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Timothée Chalamet Crashes His Own Look-Alike Contest after Police Shut down Crowded Event

Miles Mitchell, 21, winner of the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest near Washington Square Park, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP)
Miles Mitchell, 21, winner of the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest near Washington Square Park, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP)
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Timothée Chalamet Crashes His Own Look-Alike Contest after Police Shut down Crowded Event

Miles Mitchell, 21, winner of the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest near Washington Square Park, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP)
Miles Mitchell, 21, winner of the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest near Washington Square Park, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP)

Actor Timothée Chalamet made a surprise appearance at his own look-alike contest in Lower Manhattan on Sunday, an event that drew hundreds of onlookers, a dispersal order from police and at least one arrest.

Flanked by bodyguards, Chalamet briefly posed for photos with his high-cheeked, curly haired doppelgängers, some of whom had dressed as the actor's characters in "Wonka" and the "Dune" movies.

But just as the wannabe-Chalamets began strutting along a red carpet in Washington Square Park, police ordered the large group to disperse, slapping organizers with a $500 fine for an "unpermitted costume contest."

At least one contestant was taken away in handcuffs, though police did not immediately say why. A spokesperson for the NYPD said charges were pending.

"It started off as a silly joke and now it's turned pandemonium," said Paige Nguyen, a producer for the YouTube personality Anthony Po, who staged the event.

The organizers had posted flyers for the contest — which promised a $50 prize to the winner — around New York in recent days, spurring social media speculation and thousands of RSVPs to an online invite.

After leaving the park, the group soon found a backup location in a nearby playground, where more than a dozen contestants competed for audience approval from a makeshift stage.

What makes a good Chalamet?

"It's all in the nose," said Lauren Klas, a 27-year-old graphic designer who clung to a fence post to get a better view of the stage. "All of his bone structure, really."

After winnowing down the group down to four, the remaining contestants were asked about their French proficiency, their plans to make the world a better place and their romantic intentions with Kylie Jenner. Chalamet and Jenner are said to be a couple.

Eventually, a winner was chosen: Miles Mitchell, a 21-year-old Staten Island resident, who dressed in a purple Willy Wonka outfit and tossed candy to the crowd from a briefcase.

As he stood next to a novelty-size check written out to "Best Tim," a group of admirers lined up for the chance to take a photo — or exchange social media profiles — with the winner.

"I'm excited and I'm also overwhelmed," Mitchell said. "There were so many good look-alikes. It was really a toss-up."

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Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
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Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)

The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits – all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.

But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really disturbed me.”

“It wasn’t an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibition at London’s Design Museum. “I looked at those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are pretty good.’ ... (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside.”

Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you can do it, people will do it.” But he scoffed when asked if he’d use the technology in this work.

“To take over the world?” he laughed.

The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.

“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way of expressing myself.”

Decades later, after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.

London is the exhibition’s final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” sign a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s also a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to the trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug full of pencils.

Alongside hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman.”

“We had very generous access to Tim’s archive in London, stuffed full of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McLintock. “And how to synthesize such a wide ranging and meandering career within one exhibition was a fun challenge — but definitely a challenge.”

Seeing it has not been a wholly fun experience for Burton, who said he’s unable to look too closely at the items on display.

“It’s like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second series of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”

These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective – “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.

“Once you feel that way, it never leaves you,” he said.

“Each film I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” in 1988 received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each one leaves its emotional scars.”

McLintock said Burton “is a deeply emotional filmmaker."

“I think that’s what drew me to his films as a child,” she said. "He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So it’s been quite a weird but fun experience spending so much time in his brain and his creative process.

“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t agree with that. And if they are dark, there’s a very much a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the darkness in his films.”