Leah Gallo - The Art of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

MISS PEREGRINES HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN TM & 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. Text and all artwork copyright 2016 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All rights reserved. Except as authorized under U.S. copyright law, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2016934610 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-59474-944-5 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-59474-943-8 Hardcover designed by Holly C. Kempf Edited by Leah Gallo, Holly C. Kempf Production management by John J. McGurk Photo Credits: Leah Gallo Jay Maidment Derek Frey Richard Selway Phoebe Rudomino David White Christine Cantella Paul Gooch Quirk Books Ransom Riggs collection Quirk Books 215 Church Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 quirkbooks.com v4.1

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the entire cast and crew of Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children , who worked so hard to create a beautiful and unique new worldwithout you there would be no book. Im especially grateful to those who contributed photos or allowed me to pick their brains about the process, often over the course of several interviews. In particular, Derek Frey provided photos and answered hundreds of questions tossed his way, acting as a sounding board and unofficial editor. Plus, hes a wonderful husband and father. My appreciation to Jason Rekulak at Quirk Books for guiding us through this process and to Mary Ellen Wilson for being an insightful copy editor. Sam Hurwitz deserves a medal for providing us with tidy transcriptions of the electronic photo kit interviews. My gratitude as well to Valery Nuttall, who painstakingly combed through the entire book. I am indebted to the editors, especially Keith Mason, Tom Kemplen and George Mitchell, all who made themselves available whenever we needed to spin through the film; also Julia Hewitt, for always so kindly feeding me. I would like to recognize my zany graphic design contact, Carol Kupisz, for always making me smile; Christine Cantella, for sending me Colleen Atwoods drawings; Alexandra Kemp for bringing us the props we requested; Sophie Worley for providing the art department files; and Helene Tackcs for being such a gracious VFX liaison. Theres a list of people who worked on the film that contributed to what ended up on the page: Sarah Clark for her assistance setting up the vintage photoshoots (and many others); Katterli Frauenfelder, who was both an invaluable source of information and an amazing first AD; Jay Maidment who taught me tips of the trade; Josh Roth and Gregor Telfer, for offering me a home for my kit; Des Whelan for consistently bringing good will to the set, for always helping me find a place, and because you have the best name; and Richard Selway, whose reference photos are more striking than some of my stills. I want to offer a special acknowledgment to Ransom Riggs, who was available whenever I had a question or request, and who is an all-around great guy. Finally, always last but never least, Tim Burton, for your guidance, your insight, your kindness, and your general, all around brilliance. Working with you is truly like being part of a family, and for that, I am forever grateful. Dedication from Leah To Desmond - my own peculiar child whose greatest talent is force of personality and the joy that he brings me every day. Dedication from Holly To my boys, Eli & Finn but especially Gary for all his support. Thank you for staying on the right side of sane for our family.

Table of Contents

Foreword

finished writing Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children in 2011 with a lot of pride and modest expectations. I had worked hard on the bookpoured my heart into itbut I was young, it was my first novel, and having spent the prior few years as a struggling, fresh-out-of-film-school screenwriter, I was accustomed to pouring my heart into projects that few people ever saw. Besides, I knew Miss Peregrine was an odd little book, not the sort of thing that was likely to climb best-seller lists. Part fantasy, part mystery, part contemporary coming-of-age drama, it was a bizarre genre mishmashwith a dash of gothic horror and time travel just to make certain no two bookstores would shelve it in the same section. My publisher thought teenagers might like it, and Young Adult is a category that can encompass many genres, so we pushed for its inclusion therebut that wasnt an easy fit either, at first, because Miss Peregrine looked nothing like the splashy, colorful books that populated the YA section back then. It was illustrated with old black and white photographs and had an old black and white photo as its cover, and I worried it would be the last book a browsing teen would reach for. (A major bookstore chain agreed and declined to carry the book, which seemed to seal its fate.) Needless to say, I expected Miss Peregrine to sell about fourteen copies.

Luckily, I was wrongstunningly, drastically so. The book did not fail. It wasnt an overnight sensation, either, but gradually, over the course of a year or so, it found a surprisingly wide readership. Even more surprising: Tim Burton was one of those readers. Just a few months after Miss Peregrine was published, I heard that he was interested in adapting it for the screen.

Its difficult to overstate how uncanny this was for me. Tim Burton has been one of my film heroes since I was old enough to know what a film director was. His influence on Miss Peregrine is clear enough to anyone who reads it closely; his aesthetic is part of its DNA, spliced alongside that of Edward Gorey, C.S. Lewis, and Arthur Conan Doyle. If you had asked me to choose a dream director for Miss Peregrine , living or dead, I would have chosen Tim Burton. So the fact that he found my book at alla little book from a little publisher and a first-time authorwas amazing enough. That he wanted to make a film of it seemed too perfect to be true. So I decided it wasnt.

More precisely, in order to armor myself against crushing disappointment, I decided there was no way the project would actually happen. Nothing so right ever came to pass in Hollywood. It would fall apart somehow. The studio would get cold feet. Nuclear war would break out. Tim would decide to direct Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian instead. I remained stubbornly in denial through four long years of development, even as a script was written, the movie got a release date, and the lead roles were cast. Even when the production was only weeks from its start date, I forced myself not to get excited. It could still fall apart, I thought. Remember what happened to Superman Lives! Then one day it was no longer possible to convince myself it wasnt happening because I was standing on the set, surrounded by lights and equipment and crew, ecstatic and dizzy, watching Tim direct a scene Id dreamed up at my writing desk four years earlier. Only after that hallucinatory day did it begin to sink in: holy mother of God, Tim Burton is making Miss Peregrine.

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