Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I was born in Los Angeles, California.

And I lived in an area called Baldwin Hills.

And it's a kind of an odd little area of the city.

But it's an area I really love, because it was around the block

from a movie theater called the Baldwin Hills Movie Theater.

And that was my church.

That's where I grew up.

I was there every weekend of my childhood as I could remember.

And the beautiful thing of being in the '60s

is that there were never any parents.

It was very much like "The Village of the Damned"

if anybody remembers that movie of these kind of children that

were all born at the same time because they

were implanted from aliens.

And there was some kind of evil force.

And this was our world.

This was our playground.

This was our celebration.

This is what we did every week.

We wanted aliens.

We wanted monsters.

We wanted mutations.

We wanted vampires.

This is what we yearned for, or giant robots

or things of this nature.

So I grew up on movies in Baldwin Hills

in Los Angeles, California.

You have to understand me getting

into music is a freak accident.

I didn't have music in my life as a child.

But I became kind of a film nerd early on.

And then I think by the time I hit 16, 15, 16,

I was really into science in my middle school years.

I was a movie fan but science is what I was clearly

going to be in my life.

I wanted to be a radiation biologist.

And I used to do experiments in my room.

And I took also radiation biology in summer classes

in Los Angeles at the science museum actually.

I ended up going to a new school in a new neighborhood.

And the friends I met were arty.

And they were into music.

They were into jazz.

One of my friends was actually a trumpet player

who was writing contemporary compositions even at 16.

He turned me on to "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky

and then more Stravinsky.

And it changed my life.

I dumped my record collection.

And now I'm obsessed with Russian composers

because Stravinsky led to Prokofiev.

When I heard Prokofiev, it was an even deeper hit

than Stravinsky.

Prokofiev got right into my soul.

That was like this feels like I've heard it all somewhere.

I've never heard it but it feels like it's

in my blood, which is half Russian.

I felt like it was my music.

Now I'm 18.

Still have never played an instrument.

And I'm planning a trip around the world.

I wanted to take an instrument with me.

I was going to spend a year going through Africa and then

over to Asia through India, Nepal,

and work my way back to Los Angeles.

And my friend Leon Schneiderman, who was later

the saxophonist in Oingo Boingo who was already

playing saxophone as a kid, but he and I

were making this trip together.

We plotted it out.

But I wanted to bring an instrument

and secretly learn something.

So I picked the violin.

And the reason I picked violin was

due to a jazz violinist named Stephane Grappelli.

And I said that's something I would love to try to do.

So Leon made this incredible perfect case--

strong canvas case with a strap.

So when I head out to Africa, not only

do I have a super overloaded backpack that was ridiculous

but over the right shoulder would go the violin.

And I set out for this journey.

First stop was Paris, France.

My brother was living there.

And he was the conga drummer with

a crazy French musical theatrical troupe

called Le Grand Magic Circus.

And from there, Leon and I met.

We go and live for a month in Lanzarote

in the Canary Islands.

Now he's playing saxophone.

I'm playing violin.

You know, we're jamming every day.

And then, finally, we head off to Africa.

And now I'm really starting to interact,

because the music in Mali is incredible.

I started jamming with people.

I would meet musicians.

And they would play the balafon.

And I was learning how to play the balafon, which

was like a marimba, which you could see

became kind of a lifelong thing.

And I was playing with musicians.

And it's the first time they heard violins.

And they weren't like judging me like, oh yeah,

we've had much better violinists through here than you.

And my travels through Africa, it

wasn't like I was becoming a much better musician.

It's more about opening up my ears

and my perception of music that was really starting

to make the change in me.

And that's where I was starting to absorb music and listen

to it in a different way.

When I finished this trip, I think

I was a different person than when I started,

and both because of the music I was hearing,

the interfacing that was happening to me on this trip,

but also because I was transforming as a human being.

Leon and I split up along the way.

So half of the trip I was by myself.

And that meant I was going weeks and weeks without speaking.

And I think it had just something

to do with my red hair and very white skin.

And I looked a bit like a ghost or a demon.

And nobody would look at me.

Nobody made eye contact with me.

And I started feeling like I was invisible, like I was a ghost.

This is heavy for a middle class American kid

who's never experienced anything outside of suburbia.

So it was starting to penetrate.

I started getting letters in different cities

from my brother who was now moving back to Los Angeles

to start his own musical troupe inspired by Le Grand Magic

Circus.

And I remember getting a letter saying we have it together.

There's seven of us.

It's called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.

And you're going to be our musical director.

They all played to a couple of instruments-- drums,

lots of drums, and a clarinet player, and an accordion

player.

And they passed the hat in the streets.

So this was what I was becoming musical director of.

And so from the day I arrived home from Africa,

I was musical director of the Mystic Knights

of the Oingo Boingo, which was as ragtag

a group as could possibly be.

But then began the next part of my life.

How did I get into films?

It's all part of a crazy journey.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

(SINGING) Well, son, let me tell you,

I'm so pleased to meet you.

The boys and I've been expecting to greet you.

[END PLAYBACK]

In my mind, I lived in 1933 Harlem.

That's where I lived.

That's where I belonged.

OK.

My bad luck.

I was just born out of time.

I happened to be in 1975 Los Angeles.

