While there's little doubt Burton is honored, at the tender age of 32, to be the subject of tomorrow night's Montreal World Film Festival tribute, he's visibly spooked by it, too. Like Edward, Burton is obsessed with and protected by the creative process. It is the beginning, middle and end of his existence, and his shelter from the storm of real life. Creativity isn't only a gift. It's a need.
Fame is a coincidence.
And a retrospective at this time in his life is just weird enough to make him wonder if it's not some kind of omen. During a conversation in his hotel suite, Burton attempts to articulate the creative twitch that has taken him from drawing for the animation wing at Disney to the corridors of Tinseltown mega- power in one decade. Stabbing the air with his bird-like arms and delicate hands helps. So does busying the fragile bundle of bones that passes for his frame all over an overstuffed chair. For someone who says he only learned how to talk a couple of years ago, so does his hot-wired, elliptical way of speaking.