When Danny Elfman was a boy, he would make the short journey from his house to his local theatre in Los Angeles every weekend where he would watch director Ray Harryhausen's The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and other science fiction and fantasy films. He describes the time as a golden age for kids, especially for boys.
'Our parents never worried about us,' he laughs. 'You know, 'What did you see? Did you like the movie?' 'Yes Mommy. The monster, the mutant, grabbed hold of his arm, my favourite part, and pulled and pulled, and suddenly his arm came off and he left a bloody trail all the way down the stairway!' '
It comes as little surprise that the 57-year-old Grammy and Emmy winner recently visited Hong Kong for the first time late last month to research the musical score he will create for Hong Kong Disneyland's upcoming attraction, 'Mystic Manor'. The trackless ride, due to open in April of 2013, will be filled with a mysterious world of illusions and mysteries. Early comparisons liken it to Disneyland's famed 'Haunted Mansion', which suits Elfman just fine.
'Certainly, anything to do with spirits and ghosts I have a love for,' he says during a press conference for the ride. 'The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland Los Angeles was my favourite ride, so being asked to participate in something like this that could become iconic for several generations was something that I couldn't imagine not wanting to do,' he says. 'It was like being asked to do something that was connected to my own past that meant a lot to me.'
Elfman confesses he has no idea what the four-and-a-half-minute theme tune will sound like yet, nor whether it will have an Asian motif. Instead, he will let the models he has seen bubble around in his subconscious for a while before starting work on demos that he will eventually play to Disney executives. Listening to Elfman talk about his 25-year career composing film music, you get the feeling that he will certainly come up with something memorable and it will also contain the staccato m?lange of dark and upbeat motifs that he has become known for.
This, after all, is the man who nervously made his film-scoring debut on the kitschy 1985 film Pee Wee's Big Adventure. He didn't even think it would be used, but it kickstarted a new career. Best known for the 13 collaborations he's made with director Tim Burton, Elfman's scores can also be found in such varied films as Good Will Hunting, Mission: Impossible, Chicago and Milk, which earned him an Academy Award nomination, one of four he's received to date. Contrary to belief, if his outlook tends to lean towards the macabre, his scores are anything but. 'I really don't have a type of film,' he admits. 'I'm happiest when they're all mixed up. I don't like doing two action films in a row. If I can go from an action film to a dark film, to a ridiculous film, I'm happiest when I'm moving between them all.'
Film composing is, in essence, Elfman's third career. After studying at the California Institute of the Arts, where he focused on Balinese and Javanese music, Elfman spent eight years with a Los Angeles-based musical theatre troupe called the Mystic Knights. Then, after getting excited about the possibilities that a marriage between ska music and LA's 80's new wave scene could bring, Elfman spent 17 years as the lead singer of Oingo Boingo. Their biggest hit was the theme tune for the John Hughes-directed Weird Science. By the time the opportunity to score a film came along, Elfman found himself nervously starting from scratch.