But that didn't mean shit to me.

I was 1933 Harlem.

And I didn't even want to hear anything written after 1936.

And I started to feel more confident.

And then I started writing arrangements of things as well.

I wrote a piece towards the end there when we were starting

to get pretty good called the Oingo Boingo "Piano Concerto

Number 1 and 1/2."

There's 12 of us.

One was just an actor you know acting out the scene.

Everybody else was playing.

And the pianist actually had quite a difficult part

as they all were.

But it was a real arrangement.

And I feel like I'm finally starting

to get comfortable with this.

And then the next inevitable collision in my life happens.

I get up.

I happened to turn on the radio.

And I hear this music.

And I'm going, oh fuck.

And it was ska music from England.

Now I love the African music I heard over there.

It was called high life.

And the high life was kind of inspired by reggae

with a little bit of salsa mixed in.

But it was all like three piece horn sections and five piece

rhythm section.

And now I'm hearing the ska music,

which was like the high life but with a big shot of adrenaline

in it.

And always being somewhat of a hyperactive person, I said,

I like this.

I want to be in a ska band.

And within a year, Mystic Knights were gone.

They were dissolved.

So all of a sudden, my world musically got

turned around again.

And the irony is that now for the next five years,

I never have to write anything down again, because with a rock

band, you don't fucking write music down.

You know, it's like you play it on the guitar.

And everybody picks it up.

And then you're off and running.

And I thought to myself, what a waste.

The last seven years of my life have been a complete waste.

All that ear training, all that work writing down

Oingo Boingo "Piano Concerto Number 1 and 1/2"

is all just useless time for me.

Oh.

Was it?

It's 1985.

And I get a call from my manager for Oingo Boingo.

And he says there's a young animator filmmaker named

Tim Burton who's doing a--

you know who Pee-wee Herman is?

I said, oh yeah, I used to--

we used to go see Paul Reubens perform the Pee-wee Herman

character and The Groundlings in Los Angeles

much earlier than Pee-wee became Pee-wee and was just one

of several characters he did.

And I knew he was amazing.

When he came out as Pee-wee in The Groundlings,

the audience went nuts.

So I said, yeah.

I actually know who Pee-wee Herman and Paul Reubens is.

And I met with Tim.

Didn't know who he was, of course.

You know, he was a Disney animator

that was making his first film.

And I thought they wanted me to do a song,

because I was starting to do songs

with Oingo Boingo for films.

And I've done several.

And he said, I'd like you to do a score.

And I go, a score?

I don't know anything about film scoring.

He says, I think you could do a score.

And I go-- and this is pretty much verbatim.

It's like-- I'm thinking.

And I said, I think, why me?

He goes, I don't know.

I've heard Oingo Boingo.

I see the band.

And I just think you can do it.

And he shows me some of the film.

And as I'm looking at the first scene of Pee-wee riding,

I'm actually starting to hear a tune in my head.

And I say that's never happened.

I've never responded to visual stimuli.

But I heard something in my head.

And I drove home and went right down to my studio

with my little four track tape player.

And I made a demo of this piece that I

started hearing while I was watching it

and heard all the way home in the car.

And I recorded a minute and a half of music.

I put it on a cassette.

And I sent it to Tim Burton and didn't think about it again.

And I really figured it would just get thrown away.

A week later, I get a call from my manager.

He says you got the job.

And I say to my manager, I say, tell him I can't do it.

He goes, why?

Because I will fuck up their film.

And he's a really nice guy.

And I don't want to fuck up his film.

But I'll fuck up his film.

He goes, you call him.

He says, I've spent all week putting this deal together.

Here.

You want to call him, here's the number.

And I sat for a day kind of looking at the phone,

thinking of picking up the phone.

And then finally, I was like, fuck it.

Why not?

It's like if I fuck up his film, it's on him.

I mean he made the choice.

They'll find another composer that'll do a better score.

So I didn't make that call.

That little demo became the opening to "Pee-wee's Big

Adventure" pretty much verbatim.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC - "PARK RIDE"]

[END PLAYBACK]

Comedy writing and film scoring in the mid '80s,

it was in a weird place.

Nobody quite knew what to do.

The old stuff was disappearing.

New styles were starting.

Hollywood was not quite understanding

one way or another.

Orchestral film composition was kind of dying.

Comedies were mostly being scored

with kind of a jazz ensemble, or a small ensemble,

or synthesizers.

And nobody-- there wasn't like a sound.

It was just a blank area.

And especially for a quirky or comic films,

they just didn't know what to do with it.

And little did I know that doing "Pee-wee's Big Adventure"

was exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.

Now you have to realize I expected the score

to get thrown out.

I finished it.

Tim was great to work with.

I was able to write the whole thing down.

And the experience of recording it--

oh my God.

And I didn't know what to do with myself.

I was in a band.

And so I had a number of years where

I was struggling to figure out how do I work in another film

score in between my recording, producing, and touring schedule

with Oingo Boingo.

But I was committed to doing that.

The first time I was in front of an orchestra in my life

was hearing my own music played back.

I had never stood next to an orchestra.

And hearing that sound, it sounded so much better.

And it even sounded better than I imagined in my head.

And it's like I want to do this.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC - "BREAKFAST MACHINE"]