I'm waiting outside Tim Burton's suite at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, staring at a door to which a "Do Not Disturb" sign has been crookedly taped. This dishevelment, I'm guessing, is Burton's doing. Same goes for the ugly, all-caps scrawl underneath: "I'm already disturbed." This is the message Burton has been steadily transmitting to the world for close to thirty years, with a barbed, but never unpleasant mixture of mirth and moroseness. Burton may have grown up the "creepy" kid who preferred Vincent Price to Burt Reynolds, but he honed his voice as a filmmaker in the safe (if not always encouraging) confines of the studio system, and, by the age of thirty, was one of the most sought-after directors in the business. His dark visions, torn from the thorny thicket of an unhappy childhood, delighted the mainstream; the same people who wrote him off as a weirdo not only made him rich, they gave him the clout to pursue his every artistic whim with little or no studio interference. This kind of turnabout tormented Kurt Cobain, but it hasn't seemed to bother Burton all that much. Aside from the bloody, Hammer-inspired SLEEPY HOLLOW and his portrait of the unappreciated artist ED WOOD, Burton has maintained a fairly harmonious (i.e. profitable) relationship with his four-quadrant audience; he favors them with sweet, lightly deranged nightmares that suggest the darkness or madness inside of us is to be embraced, not feared. From "Frankenweenie" onward, Burton has been an unabashed entertainer; his films appear to be the product of a well-adjusted, seemingly content adult. This is why families trust Burton with their kids' impressionable minds as freely as they did with, say, Dr. Seuss; they know the subversion will never topple over into straight-up perversion. Only once did he rip open the long-healed wounds of childhood to reveal the loneliness and heartbreak that (to varying degrees) informs his work; twenty years later, the only curious thing about the self-portraiture of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is that he did it so early in his career. Did he banish the demons completely? When I'm finally ushered into the suite, I'm greeted by a smiling, laughing, dressed-in-black Burton (with black sunglasses - which might be an affectation most of the time, but, given the assault of the afternoon light in this over-exposed room, they're actually quite practical today). It seems like the conditions are ideal for a great interview - so it's a pity I had to start wrapping up eight minutes in. But you take what time you can get with the greats, and some of Burton's answers are, I think, revealing with regards to how he continues to thrive within the studio system, and how much of himself he's currently pouring into his work. This intro is now officially longer than the interview. Here's Mr. Burton...

Mr. Beaks: Something like "Tim Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND" seems so obvious. People hear that, and they say, "What took so long?" How did you approach it? Were you more interested in this particular script or the world of Lewis Carroll?

Tim Burton: The way I could best describe how this one was presented to me was as "ALICE IN WONDERLAND in 3-D!" That just felt really exciting. If someone had come to me a few years ago and said "ALICE IN WONDERLAND!", I don't know that it would've hit me in the same way. But just because the medium and the material seemed right, the trippiness of Wonderland in 3-D just felt really exciting to me. I didn't grow up on the books so much. I knew Alice more through pop culture, like a Tom Petty video (Laughs) ...or Jefferson Airplane or illustrators and writers incorporating the imagery into their art. It makes you realize how primal those characters are. That's what got me excited. And then I liked Linda [Woolverton's] script, because I'd seen all these other versions, but it never really hit me; it's always been some bratty little girl going (Affecting a prim-and-proper British accent), "Oh, that's weird!" All the characters are weird, but there was never any emotion to it. So this was to try to set the story in a context where it just felt more psychologically founded. It's a girl who's not comfortable in herself and trying to figure things out. That's what Carroll's world is: it's a dreamscape with all these weird characters who help you through your emotional landscape; they get you through the abstracts of life.

Beaks: The nice thing about your narrative is that it doesn't end as a courtroom drama.

Burton: (Laughs) Exactly! There are enough movies like that!

Beaks: That doesn't strike me as a Tim Burton type of finale.

Burton: (Laughing) No.

Beaks: The fascinating thing about your career is that, once upon a time, you were the outsider who found his way into the studio system and made films that were idiosyncratic, but also mainstream. Now, you're an established brand. I'm wondering how you feel about this. Does it feel like you shifted the mainstream to reflect your tastes?

