By Erin Free
Considered by many to be Tim Burton’s (Beetlejuice, Batman, Ed Wood) masterpiece, Edward Scissorhands is the perfect modern fairy tale, telling of a reclusive boy (a soulful, star-making turn from Johnny Depp in one of his bravest and most imaginative performances) with scissors for hands who is introduced to the strange world of American suburbia, and finds love with a high school cheerleader (Winona Ryder). Working for the first time with regular muse, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton found all of the pathos and thematic richness in Caroline Thompson’s excellent script, and delivers a film of rare wonder. A visual wonder (with stunning tableaux created in the days before CGI), the influence of the film has been keenly felt in the years since its release, specifically in the world of dance (the film was reimagined as a beautiful touring musical for the stage in 2008) and, well, porn (Edward Penishands remains one of the most infamous hardcore parodies of all time), as well as across the pop cultural stratosphere in general.
Interestingly, the original 1990 film (which was born when two unconventional talents – screenwriter, Caroline Thompson, and Tim Burton – were brought together by their shared agent, and soon realised that they were outsider kindred spirits in the glitzy world of Hollywood) was initially conceived as a musical. “We thought that the audience would have a really hard time accepting a character as fantastical as Edward,” Caroline Thompson told FilmInk in 2008. “We thought that they would be more accepting if it was a musical. I wasn’t a very experienced screenwriter at the time [Edward Scissorhands was Thompson’s first published work], and my first take on the material was a 75-page prose treatment. I also took the opportunity to write some really bad lyrics. [Laughs] When Tim read the treatment, he felt very confident that the story was so strong that we didn’t need to have the music and the lyrics to sell the idea to an audience, so we abandoned it at that point…much to my relief, I have to say [Laughs].”
Though conceived prior to his massive breakout hit with 1989’s mega-smash, Batman, it was Burton’s subsequent Hollywood “power surge” that allowed him to make Edward Scissorhands in exactly the way that he wanted to, resulting in a true stand-alone. “I won’t name names, but many actors were interested in Edward Scissorhands,” Thompson revealed to FilmInk, “and they asked questions like, ‘Well, how does he go to the bathroom?’ and they asked if Edward would have sex, and things like that. You know, questions that nobody could ever answer, and that you shouldn’t have to answer. But that’s just the kind of bullshit that a studio needs answered in the development process. The film would have died a sad little death in that process if it wasn’t for Tim’s success with Batman. It probably wouldn’t get made today either. Oh my god, you have no idea, especially nowadays, of how studios micromanage everything. They wanna tell you when to fart and where to put the comma, and it just drives you mad.”
Though writers are rarely – if ever – welcomed onto the film set these days, Caroline Thompson was encouraged to contribute by Tim Burton, and she even gave Johnny Depp a little on-set coaching. “Johnny was really confused about how to do this character,” Thompson explains. “He asked me if I could give him a clue, and I said, ‘Well, the one thing that I can tell you is that the character is based on this wonderful dog that we used to have who was so intelligent and so present that, you know, the only reason that she couldn’t talk was because she lacked the physical attributes to be able to talk. And he just took that, and he got it. He would have found the character on his own anyway, but it just snapped in like that. And he just became this beautiful I-don’t-quite-get-it-but-I-wanna-be-here-creature. He was like the perfect dog.” In the perfect movie…
