Danny Elfman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Scores (Tim Burton Edition)

It was just Tim and I.

It was really kinda like two kids in the, you know,

kindergarten class and the teacher leaves,

and they're just like running their own class,

and there's no adult supervision.

And I didn't understand till later what a luxury that was.

Hi, GQ.

I'm Danny Elfman, and I'm gonna talk to you

about some of my more well-known television and film scores.

[upbeat music]

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

Go ahead, Barbara, say it.

Beetlejuice.

[dramatic music]

I wrote music before I saw a rough cut of anything.

I had a little extra time, and I thought I'd get started.

I read the script,

and I wrote a bunch of music, all got thrown away.

As soon as I saw it, I was like,

oh, this is not the movie I was imagining in my head.

This is something else completely.

And Michael Keaton brought this energy,

and that's what I'm latching onto,

that it's really intense,

but it changes, changes, changes changes on a dime

because that's what he is.

So Tim just let me go crazy and run amuck.

And I was like, great.

If you're game, I'll just go nutty the whole time

until you tell me to stop.

Until you, until like you tell me that I've gone too far.

And he's almost never told me that I've gone too far,

fortunately, which is one of the reasons

I love working with him.

I didn't realize in hindsight how lucky I was

that when we did these movies

nobody was paying attention to us.

They were small enough budgets that we could do them.

And nobody from the studio ever showed up

saying can you play us some music?

There was no presentations.

It was just Tim and I.

It was really kinda like two kids in the, you know

kindergarten class and the teacher leaves,

and they're just like running their own class.

Well, I'm back.

I feel real good about myself.

You know what I mean?

So, without further delay.

[spooky music]

Welcome to Winter River.

It was a really deceptively hard score to play.

I didn't realize it at the time,

just the simplicity of [Danny humming]

really strict time.

So half the brass section going up, up, up, up,

offbeats like that.

And there's a tendency to wanna let it swing.

[Danny humming]

And it's like, no, no, no, no.

And poor tuba player is like turning blue

[Danny humming]

without a break,

just like on and on and on and on and on.

They tried to record it in England

like for a best of album.

The conductor in England looked at the score,

and they started playing, and he picked it up,

and he threw it on the floor and he said,

This shit is unplayable.

And it's like, I'm enjoying this.

I mean, weirdly, this kind of like weird stuff

was really fun for me.

You know, I came from many years with Oingo Boingo,

and I was a total brat,

and I was out to aggravate everybody.

I don't know how else to explain it.

It's like I thrived on negative energy

in the same way that if you want to kill Godzilla,

you're not gonna kill him with radiation

because he was made from radiation.

So you hit him with an atomic anything,

he just gets stronger.

And that was me with negative energy, you know,

both with Oingo Boingo and as a film composer.

And I think that served me well

because then when I became a film composer,

I'd go, all right.

I'm not gonna write scores like a band.

I wanna write scores like the scores I grew up on.

I was a film music fan.

So it's basically taking a fan

and saying here you go do it.

I knew what the scores of, of course, Bernard Hermann,

but I also knew Jerry Goldsmith's work,

and I knew Max Steiner and Korngold, you know,

the famous composers of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

You know, I wanted to turn to that, but at the same time

I still had a little bit of that punk attitude

that I took from the band, which was my combativeness.

All the other composers hated my guts.

And I loved that.

That fueled me on because every score I was writing,

you know, for those first 10 years I was writing,

it was all about check this out, mother fucker.

That was my motivating force.

It's like, you're gonna be fucking imitating this

next year, asshole, and you're gonna hate me for it.

In hindsight, I wouldn't have it any differently.

If everybody loved my first score, and I was accepted,

it probably would've hurt my career.

[dramatic music]

I was so sad at the end of Beetlejuice,

at the end of Edward Scissorhands.

It's like, God, I could just keep writing variations.

I'm loving doing this, and it's so sad that I have to stop.

So to get a chance 35 years later to like do it again,

that's like the weirdest sequel ever.

I'm really excited to like get back into that.

[upbeat music]

Batman and Batman Returns

[dramatic music]

I've never done anything harder than Batman

because first off, I had to prove myself.

You know, it's like, okay, he's the quirky comedy guy,

and here I am doing like this Batman movie.

Understandably, I think they were like,

uh, we need somebody who knows how to do this kind of music.

But nobody knew what kind of music it was.

There really was no superhero music.

There was just Superman.

And we said we know we don't want it to be Superman,

John Williams.

And then there was an element

with the producer in the studio

of wanting it to be a pop score.

There was definitely this moment of like,

Danny, we want you to collaborate with Prince

and co-write the score.

And I go, I can't do that.

People, you really said that?

I love Prince, but not for that score.

