With Corpse Bride, I saw a lot more of it during the process because we were changing things a lot. When I came onto Corpse Bride, it wasn't a musical.

Now, it's common knowledge that most towns of a certain size have a witch, if only to eat misbehaving children and the occasional puppy who wanders into her yard.

For Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he came to me and said, "I want to do everything that's in the book, and as much more as you need, so that it all makes sense." I was like, "Okay!" And then, I would pitch back to him my love for Charlie Bucket's family and how lucky Charlie was, and that I felt so bad for Willy Wonka, shut up in his factory, all alone with these crazy Oompa Loompas.

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.

Most times a person grows up gradually, but I found myself in a hurry... Hoping to find an answer, I uncovered an article about the common goldfish. "Kept in a small bowl, the goldfish will remain small. With more space, the fish will double, triple, or quadruple in size." It occurred to me then that I was intended for larger things. After all, a giant man can't have an ordinary-sized life.

You know something has really stuck in Tim's head when he's drawn what the character looks like. Weird Girl and Elsa actually switched places, at one point. I may be mis-remembering it, but the original design for Weird Girl was actually Elsa, but then it became Winona Ryder's character, and the new Weird Girl was just fantastic with those giant wide eyes.

The producers and I first talked about the Big Fish musical, right before we did the first test screening of the movie. I said, "I think there's a Broadway musical here." And really, from that day, we started figuring out how we would do it.