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The Local History of Edward Scissorhands

Did you know the iconic, pastel-colored neighborhood from the movie Edward Scissorhands wasn’t a Hollywood studio set built out in California? It was filmed right in our local area!

Director Tim Burton didn’t build a fake neighborhood from scratch. Instead, his crew found a regular, brand-new housing development in Lutz called Carpenters Run and completely transformed it for the movie. The production crew paid everyday local residents for the rights to temporarily paint 44 real houses in flat, eerie pastel shades like seafoam green, butter yellow, and flesh pink. Because the subdivision was freshly built in 1990, it was completely bare and open, giving the director the exact creepy, "Tim Burton-y," cookie-cutter suburban look he wanted.

The main Boggs family house where Edward lived is still standing today on Tinsmith Circle in Lutz, and a dedicated fan even bought it to create a free, prop-filled tribute exhibit called Scissorland.

While the neighborhood itself was located in Lutz, other local spots made it into the film as well:

• The famous Southgate Shopping Center in Lakeland was used for the salon scenes.
• The massive hilltop mansion was a temporary, hollow exterior set built out in Dade City.

Wild Behind-the-Scenes Facts from the Set

• Johnny Depp’s Real Florida Heatstroke: Johnny Depp had to wear an intensely heavy, smothering black leather bodysuit during the sweltering Florida summer. The heat and humidity got so brutal that Depp actually collapsed from heat exhaustion on set while filming the scene where Edward runs frantically back to the neighborhood.
• The Plastic Shrub Illusion: None of those iconic dinosaur, elephant, or other crazy shapes Edward snipped into the bushes were real plants. The set designers custom-built them out of welded steel frames, chicken wire, and artificial plastic greenery.