Kimberly Sta. Maria Dalton

Professor Slayton

American Music History

3 December 1999

Danny Elfman: An Underappreciated Talent

In the 1930s through the 1950s Hollywood developed a new style of music to accompany its films. This film music, which was much more complex than the film music of previous years, drew upon the varied sounds of orchestral instruments producing rich scores of romantic music. As the film industry progressed into the late 1900s, however, there was a departure from these classical filmscores in favor of popular songs or music composed on synthesizers. Only in more recent years has the "Hollywood Sound" of the early 20^th century returned in movies like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this new trend of fully-orchestrated scores, no artist is so prolific, and unfortunately so overlooked, as Danny Elfman.

Danny Elfman was born on May 29^th, 1953 in Amarillo Texas. Unlike his brother Rick, who was active in a rock band early on, the young Danny did not seem very interested in music at first. Perhaps because of the influence of his parents, who were both teachers, he instead joined the science project-clique and only tinkered with music when he was alone in his basement. On his first instrument, a Sears Roebuck organ, Danny spent several hours imitating popular musicians, finally mastering the difficult keyboard solo to the Doors' "Light My Fire." Later, with a Fender knockoff and box amplifier, Danny learned to imitate Jimmi Hendrix rifs. He took piano lessons for several years and wanted to take up the trombone, but was told he didn't have long enough arms. As a senior in high school, Danny settled on the violin. If not in his basement trying out some new melody on one of his many instruments, Elfman could generally be found at the Baldwin Hills movie theater. It was here, while watching Hitchcock, sci-fi adventures, or dubbed Mexican horror flicks, that Danny first became intrigued with filmscore writers such as Franz Waxman and Maurice Jarre, composers from the "Golden Age of film music (Glionna 2).

The Elfman family later moved from their mostly African American surroundings to the almost solely Caucasian Brentwood, California. As Danny describes it, he traded the way-cool world of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles for Beach Boys Land. Elfman completed high school early and left California to explore the rest of the world for a year. At his first stop in Paris, he played violin on the street. He and his brother Rick then joined Le Gran Magic Circus, an unconventional musical theatrical group (Glionna 3).

Then came a period of dark and light for Danny Elfman. He wandered alone across western Africa, through Ghana, Mali and Upper Volta. He went entire weeks without speaking to anyone and repeatedly became ill for long periods of time. "It was a cleansing," he recalls. "I spent months in quiet observance. I was like a ghost." His mother remembers finally receiving a telegram from him after several months with no contact. The message read "Strings dry, send resin." During his wanderings in Africa, Elfman came into contact with a newly-developing strain of African pop dubbed "Highlife." Highlife consisted of a reggae-salsa beat and heavy horns and was to become the basis for the style of Danny's band, Oingo Boingo (Glionna 3).

Upon his return home, Danny's brother Rick formed an eccentric rock group called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Their shows consisted of music, drama, and wild improvisation. Each member of the band developed their own bizarre talent. Danny soon joined as the lead singer, also using his fire-breathing talents onstage. The band continued for seventeen years and developed a cult following in the LA area, though never truly appealing to the general public. In 1978 when the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo broke up, Danny launched a new incarnation of the band called Oingo Boingo which was later shortened to just Boingo. His band featured quick-tempoed horns and world-beat rhythms. Danny, who was both lead singer and the composer of the band's songs, commonly used themes that were attacks at society. The band's two biggest hits were "Dead Man's Party" and "Weird Science"( Glionna 3-4).

While continuing to compose eccentric rock music for his L.A.-based band, Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo-Boingo. When the call went out for an unknown composer for Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Elfman offered to score the film, not really believing he would get the job. Though Elfman had been the principle composer for Oingo Boingo, he had almost no experience with composing instrumental music for film. Still, Tim Burton decided to give Danny a chance. "When I got the job, I almost passed on it," admits Elfman. Danny elaborated on his fears on page 38 of the fall 1988 issue of BMI MusicWorld:

Danny had Steve Bartek, the guitarist for Oingo Boingo, do the arrangements. Ever since Pee-wee, the two have collaborated on all of Danny's projects.

