Danny Elfman Quotes

For me, writing something in the spirit of Halloween is like Mother Teresa writing on charity and sacrifice. It's just second nature to me.

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.

I'm so happy dancing while the grim reaper cuts, cuts, cuts, but he can't get me. I'm as clever as can be, and I'm very quick but don't forget; we've only got so many tricks. no one lives forever.

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.

If there's one thing I really love... it's sad music.

It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and takes unexpected turns. So it's that feeling of holding on, rather than pushing it, that is the most exciting thing. It's that need to occasionally bounce off the walls, letting anything happen for any reason, and having nothing to guide you that is the joy.

The idea of performing some of Jack Skellington's songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas live for the very first time is immensely exciting.

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.

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.

You hear the beginning of a melody, you should kind of know it's going to lead down this path. It should start feeling like a friend, like familiar.

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!

It all depends on the directors. Working closely with a director is the main job of a film composer. Interpreting what he perceives as a color, an emotion or mood is very abstract. A director tells you something he wants and then you have to run back...

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

Sometimes on a film you just become taken with the fact that, all right this is as rough as it gets, but I'm going to support my general and I'm going to do the very best I can for him because he's a good general and I like him.

This is Halloween, everybody make a scene Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright It's our town, everybody scream In this town of Halloween.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing bad ever happens, why should I care?

I took part of Alan Silvestri's theme on the original movie, which I really liked, and I pulled it into it new theme, which became kind of a hybrid. I really enjoyed that.

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

You'll never get me into a tux. Not until I'm dead and I have no choice because that's what the undertaker put me in.

I really look forward to revisiting this body of work which has been such a huge part of my life and bringing it to the concert stage. And the idea of performing some of Jack Skellington's songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas live for the very first time is immensely exciting.

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.

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.