86 Quotes by Danny Elfman

You hear the beginning of a melody, you should kind of know it’s going to lead down this path. It should start feeling like a friend, like familiar.

So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It’s still their ball game. It’s their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director’s impulses.

Sometimes on a film you just become taken with the fact that, all right this is as rough as it gets, but I’m going to support my general and I’m going to do the very best I can for him because he’s a good general and I like him.

Most often the music does end up in the movie, and sometimes there’s a point where I wish that it wasn’t, just because I think the score would be more effective if there was less of it. But, again, that’s not my call.

You’ll never get me into a tux. Not until I’m dead and I have no choice because that’s what the undertaker put me in.

I’m trying to interpret the film through the director’s head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

I don’t see myself necessarily having a burning desire to write a symphony.

You have to write a good score that you feel good about. At least, you’re supposed to. But, if the director hates it, it ain’t going to be in the movie!

I think that there’s a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don’t have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.