Mind of a Mad Man...

Mind of a Mad Man...

\"My entire life has been one continuing nightmare. God help me.\"
- Danny

\"I don\'t mind getting beaten up by a director.\"
- Danny

\"If I was just a film composer, I\'d be very unhappy. It\'s very, very intense work, especially the kinds of movies I do. I get much too close to the projects. I end up cruising for a bruising every time I do a film. I set myself up for a massive disappointment if it doesn\'t come out just the way I want it to. I have no doubt that I\'d be suicidal very quickly. I need to do something else to break it up. Also the work is so hard. I work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, when I\'m scoring. And to be able to go back and write songs is my vacation. That\'s what I\'m doing now, until probably April.\"
- Danny

\"Once you get down to the nitty gritty, all the technology doesn\'t mean shit. That technology comes down to pencils and how many hours you can write before you get cramps in your right hand and have to stop and run around screaming.\"
- Danny

\"I generally write about things I\'m angry about. I also have to laugh at myself and everything I do and try to keep a certain humor involved in everything. Otherwise, I\'d just go nuts. On the other hand, everything isn\'t tongue in cheek at the same time. \"Little Girls\" is tongue in cheek, but \"Grey Matter\" and \"Nothing to Fear\" are not tongue in cheek. \"Grey Matter\" is real obvious. It says they will force you to bend over and they will fuck you in the ass unless you say no, and that happens on many different levels so that is not to be taken lightly.\"
- Danny

\"In an era of musical blandness, to be hated so vehemently means I\'m doing something correct.\"
- Danny

\"I guess I\'m finally aware that I\'ll never do things the way you\'re supposed to do them, and instead of being ashamed of it, I\'m proud.\"
- Danny

\"I have three careers. It\'s like I have three hungry children. Whoever screams the loudest gets the attention.\"
- Danny

\"Even if they created a category for best Danny Elfman score, they\'d still find a reason not to nominate me. There are a lot of people in the Academy who really hated my guts.\"
- Danny

\"That respect from my colleagues - it\'s not what I got into composing for. I\'ve never felt a part of that community, but I never felt a part of the rock n\' roll community when I was in a rock band, so it\'s really no different.\"
- Danny

\"I\'ve always felt that there\'s nothing positive about stardom at all. With the exception of, occasionally, getting a better table in a restaurant.\"
- Danny

\"It\'s not easy leaving Oingo Boingo. It\'s like getting off heroin.\"
- Danny

\"If mass success was the key, I would have written a song that I know would have been accepted. It\'s not that hard to do; it\'s just a matter of writing songs I don\'t like.\"
- Danny

\"My brother returned to Los Angeles and started a theater troupe inspired by Le Grande Magic Circus called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. He recruited me to become the music director of the Mystic Knights the day after I arrived home with hepatitis. It was like, \"you don\'t have to work hard. Just soak it in and watch while you are getting your health back.\"
- Danny

\"I would suggest a good long stay in a nice quiet sanitarium. Make sure you find one with pretty nurses and lots of strong drugs. Masturbation four times and strong drugs. Masturbation four times a day is also an excellent exercise in becoming a film composer. I put most of my music up my butt, not knowing where else to place it.\"
- Danny, on being a film composer

\"I mean, I remember at a very early age being repulsed by the idea of Christian Heaven as a reality. It was really scary to me. I was just really hoping they weren\'t right. The idea that it\'s white, that everything\'s white, and it\'s sunny and it\'s all this glowing light. I\'ve always had an aversion to light, and I\'ve always had an aversion to sun, so it made it sound like this horrible day at the beach. If there truly is a punishment Hell out there, for me, I\'m gonna die and I\'m gonna open my eyes and I\'m gonna be at the MTV Beach House for eternity. That\'s the worst thing that I could come up with for myself. If there was like a punishment that\'s as bad as it gets, it\'d be that I\'m forever at the MTV Beach House.\"
- Danny, on Hell

\"I don\'t believe in life after death… So, I suppose, you know, that becomes a fascinating mystery. I mean, I\'d like to... I hope... sometimes I really... I kind of hope that there\'s a Hell. I hope that there\'s a Heaven and that I\'m qualified for Hell. \'Cause that\'s where I would definitely want to go.\"
- Danny, on Hell again

\"Every once in a while the theater would get a musical or a cartoon, and my friends and I would boycott it. My apologies to Disney, who I guess I work for now, but hey, when you\'re eleven, you\'re eleven.\"
- Danny, during the Pee-Wee commentary

\"Size doesn\'t matter, as some people say. And some people even mean it.\"
- Danny, during the Pee-Wee commentary

\"For me, the most exciting thing was the fact that Tim Burton and I were on the film together. We had a kind of falling out, and hadn\'t spoken in a while, but we made up and came back together. It felt good, just like a family thing. As often happens in families, it gets very emotional, and you\'re not calling each other, you don\'t see each at the next Thanksgiving dinner. Then, time goes by, and you go, \'I really miss that person.\' You find that yeah, it\'s workable, and you resolve these things. We\'ve done some good work together, and I think we both recognize that. Coming back together felt really good, so working with Tim again is very cool.\"
- Danny, on Tim Burton

