Big Fish was the first movie that we worked on together, and I had already written it. We had another director, but that director didn't do it. So, it was just a Hail Mary to Tim, and Tim said that he wanted to do it and I was like, "That's fantastic!" But, there wasn't a lot of collaboration because he knew what he wanted to do and just did it. There were very minor changes for Big Fish.

When Tim asked me to do Frankenweenie, he had his original sketches from before he did the short, of what Sparky looked like, and he drew Victor and some of the other crucial people. The remarkable thing about working with Tim is that, once he's read a script, he sketches out everybody else.

I knew that Weird Girl was going to be kind of amazing. The secret truth of Weird Girl is that I put her in there originally because I needed some way to set the boys' names.

I often say that a lot of my job, as a screenwriter, is sort of being a stock picker, in that I need to figure out what movies are probably going to get made because otherwise I'm spending a lot of my time on something that's trapped in 12-point courier. So, having Tim's interest in doing a movie is a huge asset. But, not everything shoots. I'm always grateful when those things do happen.

I just always remember myself as the teenager with questions about movies and screenwriting. I would hope that there was somebody out there who would answer those questions, and so, if I can take a few minutes to do it, I will. It's not threatening for us. We're not being stalked, so it's easier.

I convinced Tim to add one song, and then we added five. We changed a lot of things while we were shooting, which you should never do in stop-motion animation. With this, it was a much smoother ship, so I wasn't getting sent the scratch reels of things.

Every once in awhile, Allison Abbate would drop a note and say, "It's going really well!," and I was like, "Great!" So, I had not seen it in about two years. They went off and started shooting, and I saw it all put together with almost the final sound mix and it was remarkable. I was so, so happy and relieved, not in the sense that I thought something had gone wrong, but you just don't know what something is going to be like until you see it put together. Everyone stepped up and brought their A+ game.