(Click to download large version of Batman Returns score)
Article byLukasKendall; Part 2 of 2
Film Score Monthly #64, December 1995
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AfterBatman, Danny Elfman did a number of action films(Darkman,Dick Tracy,Nightbreed), but it wasn'ta dislike of the genre which forced him to call it quits after BatmanReturns in 1992. "Personally I love doing those big action films. Ihad a great time writing the score toDarkman. It was a big,old-fashioned melodrama, and I love big, old melodramatic scores."Instead, it was the interminable sound effects of the genre thatturned him off. "It was during the screening ofBatman Returnsthat I decided I want to write music that will do what it was meantto do for a film; I don't want to write music that will compete withan opera of sound effects. Contemporary dubs to my ears are gettingbusier and more shrill every year. The dubbers actually think they'redoing a great job for the music if a crescendo or horn blastoccasionally pops through the wall of sound."
The situation onBatman Returns was his worst ever. Elfmanwrote his music with dynamics in mind, only to find that everythingwas flattened out by the dubbing mixer. The film was so poorly dubbedthat Elfman believes his music actually hurt the picture; had heknown how the sound effects would have been used, he would havesimplified his writing. "In the end result, I believe that if 25% ofthe score and 25% of the sound effects had been dropped, the entiresoundtrack would have been infinitely more effective than the busymess it became." Many composers will argue that a good relationshipwith a director will help get their score across in the final mix,but unfortunately most directors "don't have good ears, even thebrilliant ones. With Tim Burton, I had my best and worst dubs back toback. I've never had a better dub than onEdward Scissorhands,and I've never had a worse dub than onBatman Returns. Nodirector does this consciously, they just lack the audio skills todeal with such a complex science."
As an example of good dubbing, as practiced in the past, ElfmanmentionsLawrence of Arabia, where the first several minutesof a huge battle scene are played solely with sound effects, and at aspecific cut, the music takes over completely. "The music raises theemotional level enormously, and you're not aware that all the soundeffects have stopped, your brain thinks they're continuing. That tome is perfect dubbing." Another example EIfman gives, enthusiasmbubbling, is Hitchcock's sparse use of sound effects. "Hitchcock waswonderful at giving a heightened reality to a scene by being veryselective with the sound. We would rarely hear sound effects foraction that we did not specifically see, and he would let the musicfill in all the holes in our imaginations. It let us imagine thesethings are there all the time, but we're not hearing everything allthe time, and you don't think anything is wrong."
Today, however, "sound people tend to look at each individualmoment. They look at five seconds, and if something's missing for afraction of a second, there tends to be a panic. They don't look atthe context over the entire soundtrack and the entire film.Hitchcock's films, if dubbed today might become a whole differentanimal as the soundtrack would get filled from top to bottom, leavingno room to breathe, and certainly no room for Bernard Herrmann'smarvelous scores. There is a point at which all of this starts towear down on the audience's ears." EIfman compares the experience ofdubbing a film to mixing an album - in each case, you tend toscrutinize it moment to moment, looking at every single instant, andif there are major flaws your ear tends to grow accustomed to themjust by the repetition. Even if it's wrong, it will start soundingright. However, a major difference is that when you mix an album, youcan "A-B" it with another recording just by popping in a different CDand re-aligning your ears. "You might pop in another album forcomparison and realize, 'Oh my god, there's no bass!' But it's onlyby listening to something else that you realize that you almostcompletely lost your bass, because your ears will compensate for itand make you think you've been hearing it all this time. That's aluxury we have when we're mixing, you can pop in something else atany time and re-adjust your ears to see if you've slipped, but youcan't do that on the dubbing stage of a film. You can't just turn onanother film and go, 'Beep beep, A-B, whoa! Why does that other moviesound twice as good as ours? Maybe we're doing something wronghere.'"
Elfman isn't critical of any particular sound designer, as much asthe entire freight-train dubbing mentality. "They're simply doingtheir jobs, which is to provide every possible sound. It's themixer's job to select sounds and ask, 'Do we need to hear everythingthat you see and don't see all the time?' What contemporary dubbingis doing is taking all our imagination away from us."