\"I know Tim\'s not always going to use me, I know his personality enough to know he\'s going to want to try different ideas, different people. But I hope over the course of a number of years that, even if we don\'t work together on some films, we continue to bump into each other. Because I\'m very curious to see what he\'s going to do, and he\'s one of those people whose career I very much feel a connetion with. When I\'m scoring his films, I\'m not compromising myself, only because what he wants is so close to the type of things I like to do. But also because he drives me on in certain directions that are good for me.\"
- Danny, on Tim Burton

\"Tim, when was the last time I decked ya?\"
\"When was our last meeting?\"
- Danny and Tim Burton

\"I sang all the voices on the demo, except Sally\'s (it\'s in falsetto, so it would have been quite ludicrous). Tim and I stayed up all night in the studio, with me in the singing booth and Tim acting the part of record producer. It was great fun, and we were occasionally prone to fits of hysteria. As I layered all the voices--up to twenty for the Halloween chorus--Tim gave me wild hand gestures indicating his approval or disapproval. It was wonderfully insane.\"
- Danny, on recording with Tim Burton

\"People think I do drugs and I don\'t do any drugs. But sometimes I\'ll be out there and I\'ll be going so fast and I\'ll be looking at the rest of the band to go faster. They\'ll tell me to slow down because I\'m already too fast. After a show, I\'m so wired up, I can\'t just go to sleep. I like to sit in front of the television and hopefully there\'ll be some bad horror movie on. Something dubbed from Italian or Spanish. Something where you can see the zipper on the monster.\"
- Danny, on drug use

\"You\'ll never get me into a tux. Not until I\'m dead and I have no choice because that\'s what the undertaker put me in.\"
- Danny, on formal wear

\"It\'s convenient in a way, because you don\'t have to answer many questions: People say, \'Man, how are you feeling?\' And I say, \'How do I look?\' And they go, \'Oh, OK.\' I\'ve got the coffin maker calling every now and then about measurements, wanting to give me a proper fit.\"
- Danny, on being overworked

\"So, as the Internet gets cleaner, my interest in it diminishes wildly. You know, because I\'m just looking for the sickest little corners that I can find, and they\'re getting harder to find. You have to spend more time getting there. Because the last couple times I went on, I found all kinds of restrictions. You know, I just want to kill them. It\'s like, I finally find a really interesting topic and it\'s restricted - I can\'t pull it up. And, you know, once again I kind of go, \'yea, America. Thank you for protecting me from this bit of information.\'\"
- Danny, on censorship

“If you want to know what a pedestrian wolf is, read the lyrics. Then immediately knock yourself out with a heavy object. And the answer will come in your dream.”
- Danny, on the meaning of the lyrics to \'Pedestrian Wolves\'

\"It depends on what you consider an education- survival techniques, yeah. I learned how to disguise myself as either a Protestant or a Catholic religious student, in order to get meals out of missionaries all over the continent of West Africa. Learned how to play hymns on the violin. Anything for food, because there just wasn\'t a lot to eat out there but rice and peanut sauce. The missionaries would have all this fucking Western food- canned ham, canned vegetables, things like that. After a couple months away from it, I would do anything for it. So I learned how to disguise myself as a good religious boy. I learned how to keep myself alive when I came down with malaria, which was to not go to a hospital, but to find a Peace Corps person\'s house and knock on their door. When they opened it, I\'d collapse and say, \'American.\' They\'d have no choice but to let me have a cot in their backyard. Where I was, hospitals were more where you went to die than to get better. So, yeah, I learned a few things.\"
- Danny, on Africa

\"We were creating this eccentric character, and while writing the songs and fleshing it out, I became very attached to him. I said to Tim, \'There are better singers than I am, but nobody is going to do Jack\'s character better than I can.\'\"
- Danny, on singing for Jack Skellington

\"There\'s no meaning, honest to God. The original group was called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. I wasn\'t even in the country when it was formed. It was formed by my brother Rick as a little street theater troupe and the first time I ever saw the name I was in Ghana, West Africa. I had picked up a letter he wrote that said, \'Danny you must come back and be musical director of this new little troupe I just started. It\'s called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.\' I read the name and just laughed. I asked him where the Oingo Boingo part of it came from and he said, \'Don\'t know. It just popped up into somebody\'s head in the middle of the night.\' And it kind of stuck. Finally, in 1979, when I had purged all the last theatrical elements and we started playing just as a band to see if we could write and perform music that would hold up on its own without the crutch of the theatrics, we were going to change our name. We figured we were doing a different type of thing, so we should. We looked at all these other names and there were all these new wave groups out there and there was a certain kind of attitude that one was supposed to project and we said, \'What could we pick that would be the un-hippest name with the least amount of attitude that would be totally unfashionable?\' Oingo Boingo, what else?\"
- Danny, on the name \'Oingo Boingo\'

\"it\'s better just to sit and watch and go, yes! I do this! Something else writes my music! I\'m a pederast! I\'m into bestiality! Necrophelia! Come on, lay it on!\"
- Danny, on internet rumours

\"I just wanted to get the fuck out of high school as fast as I could. I really disliked people my age, for the most part. I just had as much as I could take from teenage boys in general... For the most part, they were so fucking stupid and proud of it that it was mind boggling. It probably hasn\'t changed that much. I just wanted to be around girls. I couldn\'t stand boys.\"
- Danny, on high school

\"I can go into battle knowing I\'m gonna win. I dont know if I\'m gonna come out with my arms and legs on.\"
- Danny, during the Planet of the Apes commentary