Tim Burton is one crazy dude, and I read someone that his original cinematic aspiration wasn’t to make movies, but to be the guy in the rubber Godzilla suit.. A writer/director who revitalized the visual tropes of the German expressionist film style, Burton first found recognition after Paul Reubens, having viewed Burton’s short film Frankenweenie, tapped him to direct the first big-screen adventure of Reubens’ Pee-Wee Herman character. After that, Burton’s career took off quickly, as he found hits in his following films Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Mars Attacks! (an underrated favourite of mine), and Sleepy Hollow. It wasn’t until 2001 that his career began to falter a little with his disastrous remake of Planet of the Apes. His follow up, Big Fish, managed to recapture the Burton spirit we all loved from earlier in his career, though, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was suitably macabre and sinister. Burton is presently working on a feature-length adaptation of Frankenweenie as well as an adaptation of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows. He turns 53 today.