A quickie October tribute to a spooktacular film and music composer Danny Elfman, who I dubbed several years ago the Patron Saint of Halloween. That was during my Monster Month of drawing in 2012. This year I’m doing Inktober; have a look at what I’ve done so far! (I didn’t do one for tonight bc I had this comic to finish, haaaaa)
Some other random facts about Dannyboy:
– followed his brother Richard to France in his late teens to do performance art and generally be weird, which morphed into Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo
– traveled northern Africa, learning percussion; turned 19 crossing into Nigeria
– entirely self-taught
– first soundtrack cognizance was Bernard Herrman’s score for The Day the Earth Stood Still
– met future wife Bridget Fonda on the set of A Simple Plan, which she acted in and he scored; didn’t meet again until six years later at a party
– has two daughters from a previous marriage, Lola and Mali
– the two Tim Burton movies he hasn’t scored are Sweeney Todd (original by Sondheim) and Ed Wood (they had a spat)
– besides the bulk of Burton, he’s done: Scrooged, all the Men in Blacks, the first two Spider-Mans, Good Will Hunting, Hellboy 2 (him and GDT together — woof), Freeway (directed by his Forbidden Zone costar, Matthew Bright), Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and a boatload more.
He seems like a fascinating guy who’s led a fascinating life, but he also seems exceedingly private, so it was hard to dig up good dirt! You can keep it to yourself, Danny, but if I ever corner you at a party, it’s allll coming out
Agreed, he’d be ideal to write a memoir but is also one of those people who clearly never would!
Though I’ve read lots of interesting things on this old blog: http://saltyka.blogspot.ca/search?q=elfman (in 2 parts) and from interviews on this site: http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfman/archive/listing.html
Funniest thing I ever read (from the first link) is bits about how, while in Africa, he tried to get treatment from malaria by first pretending to be a Christian missionary and then learned the best way to get treatment was to ring the doorbell of the resident international doctor and yell out “American!” while fainting at their doorstep.
Also every time he talks about Indonesian and African percussion instruments, and how to build them, it’s nerd heaven.
Thanks for the writeup! : )