Danny Elfman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Daniel Elfman)
Jump to: navigation, search
Danny Elfman
Birth name Daniel Robert Elfman
Born May 29, 1953 (1953-05-29) (age 54)
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Spouse(s) Bridget Fonda (November 29, 2003 - present) 1 child

Daniel Robert Elfman (born May 29, 1953 in Los Angeles, California) is an American musician who led the rock band Oingo Boingo as singer / songwriter from 1976 until its breakup in 1995, and has composed film scores extensively since 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won a Grammy Award for Tim Burton's Batman and an Emmy Award for his Desperate Housewives theme. Elfman has also composed the themes to television shows, such as The Simpsons and videogames, such as Fable.

Contents

Elfman, who is of Russian and Polish descent, grew up in a racially mixed community in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles, where he was known as 'the whitest white kid'.[1] He spent much of his time in the local movie theatre, adoring the music of such film composers as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman.

After dropping out of high school, he followed his brother Richard to France, where he played his violin on the street and performed with Le Grand Magic Circus, an avant-garde musical theater group. Violin in tow, Elfman next journeyed to Africa where he traveled through Ghana, Mali, and Upper Volta, absorbing new musical styles, including the Ghanaian highlife genre which would eventually influence his own music. Elfman contracted malaria during his one-year stay and was often sick. Eventually he returned home to the United States, where his brother was forming a new musical theater group, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. The group performed the music for Richard's debut feature film, Forbidden Zone. Danny Elfman composed his first score for the film and played the role of Satan. By the time the movie was completed, The Mystic Knights had shortened their name to Oingo Boingo and become a recording and touring rock group.

In 1985, Tim Burton and Paul Reubens invited him to write the score for their first feature film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Elfman was apprehensive at first because of his lack of formal training, but with orchestration assistance from Oingo Boingo guitarist and arranger Steve Bartek he achieved his goal of emulating the mood of such composers as Nino Rota and Bernard Herrmann.[2] He later described the first time he heard his music played by a full orchestra as one of the most thrilling experiences of his life[citation needed]. Elfman has spoken of the affinity he developed right away with Burton,[2] and he has gone on to score all but two of his major studio films (Ed Wood, which was scored by Howard Shore, and Sweeney Todd, a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim).

To date Elfman has scored the following Burton films:

Burton has said of Elfman: "We don't even have to talk about the music. We don't even have to intellectualize – which is good for both of us, we're both similar that way. We're very lucky to connect" (Breskin, 1997).

Burton has made five films without Elfman: Luau, an experimental independent film Burton made with his friends in 1982 (the film contains no original music); Vincent and Frankenweenie, both of which predated the Burton / Elfman collaboration (featuring music by Ken Hilton & Michael Convertino and David Newman respectively); Ed Wood, which was produced during the rift between Elfman and Burton; and Burton's upcoming adaptation of Sweeney Todd, which will use the original musical numbers and underscore by Stephen Sondheim.

Elfman’s film scores can be described as dark and brooding, lush and romantic, wild and manic - reflecting the many composers and styles which have influenced him over the years.[citation needed]

He recalls that the first time he became aware of film music was in his youth during a screening of The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951). The music was by Bernard Herrmann, and that, he has said, was where his love of film music began (Russell and Young, 2000). Elfman purposefully nodded towards Herrmann's The Day the Earth Stood Still score in Tim Burton's sci-fi spoof Mars Attacks!

Other film composers have also proven to be influential, such as Nino Rota and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the former in Elfman's playful music for Pee-wee's Big Adventure, the latter in his much grander work, Batman. Sometimes his music has a distinctly Russian feel, inspired by the likes of Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, while his frequent use of choirs reflects his love of choral music by the likes of Mozart and Carl Orff. Jazz and rock influences from his earlier career are evident in such films as Chicago and To Die For.

