Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DANNY ELFMAN: What makes a melody a melody?

A melody can be as simple as a bass drum,

it could be as complicated as a full blown theme,

and it could be everything in between.

There's a movie called "Dead Presidents" I did,

and really, what became the melody was three bass drums.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "DEAD PRESIDENTS THEME"]

(SINGING) Bom bom bom, bom, bom.

Bom bom bom--

[SPEAKING NORMALLY] But now, I get hired years later by Brian

De Palma, "Mission Impossible," and he goes,

I want a theme-- something like you did for "Dead Presidents."

And I'm going, I didn't have a theme for "Dead Presidents."

And I listened to it, and I go, oh, yeah, there

was those three bass drums.

So that was the tune to "Dead Presidents."

Now, for Brian, I gave him a little more

of an involved thematic piece than that,

but then I also realized that, you

got to be able to break melodies down.

Even if it's a longer melody, I got

to break it down to just little bits, how to express that.

So what is a melody, and what kind of melody

do you need in your film?

There's absolutely no answer for that,

because if it's a classically themed film,

and it calls upon it, you may be asked to do a beautiful melody,

a melody that one could hum, a melody that acts--

gets in your mind.

I grew up on these beautiful melodies of Maurice Jarre--

"Doctor Zhivago," "Lawrence of Arabia."

These were your big classical melodies that you heard,

and you kept in your mind forever.

And then also, out of the era of "Jaws"

and many others, much more simplified versions of what

is a melody.

"Edward Scissorhands" was certainly a melodic score.

It had two very clear full melodies,

but I was able to use little bits of them frequently,

like in--

[MUSIC PLAYING - "STORYTIME"]

(SINGING) Dah dah dah, or dah dah-dah dah.

[SPEAKING NORMALLY] That's it.

That's all I need to do because I was given enough opportunity

to express the full melody that, now, we only need

a tiny little bit of it.

In "Alice in Wonderland" I really dealt with it

much more scientifically.

I wanted to be able to take just the rhythm

before the melody comes in--

[MUSIC PLAYING - "ALICE'S THEME"]

(SINGING) Bom bom bom bom bom, bom bom bom bom bom,

bom bom bom bom bom.

[SPEAKING NORMALLY] And OK, that's all I'm

going to use, and use it clearly enough that, if I hear that,

I know something's happening.

Alice is on the move.

She's feeling confident.

There's something is going on.

That's all I need to say.

So I was learning by then that you could really take things,

if you fragment them out, and the film will allow

you to use these fragments.

You can create a lot of memorable bits

where you can go, oh, that's the theme from Alice.

Oh, no, that's the theme from--

no, that's the theme from-- it's all the same theme I'm just

using the introduction independently.

I'm using the chords leading into the first part

of the melody independently, and I'm

using this big tune, finally, when we get to the end.

So there's so many ways--

inventive ways to use a melody.

The classical romanticism, the Romantic Era of writing,

is something I've listened to, but I don't know it well.

But that's what a good theme is all about.

I mean just listen to Prokofiev, and you'll

hear them all over the place.

And they're all part of the same single Russian romantic

beautiful theme, but they're broken into so many elements

that you just keep going, that's Lieutenant Kijé,

and this is still Lieutenant Kijé,

and this is still Lieutenant Kijé.

It's all from the same work and the same piece,

but what you learn from that is that you could break it down,

if you're inventive, in so many different ways.

So I do love when I have a score,

and I've got a fairly simple thematic piece.

But the pleasure in it is breaking it down

into lots of variations, really turning it upside down,

turning it inside out, turning it around.

What can you do with it?

And they all work in their own way.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "THE SIMPSONS THEME"]

CHOIR: (SINGING) The Simpsons.

DANNY ELFMAN: Finding a melody, finding a tune,

is actually one of the hardest things there is.

And like every songwriter knows, the simplest tunes

don't necessarily come simply.

It just sounds simple.

That hook that everybody just loves, that hook,

it may just come in a quick second,

and it may have just been a moment,

and it may have been like 100 versions leading up

to that really simple thing.

You just don't know, and I've had both in my life.

I've had tunes that plague me and plague me and plague me,

and I couldn't figure out what it

was to make the tune come together and work.

And I've had those lucky moments.

I took the meeting with Matt Groening.

He played me a pencil sketch of the opening of the Simpsons,

and I heard this tune in my head.

And it's like, right off the bat,

I was thinking Hanna Barbera.

I was thinking Fred Flintstone running

in his car, the opening of the "Flintstones"

because Homer Simpson's driving this car,

and I felt this energy that felt very '60s

like the stuff I grew up on.

And I only had one question for Matt,

which was like, if you want something

contemporary, something modern sounding, I'm not the guy.

But if you want something that's retro, I got it for you.

He goes, yeah, retro, I like that.

I dig retro.

OK.

It was done in my car before I got home.

Everything was done.

I just ran down--

I lived in Topanga Canyon, so I had about a 45 minute drive

from Fox to Topanga.

I get to my stairs.

I run straight down on my studio because, God knows,

I don't want to hear anything else.

I don't want to talk to anybody.

I don't want to hear another piece of music.

And I got home, and I got my 4-track--

or maybe, at that point, I might have already expanded

to 8-tracks.

I don't know.

But I did the demo for "The Simpsons."

Recorded all the parts in my funky little sequencer,

all the orchestration, all the parts.

Everything was basically done, and it's--

I mean, it's only 45 seconds long or something.

I sent it to Matt, and I think it took a day to come back

saying, great, let's do it.

And we recorded it the next week.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The worst moment--

I can tell you this right now-- when

it comes to themes and melodies, is they'll hit you

at the most inopportune time.

