the director

`He's had no guidance, he's got no context . . . his work . . . indicates a highly imaginative character. It seems clear that his grasp of what we call reality is radically underdeveloped."

The quote is taken from Edward Scissorhands; it's the psychologist talking about Edward in the police station. But perhaps it can also be applied to the film's director, Tim Burton.

"But will he be all right out there?" the policeman asks. "Oh yeah, he'll be fine."

As an assessment of Edward's immediate prospects this is dead wrong. But Burton himself, in spite of his awkward fit into Hollywood formula film-making, has been fine. In fact, his films are generally hits (or mega-hits like the first two Batman movies). Lately he's made wacky Mars Attacks; now he's doing Superman; but he has also got studio support to make unique films.

You've probably seen most of them, starting in 1985 with Pee- Wee's Big Adventure. Their subjects are unlikely sources of fun: a happy young couple is tragically killed and copes with the horrors of the afterlife (1988's Beetlejuice); an animated skeleton tries to redeem a grotesque holiday (1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which he wrote and produced); Hollywood's most incompetent film-maker stumbles towards self-expression via self-delusion (Ed Wood, 1995). Burton was born in the LA suburb of Burbank in 1958 and was immersed in film - especially horror movies - and TV from an early age. His first job was as an animator at Disney; and his first short, Vincent (1982), started him down a path that runs through most of his work: his alienated characters crave the love and respect of mainstream society, but are unhappy in it, can't live by its rules and are regarded as freaks. They are most liberated when they can escape into creative fantasies - Edward's garden sculptures, dog-grooming and hairstyling are a perfect example.

It's not hard to speculate that Burton's misunderstood characters are autobiographical, and that their creative endeavours are metaphors for film-making (in Ed Wood's case, it is filmmaking). Whatever the case, there's no doubt that Tim Burton is one of Hollywood's most obvious auteurs - a director who puts an unmistakable stamp on his work, and whose films can be "read" together for their visual style and recurring themes.