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© 2008 Danny Elfman
Composer Danny Elfman
Music:
Exclusive Interview: DANNY ELFMAN FEELS THE BURN COMPOSING 'HELLBOY II' - PART TWO
The composer talks scoring for the big, red, one and his other projects he's working on
By DANIEL SCHWEIGER, SOUNDTRACK EDITIOR
Published 7/22/2008
He may have once been the Oingo Bongo frontman but that was long ago and he is even more famous for his excellent work composing the biggest and best Hollywood blockbusters. Danny Elfman has a pair of films out this summer in WANTED and HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY. In our first part of the interview, Elfman chatted about WANTED. Here he talks HELLBOY II and making big red all the more exciting through sound.
iF: The closest cousin of your scores to HELLBOY is NIGHTBREED, a film where heroic monsters are accompanied with tribal percussion. They even have the same kind of “market” scene.
ELFMAN: 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 thirteen years old again with this music." And I said, "Well, this is the kind of stuff I listened to when I was thirteen." 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.
iF: There are also a lot of other, zanier musical elements to the score, especially with the 50's jazz sound that Hellboy and his team arrive with, or the Theremin that’s used on a carnivorous tooth fairy.
ELFMAN: Yes, we used the Theremin for the lighter, fun moments, especially when tooth fairy comes alive. There's a little bit of James Bondi-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.
iF: Was it hard for you to judge where HELLBOY II’s music should be wacky, and when it should be serious?
ELFMAN: 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.
iF: Is a score like HELLBOY II closer to your heart than anything else?
ELFMAN: 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.
iF: How did you end up composing a ballet with RABBIT AND ROGUE?
ELFMAN: 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. And 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.
iF: What was your collaboration like?
ELFMAN: 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 fourteen 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 scored 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, than 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.
iF: What was it like finally seeing RABBIT AND ROGUE on stage?
ELFMAN: 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 fifteen 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
iF: 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 ZONE is now coming back as a colorized movie. What's it like to see its return?
ELFMAN: 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.
iF: Your soundtrack for STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE will probably make more money then Errol Morris' 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 PROCEDURE’s images of torture over and over as you composed.
ELFMAN: 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 STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE, but hopefully it will find a life over time.
iF: 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?
ELFMAN: 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.
iF: Do you hope that 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?
ELFMAN: 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.
iF: You seem to be at your best when scoring projects as 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?
ELFMAN: 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 onto 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.
Burn it up with Danny Elfman’s score for HELLBOY II here.
To buy tickets for Danny Elfman’s ballet “Rabbit and Rogue” at The Orange County Performing Arts Center from August 6 –10, go to www.ocpac.org
Visit The Forbidden Zone for its colorized premiere on Wednesday, July 30 at 8 PM at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. For tickets, go to www.forbiddenzonethemovie.com
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