1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,890 [MUSIC - "WHAT'S THIS?"] 2 00:00:12,070 --> 00:00:17,650 "Nightmare Before Christmas--" that was a unique moment for me 3 00:00:17,650 --> 00:00:21,760 in my life that I've never had anything quite like it since, 4 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:24,890 because I'd always, as a songwriter, with Oingo Boingo, 5 00:00:24,893 --> 00:00:26,563 and with the Mystic Knights before that, 6 00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:29,020 I always kind of struggled getting a song together. 7 00:00:29,020 --> 00:00:32,330 And usually, there's a process, like what am I singing about? 8 00:00:32,330 --> 00:00:35,400 And I have a tune I like, but I don't know what I'm-- 9 00:00:35,397 --> 00:00:37,477 what's bothering me right now, because frequently, 10 00:00:37,480 --> 00:00:39,820 I sung about things that bothered me. 11 00:00:39,820 --> 00:00:42,660 I just don't want to write things just to be obnoxious, 12 00:00:42,658 --> 00:00:44,198 like when I started out, because that 13 00:00:44,200 --> 00:00:45,710 was enough in the beginning. 14 00:00:45,710 --> 00:00:48,010 Now, I'm looking for things that I'm thinking about. 15 00:00:48,010 --> 00:00:49,060 It was hard. 16 00:00:49,060 --> 00:00:51,520 And I start "Nightmare Before Christmas" with Tim, 17 00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:56,410 and so this was unique because it's the first time in my life 18 00:00:56,410 --> 00:01:00,430 I'd written for a character that wasn't me, 19 00:01:00,430 --> 00:01:03,890 the character I felt a close kinship with. 20 00:01:03,890 --> 00:01:06,590 And as I wrote more and more for Jack Skellington, 21 00:01:06,590 --> 00:01:11,110 he became more of my alter ego that I felt was part of me, 22 00:01:11,110 --> 00:01:14,260 but that developed in the course of writing 10 songs. 23 00:01:14,260 --> 00:01:16,780 It was unique because there was no script. 24 00:01:16,780 --> 00:01:20,820 Tim and I did not know how to begin a musical. 25 00:01:20,820 --> 00:01:24,960 There was no guidebook or manual to look up 26 00:01:24,960 --> 00:01:26,800 on how to begin a musical animation that 27 00:01:26,803 --> 00:01:27,723 doesn't have a script. 28 00:01:27,720 --> 00:01:28,440 He had a story. 29 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:29,550 He had an outline. 30 00:01:29,550 --> 00:01:32,130 And that's what, basically, he got the job from. 31 00:01:32,130 --> 00:01:34,740 I just knew what I didn't want it to be. 32 00:01:34,740 --> 00:01:38,190 I didn't want it to be a Broadway musical 33 00:01:38,190 --> 00:01:42,800 because, in that period, I felt like Broadway 34 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:46,040 had become an extension of adult contemporary music. 35 00:01:46,040 --> 00:01:50,480 And so I wanted to write something musically that 36 00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:53,870 was contemporary but retro, meaning the songs were modern, 37 00:01:53,870 --> 00:01:58,700 but they also referred back to things that were retro. 38 00:01:58,700 --> 00:02:00,590 In the sense, I was trying to put together 39 00:02:00,590 --> 00:02:02,790 different eras of song writing and trying 40 00:02:02,793 --> 00:02:04,463 to find a way to make it sound like this 41 00:02:04,460 --> 00:02:05,840 could come from any era. 42 00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:09,350 So my great driving influences were-- 43 00:02:09,350 --> 00:02:12,620 obviously, Kurt Weill was the biggest influence 44 00:02:12,620 --> 00:02:14,260 because I loved "Threepenny Opera." 45 00:02:14,260 --> 00:02:14,890 [MUSIC PLAYING] 46 00:02:14,885 --> 00:02:23,075 [NON-ENGLISH SINGING] 47 00:02:23,070 --> 00:02:25,220 There was also Gilbert and Sullivan. 48 00:02:25,220 --> 00:02:26,930 I loved Gilbert and Sullivan. 49 00:02:26,930 --> 00:02:30,570 I think there's just nothing better from the 19th Century. 