By: Daniel Schweiger

If one composer has excelled at doing the danse macabre, then Danny Elfman’s nimble footsteps with malefic themes, cannibal ceremony percussion, and fiendish rock grooves have made him genre scoring’s answer to Fred Astaire, for few musicians have conjured the enchantment of the outcast and the joy of just being plain evil, with Elfman’s unhinged gift for melody. Whether his subjects were disfigured superheroes, enraged ape-men, a maladjusted chocolatier, psycho aliens, or monsters who just wanted to be loved, Elfman’s alternately crazed and languid themes have given them a darkly beautiful magic. It’s a groovy, wicked appreciation for freaks and geeks that was first heard in Elfman’s songs for his long-missed rock group, Oingo Boingo. And when he transferred that energy to the big screen with the delightful, circus-y music of 1985’s Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Danny Elfman immediately showed himself as a composer with an eccentrically unique voice.

Like any rock/pop star that dared to show he could be just as good in front of a studio orchestra as on a club stage, Elfman weathered his more conventional peers’ slings and arrows to become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand composers. While it’s often had him sing in the key of drama for Black Beauty, Family Man, A Civil Action, Instinct, and the Oscar-nominated Good Will Hunting, it’s always the weird stuff that pulls Elfman back in. For while he can romance Jodie Foster in Sommersby, memorably fill in between the numbers of Chicago, or plaster a bunch of terrorists with Jamie Foxx in The Kingdom, nothing seems to touch Elfman’s hellzapoppin’ spirit like the fantastical, in all of its musical forms. They could be The Simpsons’s bouncy theme, a vocally enchanted ice shower in Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns’s circus-from-hell calliope, To Die For’s peppy chorus, or the lounge, kitsch invasion of Mars Attacks.

Danny Elfman’s genre scores are wild roller coaster rides that crash, bang, slide, and swoon about, yet all have a definite sense of construction behind the madness. It’s music that’s just pure fun, and Elfman’s way with scoring the likes of two Spider-Man films, The Hulk, and Men in Black have made him a summer popcorn composer par excellence. This season, Elfman returns at the top of his melodically wicked game with Wanted and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The first soundtrack is a frenzy of percussion to accompany a super assassin-in-training, as rock guitars jam with the joy of the kill, string and brass pulverizing each other as a train crashes down a gorge, and death-dealing montages are played with the exuberation of Russian dances. Even better, Wanted (soundtrack on Lakeshore) features Elfman singing “The Little Things,” a tune that graduates its hero from office drone to master killer. Then, in Hellboy II, Elfman unleashes his biggest array of creature creativity since his score for Nightbreed, using an array of monster-ethnic percussion, German opera, grinding brass, lyrical piano romance, and dirty metal guitar to play a lug of a likeable devil and the wonder of a new host of faerie tale beasts. Supernatural ass-kicking has never been such a blast as it is in Hellboy II (on Varese Sarabande).

Yet if Hellboy has a yearning for respect from the masses who watch him do what he does best, then a similar feeling might account for Elfman’s need to write his first ballet, Rabbit and Rogue. And he couldn’t have asked for a better partner than legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp (White Nights), who’s helped put steps to Elfman’s complex music for an Orange County performance in early August. It’s about the furthest musical thing from the cosmic, gun-blazing music of Elfman’s summer scores, and maybe even more interesting and provocative for it.

A workaholic composer who prefers to let his tunes speak, Danny Elfman now takes a rare break to explain the most recent methods of his wonderful madness, and the opportunity to put a spring in his surreal musical step.

Daniel Schweiger: Were you always “wanted” by director Timur Bekmambetov?

Danny Elfman: I just know that I was really enthusiastic when I got a call about meeting Timur. I was a fan of his after seeing Night Watch, so he was already way up on my interest list.

DS: What was it about Timur’s work that appealed to you?

