Danny Elfman - Biography

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Danny Elfman began his career as a singer-songwriter with the rock band Oingo Boingo. Since the mid-1980s, he has been one of the most popular and busiest film composers. Elfman's zany fun-house score for "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" (1985) began a fruitful association with then-novice director Tim Burton. Since then Elfman has created impish, antic and even dramatic and lushly romantic symphonic scores, adding an aural dimension of mischievous wit, dark grandeur, and twisted sensuality to such Burton films as "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Batman" (1989), "Edward Scissorhands" (1990) and "Batman Returns" (1992). An untrained composer, Elfman has not been widely embraced by Hollywood's film and TV composing community. Unable to quell persistent rumors that he does not write his own scores, he has found success to be the best revenge.

In addition to the Burton collaboration, Elfman has compiled an impressively varied list of credits that includes Martin Brest's "Midnight Run" (1988), Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy" and Sam Raimi's "Darkman" (both 1990). He also composed the theme for TV's "The Simpsons" and collaborated with Todd Rundgren on the weekly music underscoring the antics of Pee Wee Herman on the comic's Saturday morning children's show. Prior to this thriving second career, Elfman often received song credits for Oingo Boingo songs utilized by popular movies, the most memorable being the theme song to John Hughes' "Weird Science" (1985).

Though he cites Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Bartok as his favorite classical composers, Elfman feels greater stylistic influence from classic Hollywood composers Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa and Franz Waxman. He worked his distinctive magic on three 1993 features: "Sommersby", Raimi's "Army of Darkness" (he provided the "March of the Dead" theme), and "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas". The latter was his most personal and demanding project: Elfman had input on the story and script, composed the lyrics and music for ten songs, and provided the singing voice for the protagonist Jack Skellington.

Elfman's prolific output in the mid- to late 90s includes the lovely underscore to "Black Beauty" (1994), the appropriately understated but thrilling music for "Delores Claiborne" (1995) and a return to the fun-house for Burton's "Mars Attacks!" (1996). The composer finally was welcomed into the Hollywood mainstream with two Oscar nominations for Best Original Dramatic Score for "Good Will Hunting" and Best Musical or Comedy Score for "Men in Black".