Vincent

"Vincent" (1982) is an early stop motion short of Tim Burton, about a boy, whose childish games involve imagining himself as a Gothic hero, another Vincent Price. For one reason or another, we have the feeling of Gothic around us, and some are more sensitive to it than others. I imagine Tim Burton could have had similar childhood games... He had become one of the most talented directors to express the sort of feeling since then, and still you have to say at this point that he appears a quite cheerful fellow in his interviews. In fact even in this short you can sense the sort of humor he usually hard-wires into his stories. Acting out this darker side of our inner selves is perhaps sometimes the only way to also maintain an everyday life more approachable to our environment. Similarly, Vincent Price, who also happens to be the narrator of the story, was probably one of the happiest horror actors ever, his "secret" being as he often explained is taking it as a game. There were of course examples of horror actors becoming depressed, but if we go down on this lane, I think it is perhaps more interesting how many comedy actors ended up tragically, I would guess much more of them than horror actors...