How ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ sent Tim Burton into a “screaming fit”
Despite occupying a liminal space between Halloween spookfest and holiday heartwarmer, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas has been fully embraced as a modern Christmas classic, foreshadowing a wave of 2000s winter warmers such as The Grinch, Elf and Love Actually. Today, Tim Burton’s tale of the disenfranchised Jack Skellington is more popular than ever. That being said, there was one aspect of the film that Burton simply couldn’t stand, so much so, in fact, that he kicked a hole in a wall out of sheer frustration.
The Nightmare Before Christmas tells the story of Jack Skellington, the ‘Pumpkin King’ of the town of Halloween, where ghosts, ghouls and werewolves spend the year preparing for October 31st. Disillusioned with life in Halloween, Jack stumbles upon a portal to the town of Christmas, where he finds “children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads”. After becoming obsessed with Christmas, Jack kidnaps Santa Clause and installs himself as his successor.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is frequently cited as one of Burton’s greatest works, much to the chagrin of the film’s actual director Henry Selick. Burton originally intended to direct the film, which he had based on the characters of a poem he wrote while working for Disney, but ended up taking on the role of producer instead. As Selick later explained in The Holiday Movies That Made Us, he and Tim frequently disagreed on what direction the movie should take. At one point, the director came to Burton with an idea of an alternative “classic Scooby-Doo ending”, in which Oogie Boogie turns out to be Sally’s father, Dr. Finkelstein, in disguise.
Burton absolutely hated the idea. In fact, he didn’t just hate it, he was so opposed to the suggestion that he flew into a “screaming fit” and kicked a hole in Disney’s wall with his boot. “I went, ‘Tim is your foot OK’, he said ‘Yeah, they’re steel toes.’ That was one of our more colourful interactions,” Selick recalled. Burton was clearly very possessive over The Nightmare Before Christmas, which isn’t all that surprising considering he’d been working on it for a decade by the time Disney decided to pick it up.
A little later, collaborator Caroline Thompson suggested tweaking Jack and Sally’s relationship and extending the ending to give it “another couple of beats.” Apparently, he responded by attacking an editing machine.
