It’s easy to put your idols on a pedestal when you only ever see them from afar, but a celebrated filmmaker is learning the hard way that they won’t always live up to your expectations in person: Tim Burton just got flipped off by a skeleton he had asked for an autograph.
Oof, that’s gotta sting—Tim Burton has always adored the macabre!
Poor Tim Burton probably thought it was his lucky day when he happened upon a West Hollywood cafe where a skeleton was seated outside nursing a caramel macchiato. Spooky shit like bats and ghosts have long been a major source of inspiration for Burton, and here was the chance to meet an honest-to-God skeleton, easily the most iconic ghoul in the game. He checked his breath and fished out the little wallet photo of a skeleton he always keeps on him for good luck, and it was honestly very endearing to see the award-winning director beaming like a giddy schoolboy while he walked up to fulfill his life’s dream. But sadly, his earnest excitement soon gave way to heartbroken shame, because upon introducing himself and asking if the skeleton would give him an autograph, the skeleton thrust out a bony middle finger and told Tim Burton to take a fucking hike.
The tears welling up in his eyes make it painfully clear that Burton never thought meeting his hero would go down like this. He nervously tried to smooth things over by mentioning that he had created Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas as a tribute to the legendary spookiness of human bones, adding that the skeleton had been a guiding light to him ever since his childhood days shooting stop motion shorts in his backyard, but this heartfelt outpouring of admiration only caused the skeleton to sigh in exasperation and snarl, “I literally could not give less of a shit. Just let me enjoy my coffee, asshole.”
Burton turned beet red as he noticed the other patrons looking over at his humiliation, his words falling to a quavering whisper as the skeleton impatiently drummed his fingers against the table, but he managed to choke out an apologetic explanation that he had only wanted to thank the skeleton for inspiring him to make Corpse Bride and didn’t mean any harm. Alas, the enraged skeleton shouted that his coffee had now gone completely cold while Burton stood there “blubbering like a dumbfuck,” before snatching up a handful of sweetener packets, flinging them at Burton’s face with a vicious “Here’s your fuckin’ autograph, you clown,” and storming off back to the graveyard while giving him a final one-finger salute.
Just brutal. Somebody needs to get Danny Elfman or whoever to make sure this guy’s okay!
In fairness to the skeleton, we can understand how exasperating it must be to constantly be recognized in public for your millennia symbolizing life’s inevitable progression to death, and while Burton couldn’t have known this, the skeleton had just five minutes earlier had to deal with some shitty teens crassly asking if they could use the skeleton’s femurs to play his ribcage like a marimba. That’s a lot to put up with when you’re just trying to pour coffee down your totally fleshless throat and onto the ground beneath you, but still, that doesn’t make it right to flip off a well-meaning fan so hard he crumples up his special photo of you and runs off down the sidewalk crying.
Damn, no horror buff ever wants to catch the bird from the human bones they’ve idolized since childhood. Here’s hoping Tim Burton can meet some sort of friendly mummy or reanimated dog ASAP and restore his faith in the morbid spirits he loves so well!
