Quotes

When I met Tim Burton, it was like a breath of fresh air in terms of liberating me from dreary realism. He would push me towards German Expressionism and reference other movies. He was always a fan of old horror movies. But he would view them with a sense of humor. In that period when you try to wrap your head around his aesthetic you learn. But it was a fantastic experience that changed the way I approach movies from that movie on, as much as you just thought outside the constraints of realistic, replicating reality for movie design.

I can't think of a production designer working today who if offered the chance to design a horrible, rundown carnival/circus with all of the tents and wagons and all of the grotesquery, wouldn't leap at the opportunity because it's so much fun at an aesthetic level. Clowns and circuses are creepy to begin with.

I look for beauty and a pleasing aesthetic within the most mundane, most banal and try to find beauty. As horrible as those places are, you still get it and think it's sort of cool. The goal is to experience it cinematically and in person and bathe in it.

My memories of Beetlejuice (1988) are very fond, of course. I met my wife Catherine O'Hara, who was in it.

Any time you start a collaboration with a new director there's a certain amount of, "I'm there to help them make their movie," or at least that's the way I was raised as a designer. Very often nowadays there's a committee involved. A director has been downgraded, but that's nowadays on big movies. Then, they still gave the director the freedom to make a movie. Especially a movie like Beetlejuice (1988), which was relatively small budget in the scheme of things.

I do rough drawings. And then I work with concept artists who see my rough drawings and say "oh this is what you want!" And they generate, just gorgeous concept art, and then when people sign off on it, we really love everything, then you get a blueprint. You take the blueprint and go "oh I see." And so the set decorator, costume designer, everyone gets it, and without slavishly copying it, although concept art and stills from our show usually match up, that's fun.

On Edward Scissorhands (1990): a nostalgic wave washes over me.

About his sets for A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): They really are, to me, a series of unfortunate settings for these lovely hopefully children to inhabit, surrounded by buffoons and ridiculous evil grown-ups

About A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): The show was great because every book is so radically different. Design wise and directing wise, it's like 13 little movies that happen to have the same cast.