Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 233



Only Noblemtl

233.

Tim Burton describes himself as “a person who is clearly different from other people.”

Was it his innate temperament? Or was it a reaction to the environment he grew up in?

He thought the word ‘normal’ could be a great violence. But he felt that he was a great ‘Weirdo’ and was more comfortable being alone. From childhood, he preferred to play in a cemetery where everyone was scared or watch B-movie horror movies starring Vincent Price rather than laugh and talk normally with others.

As a result, everything in his head became jumbled and ambivalent.

Life and death, humans and ghosts, good and evil, right and wrong.

In his world, what was right was bizarre, and what was scary was inexplicably transformed into something interesting.

When someone who actually knew Tim Burton asked him, “Aren’t you scared of Pee-wee Herman?”, Tim Burton didn’t take it seriously, but he thought it was a very interesting question for him. The characteristic cheerfulness and gaiety of children’s characters can turn into grotesqueness and cruelty if they cross the line.

‘Pee-wee Herman’ was a character like ‘Woody Woodpecker’ who smoked a handful of weed. Woody was a woodpecker who laughed ‘Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!’ and many people loved his crazy cheerfulness.

But Tim Burton, despite his liking for the film, didn’t really like the character. When he saw the character, he felt the urge to die when he would laugh and then suddenly become depressed.

Tim Burton has suffered from bipolar disorder for a long time.

He would periodically have alternating episodes of mania and depression, and as he experienced them repeatedly, he would become more and more worn out. He developed a habit of looking deeply into his own and others’ psychology due to his constantly fluctuating emotions, and he expressed this by making animations and films.

Tim Burton’s signature sensibility: vivid, colorful horror, dark, unholy happiness.

And the emotion he felt most strongly while reading the works of the writer who had such characteristics, God, was ’emptiness.’

Hearing those words, Shin felt as if something had struck his heart hard.

The white man sitting across from me had disheveled hair and was wearing a shabby suit. I hadn’t even been able to make eye contact with him until just now. ······It was the same with God.

But the moment he uttered the word ’emptiness’, the two men’s gazes crossed in midair for the first time.

God chewed on the word.

‘It’s emptiness.’

It was an expression that felt incredibly heavy.

How much thought must have gone into Tim Burton coming up with that one word? That’s why, instead of making hasty judgments about the expression, God asked in a cautious voice.

“In what way did you feel that way?”

“······Shall we walk a bit?”

Tim suggested, looking to the side, and Shin nodded.

‘It’s more comfortable for both of us to talk about these things alone.’

When I said I wanted to talk to them for a moment, Simon and Michael said they would and naturally moved on to talking about business.

Thinking that it would be okay to leave it like this, Shin went out with Tim Burton.

The story began in earnest as we took the elevator down to the first floor.

“Shall we start with ‘Mother’?”

“Oh, yes. Okay.”

“I think it was a work that was both a horror story and a work that showed distrust of humanity to the extreme. The main character, Suji, is most afraid of her own ‘mother,’ but she ends up becoming that same being, which I thought was a really interesting tragedy. I think that when you twist something that people are familiar with, you get really interesting results, and in that sense, I thought this work would have good synergy with me.”

From the moment the young Tim Burton was alone, he began to freely express the thoughts that came to him as he saw God’s work.

The two left the deserted Warner Brothers lobby and began walking down the street, stopping at a nearby street cafe to buy a cup of coffee each and continuing their conversation while leisurely enjoying the sunlight.

After ‘Mother’, Tim Burton explained the common emotions he felt in the three works, ‘Double Spy’, ‘Princess Quest’, and ‘About T’, as examples. Shin listened to the story with interest while sipping a cup of Americano.

According to the team, the three works seemed to convey a sense of trust in humanity.

From ‘Double Spy’, where two spies are enemies but then cooperate, to ‘Princess Quest’, where three main characters become true comrades, and finally ‘About T’, which even reaches into the difficult field of love.

“But all three works have the characteristic that the main characters eventually ‘fall apart,’ either physically or mentally.”

“her······.”

The god who heard the story up to that point thought that it was truly like a ghost.

I chose this ending because I thought it would flow naturally without thinking about it, but you’re pointing that out.

