name (“boogie” is an old Southern derogatory slang term for Black people). She unsuccessfully tried to convince Selick and Burton to change the character. Selick defended Oogie at the time; in his Sight & Sound interview, he said that Oogie’s voice, Black actorKen Page, had no issues with the part, and he’s since cited theCab Calloway-led cartoons of the Fleischer brothersas inspiration.
Even the film’s title became a point of contention. Originally meant to be a Disney film released asThe Nightmare Before Christmas, it became a Touchstone project titledTim Burton’sNightmare… very late in the game, something that Selick found “a little unfair…I would have been fine with that, if that’s what I signed up for. But Tim was in L.A. making two features while I directed that film… it was really me and my team of people who brought that to life.”
Burton did exercise a hand in post-production, though. He made trims, adjusted the pace, and got into one more argument with Selick, this time about the songs. With ten numbers,Nightmareis well over the norm for an animated musical, andSelick worried that so many numbers would lose the audience. Unlike the fight over Jack’s speaking voice, Burton didn’t back Selick on this. He insisted that all the songs be animated, with the option to pull back later. As it happened, the two ended up switching positions in post, the director now insisting that every song “had become such an integral part of the film – character development, the emotional center and just basic storytelling – that I felt there would be a huge hole.” Twenty-eight years later, with Elfman headlining live concert performances and the movie more accepted at Halloween and Christmas than poor Jack ever was, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