DE: I thought that Night Watch was wonderfully insane. Timur clearly had a great eye for storytelling, and I loved this darkly sarcastic Russian sensibility of his. I didn’t know what movie he was doing in America at the time. I was just hoping that some of his schizophrenia would be preserved. So I went out to Chicago, met Timur, and said my five words of Russian that I speak. Them Timur showed me a few scenes they’d put together while Wanted was still shooting. I could already see that this movie was going to be pretty insane and that he’d be a talent who was going to be around for a while. So I was really anxious to work with Timur after that.

DS: I’m also a big fan of Timur’s films. His whacked-out style for Night Watch and Day Watch definitely translated to Wanted, with your score hitting all of those bleak and funny notes. One thing that hit me right off the bat was how you used “Russian” music during Wesley’s big assassin training montage. Was this an intentional way of paying tribute to Timur’s heritage, since there’s nothing particularly Russian about Wanted?

DE: No. Believe it or not, I had to apologize to Timur when he came in to hear that theme. I told him that I wasn’t doing this because of his nationality, but when I’m unleashed on my own and I do what I want to, I end up returning to my own family’s Russian roots. So I’d written two versions of the montage scene. I prefaced one by saying, “Okay, this is probably the music you’re going to like,” before playing it for him. The piece was propulsive, had a lot of energy, and tied into some other motifs I’d used in the score. Then, after he’d heard it, I said, “Now here’s the one that’s a lot chancier and a lot less obvious than what someone might play. You’re probably not going to like it, but please don’t think I wrote this because you’re Russian. It’s just me!” And I played Timur the second theme. Then, he said, in his very Timur-like way of not making an expression, “Hmmm. Interesting. Can you play it again?” So we compared both of the montage approaches. Timur didn’t make a decision, so I offered to record both themes for the movie. Then, in the course of the next few weeks, Timur told me that I didn’t have to record the first version because he really liked the “Russian” theme. So in the end, that approach came about because I was just having fun. I love doing crazy montages like the ones in Wanted. And where the most “far-out” musical idea usually gets rejected on a big-budget movie, it didn’t in Wanted’s case. This is really playing-against-the-grain kind of music, but I think it really makes the scene dance. In fact, Timur thought the “Russian” approach made the training montage like a ballet.

DS: Wanted is a surprisingly thematic score, full of identifiable melodies and motifs. Where did the central five-note theme come from?

DE: Like all of my central themes, the main theme came from this melody I improvised for a particular scene. I thought, “Wow, this is interesting,” and Timur immediately gravitated to it. He called it the “Steps of Fate” theme, and it became something we used all over the place. And without picture, I wrote an extended piece of that thematic music for a prologue that Timur was going to shoot. In the end, I don’t think anyone understood it, and the prologue didn’t end up being in Wanted, which is kind of sad. But I hope it gets put on the DVD with the music I wrote for it.

DS: Wanted’s original climax didn’t end up in the movie either, but I think they replaced it with something far more clever.

DE: Yes, they shot a new beginning and a new ending. Timur is always conjuring that way. So it wasn’t like the typical thing where you preview the movie, there are problems, and then you go and reshoot. These changes happened before the preview, because Timur’s edits were his continuing exploration of the story he wanted to tell. The finale was a perfectly suitable action-movie ending, yet it also wasn’t as interesting as what he ultimately ended up with, and I never saw it until I went to the premiere. Timur had just described it to me.

DS: How did all of these editing changes affect your scoring of Wanted?

DE: They really didn’t, because I’d already written Wanted’s score and then some before I had to go off to compose Hellboy II. I knew that I was going to have to disappear because Wanted’s schedule was moved around, so I wrote ten minutes of extra music for it. It wasn’t for any scene in particular, just so that Timur would have score to use. And I knew, from his Russian movies, that the composer wouldn’t necessarily write to picture for every scene, because Timur was used to taking music and moving it around. So I took the attitude of “I’ll write you music for the scene, but I’ll also write you extra music that you can use anywhere you want. It’s fine with me.”