“I thought about it. How did this writer come to write such a story? What kind of life is he living now? I definitely like novels for that. Movies and comics mainly use the medium of ‘visuals,’ but novels don’t. They’re closer to something that is accepted by the human ‘mind.’”

“······.”

God listened to those words with his lips tightly shut.

It was an incredibly cool expression. And the reason I felt that way was because I thought that way too.

Movies and comics can be viewed visually and interpreted with individual thoughts based on the intuitive stimulation, but novels were not like that. They had to be directly connected to the language system in each individual’s brain, and the writer and reader had to communicate, so I thought that the barrier to entry was inevitably higher.

“As I read the previous works, I became more and more curious about the author’s mental world. And then the next thing I read was the ‘Losers’ series. That’s where I definitely had this thought: Ah, this author is now acknowledging the emptiness inside him and desperately fighting against it… ‘Kung-fury’ was the same.”

“······Where in ‘Kung-fury’ did you find the emptiness?”

“I’m a little cautious about saying this.”

The team that got lucky sat on the appropriate bench.

Before they knew it, the park was here. The two creators were living in a world created by someone else, freely conversing and influencing each other.

“Actually, isn’t it? It feels like a very cruel story… No matter what happens in the future, I will never completely understand you, and vice versa. But while reading ‘Kung-fury,’ I felt a sublimation of the discrimination you experienced.”

“That’s a great point, Tim.”

God listened to his careful words and couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

I once had this thought suddenly come to my mind.

“No matter what people do, they can’t see their own faces. And they can’t understand the minds of others. If there’s a certain cosmic emptiness that you feel there… Isn’t there something similar in ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’?”

“Thank you for noticing.”

“Yes. It was a really good piece of work.”

In ‘Pee-wee Herman’s Big Adventure’, the main character Pee-wee and several other characters say, ‘I have an innate loneliness.’ It was a scene consumed humorously, but Shin felt the wit and loneliness of director Tim Burton there.

As such, in the end, humans are beings who cannot help but be lonely.

The team nodded.

“Usually we live without being aware of it.”

“That’s right. No matter how many happy things we experience and how good our lives are, we all sometimes despair at the fact that we are alone. Maybe, Tim, I have that kind of feeling, too.”

“That aspect was felt even more strongly in ‘Mother.’”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. As someone else, I would never know, but I would say that I strongly felt the emptiness caused by the absolute loneliness that the author must have felt, as if he were comparing himself to the mirror of himself. Images kept coming to my mind, and I couldn’t help but draw.”

“······You said you drew a picture based on ‘Mother’?”

That ‘Tim Burton’?

God’s eyes widened, and the team’s faces turned red for a moment in response.

“Yes, yes. I just roughly drew it up without any research and just got a feel for it.”

“Ho-ok-shi, can I see it now?”

“Huh? Oh, I did bring a sketchbook to that office for now······.”

The world of ‘Mother’, depicted in the mirror of Tim Burton.

I really wanted to see what it was like.

***

When I got back to the office, Simon and Michael were in the middle of a conversation.

“Oh, it took a long time.”

Michael, who was facing the door, noticed us and reacted first.

But the team entered the office hesitantly, grabbed a bag that was hanging on a chair, and turned back.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I’ll just go out one more time.”

“······? That, that’s right.”

“It seems like the two of you still have something to talk about?”

“Haha! Wow, these two creators are already so in sync! I have a feeling this is going to happen!”

Michael smiles brightly at Simon’s words.

After leaving the two members of society(?) behind and going back out the door, the team, instead of going out like before, guided me to a nearby empty conference room as usual.

As we walked in and sat across from each other, Tim Burton carefully took out an old sketchbook from his bag, opened a page, and handed it to me.

“Here it is.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look.”

I took it carefully and started looking at it.

The first thing that came out was a picture of ‘Mother’ drawn in the ‘Tim Burton style’.

‘and.’

I couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration.

Her eyes were large, but her pupils were only dots, and her body was very exaggerated. Her arms and legs were thin, and she was wearing a long skirt, an apron, holding a knife, and giggling. And next to her, as if she was talking to Suzy, she had written the line, “It’s time to pray,” which was very impressive.

On the other hand, the Suzy drawn on the next page felt relatively normal. Her physique was also ordinary, and her large eyes with the whites of her eyes shining brightly in a unique drawing style seemed strange at first glance, but she definitely had the appeal of a main character.

