Alice in Chains: Tim Burton in La-La Land

Having turned the noble plight of the outcast into big business, Burton fancies himself an outsider for life — and thus the perfect person to speak for disaffected youths. " 'Nobody's gonna tell me what to do' — that's kind of how that crowd is. They're individuals. That's how I was, I felt like kind of an isolated, depressed loner."

Burton is legitimately still something of a loner, in that no one else has a career quite like his. A dozen years younger than David Lynch and half a decade Quentin Tarantino's senior, he doesn't really have any generational peers in American cinema; he's also one of the only auteurs to come to prominence in the late '80s/early '90s without having paid his dues in indie film. He's internationally revered as an artist — he'll top the jury at the Cannes Film Festival this May, and MoMA in New York recently launched a massive show dedicated to his paintings and cinematic imagery — and he earned that respect by making blockbuster movies designed to spawn toy lines and fast food–marketing tie-ins.

"Did you see Big Fish? It was this big!"

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• Tim Burton
• Alice in Wonderland
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When I ask if he's ever contemplated doing a film outside the studio system, Burton cackles. "I have a lot of friends who do indie movies, and the thing you quickly realize is, either way you go, you got a problem. You gotta get your money from somewhere, whether it's an evil corporation, some studio or some crazy fucking businessman."

For Burton, the "evil corporation" is clearly the lesser of the two evils. And anyway, as Burton would say, whatever — it's not like it's his intention to Goth up otherwise wholesome brands. The way he sees it, Alice in Wonderland was Goth enough before he got to it. "Actually, I'm always surprised when you look at most great children's literature — it's fucking weird. They think I'm dark? You got a smoking caterpillar, you got all sorts of shit going on, and it's, like, I'm dark? What do you think I wanted to do this for?

"Now, if I said to Disney, 'Okay, listen, we're gonna focus on the mercury poisoning of the Mad Hatter' ... I mean, it's a Disney movie. Whatever. I get it. I'm an adult."

The filmmaker may have an inimitable style, but he's never not willing to put it to the service of a larger brand. Whoever Alice might have been made for, Tim Burton, unusual among aging auteurs, never makes a movie just to please himself.