And the big fish, the ones that get away,

are your best ideas you ever had.

It's-- that fish was-- oh, my god, it was huge.

Of course, it wasn't, but it got away,

and that makes it the grand fish.

I was sitting at my eldest daughter's wedding,

and I'm in the front row, and everybody's behind me.

And they're doing the beginning of the wedding service,

and they're both there, and a fucking piece of music

hit me out of the blue.

And it's like, what is this?

Where did it come from?

And it's like, oh, this is good.

I can turn this thing into a major movement,

and I tried holding onto that.

So I got two things I could do.

I could pull out my iPhone, and try

to kind of like [MUMBLING] little thing

and do the thing and the little thing.

But to everybody sitting behind me,

I'm going to be taking a phone call.

Nobody is going to be going, oh, look there's a composer,

and he's got an idea.

There's a writer who's got an idea,

and he's trying to get the idea down.

They're going to go, the bastard couldn't even not

turn down a phone call at his daughter's wedding?

What an asshole.

And I couldn't do it.

I just couldn't do.

I had to let it go.

It was one of those things.

I had to let it go.

For some reason, I hear something--

anything can trigger something else.

I've had cars drive by me.

I'm just sitting there driving, and there's

a-- somebody's got their base turned up really loud,

and I'm just hearing [IMITATING BASS NOISES],,

like you tend to hear through the windows of a car

with a super loud sound system.

But I don't even know what the song was.

I have no idea what it is.

I can't even hear the notes.

All I'm hearing is [IMITATING BASS NOISES],,

and I'm hearing (SINGING) dun ba-dum, ba-dum ba-dum dun

dun, dun dun, dun dun da-da-dun dun dun da-da-dun dun dun

da-da-dun dun dun, dun dun, bam bam bam dun dun dun, bah bam

bam bam bam bam bam, bah bam bam bam.

And now, it's turned down a whole thing, just

that little rhythm through the window of that random song.

You just never know when it's going

to happen, which is why, from the get-go,

I was never, ever without, first, my Sony cassette player.

Then of course, that led to the digital recorders, which

were, like, great but a little sometimes hard to maneuver,

and you have to make sure to keep them charged.

And then finally, of course, Apple

came along with the iPhone.

It's like I never have to carry anything around ever again.

But I have an iPhone that, every now and then, I go,

oh, I have 170 notes on this thing right now.

I better back this fucker up.

When you're on a digital form you

have to realize there's the possibility that everything

crashes, and you have to wipe it and start again.

And if you haven't backed your stuff up,

it's like you're in trouble.

So that's the only thing I'm conscious of now

that I didn't used to have to, is

that the form I'm using to capture all my notes

is also eraseble in a quick moment.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Whether it be a theme or a motif or a leitmotif or a more

developed thematic idea, you're often faced the same question.

Is it doing what I need to, and when

do I know it's doing what I need to?

And a great example for me would be "Edward Scissorhands,"

which during the process of writing

it-- which I loved writing it, but then I reached a crisis.

And the crisis was, I don't have the theme for Edward.

In fact, I have two themes for Edward,

and they both feel right.

And I talked with Tim at length about this.

I go, Tim, there's this theme, and there's this theme.

And he's like, whatever, man.

Just use them both.

Thank god I had a director who was not analytical,

because some directors really break things down,

and they go, no, the theme has to do this,

and it has to follow this, and you've got to choose.

This has got to work this way.

And Tim was like, I don't know.

Just go with it.

Go with what seems right.

And that actually was the best advice he

gave me, which was like, why?

Why do you have to have a single thing for a character that

plays in that way?

And I realized, I don't.

There's a type of a movie where you need to have a character

theme, but what I learned with "Edward,"

and this is a lesson that I took with me

for the rest of my composing days,

is that sometimes a theme plays a feeling in the movie,

and it doesn't play the character.

It's related to the character, and it will often

play when the character is involved,

but it's not his theme.

There is no "Edward Scissorhands" theme

that plays when he's on.

There's a theme that plays a story time,

and I called it the "Storytime" theme,

and it plays the fairy tale-ness of it.

And there's a theme that I used for the ice

dance that became Edward's sadder part of his theme.

It's just a little bit of his bittersweet theme,

and the bittersweet theme wasn't like, Edward's on screen,

I play his theme, because I rarely did.

But it played the feeling that Edward gave me.

He was a tragic character.

He needed something sad.

He needed something a little bit heartbreaking.

And I found that those two themes

seemed to work in a way that didn't seem

traditional or correct to me.

But fortunately, I--

I ran out of time.

I mean, literally, I ran out of time.

And I said, well, all right, I don't know.

I don't know if this works.

I have no idea if it works.

And before the movie came out, I went

through a period of feeling I'd failed miserably at that score.

And so, of course, it's ironic that it's

become one of my most well-known scores,

but I didn't feel that when I left the film.

I had no sense of, like, yeah, I got it.

I nailed the fucker.

Uh-uh, I was like, I think I fucked up.

My indecisiveness-- my indecision

kept me from doing my job, which was finding Edward's theme.

Edward comes out, and he has a theme, and I couldn't do it.

And I felt like I failed, and I really felt pretty miserable

afterwards until later, under hindsight, I

realized I didn't need a theme for him.

That worked out fine.

I had no mentor, so there was nobody

I could turn to and say, please, oh, wise one, tell me,

I need to know.

Please, tell me.

Yoda wasn't there when I needed him.

So I was just left to my own kind

of miserable, moping around, feeling

like I'd done a shitty job, and things worked out.