Odd couple

What would Tim Burton and Johnny Depp talk about if they were left alone in a room for several minutes – with a reporter’s tape recorder innocently capturing it all?

Would they compare the relative beatnik cool of their goatees?

Or maybe congratulate each other on how the critics are besotted with their sixth, and unlikeliest, collaboration: an R-rated film version of the Broadway musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”?

A check of the tape reveals that they got caught in the act of discussing a couple of horror heroines of yore: Elsa Lanchester, the shrieking bride of Frankenstein, and the more obscure Carroll Borland, who once vamped with Bela Lugosi.

Why? Why not, given the Goth overtones and general weirdness that infuses their movies together.

It’s all the more fitting a topic, given that Depp now plays a vengeful, Victorian-era serial killer who is filled with hateful rage after being wrongfully jailed and losing his wife and baby daughter.

Moviegoers eager to see him cut throats and growl Stephen Sondheim songs get their chance starting today as Burton’s gorier, sexier and swifter take on the haunting, Tony-winning material reaches theaters.

In fact, Burton’s approach was inspired by old horror movies and spooky actors like Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.

“We took cues from silent movies,” he says. “When Johnny walks into the barbershop, you just see the pain in his eyes. I find he doesn’t have to say anything. It’s an acting style you don’t really see anymore.”

Like a mad scientist and his monstrously talented creation, Burton, 49, and Depp, 44, have a kind of psychic bond that results in sometimes-bizarre notions that still manage to connect with the mainstream public.

Even Depp’s horsey teeth and fey vocal manner couldn’t keep audiences from buying more than $200 million worth of tickets to see 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“We’ve been lucky to usually be on the same wavelength and like similar kinds of things,” explains Burton, who, like his favorite leading man, doesn’t like to get overly introspective when it comes to his work or his life.

Helena Bonham Carter, Burton’s paramour of six years and mother of his two children (a 4-year-old boy, and a girl born last week), has no such qualms.

Bonham Carter, who plays a lusty Mrs. Lovett – the meat-pie baker who puts Sweeney’s victims to practical use – gladly dishes on the Depp-Burton relationship from her London home.

“They have a great synergy,” she says. “They are very like each other. Chosen brothers elected by each other.

“They have the same sense of humor and share a deep respect. They have grown up together. ‘Edward Scissorhands’ joined them.

“They are both introverts, but very flamboyant when it comes to their work. That is their release. They are rebels, anti-authoritarian. They are very age 7 in their sense of humor.”

Even in dark times – such as when Depp’s daughter, Lily-Rose, then 7, was hospitalized with a serious illness three weeks into filming – they stick by each other. Depp suggested recasting. Instead, Burton shot Sweeney-free scenes until he returned.

Mostly they are like adult playmates, grown men whose careers pay them to be childlike, at least in their imaginations.

Unlike most male chums, they see nothing wrong with going shopping together. The paparazzi recently snapped them drooling over “Dr. Who” and “Star Wars” toys at the British geek emporium Forbidden Planet.

“In fact, we have to end this interview right now,” Burton jokes. “We have to run to Bergdorf Goodman.”

“There’s a sale on,” Depp adds.

Shopping is one thing. Broadway musicals? Not major fans – which makes their involvement in “Sweeney Todd” all the more strange.

Confesses Burton: “Often, I’m dressed as one of the members of ‘Cats.’ “

Actually, he wanted to do a film adaptation of “Sweeney Todd” even before he was a director.

“I was about 20,” says Burton, who saw the show on the London stage. “I was a college student still then. I didn’t really know what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

“But I went three times in a row, I liked it so much. I just liked the mix of emotion and the melodrama and the humor. And the beauty of the music against that imagery, I thought was really unique. I hadn’t seen anything like it.”

Depp, who dropped out of high school to be a guitarist in a punk-pop band, concedes that he likes a few musicals – but only if they rock.

” ‘The Wall’ is as far as I would go. ‘Tommy.’ ‘Quadrophenia,’ ” he says.

“Then I ended up in (John Waters’) ‘Cry-Baby’ in 1989, which is interesting. I didn’t have to sing then. We didn’t have time for any of that. They got some guy to sing for me, but I had to dance. Which was the most frightening part.”

At least he and Bonham Carter only briefly waltz in “Sweeney Todd.” Still, he half-kids: “I did ask for a stunt double.”

But Depp was eager to attempt his own singing this time. Unlike Bonham Carter, who took the traditional route and found a vocal coach, he went off with one of his former bandmates, and together they found a way for him to handle the near-operatic numbers.

“When I first heard his demo, it blew me away,” Burton says. “He took this real hard music, and he made it his own.”

Bonham Carter also took baking lessons (“It was Martha Stewart gone mad”), the better to knead in time to the music while belting out “The Worst Pies in London.”

But no shaving classes for her Sweeney.

“I didn’t have to take throat-slitting lessons, either,” explains Depp, who wielded custom-made blades. “And I slit more throats than I shave people.”

Sondheim approved of the casting and conferred on which songs to cut and other changes, slicing about an hour from the stage version.

“He trusted me, knowing that I am not an idiot,” Burton says. “I think he sensed my passion.”

That’s paid off with four Golden Globe nominations, for best musical/comedy picture; best musical/comedy actor and actress, for Depp and Bonham Carter; and best director for Burton.

As for whether Christmas crowds will be happy to spend the holiday counting the bodies as they pile up in Mrs. Lovett’s basement, Burton has his answer all wrapped up with a bow and ready to go.

“You leave the theater thinking your life isn’t so awful, so it’s a time of hope,” he says. “You know, ‘My family isn’t so rotten after all. That turkey wasn’t so bad.’ “

Besides, he knows someone who could carve that bird to perfection.