Nevertheless, film remains a medium obsessed with creating anaudio-visual "virtual reality," a type of sensory overload, to theexpense of the story and characters, even though those are whatpeople are going to see. "An audience very seldom realizes whenthey're hearing a terrible score, any more than they realize whenthey're watching terrible editing. If they could magically see ascene edited much better, they would notice the difference, andlikewise, if they could suddenly, magically see the same scene with avery effective score, they would find themselves unconsciously moreinvolved."
Nothing has been as pervasive or damaging to Elfman's reputationas the constant belief and insistence by others that he doesn't writehis own music. Never mind the similarity of style from score toscore, the fact that he has continued to write large-scale scoreswithout using Shirley Walker to conduct, who people at one pointassumedreally wroteBatman; that the scores his Ieadorchestrator, Steve Bartek, have done on his own have been completelydifferent from Elfman's music; and the sheer illogic to theassumption that Elfman could have a hidden army of ghost-writerssomewhere without anyone naming names or coming forward. Yes, it istrue he came up with the theme toBatman while on an airplane,then went into the john and hummed it into a tape recorder. Manycomposers and songwriters have been known to carry around taperecorders and hum out a melody when it comes to them; some turn overthe tape to an orchestrator to flesh out, many write it themselves.Elfman took his tape of him humming theBatman theme, broughtit home and wrote it out himself at a piano with pencil and paper.
"I use orchestrators, not arrangers. The difference may seemsubtle. but it's not," he explains. "The orchestrator's job is totake music which has been clearly written and balance it for the sizeorchestra that has been designated. Steve Bartek has been my primaryorchestrator on almost every film I've done. He never changes amelody, he doesn't add counterpoint, he does not change or addharmonies. That's the composer's job. He will elect whatinstrumentation might best express what I'm trying to convey in termsof doubling melodies and dividing the parts of the string section sothey can be used most effectively. I don't want to minimize this job,it's very important. It's time-consuming and I, Iike most composers,depend on our orchestrator to complete the final stage of thescoring. John Williams uses orchestrators and he certainly doesn'tneed to. Prokofiev used orchestrators, though he certainly didn'tneed to. I use orchestrators for the same reason." To give specificexamples, if Elfman wrote three parts for strings, Bartek will decidewhich individual players will play which note to best balance theorchestra. He might also write out more orchestral parts than areeventually used; for example, the oboe music might include lines fromthe flute part, so that even though the oboist is not expected toplay, his music will include the flute lines in case it is deemednecessary for him or her to "double" (also play) it. It's simplyeasier to have it all written in advance than to have to rush andhave the copyist scribble out new parts on the stage. "We may havethe first pass of a cue over-orchestrated, and then have to tacitparts, but better that than under-orchestrated," he explains.
The orchestrator is helpful before the recording, as well asduring it. "I have a tendency to overwrite, as you're well aware, andSteve is very helpful in finding train-wrecks before we get to thescoring stage. When I'm moving very fast, he'll be able to help me,like 'tell me where I fucked up by laying it on too dense.' SometimesSteve will call me up, he'll say, 'Your melody is down there in thisvery loud section, I think you've got to make a decision between whatthe trombones are playing or where the melody is.'"
In two rare cases. Elfman has delegated a cue of a score to anoutside composer, just to finish on time, Jonathan Sheffer wrote thehelicopter music inDarkman (see sidebar p. 16), and ShirleyWalker did one of the climactic action cues inNightbreed.These resulted from Elfman knowing he could write 63 minutes of a 70minute score in the time allotted, for example and delegating theother 7, often for particularly noisy, sound-effects laden cues hedidn't want to deal with, to the outside musician. "The few timesthat I've asked orchestrators to do an arrangement and take a melodyI've written and turn it into an original piece of score, I've alwaysgiven them composing credit," he states. (For proof, see the endcredits of the respective films.) "That same philosophy applied inmany films today would leave very long and embarrassing end credits."
