Saturday Night at the Movies

by Jenny Nelson

  Branagh’s highest-grossing film to date is the Disney live-action remake of Cinderella (2015), and once again he sat down with Patrick Doyle well in advance to discuss the music, although this time there was a more practical necessity to do so: ‘When there are considerations like the requirement of music for the waltz that features in the film, we would need playback on set when shooting, so he’s writing a tune and an arrangement maybe six months before he would normally do so; that’s quite a big commitment in advance to what a central theme of the movie might be. That early collaboration is key.’

  Branagh’s skill of honouring the story and the characters was particularly useful for Doyle in getting to the heart of the score: ‘There was no frivolous dismissal of “it’s only a fairy tale”. He recognised that this is one of the greatest stories ever told. He described the dilemmas that Ella had – the dysfunctional family, the multiple deaths, the darkness that’s in that picture . . . I then let those thoughts process through my head for four, five days, and I sat down at my piano one day and I just played the entire opening of the principal waltz. There was no difference in Ken’s mind between the characters in Cinderella and the characters in Hamlet, for example. They were just as important . . . and the same commitment and depth was required of the score.’ The composer neatly avoids over-sentimentality, with music that is as magical and charming as the Disney tale requires, but never cloying.

  Next came another familiar tale, albeit of a very different nature, with the fourth screen adaptation of Agatha Christie’s much-loved classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express (2017). Branagh assembled another stellar cast, with Penelope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe alongside his old chums Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench, and he took on the challenge of playing private detective Hercule Poirot. The production team recreated a 22-tonne locomotive on a moving set, enabling the actors to feel that they were really on board the famous Orient Express, complete with thousands of LED screens on the windows showing passing Alpine scenery. The composer, as usual, visited the set several times, but his thematic ideas had formed even earlier, after detailed discussions about the characters with Branagh. He also saw some early footage and read the script before getting down to work. ‘I presented material very early on, way back in Christmas 2016, and said, “Is that the world you expect?” and he said, “Well, it sounds like you’re going in the right direction.”’ With that, content he was on track, Doyle continued.

  One of the most impressive elements of the Doyle–Branagh collaboration is the way they have balanced friendship with a professional partnership over the decades, defying the old adage about mixing business with pleasure. In some interviews, Doyle attributes their success and longevity to their ability to have fun: ‘As soon as he starts to talk fervently about a subject, whatever it is, I just jump on board immediately. But I think what’s essential to the connection is a great sense of humour.’ In others, he places value on the support he receives from the director during the pressured film-making process: ‘The bottom line is you have to come up with a very good score, but you’re aided and abetted by a very generous collaborator. Extremely generous, extremely considerate of the process, very understanding of time limits and deadlines.’

  Detailed communication, careful listening and early planning are key, but an acute understanding of how the other person works and what makes him tick is a vital ingredient – and one that perhaps can’t be taught. ‘There are people in life that you just have an instant connection with, and that was the case when I met Kenneth Branagh,’ the composer explains. ‘We’re both of Celtic background, we both share a very strong sense of humour, and I have discovered over the years that I really can read his mind and vice versa. You save an awful lot of time when you’re ahead of someone’s thoughts.’

  In 1997, Patrick Doyle was diagnosed with leukaemia. He continued to compose throughout his treatment and made a full recovery. In 2007, his film scores were performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the Royal Albert Hall in a special ‘Music for the Movies’ concert held in aid of Leukaemia Research UK. Featuring appearances from British acting royalty, including Thompson, Dench and Jacobi, it was directed by Branagh, who was a leading force in staging the event. This may go some way towards explaining Doyle’s comment: ‘What I really appreciate about Ken is his constant loyalty and his friendship. We’ve been through a lot and for the record it’s a highly unusual thing to have a director in this business who you’ve spent almost thirty years working with. I’m a very lucky man.’

  Collaboration History

  Henry V (1989)

  Dead Again (1991)

  Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

  Hamlet (1996)

  Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)

  As You Like It (2006)

  Sleuth (2007)

  Thor (2011)

  Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

  Cinderella (2015)

  Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

  Suggested Playlist

  Henry V, Opening Title

  Henry V, Non Nobis, Domine

  Dead Again, The Headlines

  Much Ado About Nothing, Overture

  Much Ado About Nothing, Sigh No More, Ladies

  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Escape

  Hamlet, In Pace

  Hamlet, Oh, What A Noble Mind

  Hamlet, Sweets to the Sweet Farewell

  Love’s Labour’s Lost, Victory

  As You Like It, Under The Greenwood Tree

  As You Like It, Violin Romance

  Sleuth, The Visitor

  Sleuth, Rat In A Trap

  Thor, Thor Kills the Destroyer

  Thor, Chasing the Storm

  Thor, Can You See Jane?

  Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Ryan, Mr President

  Cinderella, A Golden Childhood

  Cinderella, Courage and Kindness

  Cinderella, Who Is She?