I already knew what the score was,

and I knew that if I collaborated,

he'd be writing tunes, and I'd be orchestrating his tunes,

and I would be essentially a glorified arranger

rather than a composer, you know,

because he was world famous, and I was still nothing.

I had to walk away.

I was so depressed.

I felt like I just blew up my own career.

And then a month later I got the call saying,

Danny, you're back on.

We gotta get moving.

Come on, come on.

It's like [heavy sigh] this gamble paid off.

But it was a miserable period of time.

On the other hand, I already heard the music in my head.

I knew what it was, and I was determined that

that was gonna be the score.

The producer was so hard on me, John Peters,

and then there finally he's in

I think it's the third presentation.

And I didn't know how to do presentations.

I was playing this weird music stuff

that was all like inspired, you know, crazy.

And then Tim says, play the March, play the March

play the march.

And that's what he called the titles.

I go, oh yeah, I got this piece here.

And of course, now I know,

you lead with your headline, obviously.

I didn't really know, understand that back then.

And I put this piece of music on,

[dramatic music]

and John starts conducting in his chair.

And then at a certain point he stands up,

and he's going like this.

And I, and Tim looks at me and he's like,

[Danny laughing] yeah, we got it

[upbeat music]

The Nightmare Before Christmas.

♪ Boys and girls of every age ♪

♪ Wouldn't you like to see something strange ♪

♪ Come with us and you will see ♪

♪ This old town of Halloween ♪

Oh, Christmas was the most depressing

time of the year for me.

It was a very lonely time for me as a kid.

You know, I didn't have other Jewish friends.

All my friends were celebrating Christmas.

and I was just kind of staying home, playing some game

in, you know, my room or annoying my brother.

And I imagined them all together holding hands

around a Christmas tree and singing carols,

and you know, just the kind of warm family thing in my mind.

All my friends are doing this, and I'm just like.

So Tim comes to me with Nightmare before Christmas,

and you know first thing is like, oh God, Christmas.

Here we go.

Tim and I had never done a musical,

so neither of us knew how to start and there was no script.

And we're just like, how do we begin?

He said, well, let's just start with the songs.

Tim would come over every three days,

and I'd say just tell me the story

like you're telling it to nephews and nieces, you know,

around a fire at night.

And he'd say, okay, come in here.

And he'd show me the drawings,

and he'd show me what Zero and Jack looked like.

And he goes, Jack is wandering into the forest.

And he comes across these three doors,

and these three trees, and he gets sucked down.

And when the door opens, and this, all this stuff

he has no idea what it is.

What is it?

What is it?

And I'm just going,

♪ what's this ♪

♪ What's this ♪

♪ There's carpet everywhere. ♪

♪ What's this ♪

♪ There's white things in the air ♪

♪ What's this ♪

♪ I can't believe my eyes ♪

♪ I must be dreaming ♪

♪ Wake up, Jack ♪

♪ This isn't there. ♪

And now it wasn't decided that I was gonna sing,

but I was slowly becoming

more and more attached to the character

because I wasn't quite conscious of it at the moment.

But, you know, Jack Skellington

is like the king of Halloween land,

but he wants something else.

And at that moment in time, I had my own band.

I had Oingo Boingo, but I wanted out in my heart.

You know, when you're the songwriter

and lead singer in a band, it's like,

that's your mini universe.

That's your, that's my Halloween land.

I felt this obligation to keep going, you know,

because the band depended on me,

but my heart wasn't in it anymore.

And so I put that into Jack Skellington,

my desire to kind of free myself of this responsibility

that I felt chained to.

So I understood Jack emotionally on that level.

Even though the creation is 100% Tim,

I was pouring my own feeling into the character.

♪ But who here would ever understand ♪

♪ That the pumpkin king with the skeleton grin ♪

♪ Would tire of his crown ♪

♪ If they only understood ♪

♪ He'd give it all up if he only could. ♪

And so we went into the studio one night,

and all night long I just recorded every single song,

all the voices for every song except for Sally's song,

finally exhausted it's like middle of the night,

and I got all 10 songs recorded.

I say to Tim, so Tim, I,

and he goes, you'll sing, don't worry.

And I was like, thank you.

Cause I was already imagining a scenario in my mind

where, well, of course we're gonna have to hire like,

you know, a real singer, professional singer.

And then all these accidents would happen.

Like the singer would be walking down the street,

and a piano falls on his head.

It's like, oh, well, let's find somebody else.

So I didn't have to resort to dropping pianos out of windows

on other singers.

Edward Scissorhands

[upbeat rock music]

But etiquette tells us

just what is expected of us

and guards us from all humiliation and discomfort.

[upbeat music]

Tim doesn't talk about his films when we're starting them.

