Edward Scissorhands


Edward Scissorhands is a 1990 American Gothic romantic fantasy film directed by Tim Burton. It was produced by Burton and Denise Di Novi, written by Caroline Thompson from a story by her and Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as the title character, along with Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall, Kathy Baker, Vincent Price, and Alan Arkin. It tells the story of an unfinished artificial humanoid who has scissor blades instead of hands, is taken in by a suburban family, and falls in love with their teenage daughter.
Burton conceived Edward Scissorhands from his childhood upbringing in suburban Burbank, California. During pre-production of Beetlejuice, Thompson was hired to adapt Burton's story into a screenplay, and the film began development at 20th Century Fox after Warner Bros. declined. Edward Scissorhands was then fast-tracked after Burton's critical and financial success with Batman. The film also marks the fourth collaboration between Burton and film score composer Danny Elfman, and was Vincent Price's last film role to be released in his lifetime.
Edward Scissorhands was a critical and commercial success, grossing over four times its $20 million budget. The film won the British Academy Film Award for Best Production Design and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, in addition to receiving multiple nominations at the Academy Awards, British Academy Film Awards, and the Saturn Awards. Both Burton and Elfman consider Edward Scissorhands their most personal and favorite work.

Plot

One snowy evening, an elderly woman tells her granddaughter the story of a young man named Edward, who has scissor blades for hands.
Many years earlier, Peg Boggs, a door-to-door Avon saleswoman, drives to the decrepit Gothic mansion where Edward lives, perched on a hill overlooking Peg's stereotypically pastel suburban neighborhood. The creation of an old inventor, Edward is an ageless humanoid. The inventor homeschooled Edward but died from a heart attack before giving Edward hands, leaving him unfinished. Peg finds Edward alone and offers to take him to her home. She introduces Edward to her husband, Bill, their young son, Kevin, and their teenage daughter, Kim. Edward falls in love with Kim. As their neighbors are curious about the new houseguest, the Boggses throw a neighborhood barbecue welcoming him. Most of the neighbors are fascinated by Edward and befriend him, except for the eccentric religious fanatic Esmeralda and Kim's supercilious boyfriend, Jim.
Edward repays the neighborhood for their kindness by trimming their hedges into topiaries, progressing to grooming dogs and later styling the hair of the neighborhood women. One of the neighbors, Joyce, offers to help Edward open a hair salon. While scouting a location, Joyce attempts to seduce him but scares him away. Joyce lies to the neighborhood women that Edward forced himself on her, reducing their trust in him. Edward's dream of opening the salon is ruined when the bank refuses him a loan.
Jealous of Kim's attraction to Edward, Jim takes advantage of his naivety by asking him to pick the lock on his parents' home so he can steal his father's electronic goods and sell them to buy a van. Edward agrees, but when he picks the lock and enters the house, a burglar alarm is triggered and walls come down, trapping him inside. Jim flees, and Edward is arrested. The police determine that a lifetime of isolation has left Edward without any common sense or morality; thus, he cannot be criminally charged. Edward nevertheless takes responsibility for the robbery, telling Kim that he did it because she asked him to. Consequently, he is shunned by the entire neighborhood except for the Boggs family.
At Christmas, Edward carves an ice sculpture modeled after Kim; the ice shavings are thrown into the air and fall like snow, something that has never happened before in the town. Kim dances in the snowfall. Jim arrives suddenly, calling out to Edward, surprising him and causing him to accidentally cut Kim's hand. Jim accuses Edward of intentionally harming her, but Kim, fed up with Jim's jealous behavior towards Edward, breaks up with him. Meanwhile, Edward flees.
Kim's parents go to find Edward while she stays behind in case he returns. Edward returns, finding Kim there. She asks him to hold her and arranges his scissor hands so they can embrace. Jim's drunken friend drives to Kim's house and nearly runs over Kim's younger brother, Kevin, but Edward pushes Kevin to safety while inadvertently cutting him. Witnesses accuse Edward of attacking Kevin. When Jim assaults him, Edward defends himself and injures Jim's arm before fleeing back to the inventor's mansion on the hill.
Kim goes to find Edward. Jim obtains a gun, follows her, and shoots at Edward before grabbing a fire poker and beating him. Edward refuses to fight back until he sees Jim strike Kim as she attempts to intervene. Enraged, Edward stabs Jim in the stomach and pushes him from a window of the mansion to his death. Kim confesses her love to Edward and kisses him as they accept that their love can never be fulfilled. As the neighbors gather, Kim convinces them that Jim and Edward killed each other.
The elderly woman, revealing herself to be Kim, finishes telling her granddaughter the story and says that she never saw Edward again, hoping that by staying away he would remember her as she was in her youth. She believes he is still alive because it would not be snowing without him. Edward is then seen carving ice sculptures of his experiences with Kim, with shavings of ice floating down from the mansion as snow in the wind. The elderly Kim, commenting on the snow, concludes, "Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it."