DS: Do you think that Wanted continues the rock and roll action sound that you used for The Kingdom?

DE: If anything, Wanted’s score is a counterpoint to The Kingdom. That was a guitar-based score, which was also very melodic. The main themes were almost bluesy, and I was playing the music with a “clean” kind of guitar, even if I did some distortion on the repeating effects. Wanted is anything but clean. It was about producing the nastiest sounds and trying to keep a very “heavy metal” approach, which contrasts to The Kingdom’s melodic guitar playing.

DS: After Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man 2, Wanted marks your third train smash-up sequence.

DE: Yeah, they just keep those trains smashing up! You can’t have enough of them.

DS: Is there a trick to writing for the sound effects in sequences like these?

DE: No, you just write knowing you’re not going to hear any of it, but you pretend that you will because the directors always think that. Yet you know deep down inside: “I’m not going to hear any of this music.” So it’s a little depressing, writing for that kind of a scene, because you’ll only hear a few notes and chords coming through the sound effects. Still, you have to write as if the scene really matters, and that’s something I try to do in every action scene. But the reality, in contemporary action films, is that the listener will only catch 10% of the music.

DS: The spotting in Wanted is really interesting. There’s score in parts that you wouldn’t think of, and no music in scenes that would seem to demand it, like the long, slow-motion kiss between Wesley and Fox. You only hear a heartbeat during it.

DE: There was a lot of talk about that. At first, I said that I’d write something for their kiss, and then they wanted a song. Then, at the 11th hour, Timur just decided to keep the scene “dry,” and I’m glad that happened because it would’ve been cornier with a song. I like the way he didn’t play it. Timur dropped out music in a lot of odd places in that way. And, as I expected, he moved music around a lot too. But that’s all cool. Timur’s an imaginative director, and that is a director’s prerogative.

DS: Wanted’s most noticeable song is definitely your “Little Things,” when Wesley decides to become an assassin for The Fraternity.

DE: It’s a funny story - how I ended up doing it - because they had a song in that scene they really wanted…and then they weren’t sure they could get it. So they came to me with a score riff they liked in the movie and wanted me to put a beat to it. Originally, that was a piece of music for the scene where Wesley smacks his so-called “buddy” with a computer keyboard. Kathy Nelson at Universal’s music department called and said, “Can you try putting a lyric to that? You know they’re not going to use it anyway. They’re going to want an anthem or something.” So I put a verse down with a guitar and sent it out. Timur called and said, “Thank you very much, but I think it needs to be a certain kind of a song.” I told Timur that was no problem. Now it’s six weeks later. I’m finishing Hellboy II, and am about to leave to score it in London. I suddenly get a call telling me that they’d changed their minds and really wanted me to do this song. Because I’d do anything for Timur, I grabbed my guitar, put a chorus on it, and sent it out, thinking they’d never use it. So now I’m in New York doing rehearsals for Rabbit and Rogue, en route to London for Hellboy II, and I get this call that Timur really wanted the song in the movie. But it was too late! What could I do? Yet I had to come up with some more lyrics for “The Little Things.” So here I am, exhausted in a hotel room, banging out some lyrics. Then I get to London, where they asked me to record some vocals. So after 12 hours of scoring and mixing Hellboy II every day, I’d go into a booth and lay down vocals. I sent them in. And to my astonishment, they loved it! But here’s the clincher - Timur wanted me to also sing “The Little Things” in Russian! I can’t sing in Russian! Timur must have been pals with every Russian band that exists, but he still thought it would be good if I did it. They sent over lyrics in Russian, and I needed help! So they hired a woman who spoke Russian to be my coach. And I have to tell you, that was the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life. Russian is a motherfucker of a hard language. All Slavic languages are for English speakers. I mean, there are consonants we just don’t put together. There’s a z before an s, six different ways to say the letter e… I’d sing the lines back to the translator the way I thought she sung them to me, and she’d laugh! She’d go, “Oh no. Instead of saying the world ‘alive,’ you said the word ‘potato!’” But I couldn’t hear the difference. So I ended up doing one line at a time. I said to myself, “I know they’re not going to keep this and use it, but for Timur, all right.” Because if I like a director, and if there’s respect on both sides, then there really is nothing I won’t do. It took me three nights. At the end of the first one, I just got one verse down. So when you see Wanted in Russia, you’ll hear me sing “The Little Things” in Russian!