I mean, he's no different now than he was 38 years ago.

He basically will just show me what there is to show.

He'll tell me a little bit how he feels emotionally

about the movie.

He'll show me drawings.

And, you know, in that case there was a script,

and I read the script.

I didn't really quite understand,

but you know from his drawings, I got a sense of it.

There was no template

for what this is supposed to sound like.

That's heaven for a composer.

There's no genre that this fits into.

So I just started writing,

and for a while I was kind of stressed.

I remember sitting with Tim

because I have two themes for Edward.

Really I've got this A theme and a B theme.

And I think, you know,

you're supposed to just pick one theme for a character,

and I don't have any love theme at all.

And Tim was just like, I don't know, it just works.

Because one of them became like the storybook theme,

and the other became like the ice dance theme

that followed Edward.

And I just took those themes,

and I let them follow everything from his perspective.

[uplifting music]

And like often with Tim's movies, it previewed terribly.

You know, they'll often preview a movie

before it's totally finished,

and the scorer is still like weeks

or a month away from recording.

And I remember being there for it.

And the audience did have,

they had no clue what to make of this thing.

There was this one guy,

I forget what Anthony Hall's character's name was.

He's the antagonist in the film.

And this guy gets up in the focus group and he goes,

I felt sorry for him.

And I remember thinking, oh my God.

And Tim is like, oh, this is not going well.

It really just made me think more in a sense

that no one's gonna see this movie, and I really love it,

but it's just, that's gonna be one of those films.

People don't get it, and they're not gonna see.

But that's the way I felt about Beetlejuice.

In fact, the studio tried to rename the movie House Ghost

when it came up cause they said

no one will come and see a movie called Beetlejuice.

It's too complicated.

Sorry, House Ghost.

In the end they just said,

ugh, it's gonna be a disaster anyhow, let's just put it out.

And of course, you know, it did really well.

And Edward Scissorhands found an audience,

and it just felt really good

cause I just had this sad sense when I was working on it

that it's gonna be one of those,

a really sweet little movie that 10 people will see.

[upbeat music]

Wednesday.

[dramatic music]

Well, I'd never done episodic t.v.

I'd only written themes for episodic t.v.

The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, you know,

Tales of the Crypt, you know,

it was only like one piece of music.

And here it's like, oh wait, I got four episodes.

So we spent forever on the first episode,

cause for Tim, it was just like doing a movie.

And he's like giving me notes and talking about stuff.

And I'm changing and writing, I said,

Tim, you know once we get past this,

you know, we're gonna have 10 days per episode

to like do the next three scores.

And he's like, really?

So once we got it all defined with the first episode

then I had to dive into like the next three.

We were like, oh my God.

I ended up with such respect for episodic composers,

you know?

And fortunately I had a partner that I brought in

to co-compose the score.

You know, I did the first four, and he did the next four.

A guy named Chris Bacon.

And he'd done a lot of television before.

So he was, he would keep me calm.

Go, don't worry, Danny.

It's gonna be fine.

I'd go, Chris, this is insane.

This is insane.

And he kept, it's gonna be okay.

It's gonna be okay.

But I, yeah, it was so fun.

How could I not love it?

Even though it was really intense.

[dramatic music]

I loved Adam's Family, and I really loved Jenny.

You know, it just helps so much

when you have a character on screen

that you're following constantly,

and you just love looking at them.

Her dead pan sensibility, which I really related to,

and of course how could I not relate to Wednesday Addam,

and thing, you know, I'm obsessed with hands, you know.

I've got amputated hands.

I've got hands all over the place.

I must have like 40 hands in my collection.

And so, you know, here's like, oh my God.

It's Jenny Ortega and a Hand.

It's thing that I grew up with, Thing.

Really, when Tim told me he was gonna work on it,

I really just said, what took you so long?

No like, oh my God, really?

You doing Addams family?

This is like supposed to happen.

[dramatic music]

[Interviewer] So what was the conversation

about bringing in the original theme song?

Well, you know, Tim is usually adamant

that we not do that.

Batman, we never touch it.

Planet of the Apes, we never touch it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, never reference it.

He says, I wanna start from scratch.

But with Wednesday he was more open-minded,

and I kept saying, I'd like to bring in

just the harpsichord in the sound just to connect us

to the original.

And he was like, okay, we can do that.

And the beauty of the original theme, which I love so much,

is that I could be playing, playing playing

like this whole piece of music and end with

[The Addams Family Theme song]

it's the easiest theme in the world

to create a connection to.

And every now and then I would sneak it in,

go see if Tim's gonna like smack me down.

[Danny humming]

And he'd listen, and he'd go, okay.

And I was like, yes.