As soon as I saw it, I was overwhelmed with emotion. It would be okay to say that I felt a kind of explosion of fandom.

That Tim Burton guy illustrated my work!

As I turned each page, I was drawn into the world of ‘Mother’ as expressed by Tim Burton, and one thought naturally came to mind.

‘······I want to work with this person.’

I don’t think this person would be offended at all by any word he used to say ‘Mother’.

Because this person understood my world of work.

Even the parts I didn’t know were clearly explained in my own words. It made me recognize a part of myself I didn’t recognize, and at the same time, it gave me the thrilling pleasure that comes from looking back at a new part of myself.

Also, creepily, it made me understand Tim Burton too.

The country took it as a mirror to see how he felt when he was ‘left alone in the world’.

Just as I live with my own loneliness, where the future, present, and past are all jumbled up as I get another chance to live, he too must be enduring the pain of life for his own reasons and emotions.

What on earth could it be? Like, you got hired at Disney and ended up quitting the company because you drew a picture of a ‘cute fox’ that you didn’t even want to draw?

Anyway, I would never know it for the rest of my life, and it would never be ordinary.

And that was good.

“Director.”

“Yes, yes, sir.”

“Can I ask you one thing?”

“As much as you want.”

“Now that you’ve left, what form would you like to take ‘Mother’ in?”

“If it’s a form······?”

“······In fact, I thought that if you were the director, you might want to make ‘Mother’ into an animation that matches the feeling of the picture you just showed me.”

As I said that, I pushed up my glasses, which were nowhere to be found.

Tim Burton’s eyes widened like the painting he had drawn of ‘Mother’, perhaps because of the unexpected words. As Tim thought that he might see himself in the mirror like this painting, the answer came slowly.

“······If possible. But it might not be possible.”

“Then I would also like to vote for animation.”

“Ha, but you’re making a horror novel into an animation? Does that really make sense?”

“Of course, there is a perception that animation is only for children······.”

Certainly, there wasn’t much demand for theatrical animation, unless it was something like ‘Disney’, and even then, most of them were for children.

That’s why I also thought this choice would be quite a gamble. Besides, the name ‘Tim Burton’ started to become really famous after ‘Beetlejuice’ was released in 1988. It was still unclear how much investment he would receive.

But after talking to him and even looking at his paintings, I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

The result of Tim Burton’s free imagination, without anyone’s restrictions.

“Shall we talk about it for a moment?”

“······Um, I don’t know.”

“But I think it would definitely be fascinating. An animation called ‘Mother’ based on the director’s drawings.”

“······Is that really true?”

The team, like me, pushed up their glasses that didn’t exist anywhere.

The ‘Nerd’ frequency started to flow between the two of us.

“Then, author, before we talk, can I ask you a favor?”

“What favor do you have?”

“I would like the writer to advise me on the production of the script.”

“Why is that?”

“I think we need the original author’s help to properly realize this world. I would like to work with the author to bring ‘Mother’ to the screen.”

I was momentarily speechless and blinked in front of Tim Burton, who was speaking forcefully.

No, I’m not waving in front of the pupa right now.

Me giving my opinion on Tim Burton’s movies?

······It was not the time to decline while thinking the same thing.

Because we are ‘resonating’ now.

“If it helps ‘Mother,’ which will be expressed in the director’s dark and grotesque splendor, then by all means.”

“I really wonder what the colorful cloths hanging inside the chapel will look like.”

“If you don’t mind, please come visit Koreatown in Los Angeles sometime. I’ll show you around.”

“Oh, is this a field trip? Okay.”

Like that, swoosh- swoosh-, over and over, swoosh- swoosh-,

After showing off our inner nerds to the fullest, we quickly hit it off and went to the office to find two working adults.

And when I said, ‘We want to make animations!’, Michael from Warner Brothers, who was standing in front of Simon with his eyes wide open, let out a long sigh and answered like this.

“Well, animation production costs a lot of money and time. It’s even more expensive than making a regular movie.”

“······ah.”

I guess so.

“Demand is also ambiguous. Disney animation has also been in a bit of a slump recently······.”

“ah······.”

······I guess so.

The wall of reality in 1986 was high.