  Murder on the Orient Express, Justice

  Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot

  If you had to describe a Tim Burton film, words like ‘eccentric’, ‘quirky’, ‘gothic’ or ‘weird’ might spring to mind. Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for example, all possess a distinctive glint in their eye, one that allows the audience to revel in the macabre within a realm of playfulness. In a partnership spanning more than three decades, Danny Elfman has provided the perfect musical complement to Burton’s twisted tales and stylised visuals. They have worked on seventeen films together, with Burton taking the role of director for all but two of them, serving as producer for The Nightmare Before Christmas and, more recently, Alice Through the Looking Glass. Their next collaboration as director and composer is the live-action remake of Disney’s Dumbo, due for release in 2019. They are unique outsiders who have been embraced by audiences and major film studios. Just as a Tim Burton film often feels instantly recognisable, there is a definitive Elfman sound, involving scampering percussion, a soaring chorus and a real sense of mischief. As the director long since acknowledged, Elfman’s music plays a vital role in his movies: ‘It is as important as some of the actors or anything, if not more important. Danny is an actor in the films.’

  Burton and Elfman pursued their careers along slightly tangential paths, with the director starting out in animation and the composer in performance art and later as frontman of the new-wave band Oingo Boingo. Their respective backgrounds have proved highly influential as definers of their style and technique, and indicate a shared creative outlook: as Burton once said, ‘It’s trying to show that it’s all just a process and that there are different ways to approach things. I think both you and I hate categorisation. People are always trying to stick you in a box and say, “Oh, he’s in a rock band. Now he’s a composer, but he only composes this kind of stuff.”’

  They are self-confessed fans of horror films from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and t
his common ground has added to their shared sensibilities, but while their partnership appears, from the outside looking in, to be a true meeting of minds, Elfman does not allow himself to get too comfortable: ‘I’m surprised every time I get a call again to do another film. I don’t ever expect to do his next film. He will call if he’s ready to call.’ To date, there are only three films directed by Tim Burton that haven’t been scored by Danny Elfman: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016), apparently due to scheduling conflicts, Sweeney Todd (2007), because it used Stephen Sondheim’s existing music, and Ed Wood (1994) – more on that later.

  Elfman may be linked most often with Burton in the world of film scoring, but his most recognisable composition is undoubtedly the theme from hit television show The Simpsons. Of his four Academy Award nominations, only one is for a Tim Burton film – the somewhat underrated Big Fish – and the others make for a varied list: Good Will Hunting, Men in Black and Milk, demonstrating his music-making has far more breadth than a quirky paint-by-numbers model. Having collaborated with other respected directors like Gus Van Sant, Sam Raimi and David O. Russell, Elfman remains one of the hardest working and most open-minded composers around. In his view, ‘Writing the score is the easy part. Getting into the director’s head and understanding their psyche is what’s hard. But that’s what you need to do. You have to be half-composer, half-psychiatrist.’

  Elfman’s first film-scoring project for Burton was his first feature-length film, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), about Pee-wee Herman’s quest to retrieve his stolen bicycle. For those unfamiliar with Herman, he’s a besuited man with a red bow tie and a childlike demeanour, portrayed by the comedian Paul Reubens. Pee-wee comes across as both endearing and strangely sinister, and the persona was so engrained in American popular culture that it was Pee-wee, not Paul, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His later fall from grace, when Reubens was arrested and charged with indecent exposure, was a remarkable, scandal-fuelled affair.

  In the mid 1980s, Danny Elfman was the lead singer and songwriter in Oingo Boingo. The band, initially called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, had been founded by Danny’s brother Richard in the early 1970s, with leanings towards performance art, a world that Danny was well versed in, having worked in an avant-garde cabaret musical theatre group called Le Grand Magic Circus. He had never trained as a composer but had taught himself to transcribe and write music, and in 1980 Richard asked him to score a film he was directing, The Forbidden Zone, based on the band’s performances. That was Elfman’s main experience of composing for the cinema before he met Tim Burton.

  Burton had received early acclaim at the age of fourteen when he won first prize for his designs for an anti-litter campaign, resulting in his posters covering rubbish trucks in his district of Burbank, California. Disney Studios, which were down the road, sponsored him to attend the California Institute of the Arts, and one of his short films, Stalk of the Celery Monster, impressed Disney so much they offered him an animation apprenticeship. His first assignment, in 1981, was The Fox and the Hound, and his directorial debut was an animated short called Vincent, narrated by the horror-film actor Vincent Price, who would go on to play the inventor in Edward Scissorhands. Burton had written to his childhood hero with his idea for the short film and was overwhelmed at the response: ‘[Price] was so great and supportive, and even though it was a short film, he helped get it made. That was my first experience in this kind of world, and it was a really positive one. It stays with you forever.’