Cast

Development

The genesis of Edward Scissorhands came from a drawing by then-teenaged director Tim Burton, which reflected his feelings of isolation and being unable to communicate to people around him in suburban Burbank. The drawing depicted a thin, solemn man with long, sharp blades for fingers. Burton stated that he was often alone and had trouble retaining friendships. "I get the feeling people just got this urge to want to leave me alone for some reason, I don't know exactly why." During pre-production of Beetlejuice, Burton hired Caroline Thompson, then a young novelist, to write the Edward Scissorhands screenplay as a spec script. Burton was impressed with her short novel, First Born, which was "about an abortion that came back to life". Burton felt First Born had the same psychological elements he wanted to showcase in Edward Scissorhands. "Every detail was so important to Tim because it was so personal", Thompson remarked. She wrote Scissorhands as a "love poem" to Burton, stating "He is the most articulate person I know but I couldn't tell you a single complete sentence he has ever said".
Shortly after Thompson's hiring, Burton began to develop Edward Scissorhands at Warner Bros., with whom he worked on Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Batman. However, within a couple of months, Warner Bros. sold the film rights to 20th Century Fox. Fox agreed to finance Thompson's screenplay while giving Burton complete creative control. At the time, the budget was projected to be around $8–9 million. When writing the storyline, Burton and Thompson were influenced by Universal Horror films, such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, and Creature from the Black Lagoon, as well as King Kong and various fairy tales. Burton originally wanted to make Scissorhands as a musical, feeling "it seemed big and operatic to me", but later dropped the idea. Following the enormous success of Batman, Burton arrived to the status of being an A-list director. He had the opportunity to do any film he wanted, but rather than fast track Warner Bros.' choices for Batman Returns or Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, Burton opted to make Edward Scissorhands for Fox.

Casting

Although Winona Ryder was the first cast member attached to the script, Dianne Wiest was the first to sign on. "Dianne, in particular, was wonderful", Burton said. "She was the first actress to read the script, supported it completely and, because she is so respected, once she had given it her stamp of approval, others soon got interested". When it came to casting the lead role of Edward, several actors were considered; Fox was insistent on having Burton meet with Tom Cruise. "He certainly wasn't my ideal, but I talked to him", Burton remembered. "He was interesting, but I think it worked out for the best. A lot of questions came up". Cruise asked for a "happier" ending. Gary Oldman was on Burton's shortlist for the part, but he turned it down; Oldman didn't understand the script and found the story to be absurd, but understood it after watching "literally two minutes" of the completed film. Jim Carrey was also considered for the role, while Thompson favored John Cusack. Elsewhere, Tom Hanks, William Hurt, Robert Downey Jr. and musician Michael Jackson expressed interest, although Burton did not converse with Jackson.
Though Burton was unfamiliar with Johnny Depp's then-popular performance in 21 Jump Street, he had always been Burton's first choice. At the time of his casting, Depp was seeking to break out of the teen idol status which his performance in 21 Jump Street had afforded him. When he was sent the script, Depp immediately found personal and emotional connections with the story. In preparation for the role, Depp watched many Charlie Chaplin films to study the idea of creating sympathy without dialogue. Fox studio executives were so worried about Edward's image, that they tried to keep pictures of Depp in full costume under wraps until release of the film. Burton approached Ryder for the role of Kim Boggs based on their positive working experience in Beetlejuice. Drew Barrymore previously auditioned for the role. Crispin Glover auditioned for the role of Jim before Anthony Michael Hall was cast.
Kathy Baker saw her part of Joyce, the neighbor who tries to seduce Edward, as a perfect chance to break into comedy. Alan Arkin says when he first read the script, he was "a bit baffled. Nothing really made sense to me until I saw the sets. Burton's visual imagination is extraordinary". The role of The Inventor was written specifically for Vincent Price, and would ultimately be his final feature film role. Burton commonly watched Price's films as a child, and, after completing Vincent, the two became good friends. Robert Oliveri was cast as Kevin, Kim's younger brother.