Jinks and Cohen were also in sync about who they wanted to direct the project – Tim Burton, to whom they sent the script. At the time, Burton was planning another project with Zanuck, a follow-up to their recent successful collaboration on Planet of the Apes. “But I thought Big Fish was one of the best scripts I’d ever read and so did Tim,” Zanuck contends. “And we wanted to do it right away.”
When August heard Burton was interested in directing the film, he knew he was the ideal choice to create that special blend of ingenuity and alchemy needed to bring the story of Big Fish to life on the screen.
What struck Burton about the material was its delicate balance between the epic scope of the tall-tales and the simpler, more intimate story about family dynamics. “I enjoyed the fact that it would go into moments of fantasy and then return to the poignant reality of losing a parent,” says Burton. “The challenge for me was to maintain that balance in the visualization of the story.“
Burton was perhaps the only person who had even a moment of self-doubt about his ability to do justice to the story. Zanuck certainly didn’t. “As he’s shown in films like Edward Scissorhands, Tim’s stories have whimsy and fantasy with great heart. And when you think of the wacky, almost surreal Ed Wood, you also remember Martin Landau’s moving performance as Bela Lugosi, which won him an Oscar® as Best Supporting Actor. Big Fish offered him the opportunity to go even further, to delve into the complex universal issues that resonate between fathers and sons and also to exercise his great gift for visualizing the exotic and bizarre.”
Burton’s enthusiasm was palpable – and infectious recall Jinks and Cohen. “One of the great things about Tim’s response was that he would point to scenes in the script and say ‘I can’t wait to shoot that,’” says Cohen. “He also brought imaginative and tangible ideas that John then worked into the script.”
Jinks adds “I’d say that one of the big selling points for Tim was that he is known as a great storyteller and this was a movie about great storytelling. If you look at such films as Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, they’re exactly the kinds of stories Edward Bloom might tell.”
Bloom’s storytelling was definitely an attraction for Burton, the director says. “Here’s someone who invents himself into an extraordinary person, someone who doesn’t have much use for ordinary life and needs to embellish it, make it exciting. His stories are what make his life exciting. They give him a touch of magic.”
With a highly regarded script, three acclaimed producers and a visionary director aboard, the casting of the central roles in Big Fish proved to be as effortless as it was fortuitous.
For the crucial central role of Edward Bloom, the filmmakers were searching for two world-class actors who could convincingly play the same character as a younger and older man.
For the younger Bloom, Ewan McGregor had demonstrated his versatility in films such as the romantic musical Moulin Rouge and the action epic Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. At the time they handed him the script for Big Fish, McGregor was working with Jinks and Cohen on the romantic comedy Down With Love. The actor says he related to the story in a personal way. “The first time I read the screenplay, it left me speechless. It was so moving, with a power that derives from essentially being about the relationship between a father and a son. It reminded me of when I left Scotland, which is a big deal for a Scot. I moved to London to go to drama school but really because I wanted to see the world. It’s similar to what Edward does. Sometimes you have to leave the familiar to find out who you really are. I think the film will resonate with everyone who’s ever done that.”
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