50 00:02:30,570 --> 00:02:33,590 These are what I took into the songs. 51 00:02:33,590 --> 00:02:35,150 We don't have a script, but Henry 52 00:02:35,150 --> 00:02:36,760 is ready to start animating. 53 00:02:36,760 --> 00:02:38,510 We have to start coming up with something. 54 00:02:38,510 --> 00:02:40,910 We just-- we're just behind. 55 00:02:40,910 --> 00:02:42,650 Let's just start with the tunes. 56 00:02:42,650 --> 00:02:45,920 OK, take out the drawings, and I would say, just tell me 57 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:47,300 what happens here. 58 00:02:47,300 --> 00:02:50,040 And he goes-- he starts telling me the story, 59 00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:52,250 and I would start hearing the tune. 60 00:02:52,250 --> 00:02:54,780 And he would have, sometimes, little phrases, bits of lyrics 61 00:02:54,782 --> 00:02:55,492 that he had done. 62 00:02:55,490 --> 00:02:56,840 It's like, oh, that's good, that's good, 63 00:02:56,840 --> 00:02:58,040 and I would shut them down. 64 00:02:58,040 --> 00:02:59,220 And I'd say, OK, that's it. 65 00:02:59,223 --> 00:03:00,143 Don't tell me anymore. 66 00:03:00,140 --> 00:03:02,630 Get out there, and I run back to my studio. 67 00:03:02,630 --> 00:03:06,020 And we did this 10 times, and each song only 68 00:03:06,020 --> 00:03:07,580 took about three days to write. 69 00:03:07,580 --> 00:03:11,660 I'd call him back twice a week to hear a new song. 70 00:03:11,660 --> 00:03:13,670 And I'd play him the one that I just wrote, 71 00:03:13,670 --> 00:03:17,030 and he was like, oh, yeah, OK, yeah, that's good. 72 00:03:17,030 --> 00:03:18,480 Well, what happens next? 73 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:20,170 Now, Jack wanders into the forest, 74 00:03:20,170 --> 00:03:21,920 and he's going to come across these doors. 75 00:03:21,920 --> 00:03:24,250 And he gets pulled down, and it's Christmasland, 76 00:03:24,252 --> 00:03:25,212 and he's never seen it. 77 00:03:25,210 --> 00:03:26,040 Everything is fresh. 78 00:03:26,043 --> 00:03:27,183 Everything is new. 79 00:03:27,180 --> 00:03:29,910 And it's like, yes, what's this? 80 00:03:29,910 --> 00:03:30,410 I got it. 81 00:03:30,410 --> 00:03:30,910 I got it. 82 00:03:30,910 --> 00:03:31,430 I got it. 83 00:03:31,430 --> 00:03:32,100 Get out of here. 84 00:03:32,100 --> 00:03:32,510 Get out of here. 85 00:03:32,510 --> 00:03:33,320 And he's-- OK, I'm going. 86 00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:33,980 I'm going. 87 00:03:33,980 --> 00:03:34,580 Go back. 88 00:03:34,580 --> 00:03:35,690 Write "What's This?" 89 00:03:35,690 --> 00:03:36,860 Lay down all the vocals. 90 00:03:36,860 --> 00:03:40,760 I was laying down all the vocals for everything as I went. 91 00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:42,440 Comes back three days later, and he 92 00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:43,070 hears, (SINGING) what's this? 93 00:03:43,070 --> 00:03:43,530 What's this? 94 00:03:43,530 --> 00:03:44,510 There's color everywhere. 95 00:03:44,510 --> 00:03:44,900 What's this? 96 00:03:44,900 --> 00:03:45,710 There's white things in the air. 97 00:03:45,710 --> 00:03:46,160 [MUSIC - "WHAT'S THIS?"] 98 00:03:46,160 --> 00:03:46,970 (SINGING) What's this? 99 00:03:46,970 --> 00:03:48,130 I can't believe my eyes. 100 00:03:48,128 --> 00:03:48,918 I must be dreaming. 101 00:03:48,920 --> 00:03:49,620 Wake up, Jack. 102 00:03:49,620 --> 00:03:50,490 This isn't fair! 103 00:03:50,492 --> 00:03:51,802 What's this? 104 00:03:51,800 --> 00:03:53,840 And he's going, yeah, that's good. 105 00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:55,130 Now, what happens? 106 00:03:55,130 --> 00:03:58,430 And we just went the whole way like that. 107 00:03:58,430 --> 00:04:02,150 And at points, it was stuff that wasn't 108 00:04:02,150 --> 00:04:04,040 going to be in song at all. 109 00:04:04,040 --> 00:04:06,950 But it's like, Jack calls a town meeting, 110 00:04:06,950 --> 00:04:08,850 and he's bringing everybody, and he's 111 00:04:08,850 --> 00:04:12,210 going to explain what they don't understand. 