I'm feeling a little nostalgic tonight so bear with my rambling.
A few thoughts on Nightmare before Christmas.
Nightmare before Christmas went to theatres in 1993 shortly before my twelth Birthday. I used my own Birthday money to treat my mother, brother, and two of my cousins, Nicole and Michael, to see it.
The movie theatre we went to was in Sunrise Mall in Nassau County Long Island. We went to The Disney Store (which was right next to the movie theatre). I spent ten dollars there on a box of figures from Aladdin (Which was still the most recent Disney animated feature at the time.)
I sat down near the front of the theatre because I have poor eyesight. I am very, very near sighted among other things. I don't remember what trailers were before the movie or if we had a short before the movie. What I do remember is I considered my own quirk of getting obsessed with the most recent animated musicals or musicals in general and I remember thinking to myself "Please don't get obsessed. Please don't get obsessed. I'm still into Aladdin, I still want to be into Aladdin. Please don't let this be the new obsession." However I was less than half-way through listening to "This is Halloween" when I knew I loved it, loved it more that anything else I had ever seen before and I just had to let it wash over me.
For many years in the 1990s I had a shelf in my room that was a shrine to Tim Burton. I collected every Nightmare before Christmas collectable I could find or afford. This seems like no big deal today where you can find Nightmare before Christmas merchandise in Hot Topic, FYE, and various other stores year 'round.
But before the big resurgence of the early 2000s Nightmare before Christmas merchandise was hard to come by. I was lucky to find maybe a wrist watch one year and a pop up book the next.
How jealous I was of the 2000s generation that treated Nightmare before Christmas like a brand name. They will never know what it was like to sit listening to a walkman cassette player and other kids asking "What are you listening to?" and when you say "Nightmare before Christmas soundtrack" you get weird looks and "Never heard of it." Those same people who acted like I was a freak for my love of this precious little film now acted as if they always loved it too.
As I was into Nightmare before Christmas back in 1993 it's disconcerting to try to seek out like-minded fans today because they assume you're a n00b to it or you are following some kind of trend. Though I had the book on how the film was made almost entirely memorized before I was thirteen there are people online who will insist that I and others aren't "real" fans.
I've heard things (also in regard to the mini-series 10th Kingdom) "If you were really a fan when it first came out why are you only joining the discussion groups now?" The answer is simple. Those groups did not exist when the film was first released. How many of us even had The Internet in 1993? And years later when we finally were online on a regular basis many of us didn't consider joining groups for our old beloved fandoms until some quiet night we think of our childhood nostalgia.
It also bugs me when people point out that Tim Burton didn’t actually direct Nightmare before Christmas and say snooty and pretentious things like “You know it’s really a Henry Selick film, right?” Wrong. Henry might have directed it but it’s still Tim Burton’s baby. He came up with the character designs, the concept art, the original poem, wrote some of the song lyrics (uncredited), chose the color pallets, and even picked out Sally’s socks. He was the one who told the story little by little to Danny Elfman who wrote the songs before there was even a script (going backward from how most musicals are done). Tim Burton did a lot of work usually reserved for directors and most of it was unaccredited. I will give Henry his due but Tim Burton isn’t just a brand name. He did more than just fund the thing. Nightmare before Christmas is HIS baby.
Sally was the first Frankenstein Monster I had ever seen in modern pop culture who was intelligent. I was eleven when the movie came out so I had not yet read the original Frankenstein novel (that wouldn't be for another year or so). Over time other intelligent and articulate Frankenstein monsters got my attention. At first only female ones and I recall thinking "Why are only the female Frankenstein monsters smart?" The movie The Bride and later Eve in Dark Shadows (Though Adam wasn't exactly simple).
I also liked that Sally's hair wasn't up and streaked like every cartoonish female Frankenstein monster mimicking the creature from The Bride of Frankenstein movie. Also there were no bolts in her neck.
Sally kickstarted my first Frankenstein obsession which quietly dimmed over time. Then came the Hallmark mini-series of Frankenstein and finally Caliban AKA John Clare AKA The Creature on Penny Dreadful.