Elfman's first film was the aforementionedPee-Wee's BigAdventure, and he briefly toiled with the idea of doing it theusual "rock and roll method," i.e. playing themes and having anorchestrator take it from there. But he realized. "to really get yourvoice sounding original, you need to do more than that. I starteddoing that for two weeks onPee-Wee, and realized, this isn'tgoing to work. I forced myself to start writing the stuff out." Hegot by onPee-Wee by the fact that "it was a very simplescore", same forBack to School. "I got up toBeetlejuice and over the course of ten scores got to the pointwhere I could handle more complicated music and I had to push myselfto doBatman. Once I got toBatman I had the confidenceto hold much denser pieces in my head, because in order to write Ihave to mentally freeze the entire piece of music and write it downone part at a time. Same thing leading intoDolores Claiborne,I couldn't have done that at the time I didBatman, because atthat point I couldn't really do dissonance, I had a hard time holdingonto chords with odd voicings and movements, and moving things aroundin a non-rhythmic way. The key scores for me werePee-Wee toBeetlejuice toBatman toDolores, those were thebig jumps, for me at least I'm not saying they were great leaps formusic-kind."
"It's always amazed me how far and widespread the rumor that Ihire other people to write my music has gone," Elfman states. "It'smost interesting to me that Steve Bartek, who has orchestrated 95% ofmy music, never seems to be the one given that credit, which usuallygets bestowed on conductors and secondary orchestrators, for reasonswhich I can't fathom. I've only heard a thousand times that ShirleyWalker 'really' wrote the score toBatman, that Bill Ross'really' wrote the score toBeetlejuice, that Mark McKenzie'really' wrote the score toThe Nightmare Before Christmas -the list goes on and on, and it's very boring."
However, he does he write his own music, and now, what started outas a challenge from a member of this otherwise unnamed group - "I'llbelieve it when I see it" - is a reality. See above a page of Elfmans sketch forBatman Returns (9M2, "The Rooftop"), and on thenext page over,Black Beauty (1M1, "Birth"), each in his ownhand. If people still believe this is a fabrication, then there'snothing anybody can do.
Elfman's initial response to a request to print his sketches wasan emphatic "No way!" and one just has to look at his work to see whyhe might be defensive. "I'm embarrassed for good musicians to see mywritten music. My writing is self-taught, and as is with anyilliterates learning to write, they often teach themselves inpeculiar ways. My uses of sharps or flats often have a random qualityas to my ear A-sharp and B-flat have no difference. To a trainedmusician, of course, they are different, in how they're read. Often Icatch myself writing in sharps and realize I should be in flats andswitch half-way through a phrase, creating some very confusinglooking notation, particularly when changing keys. In that sense, I'mcertainly an orchestrator's biggest nightmare. Also, I'm mostcomfortable writing in treble clef, even if it means using 15 or 31vb[one or two octaves lower than written] next to the phrase becausethis requires the least amount of concentration while I'm writing.When I feel alert, I write in bass clef, it just depends on the timeof day. My writing is very much like an illiterate person who taughtthemselves the alphabet and how to type while writing a novel. Theymay be able to accurately tell their story, but it will be filledwith misspellings and grammatical errors. Because of this, they, likemyself find the viewing of their original manuscripts to beembarrassing. I can't make up for a dozen years of training that Inever had, but musically speaking, I am able to say exactly what Iwish to say, though often in awkward ways."
So basically, Elfman is a bad speller. However unlike aself-taught novelist who can use a spell-checker on a computer,there's no spell-checker for writing music with pencil and paper."Those misspellings stay forever in my music," he says.
Ironically, Elfman's latest two projects are similar in that theyare not fully written out and orchestral, but exploit the medium ofrecording in order to layer different samples, most of which heperformed himself.Dead Presidents is the second film by TheHughes Brothers; their first wasMenace II Society, for whichthey did not use a composer. The film is about a young black man andhis experiences from 1968 to 1975 through inner city life, Vietnamand then a bank heist towards the end of the picture. (The titlerefers to money, which has Washington, Lincoln Jackson, and other"dead presidents" on it.) Most of the soundtrack is made up ofclassic '60s and '70s funk; Elfman's score plays a major role in themain title, Vietnam scenes and climactic heist. Co-director AllenHughes was very generous of Elfman's contribution in a recentHollywood Reporter, noting, "OnPresidents, we workedwith a composer for the first time; Danny Elfman. He does some thingshe's never done before, a really interesting mix of percussion,industrial sound and orchestra. We worked closely with him but mainlyjust told him what we didn't like. He taught us what music can do fora scene in terms of the score; he made some scenes ten times moredramatic. We hadn't experienced that onMenace II Society. Heshowed us how powerful it can be."