  Vincent caught the attentions of Warner Bros., as did Burton’s follow-up short at Disney, Frankenweenie – which would receive the feature-length treatment decades later – and the twenty-five-year-old animator landed himself the role of director for the new Pee-wee Herman movie after writer Stephen King, the master of horror, recommended Frankenweenie to a Warner Bros. executive, who showed it to Reubens. Not one to follow convention, Burton asked Elfman to score it. The composer recalled, ‘I knew who Pee-wee was ’cos I’d seen Paul Reubens perform at The Groundlings and I thought he was great. I had no idea who Tim was, of course. Nobody did. When I met him, it was like, “Why me? Why would you want me to do a score? That’s crazy.” Tim was like, “I don’t know. I’ve seen your band and I think you could do it.” It was kind of that simple.’ Burton explained his reasons to Elfman, admitting, ‘I always thought you were very filmic in some way. I don’t even know what that means! There was a strong narrative thrust to what you were doing. And it was theatrical. Also, because I hadn’t made a feature-length film yet, I just responded to your work.’

  With a first-time director and a self-taught composer, there was a lot of learning on the job, but despite the daunting challenge, their freshness offered up a blank canvas for creativity. Elfman cites Nino Rota and Bernard Herrmann as his two main influences on this score, specifically the Italian composer’s films with Federico Fellini. The result sounds assured, in particular ‘Breakfast Machine’, which is full of now-trademark Elfman quirks, and is best experienced with the film to appreciate the sound effects that accompany Pee-wee’s morning routine to the full. There is a circus feel to the music as the breakfast is prepared by bizarre inventions, creating a joyful atmosphere of chaos. Elfman recruited Oingo Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek to orchestrate his music – the two have gone on to work on over fifty scores together – and he credits the veteran composer Lennie Niehaus, a regular Clint Eastwood collaborator, who conducted this score, with steering him in the right direction.

  Burton acknowledged Warner Bros. for surrounding him with an experienced crew while taking a chance on both him and Elfman. He can still recall his first impressions of Elfman’s music for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure: ‘Hearing the music played by an orchestra was probably one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had. It was incredible and so funny to see Danny because he’d never done anything like that.’

  Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was a secure hit for the studio and despite appearing on some critics’ ‘worst films of the year’ lists, it’s become something of a cult favourite. Its financial success led to Warner Bros. hiring Burton to direct Batman, but the next Burton–Elfman collaboration was an episode of the revitalised television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, called ‘The Jar’. This allowed Burton to flex his horror and suspense muscles, and for Elfman to pay homage to his hero Herrmann. Their next film project together was Beetlejuice (1988), a deliciously madcap affair about a bio-exorcist ghost, played with gusto by Michael Keaton.

  The score is a perfect fit, exuding cheekiness and menace with a melting pot of styles, including tango, waltz and calypso, that nestle well with the soundtrack songs by Harry Belafonte. The main titles don’t start so much as they swerve around a corner towards you, pick you up and drag you along for the journey. The music feels free, even unhinged at times, and indicates how the director and composer worked at this period. Elfman recalled, ‘The interesting thing about [the early films] for me was that there was no template to turn to, [Burton] didn’t put a temp score in because they were really un-temp-able.’ With the absence of musical steers or stabilisers, Elfman was able to take the cues in whichever direction he saw fit and then present his ideas to the director.

  While Beetlejuice was Burton’s second feature-length film, it was Elfman’s fifth project: ‘I had four films between Tim’s early films, so Pee-wee, Beetlejuice and Batman was one, five and ten. Tim would say, “How are you doing all these films in between these movies?” and I’d go, “If I didn’t, I couldn’t do our movies, I have to learn.” So that’s how I learned. Every time I got in front of an orchestra, I was really hungry for it at that point and I wanted to try something new every time.’ The likes of Scrooged and Big Top Pee-wee helped to get his name known, but Beetlejuice brought his style to the attention of mainstream audiences. Some of the more traditional critics were bemused by the energy and dynamism of Elfman’s score, suspicious of his rock-band background, but many embraced him because his mu
sic mirrored the film so well.

  Tim Burton and Danny Elfman while working on The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993.

  This film provided a learning curve for the director too, demonstrating just how important it is to have music that fits – as well as reinforcing his already mixed feelings of working with major studios: ‘There was a weird incident with Beetlejuice. We did some test screenings without the score, and the film got some really low marks. Then we showed it with the score and it got really high marks, and one of the things people liked from these test screenings was the score. But then somebody at the studio said that the score was “too dark”, which was odd because these are the people who live and breathe by these audience research screenings and here they were contradicting the only positive thing from the screening.’

  Cast your mind back to a time when superhero films weren’t ten a penny at the box office. Before the Avengers assembled, before various Spiderman webs, and before the Dark Knight trilogy, there was Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), his first big-budget movie. ‘A first for him, a first for me,’ Elfman commented, before explaining that the director had had to fight the composer’s corner for Elfman to score the film: ‘Nobody wanted me on the film but Tim. It was the hardest and most difficult experience of my career.’ Burton’s unwavering support for the composer paid off, as did his refusal to back down over the casting for the lead role. The producers were wary of hiring Michael Keaton, an actor better known for comedies, but Tim stuck to his guns and the rest is history.