[The brown carpet interview]
From a number of quick interviews on the "chocolate carpet" to the
premiere. (Music playing overhead is from Spider-man 2). Transcript by Bluntinstrument
Interviewer: So you're stepping into a giant responsibility here, I
mean normally - I know you and I know what you've composed in your life and
usually it's composed from the ground up - it's all Danny. And here now you're
not duplicating anybody's work but you've got a little more constraint with
a remake. Was that daunting?
Elfman: Well no, it really wasn't because, you know, because having
composed Batman and there was the question of "are we going to use the
TV theme?"... Tim and I already did the Planet of the Apes - and there
was that earlier film...
Interviewer: But they weren't as musical really as Wonka was.
Elfman: No, that's true, but I didn't think about it because Tim made
it really clear that we wanted to go in a totally different direction. He wanted
each of these songs... he didn't want it to be Broadway-like at all, like the
original. He wanted each song to be a big, crazy, over-the-top production retro-pop
piece. So once he'd made that clear to me it was really easy to launch off in
these different directions.
Interviewer: Did you do it in your typical form, doing synthetic composition
first, then to paper then to the studio?
Elfman: No paper! I improvised each song - I was playing guitars, laying
down the parts and doing all the vocals. And then suddenly there was a finished-sounding
demo, and it stayed that way until only a month ago when I replaced drums with
real drums and "orchestra" with real orchestra, but it's essentially
the same piece of music for the whole year.
Interviewer. Wow. I know you're going back and forth from London. Did
you do a lot of tracking in London?
Elfman: Ya, I did all the tracking in London and I worked with Tim also
on them. I would go to London even before we were recording just to work on
the songs with him cause he wanted to work very closely on these...
Interviewer: Any word for your Oingo Boingo fans and how they can relate
to the movie?
Elfman: I don't know - other than it's me singing all over the place, but that's
the only connection I could come up with. There's a few moments here and there
where Tim said, hey that sounds a little Boingo maybe, so there obviously are
some.
Interviewer: Did he say that with reluctance or like he was glad.
Elfman: No just kindof like wickedly.
[camera cut]
Elfman [subtitle: Shamless OingoBoingo.com plug :)] Welcome to Wonkaworld
on OingoBoingo.com and I hope you all like the movie as much as I do.