DS: Both Wanted and Hellboy II are films about “outcast” superheroes. One is a demon and the other is an assassin, and your music shares their wonderful sense of ridiculousness in the situation of seeing traditional villains becoming the good guys.

DE: The only reason I did those scores back-to-back is because they had really different tones to them. I was actually on Hellboy II first. When I first met Timur about Wanted, I said that time-wise, and technically, I could just about make his score work. But what most concerned me was that it would be close to Hellboy II. It wasn’t until I saw the Wanted footage that I realized how different the scores would be. The heart of Hellboy II is a very big, romantic, old-fashioned orchestral score with occasional silliness. The center of Wanted would be a weird, twisted, sarcastic thing. And so I was able to go from one score to the other and still feel that I was doing two very different things.

DS: The closest cousin of your scores to Hellboy II is Nightbreed, a film where heroic monsters are accompanied with tribal percussion. They even have the same kind of “market” scene.

DE: Nightbreed is essentially a really romantic and somewhat old-fashioned score, like Hellboy II’s, and I love it when a director will let me do something that’s a nod to my own musical roots. When I finished one sequence, Guillermo turned to me and said, “You know, you’re making me feel like I’m 13 years old again with this music.” And I said, “Well, this is the kind of stuff I listened to when I was 13.” It was really fun to be able to do that in Hellboy II - the thematic romanticism of the prince and princess; the whole thematic side of the Golden Army is very Hermann-esque. In the end, Guillermo and I really felt that we were scoring a George Pal/Ray Harryhausen film with Hellboy II.

DS: There are also a lot of other, zanier musical elements to the score, especially with the ‘50s jazz sound that Hellboy and his team arrive with, or the Theremin that’s used on a carnivorous tooth fairy.

DE: Yes, we used the Theremin for the lighter, fun moments - especially when tooth fairy comes alive. There’s a little bit of James Bond-ness in there as well, which represents the tongue-in-cheek side of the Hellboy character. There are three times in the score when I got to do a funny thing where Hellboy makes his entrance with a huge musical fanfare, which is followed with him saying, “Hey, how you doing?” Guillermo couldn’t make that music big enough! But that’s his sense of humor.

DS: Was it hard for you to judge where Hellboy II’s music should be wacky and when it should be serious?

DE: No, it was so easy, because anytime we’re on Hellboy just bomping around and doing his thing, then the music’s always going to be kind of tongue-in-cheek. And any time were on the Golden Army, the Prince and Princess, and even Abe Sapien, who falls in love, that side of the score is always going to be bigger and more romantic. So it was very easy in that sense - to know when to be funny and then to suddenly turn on the dramatic juice.

DS: Is a score like Hellboy II closer to your heart than anything else?

DE: I really can’t say that it is, because there are always moments that I’m really pleased with in any score I do. On Wanted, I enjoyed myself every time I was writing that “Russian” theme and the “Steps of Fate” theme. That “thumping” sound was very close to my heart, and I could have done variations on that theme forever. And when I get to do the big old-fashioned Ju Ju for Hellboy II, or the stuff that Tim Burton lets me do frequently, then that’s also very close to my heart. So it’s impossible to say that one score is more “me.” I look in any movie for something that I can get my teeth into and have fun. I’m just lucky that Wanted and Hellboy II had a lot of those moments.

