'Edward Scissorhands' Secrets Revealed in 25th Anniversary Look-Back

Fantastical and romantic, ‘Edward Scissorhands’ is Tim Burton’s modernized Frankenstein story that imagines an artificial man who inspires — and sometimes irritates — a sleepy suburb. If you’re wondering how Johnny Depp developed the doe-eyed, largely non-verbal character, screenwriter Caroline Thompson has the answer. “You’re based on my dog,” she recalled telling the actor on the film’s Florida set. “He was very confused about his role,” she revealed.

Thompson politely declined to share exactly which scenes were shot before Johnny Depp began channeling her dog, only saying that she “can totally see the difference” when she watches the film. Incidentally, the dog that Edward is based on was a border collie mix Thompson had in early adulthood. “I swear to god, if she’d had a larynx she would have talked.”

While Edward Scissorhands’s personality was inspired by Caroline Thompson’s dog, his look came from a sketch director Tim Burton first drew in high school. “You look at that drawing, then you look at Tim, then you look at Johnny [in costume], and they were almost indistinguishable,” observed production designer Bo Welch with a laugh. “It was such a personal manifestation of Tim’s world, life, and aesthetic, it was hysterical that way.”

Everyone on set adored horror movie legend Vincent Price, who played the Inventor. And the part was written expressly for him. “Tim especially honored, revered, and loved [Price] more than anything,” remembers Welch. “You can feel it in the movie.” Price died of lung cancer less than three years later at the age of 82.

Welch divulged a movie magic cheat that occurs early in the film: The first look at the Inventor’s Gothic mansion, seen from Peg Bogg’s (Dianne Wiest’s) rearview mirror, is a model replica. “I love that shot because it’s in-camera, it’s simple, and improvised in what today would be an elaborate blue-screen comp and a digital model.”

The film was shot in the sweltering Florida heat and Johnny Depp baked in his leather and buckle-and-scissor-encrusted costume. A deficient cooling system built inside his garment did little to help. “He was a trouper,” remembers Welch, crediting Depp’s dedication inside the getup to igniting his long and fruitful working relationship with Tim Burton. “This was the first in what became an eternity of collaborations.”

“You’d be endlessly stunned on the set when you see in that neighborhood — the pastel houses and the topiaries — when Edward would show up,” Welch observed. “It was breathtaking.”

Depp wasn’t the only actor puzzled about his character. Alan Arkin wasn’t sure how to play suburban patriarch Bill Boggs until screenwriter Caroline Thompson chimed in. Boggs is based on her father, who had a habit of asserting awkwardly self-important idioms. “If someone was driving down the road with their trunk open, he would say things like, ‘Some people go through life with their trunks open!’”

Set designers welded together lightweight steel armatures wrapped with chicken wire and then stuffed them with artificial greens to make Scissorhands’s signature shrub sculptures. “We decided on animal shapes [because] it was meant to be part of Edward’s imagination,” said Welch. “And they looked cool.”

Younger generations — who are either too young or weren’t yet alive to see the 1990 fantasy film when it first came out — may not realize that Winona Ryder (Kim Boggs) and Johnny Depp were dating during the making of ‘Edward Scissorhands.’ “Oh, that’s right! I’d forgotten completely about that,” said Welch when Yahoo Movies mentioned it.