Although Elfman first gained public recognition for his wonderful score for Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985, his first film score was actually composed several years earlier, for Forbidden Zone. According to Elfman, the film, which was written, directed and produced by his brother Richard, was "very much a family project." Danny's father and grandfather were also in the film, and Richard's wife was the art director. The score was performed by the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and contained not only "pop" material, but also a good thirty or forty minutes of instrumental music. Still, as Elfman concedes, even the experience he had gained in Forbidden Zone, few would take him seriously as anything but a rock composer. "I don't know how I would have gotten my first scoring assignment if it hadn't been for Tim…I would have continued to have been offered the types of films that I had been getting up til then, 'pop' scores, most of which I detest (Silber 569).

Pee-wee's Big Adventure was a success and Danny landed other scoring jobs including Wisdom in 1986, Back to School in 1986, and Summer School in 1987. In 1988 Danny composed the score to Pee-wee's sequel, Big Top Pee-wee. His task was somewhat frustrating because he could not use any of the themes from the first film because it had been released by a different film company. It was not until the filming of Beetlejuice in 1988 that Danny Elfman once again collaborated with Tim Burton. The dark feel of Tim Burton's direction allowed Danny to open up to his darker side. "Elfman's score is terrific, but in unexpected ways. In contrast with the heroic and upbeat music of John Williams' scores such as Star Wars, Danny's music, like Burton's film, is dark, gothic, and intense (Silber 569-570). "I've always loved black comedy; that's why I have a good feel for films like Beetlejuice. When I was a kid I was obsessed by horror and fantasy" (Robinson 39).

Danny's next project in 1988 was Scrooged . Unfortunately, as is the hazard with the fimlscoring profession, the director did not like Danny's dark interpretation of the film. His entire first score was rejected after it had been completed and another lighter score was composed in its place. Danny still maintains that dumping the first score left the movie "not as strong as it could have been" (Doerschuk 94).

With only the experience of a few films under his belt, Danny moved on to his first truly epic project: Batman. This time Tim Burton wanted a full-blown orchestral soundtrack, as opposed to the mostly synthesized music dished out by many Hollywood composers. Though self-taught, with none of the conservatory schooling of many of his peers, Elfman accepted Tim Burton's offer. For several months Elfman worked relentlessly working on his Mac II with Performer and several synthesizers. Danny's amazing talent with character themes was shown in the dark, delicate waltz used for the joker and the heroic "anthematic" theme for Batman. He effectively expanded the joker's theme into a full blown Strauss waltz in the final scene of the movie atop the cathedral. Though the title theme was written in a minor key, it was flexible enough to be resolved to major chords while still feeling minor. His music also featured vocal ensembles for "dreamlike" sequences. The symphonic album, which was released separate from the popular music tracks, was considered by many to be the blockbuster soundtrack of the year (Doerschuk 85).

After Batman's smash hit, Eflman found no trouble landing filmscoring jobs. Among the forty movies he has completed since Batman are such notable titles as Dick Tracy, Darkman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Sommersby, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dolores Claiborne, Mission: Impossible, Mars Attacks!, Men in Black, Flubber, Good Will Hunting, Scream 2, A Civil Action, and the recent release Sleepy Hollow. Danny also has several movies, American Psycho, X:The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, and Mission: Impossible 2, in the works. However, just as he tired with Boingo, Danny is tiring of film scoring. He has already landed a two-picture writing, directing and development deal with Disney and has taken up writing screenplays as well. "I know one thing. I'm just not happy being a film composer all year round. While it may be a great part-time job, it's real crappy full-fime work" (Glionna 6).

