Danny Elfman Quotes

• You’re allowed to rip-off another score so close that it’s ridiculous. In my opinion it’s ridiculous, how closely one can just rip-off a score that happened a year or two earlier.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opinion

• You have to write a good score that you feel good about. At least, you’re supposed to. But, if the director hates it, it ain’t going to be in the movie!

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Movies

  Tags in Good

• You have to nail the right tone because sometimes when you just see his films cold, you’re not quite sure. It’s the same in – I’m trying to think of other directors with a similar sense – David Lynch’s films, Tim’s films, some of Cronenberg’s stuff.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Think

• There’s kind of a cool feel that happens every now and then. I guess that feel is the thing that makes the score its own score. But, I don’t know exactly what that is. So, it’s hard for me to answer that question.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cool

• The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you’re going to want the melody to catch four things in the action.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Action

• The beauty of a main title is that you establish your main theme and maybe a bit of your secondary theme. You plant the seed that you’re going to go water later in the score. And so, having that removed just made it so much more difficult.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Beauty

• That still has to be there. And so, it’s kind of an interesting question you brought up. Because, on the one hand, yeah, it’d be lovely. I certainly don’t see that happening. In fact, I see the opposite happening.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Love

• Sometimes I like them artificial and sometimes I like them real. And the reason is because sometimes I like a real close sound. And I like a very specific snare sound and I can’t get that in the big room.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Real

• So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It’s still their ball game. It’s their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director’s impulses.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Success

  Tags in Game

• So I’ve learned in the past, if a company approaches me and they want something like this, or something like that that I’ve done and I turn them down, they’re going to do it anyhow.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in past

• Or certainly I would need time – which I would love to have but there almost never is on a film – to just spend a week with a roomful of guys laying down these patterns.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Time

• Oh see, first off you gotta realize – everything for me is a reconstruction or deconstruction. I would actually say deconstruction. Mission: Impossible would be the exception. That would be a reconstruction- deconstruction.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Impossible

• Most often the music does end up in the movie, and sometimes there’s a point where I wish that it wasn’t, just because I think the score would be more effective if there was less of it. But, again, that’s not my call.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Movies

  Tags in Music, Think

• It’s just hard. I wish the studios felt there was more value in these themes and these pieces of material – that they’re worth protecting more. Because then it just wouldn’t happen. If the studios cared, the stuff would be stopped in a second.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Wish

• It’s hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Happen

• It sounds really stupid, I hate making cosmic comments like this but, I just let it do what it wants to do.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Stupid

  Tags in Hate

• In Tim’s films, more than most, if you miss the tone, you don’t get the film.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Miss

• In some types of music I’m working out all the chords one bar at a time – the whole structure, because it’s about that. And there are other pieces which are really about – okay, the melody is going to start here and play through to here.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Time, Music

• I’m trying to interpret the film through the director’s head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Composer

• I’m looking for a feel and I have to find what that feel is before I can move on from there. I’m not necessarily catching stuff in such a simple way – I don’t need to. So, I’m going for something else.

  Danny Elfman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Necessarily

Danny Elfman (31)

Birth:	29th May, 1953
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Actor, Composer, Lyricist, Musician, Record Producer, Singer

About

Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman was born in Los Angeles, California. He is an American composer, singer, songwriter, record producer, actor and musician. He is known as the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band Oingo Boingo, from 1976 to 1995 and later for scoring music for television and film and creating The Simpsons main title theme as well as the 1989 Batman film theme. Elfman re-entered the film industry in 1976, initially as an actor. He has since been nominated for four Academy Awards and won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for Tim Burton's Batman and an Emmy Award for his Desperate Housewives theme.

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