DS: How did you end up composing a ballet with Rabbit and Rogue?

DE: The American Ballet Theater came to me about two years ago, with the possibility of a commission. A year earlier, I’d done a piece that played in Carnegie Hall called Serenada Schizophrana, which I was lucky to be able to put out on CD. They liked that and thought I’d be interested in a ballet…and I was. So I flew out to New York and watched their gala. It ended with a piece that Twyla Tharp had done for Philip Glass. I met with the ballet company the next day, and they asked me who I wanted to work with. The name at the tip of my tongue was Twyla’s. They told me that she was difficult, was tough to get, and wouldn’t want to do it, but I didn’t know of any other choreographers who were popping in my head. Then I got a call less than a week later, asking me to come back to New York to meet Twyla. We hung out for an afternoon and she agreed to do it.

DS: What was your collaboration like?

DE: The commission was for a 45-minute ballet, which is half an evening’s work. At first, I didn’t know if we should go for a narrative ballet or one that was straight music. Twyla and I thought that doing a story in dance would be tough, because we’d be cramming a full-length ballet into half that time. Twyla thought I should just write some music and see where it went. When I first met her, she was playing a Scott Joplin record. That gave me the idea of writing a jazz rag for her, and I ended up composing about 14 stylistically different pieces of music for her…and Twyla like them all, which rattled me! I didn’t know how to put the music together, but it ended up being one of the easiest and most fun collaborations I’d ever had. I gave Twyla my demos, went away to score movies, and then it was suddenly rehearsal time! I had to start writing down stuff and printing it up, and I suddenly realized that I’d written a very, very difficult piece. Some of the music had electronics in it, some had samples, but I thought if Steve Reich could do this sort of thing, then so could I, even if it was insanely difficult! If I ever do another ballet, I’ll try to make it simpler. It was almost impossible to get the whole thing ready for rehearsal in a week and then to play along with the electronics.

DS: What was it like finally seeing Rabbit and Rogue on stage?

DE: I had no idea what to expect when I saw the piece in rehearsals, and Twyla’s work was amazing. It was like Wanted, where Timur would do the least-expected things. I’d have a big section of music for “Rabbit,” and Twyla would only use two dancers for it. The show ended up being very different from what I expected, but really brilliant. And opening night at the Metropolitan Opera in New York was one of the most intensely frightening experiences of my life, especially because I knew this wouldn’t sound like anything a ballet lover would expect. Instead of writing “contemporary” music, I was taking lots of old motifs and things from my imagination, and then forcing together this mosh of styles that should never go together. It was like what Leonard Bernstein would do when he used popular motifs in a wild way. And here I was, trying to write something that my 15-year-old godchildren could listen to and not find daunting in the way that “contemporary” music is for most people. All of this is the polar opposite of what one expects to hear from a commissioned piece for a 21st century orchestra at The Met. People were expecting something more dissonant and “modern,” and what I presented was insane but not dissonant. Twyla’s choreography was also so different, so there was no way to know how the audience would react. And waiting for the last few seconds of those 45 minutes was really tense, because Twyla doesn’t put “applause” moments into her pieces, so I was expecting boos or silence from thousands of people. I described it as “the night of 100 heart attacks.” I had no idea if the orchestra would get through the piece, which they’d never played from beginning to end until that opening night. It was scarier than any fucking thing I’d done in my life. The only thing I could equate it to was if Oingo Boingo performed at the Universal Amphitheater without anyone knowing who we were, and unable to react until the end of the concert. But the reaction to Rabbit and Rogue was wonderful. What a relief. In the end, I think that people will have to check out the ballet for themselves when it plays in Orange County. It’s a really odd piece.

DS: When it comes to Oingo Boingo, the first film you ever scored was the black and white Forbidden Zone, where your brother Richard directed The Mystic Knights in a truly surreal piece of “storytelling.” Now Forbidden Zone is now coming back as a colorized movie. What’s it like to see its return?

