How tough was it to drop characters like The Walrus And The Carpenter?
Tim Burton: There is a picture of the walrus on a wall though. Linda, the writer, and I discussed that. I felt other versions suffered in trying to be literal to the stories. We did not want to try to pack it all in. So we weaved in according to the structure of what Linda had written. Everyone probably has a favorite character but we fed in the ones that felt appropriate. You made the Mad Hatter a much more focal point? Tim Burton: With all of the characters we felt they suffered in other versions because they were just depicted as crazy. Rather than him bouncing around being crazy we tried to layer the characters with some depth. There was a lot of research into them being called Mad Hatters because of the mercury poisoning in hat making. So all the characters in Alice in Wonderland are mad but we tried to make sure that they each have their own particular kind of madness. Having made so many films with Johnny Depp do you now see him as your avatar as you go into these strange dream
