I met up with ~Setsunacutey on Wednesday, and we spent quite some time waiting at the red carpet for Tim to show up. Most of the people around us were journalists and professional autograph hunters. As guests and celebs started entering the theatre, we spotted Karin Spaink and asked her, mid-red-carpet, if she'd be at the next Anon raid. Which got a perfectly brilliant "Holy shit, you people are everywhere" smile from her.

Eventually, Tim's car pulled up, and he stepped out, smiled, signed a few things, flailed and managed to knock over half the red carpet contraption. He was wearing those massive blue sunglasses. His hair looked odd. We stared and gawked and I wondered how he could look so perfectly normal, and still - somehow - so much larger than everyone else around him. It wasn't the fans crowding around him or the barrage of camera flashes or even his really awesome coat; there was something quite intrinsically huge about him.

The Amsterdam cinema is probably one of the most beautiful buildings this country has, and even in our way back balcony seats we had a clear view of the stage and screen. Of course, as things go, after five minutes or so we were offered second row par-terre seats instead. (It's a thing what happens every time I go to any sort of event. Don't ask.) Sitting that close to the stage, between the journalists, the celebs, etc., things just sort of seemed to shift into place.

Before Tim received his award, we learned that Jan Doense (the Dutch horror movie authority) was retiring from both organizing the festival - which he'd been doing for 23 years - and from hosting the yearly Bad Taste Night movie tours I used to attend with ~mahjqa. The thing with Bad Taste Night is, you get two hours of bad B-film trailers with commentary, cheap beer, plus a midnight audience who like to yell "WHOORRRRRRRRRE" every time a woman appears onscreen. (Which yes, has a brilliant rolling 'r' in Dutch.) It's sort of legendary as is the Amsterdam film festival - what no one had anticipated now was, right in front of all of us, Jan Doense received Knighthood for his continued efforts to educate the masses. He was speechless; the audience yelled "WHOORRRRRRRRRE".

After that, Tim entered to receive his award. It was some kind of abstract pile of black stoney goop. While he really didn't seem all too impressed by it (he first asked if it was dinner, looked at it for a bit and concluded it might make a great new character in his next film) he was definitely thrilled with the fact that Jan Doense "got a Knighthood for showing horror movies to people!". After which, he left, and we got to watch the first showing of the festival.

The Fall is quite possible one of the most beautiful movies ever made. I could probably fill up an entire blog entry waxing poetic about this film; the trailer doesn't do it justice, the stills don't remotely begin to convey just how beautiful it is. If you like fantasy movies - if you like movies in general - you must go see it as soon as you can, in the best available quality. It takes on the storytelling tradition of The Princess Bride, Alice In Wonderland, Labyrinth, Big Fish, etc.; only it's intense and vivid, and unlike most fantasy films, it never really holds back. It's the only movie I've ever seen that comes close to the colors and characters and logic I used to imagine reading children's books. Also it's presented by David Fincher and Spike Jonze.

On the second day, Thursday, I spent a lot of time waiting (again) in line to see Tim. It took a bit, but eventually I was allowed to enter the theatre, go up the stairs and enter a (seemingly) tiny room with, sitting at a table directly across from the entrance, Tim waiting to sign my swag. I really didn't particularly care for autographs, but I had brought all the rare items I could think to bring - including Aladdin And His Wonderful Lamp - as a "just in case" sort of contingency... in those two seconds between myself and the fangirl in line before me, I was told to choose just one item to get signed. And by pure instinct, from all the rare swag and special edition DVDs and no longer available bios and etc., I surprised myself choosing something I really never would have expected - my scratched, second hand, badly subbed, cheap cardboard box Mars Attacks! DVD.

So I entered, grinned, shook his hand, got the DVD signed, thanked him and left.

After that, finally, there was the Q&A round. We were forced to stand in the back (apparently the theatre ended up handing out twice the amount of tickets actually available) but the view was nice and the sound was clear. The host spent most of the first half hour asking absolutely retarded questions ("So, you're socially awkward, right? What's that like?") and the audience the next half hour doing much the same. Tim didn't much seem to mind though. His answers were great and got progressively less coherent (and more twitchy) as the interview went on; some of it was info I'd seen regurgitated for years already, but most of what he said was absolutely fantastic. He talked about Burbank, about The Fox And The Hound, meeting Johnny, seeing "Danny's band" in LA, working together with Vincent Price, pitching Sweeney Todd ("It's like the Sound Of Music. With blood!"), filming Planet Of The Apes ("Yeah. That was a bad... that was a bad idea."), about Terry Gilliam (explaining no one would even dare consider making Don Quixote, it's Terry's baby), Poe and Lovecraft (he'd love to do a film about either), about his socks (black with little white skulls on them), Batman, Ray Harryhausen, Alice In Wonderland (he's sort of considering it - but only sort of), and how to direct if you can't really speak at times.

All that until the host asked for one final question from the audience, something "really good" to end the interview, a "real banger", and pointed at me. Tim stared directly at me - as did the rest of the audience - and I managed to say:

"You mentioned Oingo Boingo and when you first started working together with Danny Elfman." (Tim smiles.) "This was in the early days of Boingo -" (Tim nods) "- and just a few years after Forbidden Zone." (Tim flashes a massive grin.) "What was it that made you realize that this music, which really wasn't exactly family-friendly, would be able to set the tone for a children's movie?"

As he answered, I remained perfectly still and calm, smiled and nodded, looked on the whole tremendously receptive, and afterwards asked the rest of the fans what on earth his reply had been since I couldn't get my senses to work anymore. I still sort of remember the words "evil clown music from hell" coming out of his mouth at that point, and far as I understand, the answer had a lot to do with growing up on the same movies and being sick twisted fucks. Well, that was all right then.

The final part of the evening involved watching Edward Scissorhands on big screen, with Tim introducing the film. The introduction itself failed to be any kind of spectacular (mostly due to the host's questions still being retarded) and Tim rather quickly fled as soon as that was over with. We watched Scissorhands happily. I sort of cried near the end.


So that was it, then; I met Tim Burton and managed to not turn into a complete idiot, I saw The Fall, I witnessed Jan Doense become a 'Sir', and I spent over six hours this week standing in line in Amsterdam. It was great.