112 00:04:12,210 --> 00:04:15,530 He's trying to explain the spirit of Christmasland 113 00:04:15,530 --> 00:04:16,940 to Halloween Land. 114 00:04:16,940 --> 00:04:17,910 And it wasn't a song. 115 00:04:17,912 --> 00:04:19,372 It was never intended to be a song. 116 00:04:19,370 --> 00:04:22,250 But he's telling me the story, and I go, 117 00:04:22,250 --> 00:04:23,950 this is a thing called a present. 118 00:04:23,953 --> 00:04:25,373 The whole thing starts with a box. 119 00:04:25,370 --> 00:04:26,140 A box? 120 00:04:26,140 --> 00:04:27,140 Is it filled with a pox? 121 00:04:27,140 --> 00:04:28,790 (IN A SILLY VOICE) A pox, how delightful, a pox. 122 00:04:28,790 --> 00:04:30,440 (SPEAKING NORMALLY) No, no, no, you don't understand. 123 00:04:30,440 --> 00:04:32,690 A box with bright colored paper, (SINGING) and the whole thing's 124 00:04:32,690 --> 00:04:33,710 topped with a bow. 125 00:04:33,710 --> 00:04:34,670 (SPEAKING NORMALLY) And now, it's a song. 126 00:04:34,670 --> 00:04:35,150 (SINGING) But why? 127 00:04:35,145 --> 00:04:36,095 (SINGING) How ugly. 128 00:04:36,095 --> 00:04:36,575 (SINGING) What's in it? 129 00:04:36,570 --> 00:04:37,390 What's in it? 130 00:04:37,390 --> 00:04:39,140 It's the point of the thing not to know. 131 00:04:39,140 --> 00:04:39,980 It's a bat! 132 00:04:39,976 --> 00:04:40,686 Will it bend? 133 00:04:40,688 --> 00:04:41,228 It's a rat! 134 00:04:41,230 --> 00:04:41,970 Will it break? 135 00:04:41,970 --> 00:04:44,510 Perhaps it's the head that I found in the lake. 136 00:04:44,510 --> 00:04:48,380 And there we went, and then I started really having fun. 137 00:04:48,380 --> 00:04:50,670 (SINGING) Everyone, please, now, not so fast. 138 00:04:50,670 --> 00:04:54,170 (SPEAKING NORMALLY) Now, that little phrase is-- 139 00:04:54,168 --> 00:04:54,708 I don't know. 140 00:04:54,710 --> 00:04:55,910 It's right out of-- 141 00:04:55,905 --> 00:04:57,535 I don't know if it's out of Cole Porter 142 00:04:57,530 --> 00:04:59,610 or it's out of something from Gilbert and Sullivan 143 00:04:59,613 --> 00:05:00,713 or something in between. 144 00:05:00,710 --> 00:05:02,690 But every time I got to those moments, 145 00:05:02,690 --> 00:05:03,980 I was really having fun. 146 00:05:03,980 --> 00:05:05,730 (SINGING) Ah dah-dah bum bum bum bum bum. 147 00:05:05,727 --> 00:05:07,307 (SPEAKING NORMALLY) It's like, I never 148 00:05:07,310 --> 00:05:09,560 get to do this unless it's really silly, 149 00:05:09,560 --> 00:05:11,120 but here, I'm putting it into song. 150 00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:14,720 And I love these archaic little moments, musical moments, 151 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:19,130 that I could grab and make a hodgepodge, kind of a collage, 152 00:05:19,130 --> 00:05:20,510 of styles from different things. 153 00:05:20,510 --> 00:05:22,610 So within one song, I might be going 154 00:05:22,610 --> 00:05:26,570 from Kurt Weill to Cole Porter to Gilbert and Sullivan 155 00:05:26,570 --> 00:05:29,120 and then back to Kurt Weill again. 156 00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:29,990 Who knows? 157 00:05:29,990 --> 00:05:32,180 But it was that easy. 158 00:05:32,180 --> 00:05:34,100 In that month, there was actually, 159 00:05:34,100 --> 00:05:37,650 by the time we finished, more than half the story, 160 00:05:37,650 --> 00:05:39,390 half the movie, was there. 161 00:05:39,390 --> 00:05:41,520 Half the movie was done in song. 162 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:43,410 And it's like, OK, what the hell? 163 00:05:43,410 --> 00:05:48,900 And Disney, fortunately, let us be. 164 00:05:48,900 --> 00:05:51,390 They didn't have any involvement in the process. 165 00:05:51,390 --> 00:05:52,310 Nobody came in. 166 00:05:52,310 --> 00:05:53,940 Nobody asked to hear anything. 