Through the years Danny's dark characteristic sound, which is very effective in the American styles that it utilizes, has changed very little. An Elfman score is reminiscent of a complex and romantic 1940s Hollywood composition, but with a dark or sinister twist. He uses dissonance and prefers minor keys to major ones. He also uses small choruses or other sounds and then layers them to create a fuller sound with a synthesizer if needed. Though he tries to use all acoustic instruments, sometimes, as with the pipe organ in Batman, that was not possible, so sound samples were used and mixed on a computer. As a film composer, Danny frequently changes the tempo or creates irregular bars of his music to match the action of him movies. Also, his use of Oingo Boingo and other elements of rock in movies such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Back to School and his mixing of musical styles and sounds as well as experimentation with nontraditional instruments, such as a musical saw in Batman, are effective and distinctly American.

Despite his many achievements, Elfman has not always been taken seriously, or been treated fairly, by some of his contemporaries. This may be because he is so honest about his lack of formal musical training and so eager to praise those who assist the preparation of his film scores. While it is comprehensible that some of his scores may have been overlooked due to the films themselves, it was unbelievable that his score for Beetlejuice, which was considerably better than any of the five Oscar nominated scores for 1988, was never even considered. When told that it would be difficult for the Academy to ignore his exceptional work on Batman, Elfman simply said, "Just watch them. They don't like me" (Silber 572).

Another reason why Elfman has received so little attention is because of viscous Hollywood rumors that that he doesn't write his own scores. "On Beetlejuice, people were giving credit to the guy who we brought in at the very last second as a conductor, during the last three days of scoring. They said, 'Oh yeah, that's Bill Ross, he wrote that.' And the same thing is happening on Batman" (Silber 572). Indeed, when Keyboard Magazine included an article on Danny in October 1989, they received several letters from critics who were shocked to read that Danny had never attended a musical conservatory. One angry professor accused Danny of having studied with Christopher Young and stealing most of Batman's theme from Young's Hellbound:Hellraiser II. The professor condemned the Keyboard interviewer for his article saying that "by glorifying Elfman, he glorifies musical ignorance." The professor also accused Danny of hiring "competent, conservatory-trained people such as Bartek and Walker" to help him in his compositions because he was incapable of writing such complex music himself (5, 10). Danny later responded to the professor's misinformed accusations in the March 1990 issue of Keyboard stating that neither Bartek or Walker were conservatory-trained. Danny's letter also defended other artists like himself who did not receive formal training in their field and who feel the pressure of elitism.

Though the rumors and the lack of recognition was disheartening, Danny remained patient and modest. "My theory," according to Danny Elfman, "is that I'm going to work for ten years, and I'll start to get recognition from the industry. But they're going to be the very last ones" (Silber 573). Ten years later Danny still had not received recognition by the Academy, but he didn't let it upset him; he sometimes joked that he couldn't even get nominated for Best Danny Elfman Score. Then suddenly in 1997 Danny finally received the recognition that he had been denied in the form of an Oscar nomination in each of the score writing categories. He was nominated in the comedic category for work on Good Will Hunting and for the dramatic category for Men In Black. "I was shocked and saddened," says Elfman, who had been hoping to remain the most-unrecognized major film music composer in history. "To go from the stern cold shoulder to this. I finally admitted it was a good thing" (Glionna 5). Unfortunately, Elfman did not win in either category, though he did take home four BMI music awards in 1998 for Men In Black, Good Will Hunting, Flubber, and The Simpsons (Billboard 55).

Through the years, Elfman's work has made a significant change in movie music. He has held his own with his conservatory-trained contemporaries while continually maintaining modesty and respect for more learned musicians. This humility was evident in the October 1989 issue of Keyboard Magazine:

By writing soundtracks that stand on their own as album releases which could challenge the Star Wars theme in pops concert programs, Elfman demonstrates that with sufficient talent and dedication, even untutored musicians may write effectively for orchestra. Indeed, he has proven that anything is possible if one is determined to succeed.