Burton: I don't know. The clearest example to me is BATMAN. I remember how difficult that was. The idea of this dark kind of [movie]... they were scared of it. I mean, they weren't that scared of it. They made it. But it was uncharted territory at the time. So it does feel weird that, now, you can't do anything but that kind of thing. The darker the better; the more psychological the better. It was weird to be starting to toy around with that kind of stuff when it was not really happening. But I don't really think too much about it. You just try to be a moving shark; you just have to keep moving in the water.

Beaks: Do you find it easier to navigate?

Burton: I learned this very early on; I learned this after BATMAN, when I tried to get EDWARD SCISSORHANDS done on a small scale. I've learned from that period on that it's difficult to get any movie made. They throw a curve at you any which way it can be thrown at you - which I find always a bit strange. You're a star athlete, you're about to enter the race, and then they beat the shit out of you. They break your legs and say, "Okay, now go win that race!" I don't really understand that kind of dynamic, where you're not nurturing projects. It is an interesting dynamic, and each and every film has been difficult to get made.

Beaks: So, wait, do you still get studio notes?

Burton: Yeah. Not extensively, but I get the occasional this or that. (Pause) Yeah, I get them.

Beaks: Do you take them?

Burton: (Pause) I got to the point now... I got to this point a long time ago. I used to get really offended by it, but then I got to the point where I'm secure enough to say, "Listen, if somebody's got a good idea, great! And if they don't, great! If the janitor's got a good idea, great! My dentist? Great!" I just try not to get too adversarial. If someone's got a good idea, I take it. But I don't feel obliged to take it.

Beaks: How collaborative are you with the actors with regards to the design of their characters and how they'll fit into the world?

Burton: I've always been pretty lucky. Each thing is a slightly different thing. Something like this is weird because there aren't a lot of sets and things to bounce off of. Usually, what you enjoy when you get actors in costumes on set is that you see the world. In [ALICE IN WONDERLAND], it's much more imagined, which makes it harder for actors. But I was lucky enough on this to get actors who were game; you couldn't really be a method actor on this movie. I don't feel dictatorial, but I always feel that if you choose an actor to do it, you're choosing them because you see something or want something from them, so you kind of want to let them do it. Because if they don't feel it, how can they do it? It's important to try and get the person who senses and feels what their part is.

Beaks: And that they don't overwhelm the film. Even if they're Johnny Depp. He just feels like part of the tapestry in ALICE. He's just another eccentric.

Burton: That's what it's all about as an actor. That's why I like him. He's more like Lon Chaney or Boris Karloff than he is Alan Ladd; he wants to change and be that. He didn't become an actor to be glamorous; he wanted to become characters. That's what's exciting, and those are the kinds of people I enjoy working with. They're not in it for the celebrity or the perks; they're doing it because they kind of want to hide. (Laughs)

(I get the wrap-up signal much earlier than I expected, so I barge right into a question I'd hoped to gradually work up to.)

Beaks: EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is one of the few times a director has completely bared his soul on a studio dime. It's like VERTIGO or E.T. in that regard; it feels like you told us exactly who you are.

Burton: That's right.

Beaks: And you did it fairly early in your career.

Burton: Yeah!

Beaks: Do you ever feel like you made that film too early, that you kind of just gave it all away?

Burton: No, I'm glad I did it then because those feelings were really fresh in me. I guess there's always more things that are percolating. I always try to put stuff of me in everything, whether it's a known property or anything. But even as much as I've been doing known properties, there's always stuff that's kind of percolating. There's always room for more.

Beaks: Do you still feel like that you are that person?

Burton: Oh, sure. You can be the happiest person and have a nice big family, but there's always that thing inside you that stays. You can't help it. It's part of you.

Beaks: Can you see bringing that out in something like FRANKENWEENIE, which you'll be revisiting for Disney in 3-D? Are you finding different parts of yourself being applied to this telling of the story?

Burton: One of the reasons I wanted to do that was that there's a certain emotion in the drawings that I want to get... as much as I loved the short, there's a certain emotional quality of the drawings that I want to get.

And that's ten minutes with Tim Burton! ALICE IN WONDERLAND 3-D opens this Friday, March 5th, in theaters everywhere. Mr. Beaks