circa 1990
Section: The Hot List
Hot Film Scorer - Danny Elfman
When Tim Burton wanted music for his first feature film, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, he remembered that the L.A. rock band Oingo Boingo's music had always struck him as "very theatrical." He hired Oingo's leader, Danny Elfman, whose frenetic, goofy score helped make the movie. Since then - on Beetlejuice, Batman and the upcoming Edward Scissorhands - the two have developed the kind of perfect synergy Elfman's heroes Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota had with Hitchcock and Fellini. "Danny takes stupid ideas and makes them real," says Burton. Elfman's dark, zany mix can also be heard in the score to Dick Tracy and the theme to TV's Simpsons. Yet Elfman is just as effusive about his work on Clive Barker's recent Nightbreed and Sam Raimi's upcoming Darkman. "I loved Barker's Hellraiser and Raimi's Evil Dead II," he says, "and after Batman, I told my agent I wanted to work with them. He said, 'You're crazy!' But they're wildly imaginative. It's a genre I love - nonreality."