Vincent Price Said He Achieved ‘Immortality’ With a 5-Minute Tim Burton Film
What To Know
- Tim Burton created the short film Vincent in 1982 at Disney, inspired by his childhood admiration for horror icon Vincent Price and expressionist cinema.
- Vincent Price narrated the film, considering it the most gratifying project of his career and describing it as giving him “immortality” beyond his previous cinematic achievements.
- The collaboration was deeply meaningful for both Burton and Price, with Burton viewing Price as a formative influence and Price appreciating the psychological depth and homage of the film.
The five-minute film Vincent was one of Tim Burton’s first screen projects and one of Vincent Price’s last — and, for the actor, one of the most significant.
The 1982 film predated Burton’s work on Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands, and it came after Price had already made a name for himself in cinematic Edgar Allan Poe adaptations like House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and The Masque of the Red Death.
But in Price’s mind, it was Vincent that gave him immortality…
Tim Burton grew up idolizing Vincent Price
Growing up in Burbank, California, Burton found escapism and early influences in the works of expressionist cinema, Japanese monster movies, Universal Studios horror flicks, illustrators like Edward Gorey and Charles Addams, and icons of suspense like Price, as his website explains.
“I went to see almost any monster movie, but it was the films of Vincent Price that spoke to me specifically for some reason,” he wrote in his book Burton on Burton. “Vincent Price was somebody I could identify with. When you’re younger things look bigger, you find your own mythology, you find what psychologically connects to you. And those movies, just the poetry of them, and this larger-than-life character who goes through a lot of torment — mostly imagined — just spike to me in the way Gary Cooper or John Wayne might have to somebody else.”
Burton filmed Vincent during his time at Disney
During his time as an animator and concept artist Disney, Burton worked on the film The Black Cauldron and on a concept called Trick or Treat, but he had grown bored, as he related in Burton on Burton. A lifeline came in 1982, when Tom Wilhite, then head of creative development at Disney, gave Burton $60,000 to produce Vincent.
“I had written Vincent originally as a children’s book and was going to do it that way first,” Burton said. “But then I got the opportunity to make it as a stop-motion film. I wanted to do that kind of animation because I felt there was a gravity to those three-dimensional figures that was more real for that story. That was really important to me, I wanted it to feel real.”
Burton worked on the project with Disney animator Rick Heinrichs, stop-motion animation Steven Chiodo, and cinematographer Victor Abdalov, and after two months, the short film was finished. Vincent follows a 7-year-old named Vincent Malloy who fancies himself Vincent Price and whose imagination runs wild with images from Price’s adaptations of Poe’s work.
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“Vincent Price, Edgar Allen Poe, those monster movies, those spoke to me,” Burton. “You see somebody going through that anguish and that torture — things you identity with — and it acts as a kind of therapy, a release. You make a connection with it. That’s what the Vincent thing really was for me.”
Meeting Price was a highlight of Burton’s life
Getting Price to narrate Vincent was “probably one of the most shaping experiences” of Burton’s life, as the latter explained in Burton on Burton. “He was so wonderful, and so interesting as a person in what he liked in terms of art and stuff. He was very supportive. I always had the feeling he understood what the film was about, even more than I did; he understood that it wasn’t just a simple homage, like, ‘Gee, Mr. Price, I’m your biggest fan.’ He understood the psychology of it, and that amazed me and made me feel very good, made me feel that someone saw me for what I was, and accepted me on that level.”
Price called Vincent “the most gratifying thing that ever happened”
For his part, Price said that the Vincent short film “was the most gratifying thing that ever happened” to him, per Animation World.
“It was immortality,” he added, “better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard.”
Burton and Price would collaborate again before the actor’s death in 1993. Price hosted Burton’s 1983 short film Hansel and Gretel, and he played the inventor in 1990’s Edward Scissorhands. During the production of the latter, Burton directed a documentary about the actor’s life, titled A Visit With Vincent.
As his career progressed, Burton got a chance to work with other great talents, many of whom he idolized as a child, but no collaboration topped his interaction with Price. “It’s surreal to work with those people who you’ve watched as you grow up,” as he said in Burton on Burton. “But my first experience with Vincent Price on Vincent, that was the ultimate.”