Danny Elfman

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. ”

Doing Tim's film is always going to be the most pleasure. Let me just put it that way. So, without drawing favorites one way or the other, getting back with him and doing Mars Attacks! was certainly a special treat. ”

The beauty of a main title is that you establish your main theme and maybe a bit of your secondary theme. You plant the seed that you're going to go water later in the score. And so, having that removed just made it so much more difficult. ”

In some types of music I'm working out all the chords one bar at a time - the whole structure, because it's about that. And there are other pieces which are really about - okay, the melody is going to start here and play through to here. ”

I really liked doing a number of the projects and directors, and etc., etc., I knew about half-way through that I would never be doing that again. It's just not me. I really am happy as a part-time film composer, not a full-time film composer. ”

I can't get that live and I don't have the time to take the tape, after I've finished recording it, into a little studio somewhere else where I can get a different kind of percussion sound. ”

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time. ”

I had to do this very aggressive, big score in a very short time, and knowing that in the beginning, middle, and end would be this very, very famous theme, but I still had to weave a score around it and make it work as a score was really challenging. ”

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. ”