Of the film, Elfman offers. "It's a percussion based score,sampled percussion, of which I prelaid every cue, so that half of thescore is my own performance. Then we laid orchestra on top of it.It's actually a way of working that I don't like to do as a rulebecause it's so much more labor-intensive. It means I have topre-record every single cue before we go to orchestra. But it's whatthat particular score required, they [The Hughes Brothers] wanted apercussion-based score." EIfman's main title is his only cut on theDead Presidents album, but the composer hopes to includeseveral moreDead Presidents cues on a secondMusic for aDarkened Theater compilation from MCA, planned for some time inthe next year or so.
EIfman's other score in a recent movie isTo Die For, GusVan Sant's black comedy starring Nicole Kidman as a fame-obsessed,would-be television personality. "To Die For has a lot ofsynthesizers in it, but is more orchestral thanDeadPresidents. It's kind of hard to explain." (See review lastissue.) Both films feature this sampling and orchestra technique,particularly in their main titles, so as to achieve instrumentalcombinations one could never get in "real life" - i.e. a Churchorgan, then an orchestra, then thrashing electric guitars, all over apercussion track and odd sounds, play in the same piece. The musicdraws in the audience, pulling off the crucial opening minutes of amovie when it is imperative that people shut up and get absorbed.
Elfman was absent, however, from a certain big-budget movieearlier this year,Batman Forever. The reason is very simple:"they didn't ask me," he says. He wasn't too disappointed initially,having heard that the filmmakers wanted to go in a differentdirection; however, then he saw the film, and was surprised to findmuch of Elliot Goldenthal's score similar to his own Bat-music insound and style. Elfman also knows what the first Oscar-nominatedscore of the year will be, because he walked out of the movie due tothe music, and "whenever that happens, I know it will be Oscarnominated." (What that is, however, he isn't telling.)
And thus we get the impression of the Good Danny and the EvilDanny. There is the Danny who is an all-nighter workaholic to do thebest he can on his own scores, and the Danny who thinks it all sucksthe Danny who speaks of the things he loves and admires, and theDanny who also speaks out against the industry. There's the Danny whois proud of what he has been able to accomplish, and the Danny whorolls his eyes in disbelief (and also pity that people would wastetheir time in such a manner), when told of a"rec.music.artists.danny-elfman" newsgroup recently started on theInternet. But that's all pretentious - this isn't a transporteraccident, it's just one guy, a film music fan, unquestionablytalented, who has paid his dues in hard work.
"There's a big bitter contingent of people out there who feel liketheir place is being robbed by people like me," states Elfman thecomposer, forced back into self-reflexive mode and still paying forthe career-defining error of admitting he has no formal education."The most annoying thing about composers is their inability to acceptthe possibility that one could be self-taught. That doesn't exist inany other field in film. A director doesn't need to go to film schooland no one will question him. But a composer cannot be a composerdoing their own music without going through formal musical training.If that's what they think, fine, I don't give a fuck. The fact thatthere are a lot of composers that on their own would be betterorchestrators than me, that's great. I think a good proportion of thecomposers working out there are really just orchestrators, andhaven't a fucking clue what to do with a melody or how to use it orhow to do variations on a theme; and/or they're songwriters who dowhat I'm accused of doing, although I don't, which is just coming upwith melodies and hiring a team to adapt it into a score."
And Elfman the fan, what does he think? Is film music dead? Willit ever get any better? Despite pretensions to the contrary, the goodDanny comes through, and he's as eager and hopeful for a new GoldenAge in film music as anyone. "Who knows? Everything is cyclic. In thedecade beforeStar Wars the big orchestral score waspractically dead in the water, and everything turned aroundovernight," he states, matter-of-factly. "Anything can happen."