Elfman, Danny

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DANNY ELFMAN

Born: Los Angeles, California, 29 May 1953

Genre: Film Scores

Best-selling album since 1990: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Danny Elfman, guitarist and co-founder with his brother Richard (an independent film director) of the cult-favorite band Oingo Boingo, became a soundtrack composer in 1985, when he met director Tim Burton and agreed to score Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. That film, concerning the surreal, epic search by oddball television kid's show character Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) for his missing bicycle, established Elfman's metier: the subtle depiction in hyperbolic music of zany and/or peculiar adventures, for thrills and chills and fun.

Elfman has subsequently scored every one of Burton's movies except Ed Wood (1994, scored by Howard Shore), collaborating with orchestrator Steve Bartek, another ex-Oingo Boingo member. He has also worked with directors Brian DePalma (Mission Impossible, 1996), Sam Raimi (Darkman, 1990), Warren Beatty (Dick Tracy, 1990), and Wes Craven (Scream 2, 1997), among others. He composed the theme for Matt Groening's animated television series The Simpsons (1989) and the themes for The Dilbert Zone (1999) and Tales from the Crypt (1989); he supplied music for television advertising campaigns by Lincoln/Mercury (1998–1999) and Nissan (1996–1997).

Elfman's light touch typically is accompanied by dark undertones, especially in keeping with Burton's chiaroscuro of comic and gothic motifs in films such as Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Mars Attacks! (1996), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001), and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), which included ten of Elfman's original songs as well as his uninterrupted orchestral score. Elfman has acknowledged the influence of classical composers ranging from Erik Satie through late Russian Romantics (Sergey Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky) to George Gershwin, and he exhibits a fondness for circus and parade themes, grandiose gestures, xylophone and glockenspiel accents, pizzicato strings, chorales, and cymbal crashes. Around 2000, his projects (including Spider-Man [2001], Red Dragon [2001], and the supplemental score to the Academy Award-winning Fred Ebb-John Kander musical Chicago [2002]) began to exude a renewed rock and roll and minimalist-influenced approach.

Elfman's score to Taylor Hackford's adaptation of Stephen King's novel Dolores Claiborne (1995) is perhaps the darkest of Elfman's soundtracks; his writing for Sommersby (1993), a drama set after the American Civil War, is probably his most romantic, and his music for Spy Kids (2001) may be his sunniest. He has annotated two volumes of his work for diverse films and television projects under the collective title Music for a Darkened Theater (1996, 1990).

Elfman received his only Grammy Award in 1989 for the score of Burton's first Batman film, and was accorded two Academy Award nominations in 1998, competing with himself in the category of Best Score for Good Will Hunting (1997) and Men in Black (1997). Even after a career spanning two decades, Elfman considers himself a film and television industry outsider, but that self-image may refer as much to the singularity of the characters in films he has scored than to his own career status.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Music for a Darkened Theater, Vol. 1 (MCA, 1990); Edward Scissorhands Soundtrack (MCA, 1990); Dick Tracy (Warner Bros., 1990); Darkman Soundtrack (MCA, 1990); The Nightmare Before Christmas (Disney, 1993); Sommersby (Elektra, 1993); Dolores Claiborne Soundtrack (Varese Sarabande, 1994); Dead Presidents (Capitol, 1995); To Die For (Varese Sara-bande, 1995); Music for a Darkened Theater, Vol. 2 (MCA, 1996); Good Will Hunting (EMI/Capitol, 1997); Men in Black (Sony, 1997); Sleepy Hollow (Hollywood, 2000); Planet of the Apes (Sony, 2001); Spy Kids (Chapter III, 2001); Chicago (Epic/Sony Music Soundtrax, 2002).