- This topic is empty.
- Posts
does anyone know why elfman and burton had split 12 years ago right after Nightmare? I think Ryan was about to say once, but never got around to it. So why the split?
This amazing interview with Elfman pretty much sums it all up by the man himself.
http://suicidegirls.com/words/Danny+Elfman/
DRE: Supposedly about 12 years ago you and Tim had a fight and that’s why you ended up not scoring Ed Wood, is that an exaggeration?
ELFMAN: No, we had one big blow up in our 20 years together and that is true about Ed Wood. We were very upset and we both said we‘d never speak to each other again. It was one of those kinds of moments. But with Tim and I, it’s almost like a family thing. Now with the wisdom of age and hindsight, over a two decade period with our personalities being what they are, it’s inevitable that we’d have to have some kind of meltdown somewhere.
DRE: It had been about ten years up to that point.
ELFMAN: Yeah and we used to joke that we’d end up like Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock and sure enough, we did. But fortunately, this is where the family thing comes in, we never disagreed over a piece of music. Let me put it that way.
DRE: It was just over probably nothing.
ELFMAN: It’s too complex to even get into. But these things are never over about one thing. It was probably something that had been building up for years and had to explode. In the year and a half or so that Tim and I didn’t speak, I felt really *beep* It turned out that he didn’t feel very good about it either. So that’s where the family thing comes in because I’ve had fights with my own brother where I vowed I’d never speak to him again. But in the end you’re family and you find yourself missing that person. That’s absolutely what happened with Tim. So it was gratifying to find out that we both felt the same way. While Tim was shooting Mars Attacks, I got this call from a producer saying, “Will Danny ever consider speaking to Tim again?” I was on a plane the next day. We met in a coffee shop in Kansas, hugged, sat down and said, “That was *beep* up.” He said “Let’s forget the whole thing and just move on from this discussion.” I said “Absolutely.” We never spoke of it again and we’ve never had any personal issues again.
DRE: On purpose or it just has never come up again?
ELFMAN: I think it was a learning experience so now I think we’re probably both a little more cautious. We’re both really passionate about what we do so you get smarter about stuff like that. It’s like in a marriage, you know. You go through like a big horrible break up so you get together and you really don’t want that to happen again. Then when you feel your emotions getting all worked up and intense, you step back.
DRE: What do you think of the score to Ed Wood?
ELFMAN: I didn’t really know what to make of it. The whole thing was just weird, so I didn’t really have any objective opinion. I never was even able to like watch the whole thing in one sitting. It just represented a really nasty period. Once again, if you’re in a marriage and there was something in the center of that whole thing, a part of you will never be able to just go and look at that thing because it’s always going to remind you of that really nasty period.
That was a particularly intense time because I’d been on Nightmare for two and a half years then did Batman Returns in the middle of that. It was all this overlapping stuff and a lot of frustrations just kind of blew up. But I’ve had different kinds of disagreements with different directors over the years and there are directors who I don’t want to work with anymore but as intense as it was I’ve never had an unworkable disagreement with Tim over a piece of music. At the end of the day I always got to remember that. I’ve always come out of a Tim Burton movie feeling good even with some of the ones that were really difficult to work on.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.