DE: Well, Forbidden Zone’s music will always be the same for me, but I think it’ll be a great new experience for my brother and fans of the movie.

DS: Your soundtrack for Standard Operating Procedure will probably make more money then Errol Morris’s film about Abu Ghraib. It’s one of the your best scores and films your music has appeared in, yet it was hard enough to watch once. I can only image how horrible it was watching Standard Operating Procedure’s images of torture over and over as you composed.

DE: I had so much fun scoring Standard Operating Procedure! Everybody kept saying, “Oh my God. You must be so depressed!” But I was having the time of my life! That was because Errol didn’t want me to score to picture. He wanted me to look at the movie and start writing music from just thinking about it. And Errol’s wonderful, imaginative approach let me write and write. The film didn’t depress me at all during the process, because I was writing so freely. And when I’m writing freely, I don’t care what I’m watching. It could be Abu Ghraib or Pee Wee Hermann - I’m happy. In the end, I did take some of the music I’d composed and scored it to picture to make the music fit better. It all turned out to be a great experience. I’m sorry more people didn’t see Standard Operating Procedure, but hopefully it will find a life over time.

DS: You’ll be working with director Gus Van Sant on Milk, which is the first time you’ve worked with him since your Oscar-nominated work for Good Will Hunting. What can we expect from this new score?

DE: I’m already deep into the world of Harvey Milk. It’s a drama and a great way to follow Wanted and Hellboy II, because Milk has very little sound effects, no fighting, and I like working with Gus. I’ve been writing for two weeks, and he’ll hear my music soon. I don’t know what to expect from the score in the end, but I do know the performances from Sean Penn and the cast are great. I’m really enjoying myself so far. Hopefully it’ll stay on track.

DS: Do you hope, between Hellboy II, Wanted, and Rabbit and Rogue, to get the reputation as a composer who can do popcorn films as well as artistic ones, and be equally recognized in both worlds?

DE: I’m not hoping for anything but the chance to compose. I’ve had a fun year going between all of these different projects. They’re great challenges. Creating and scoring a ballet with Rabbit and Rogue and scoring a film to no picture on Standard Operating Procedure were completely new things for me. And doing these two wonderful action films then going to a lovely drama is great, so I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody but myself - that there’s a way to keep on writing imaginatively, somehow. That’s all I want to do.

DS: You seem to be at your best when scoring projects with outsiders. As someone who entered scoring from the rock world and fought hard to be recognized as a film composer, do you still view yourself as an outsider to Hollywood?

DE: I always view myself as an outsider in Hollywood. And even though I know I’ve achieved a lot of recognition and that they occasionally pay me a lot, I still feel like as much of an outsider now as I was when I started. I was in a band, yet I didn’t feel any association with any other group. I was in a universe unto myself. And being in your own world goes with the territory of being a film composer. In 23 years, I’ve hardly met any other composers, so it’s not like I have a repartee with a community of other writers. My world is completely solo, up until the very last second, when I’m suddenly in a room with a whole orchestra for a few days. But for anywhere between six and twelve weeks, I’m working every day by myself. Maybe twice a week I’ll get a visit from a director, and then it’s back to solo. So it’s easy to feel like an outsider. I’ve felt that way my whole life anyhow. So of course I always lean towards the outsider in any story. That’s what I grab onto.

[Original audio version of interview]

Burn it up with Danny Elfman’s score for Hellboy II here, and then get on his groovy Wanted list here.

To buy tickets for Danny Elfman’s ballet, Rabbit and Rogue, at The Orange County Performing Arts Center from August 6th –10th, go to http://www.ocpac.org.

Visit The Forbidden Zone for its colorized premiere on Wednesday, July 30th at 8:00 PM at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. For tickets, go to http://www.forbiddenzonethemovie.com.

Daniel Schweiger’s writing contribution courtesy of the wonderful iFMagazine.

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