With more space, the fish will double, triple, or quadruple its size.”Īll of Big Fish‘s tall tales are glorious. “Kept in a small bowl, the goldfish will remain small. Even if it is based on a pre-existing story, there’s an in-built catharsis to these two creative forces coming together to tell this particular story of a man looking for his dad. But what’s really unusual about this is that both the director and the screenwriter lost their fathers before coming to this particular project.Īugust was first attracted to the project because he saw something of himself in Will, having trained as a journalist and not known as much about his father as he’d like, whereas Burton had sadly lost both of his parents in almost as many years. He nails the Southern Gothic tone and there’s plenty of opportunity to enjoy himself with macabre characters – because of course Danny DeVito turns out to have been a werewolf the whole time. When someone figures out a VPN for parallel universe versions of Netflix, the Spielberg-Nicholson version will probably be worth a watch, but what makes the film itself such a masterpiece is the match of a different director’s sensibilities with a Spielberg-level project. The script came to Burton, and in the main, he’s definitely the better choice. With its adventurous emotional core and unusual structure, the resulting script attracted the attention of none other than Steven Spielberg, who wanted to make the film after he finished Minority Report, with Jack Nicholson playing the role of Edward Bloom. Although Wallace’s novel was destined for adaptation before it was even published, its delivery was similarly unusual.Īugust read the manuscript six months before publication, and got Columbia Pictures to option the rights for him.
In characteristically preposterous fashion, the new-born baby shoots right out of his mother and slides down a hospital corridor, sending doctors and visitors sprawling in his wake. IntroductionĮarly on in the film, we’re shown Edward Bloom’s birth, or his version of it anyway. In Big Fish, the combination of August’s masterful plot structuring and Burton’s directorial sensibilities yields an interesting view of its characters past, present, and future.
Burton has no shortage of fans, but the accessible quality of this understated masterpiece shouldn’t be ovelooked next to his more idiosyncratic fare.
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John August’s hugely quotable script takes the unusual structure of the novel and adapts it into a time-hopping series of vignettes that gradually paints a picture of the relationship between father and son by reconciling their clashing perspectives.ġ5 years on, it’s still interesting to look back on how the film converts the themes of fatherhood and the importance of storytelling into a visual medium.
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