According to Alex Ross of The New Yorker, Elfman's "rock origins and lack of classical training raised doubts at the start; some established composers considered him a 'hummer'—Hollywood slang for a would-be composer who can’t read music and relies on ghostwriters. (Charlie Chaplin was a hummer.)"[3]

After the release of Batman, Elfman reacted to comments in Keyboard Magazine wherein Micah Rubenstein conjectured that a rock musician like Elfman, not classically trained, probably didn't even write out the musical score to Batman. Speaking on behalf of "the many musicians, composers, and arrangers who lack formal education," Keyboard published an open letter by Elfman in March 1990. Elfman referred to Rubenstein's comments as a growing "musical elitism," stating he worked 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month and a half to write the Batman score, and calling Rubenstein a "dumb fuck" for supposing that Elfman didn't write down his scores: "...I actually wrote it down - I will not sit back passively and allow myself to be discredited for the work I did by an idiot who mistakenly thinks that I lazily hire people to do it for me, or that only a conservatory can produce a real film composer."[4]

And, as Alex Ross notes, Elfman has gone on to receive Academy Award nominations and other accolades for his work.[3]

When asked during a 2007 phone-in interview on XETRA-FM if he ever had any notions of performing in an Oingo Boingo reunion, Elfman immediately rejected the idea and stated that in the last few years with the band he had begun to develop significant and irreversible hearing damage as a result of his continuous exposure to the high noise levels involved in performing in a rock band. He went on to say that he believes his hearing damage is partially due to a genetic predisposition to hearing loss, and that he will never return to the stage for fear of worsening the condition.

In addition to his work with Tim Burton, Elfman has written scores for numerous other films including:

He has also written the theme music for several television series, including:

  • Elfman composed the opening title theme of the 2004 video game Fable.
  • Elfman also was in Finding Kraftland for his agent Richard Kraft.

Elfman has recently started working in the classical world, beginning with Serenada Schizophrana for the American Composers Orchestra. It was conducted by John Mauceri on its recording and by Steven Sloane at its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York City on 23 February 2005. After its premiere, it was recorded in studio and released onto SACD on 3 October 2006. The meeting with Mauceri proved fruitful as the composer was encouraged then to write a new concert piece for Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Elfman composed an "overture to a nonexistent musical" and called the piece "The Overeager Overture."

  • Grammy Awards
    • WINNER: Best Instrumental Composition: The Batman Theme from Batman (1989)
    • Nominated for Best Album of Original Instrumental Background Score for a Motion Picture: Batman (1989)
    • Nominated for Best Instrumental Composition for a Motion Picture: Dick Tracy (1990)
    • Nominated for Best Instrumental Composition for a Motion Picture: Edward Scissorhands (1990)
    • Nominated for Best Musical Album for Children: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
    • Nominated for Best Instrumental Composition for a Motion Picture: Men in Black (1997)
    • Nominated for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture: Planet of the Apes (2001)
    • Nominated for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture: Spider-Man (2002)
    • Nominated for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture: Big Fish (2003)
    • Nominated for Best Song for a Motion Picture: "Wonka’s Welcome Song" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

  1. ^ http://elfman.filmmusic.com/elfman_la_times.html
  2. ^ a b http://www.boingo.org/articles/FanfareArticle.html
  3. ^ a b Alex Ross. "Oscar Scores." The New Yorker. 9 March 1998. Accessed on 15 November 2007.
  4. ^ Elfman, Danny (1990). "An Open letter from Danny Elfman". Keyboard Magazine (March): 47. 

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
v • d • e
Oingo Boingo
Albums Forbidden Zone (soundtrack) · Oingo Boingo (EP) · Only a Lad · Nothing to Fear · Good for Your Soul · So-Lo · Dead Man's Party · BOI-NGO · Boingo Alive · Dark at the End of the Tunnel · Boingo · Farewell: Live from the Universal Amphitheater, Halloween 1995
Compilations The Best of Oingo Boingo: Skeletons in the Closet · Stay · Best O' Boingo · Anthology · The Best of Oingo Boingo: 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection
Related articles Forbidden Zone · Dead Bands Party: A Tribute to Oingo Boingo
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Elfman"
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.