167 00:05:53,940 --> 00:05:55,890 They were just like, OK, you know what? 168 00:05:55,890 --> 00:05:59,400 We're at the point now where let's let Tim and Danny go 169 00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:00,390 and do their thing. 170 00:06:00,390 --> 00:06:03,720 Let them go play, and play we did. 171 00:06:03,720 --> 00:06:06,420 And since we had no one to answer to, 172 00:06:06,420 --> 00:06:09,540 this is where, of course, we had the most fun working together, 173 00:06:09,540 --> 00:06:12,060 because it really was like that most of the time. 174 00:06:12,060 --> 00:06:15,680 It was only "Batman" that there was producers and others 175 00:06:15,680 --> 00:06:17,880 and the studio involved, but most of the time, 176 00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:19,150 we were left on our own. 177 00:06:19,150 --> 00:06:20,940 Nobody was paying attention to what we were 178 00:06:20,942 --> 00:06:22,262 doing on "Edward Scissorhands." 179 00:06:22,260 --> 00:06:22,950 Nobody cared. 180 00:06:22,950 --> 00:06:26,920 It was a low budget movie, and just go do your thing. 181 00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:28,420 But to do a musical at Disney-- 182 00:06:28,420 --> 00:06:30,450 I didn't realize until much later. 183 00:06:30,450 --> 00:06:32,210 I go, how could they have allowed that? 184 00:06:32,210 --> 00:06:36,630 That's not in their mindset to just let two people go run off 185 00:06:36,630 --> 00:06:40,110 and not say, so, gentlemen, let us listen to what you're doing. 186 00:06:40,110 --> 00:06:40,920 They didn't. 187 00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:44,670 Now, was that our good fortune, or was that their wisdom 188 00:06:44,670 --> 00:06:46,380 or a combination of the two? 189 00:06:46,380 --> 00:06:49,870 Whatever it is, I'm really grateful for that now, 190 00:06:49,870 --> 00:06:53,370 because I think that's a really rare thing for-- 191 00:06:53,370 --> 00:06:56,520 just let a couple artists just go and do their thing. 192 00:06:56,520 --> 00:06:59,190 And I realized-- here I am, for the first time 193 00:06:59,190 --> 00:07:02,250 ever, writing through another voice. 194 00:07:02,250 --> 00:07:04,070 And because it's another voice, I 195 00:07:04,073 --> 00:07:06,243 didn't have to think about what he's thinking about. 196 00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:07,320 I knew what he was thinking about. 197 00:07:07,320 --> 00:07:09,450 Tim was telling me what he's thinking about. 198 00:07:09,450 --> 00:07:11,940 He was showing me pictures, and it was right there. 199 00:07:11,940 --> 00:07:13,530 And I go, I love this. 200 00:07:13,530 --> 00:07:16,060 There's no stressing over, what is the character-- 201 00:07:16,060 --> 00:07:17,870 what am I wanting to say? 202 00:07:17,868 --> 00:07:19,408 Of course, I know what I want to say. 203 00:07:19,410 --> 00:07:22,080 I want to say, (SINGING) what have I done? 204 00:07:22,080 --> 00:07:23,040 What have I done? 205 00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:24,040 How could I be so blind? 206 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:26,620 (SPEAKING NORMALLY) Because he's just crashed in the graveyard 207 00:07:26,623 --> 00:07:28,203 because he's screwed up Christmas. 208 00:07:28,200 --> 00:07:30,300 There's not any stress over what it's about. 209 00:07:30,300 --> 00:07:32,070 It's-- it's just right there. 210 00:07:32,070 --> 00:07:34,620 It's like, he's singing about the story. 211 00:07:34,620 --> 00:07:39,510 And so "Nightmare Before Christmas" was a rare thing. 212 00:07:39,510 --> 00:07:42,870 The actual creation of the songs that 213 00:07:42,870 --> 00:07:45,690 ended up being such a big portion of the film-- 214 00:07:45,690 --> 00:07:49,770 it just was a rare moment of synchronicity. 215 00:07:49,770 --> 00:07:54,720 Tim and I were in complete synchronicity, and it's like, 216 00:07:54,720 --> 00:07:58,140 let's just do our thing and have fun.