Biography

December 24, 1951 · Yardley, Pennsylvania, USA

Robert Wood Welch III

He met his wife Catherine O'Hara on the set of Beetlejuice (1988) after director Tim Burton encouraged him to ask Catherine out on a date. They married in 1992 and they have two sons.

Has 2 sons, Matthew Welch (born 1994) and Luke Welch (born 1997), with Catherine O'Hara.

Graduated from the University of Arizona College of Architecture.

Brother-in-law of Mary Margaret O'Hara and Marc O'Hara.

When I met Tim Burton, it was like a breath of fresh air in terms of liberating me from dreary realism. He would push me towards German Expressionism and reference other movies. He was always a fan of old horror movies. But he would view them with a sense of humor. In that period when you try to wrap your head around his aesthetic you learn. But it was a fantastic experience that changed the way I approach movies from that movie on, as much as you just thought outside the constraints of realistic, replicating reality for movie design.

I can't think of a production designer working today who if offered the chance to design a horrible, rundown carnival/circus with all of the tents and wagons and all of the grotesquery, wouldn't leap at the opportunity because it's so much fun at an aesthetic level. Clowns and circuses are creepy to begin with.

I look for beauty and a pleasing aesthetic within the most mundane, most banal and try to find beauty. As horrible as those places are, you still get it and think it's sort of cool. The goal is to experience it cinematically and in person and bathe in it.

My memories of Beetlejuice (1988) are very fond, of course. I met my wife Catherine O'Hara, who was in it.

Any time you start a collaboration with a new director there's a certain amount of, "I'm there to help them make their movie," or at least that's the way I was raised as a designer. Very often nowadays there's a committee involved. A director has been downgraded, but that's nowadays on big movies. Then, they still gave the director the freedom to make a movie. Especially a movie like Beetlejuice (1988), which was relatively small budget in the scheme of things.