Even though Nightmare Before Christmas' blossoming romance between Jack and Sally, the rag doll, is also threaded throughout the story.

Despite its trim 76 minutes, The Nightmare Before Christmas packs tons of heart, humor, and charisma into the story. Plenty of grown adults struggling with career burnout can find much to relate to in so many people still believe Tim Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, as, while he deserves lots of credit for the vision, he had nothing to do with its direction.

Henry Selick Directed The Nightmare Before Christmas

He Was A Stop-Motion Animation Pioneer - After Nightmare

Despite the persistent belief, it was actually the legendary stop-motion director Henry Selick who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, not Tim Burton. Selick had experience making short films and music videos, and his experience in stop-motion and animation was what landed him the job directing The Nightmare Before Christmas, his first feature-length film. It was a daunting task: Nightmare took a crew of over 100 people three years to film, with each second of footage requiring an average of 12 different frames of stop-motion movement.

Burton and Selick's friendship went back years before The Nightmare Before Christmas came out. The two had both met as students in CalArt's animation program. As was the case with many animators of that era, they found themselves both working at Disney Animation Studios after graduation. Years later, Burton thought of his old friend when it came time to direct The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton's schedule was full, and he didn't trust that he had the skill with stop-motion or the creative neutrality to properly direct his idea, but Selick was the perfect person to step in, as his love of stop-motion was evident in his work.

Still, Selick has been quite open in numerous interviews over the years that it does irritate him a bit that Tim Burton gets all the credit for the movie, and so few people know he directed it. It's understandable: Just a few weeks before the movie's release, a marketing decision was made to put Tim Burton's name before the official title. The branding made sense, as Burton was a big name then, but Selick has said had he known that Burton would get all the credit, he might have felt otherwise about the title decision. He's been clear that Burton, who was busy with other projects, was barely on set for the three years it took to shoot The Nightmare Before Christmas, only appearing a handful of times at the studio.

"Tim was in L.A. making two features while I directed that film, and I mean, Tim is a genius — or he certainly was in his most creative years. I always thought his story was perfect, and he designed the main characters. But it was really me and my team of people who brought that to life.” (via AV Club)

Tim Burton Contributed The Character & The Original Story

The Initial Idea & A Few Characters Were All Tim Burton

That said, Tim Burton did contribute quite a bit to the story. Creatively, it is entirely his. The story, the characters, the design, and the overall look of the world are wholly his own; he took all of that and gave it to Selick to bring to life. Burton reportedly came up with the idea when he saw a Halloween and Christmas store display side-by-side, and it got him thinking of the juxtaposition of such two different holidays with wholly different vibes. It was the early '80s, and Burton, who was working for Disney at the time, had recently finished his stop-motion short, Vincent.

Burton reportedly came up with the idea when he saw a Halloween and Christmas store display side-by-side, and it got him thinking of the juxtaposition of such two different holidays with wholly different vibes.

The idea lodged itself in his mind, and Burton ended up penning a three-page poem outlining the story and the character of the Pumpkin King, whom audiences know and love as Jack Skellington, and his dog, Zero; he later had sculptor Rick Heinrichs sculpt the characters from his sketch. His original poem was a little darker, but it was indeed the twisted parody of "The Night Before Christmas" that ends up in the movie. Of course, a short poem doesn't have enough story for a full-length film, so Burton and his co-scriptwriters Michael McDowell and Caroline Thompson fleshed out the story and added new characters for the movie, including the beloved ragdoll, Sally.

Selick has given Burton plenty of credit for his creative genius. "Tim's a genius for the ideas, the designs, and all the things that really do matter, but he wanted somebody else to direct it," he told A.frame. In 2018, he told THR a bit more about Burton's vision: “He came up with this great idea for this man taking over Christmas thinking he could do a better job and did just a few sketches. There was really only Jack and his dog Zero and Sandy Claws, and Rick did beautiful sculptures of those characters.”

How Henry Selick Feels About Tim Burton Now

Time & Friendship Have Mellowed His Irritation

With time and distance, however, Henry Selick is more mellow about Tim Burton erroneously being thought of as the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Having his own success separate from Burton in the industry ensured that Selick established himself in the industry as a titan of his stop-motion craft, and he also now acknowledges that it was smart to put Burton's name on the branding, even if he was blindsided by it at the time. As he said last year,

"It's not really a problem. For the most part, at least everyone in the industry, everyone in animation, knows it's me who directed it. I think it made sense to put his name on it to make sure people didn't confuse it, maybe with Nightmare on Elm Street or some out-and-out horror film. So yeah, it bothered me more years ago. It doesn't bother me at all now."

It helps that the movie became a cult classic, and then a genuine classic, spawning some of the most iconic characters in movies and an entire multimedia franchise for Disney, which, finally, wisely embraced the movie and characters after initially wanting to distance itself from the funny, dark little movie Selick and Burton and composer/singer Danny Elfman had made.

Disney finally, wisely, embraced the movie and characters after initially wanting to distance itself from the funny, dark little movie Selick and Burton and composer/singer Danny Elfman had made.

Selick, whose other stop-motion movies since his debut with The Nightmare Before Christmas were also hits, credits his friendship with Burton for helping him stick to his vision. He credits Burton's influence on him and his advice for helping him stay true to his weirder design sensibilities and not allowing Hollywood's corporate sameness to make him second-guess his style. If the movie is weird but authentically true to itself, it will find its audience:

“It’s something Tim Burton taught me a long time ago, and it holds true. He said, ‘The biggest successes are films that look normal, with a normal story.’ But who’s interested in doing that? Certainly not him or myself. ‘Or you could have a film that looks really weird, and has a really weird story, and that’s going to have the least amount of success, involving very few people. But you can have a film with one of those two elements being normal and the other weird, and you can have a pretty big cult film.’” (via Polygon)

Likewise, Selick and Burton are in agreement that The Nightmare Before Christmas 2 should never happen unless they and Elfman can return, and the sequel can be made exactly as the original movie was: stop-motion animation, not CGI as Disney had pitched to them years ago. Even if Disney didn't recognize it at the time, the trio working on the movie knew they had something great in their unconventional ion project, and that should remain untouched.

That hasn't stopped Disney from incorporating the characters in other ways and in other mediums. The franchise has continued in books, comic books, video games, merchandise, toys, and more.

Still, even they didn't know what a beloved classic their movie would become. "Its cultural legacy, I couldn't have predicted it," Selick said. "It struck the right balance of being very original and being done in stop motion. And I think a film done well in stop-motion animation leaves its mark. I'm grateful that it lives on, and I suspect it'll be around for decades to come."

In a way, Tim Burton's name being so intricately linked to the branding of the original movie may have secretly been a boon in the long run. It's one of the few successful Disney projects where it seems the creatives have had the final say on greenlighting a sequel, not the studio. In of wanting to protect the legacy of The Nightmare Before Christmas and their vision, Burton and Selick are in complete lockstep and always have been.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is available to stream on Disney+.

Sources: A.frame, AV Club, THR, Polygon