Keeping the cat front-and-center was definitely a smart choice, from Tim and the animation department. Mr. Whiskers got referred to more than we actually saw him on stage. Seeing him on screen, you just love him.

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.

You're looking, moment by moment and scene by scene, how you can tell the most interesting story. So, we had this great short and we knew that we had a story about a boy and his dog. Because we had that pure emotional core, we could go on crazy tangents and always come back to Victor and Sparky. When I wrote in stuff like Weird Girl and the cat poop, Dutch Day and the windmill, it felt like it was part of Tim's universe.

Preacher is a great frustration because I thought it was done, and then it got put in the press notes for the [Frankenweenie] junket and everyone started asking about it again. Preacher could be filmed, at any point. It's sort of ready to go, but it's lacking a green light. At some point, that green light might come, but it may never come. So, I have to allow for the fact that I've done everything I can, and whatever happens with it, happens with it.

I knew that this was the movie in which a lot of the cinema version of Burton-esque first started. So, I knew that there were things that were hugely important to him for it, but it didn't really feel that different than working on any other of these projects.

Josh [Friedman] and I have been friends for years, and he said, "Hey, if you ever want to do a TV show, I can take it over and run it," and I was like, "Yes!" He's always been so busy that I never dared to ask that, but it just worked out, time wise, that this was the season where we could probably do it, so I jumped at it. So, even though I'm busy with other stuff, I'm excited to be writing this.

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.