Danny Elfman's Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

I don't see myself necessarily having a burning desire to write a symphony.

I like creating these rhythmic patterns. These interlocking rhythmic things are really fun.

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.

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

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

Doing Tim's film is always going to be the most pleasure. Let me just put it that way. So, without drawing favorites one way or the other, getting back with him and doing Mars Attacks! was certainly a special treat.

I can't get that live and I don't have the time to take the tape, after I've finished recording it, into a little studio somewhere else where I can get a different kind of percussion sound.

I had to do this very aggressive, big score in a very short time, and knowing that in the beginning, middle, and end would be this very, very famous theme, but I still had to weave a score around it and make it work as a score was really challenging.

I really liked doing a number of the projects and directors, and etc., etc., I knew about half-way through that I would never be doing that again. It's just not me. I really am happy as a part-time film composer, not a full-time film composer.

I think that there's a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don't have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.

I think that's one of the things that has always put me in kind of an odd niche. It's that all of my understanding of orchestral music is via film, not via classical music like it's supposed to be. To me it's the same, it doesn't make any difference.

I would have to say I might do some stuff, but it's the film that's appealing. I was raised on film. My musical experience is all via film, it's not from classical music.

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.

I'll look back and I'd be better to answer that in about three months from now. Or when the movie comes out and I see it. I don't even know what it is yet. I've still been in the middle of it.

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.

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.

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.