Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Tim Burton’s film Big Fish.   A witch. A giant. A werewolf. Conjoined twins. Daring feats of strength. A magical town.   Tim Burton’s 2003 film, Big Fish, has it all.   Based on Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel of the same name, the film stars Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Steve Buscemi, Danny DeVito, Jessica Lange, and a large cast of other actors. It is a delightful, fantastic, over-the-top spectacle of a small Southern traveling circus, complete with “freaks,” as they are often known. It also tells the story of Spectre, a fairy-tale, utopian version of a small town in Alabama.   Big Fish is also a tale within a tale, the story of a young man, Will Bloom, saying goodbye to his elderly, dying father, Edward. When Will was a boy, Edward regaled him with one fantastic story after another – and he continues the outlandish tall tales on his deathbed. Will, who had been caught in the tales as a child, eventually came to believe his father was a liar, that he’d spun crazy yarns to make himself lo