May 29 - Danny Elfman

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On this day, in 1953, Daniel Robert Elfman was born in Los Angeles, California. As the child of teachers, Danny spent much of his childhood hanging around the local movie theater (not surprisingly admiring the scores of movies more than the actors in them) and hanging out with the band geeks. While in high school, he started a ska band, dropped out of school and followed his older brother Richard to France for a while. Upon his return to the States, he sort of sat in on a few classes at CalArts (not having a high school diploma prevented him from actually enrolling). Then, when he was nineteen, a formal education ceased to matter all that much. 

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In 1972, Richard formed a band/performance art troupe he called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.  Danny was off in Africa at the time studying the violin and percussion instruments, but joined the group when he got back to America. The Mystic Knights played a variety of genres of music, mostly wearing clown makeup, with original performance bits thrown in. Needless to say, they didn’t make any recordings of their shows, in spite of their growing popularity. In late 1975, Richard’s interests began to drift towards filmmaking and he passed the mantel of leadership of the group on to Danny. The Mystic Knights really began to gain a following in Los Angeles and even appeared on the Gong Show in 1976, winning their episode. Over the next few years, they began appearing in independent films and the group’s style began to lean toward pop artists. In 1980, Richard released a film called Forbidden Zone, which was supposed to represent the surrealism of one of the Mystic Knights’ stage performances. It was the first time that Danny would write the score of a movie. Despite receiving poor reviews, the film has become a cult classic and provided a boost to Richard’s film career and Danny’s music career. 

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Following the release of Forbidden Zone, The Mystic Knights shortened their name to Oingo Boingo, dropped most of the theatricality from their performances and became a pop octet with Danny as lead singer, rhythm guitarist and songwriter. Oingo Boingo was frequently called a new wave band but in reality, their use of a horn section and continuously surreal imagery put them pretty much outside of that, or any, rock classification. The group would play together for fifteen more years, releasing several  albums, appearing in several films (including Weird Science and Back to School) and influencing future groups like Nirvana and Fishbone. What seemed like an abrupt retirement in 1995, later turned out to be a move of pure self-preservation by Danny. His hearing was shot after all those years in a rock band, and rather than damage it more, he walked away, the group dissolving with his departure. Thankfully, Danny’s second career was well established by that point. 

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In 1985, Tim Burton and Paul Reubens asked Danny to write the score for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Tim’s debut as a feature director. Danny was reluctant to take the project on because of his lack of formal musical composition training, but he got orchestration help from Steve Bartek, Oingo Boingo’s arranger, and pulled it off. Danny has called the moment he first heard a full orchestra playing something he wrote the best moment of his life. Tim was more than thrilled with his work. Danny has written the score for all but three of Tim’s movies in a collaboration that is still happening today. His distinctive style melds well with Tim’s and can be heard in classic films like Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, Corpse Bride (for which he also provided the voice of Bonejangles) and Sleepy Hollow. 

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Danny became part of Disneyana way back in 1990 when he wrote the score for the Warren Beatty blockbuster Dick Tracy. Three years later, he played an integral part in one of my favorite films, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Not only did he write the music for the film but he provided the singing voice for the lead, Jack Skellington, and the voices for Barrel, one of Oogie Boogie’s henchmen, and the Clown with the Tear Away Face. His other Disney film scores include Flubber, Meet the Robinsons, Good Will Hunting, 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, 2012’s Frankenweenie, Oz the Great and Powerful, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Alice Through the Looking Glass and this year’s Dumbo. In 2015, for all of the delightful music he’s contributed to the company (and will most likely continue to bring us), Danny was declared an official Disney Legend.

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Outside of Disney, Danny has had all kinds of success. Over the course of his career he's earned 24 BMI Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Grammy, an Annie Award, six Saturn Awards, a Sierra Award and a Satellite Award (he's also gotten an additional 39 nominations outside of those 36 wins). Highlights from the dozens of film scores he’s done include the Men in Black series, the first Mission: Impossible, two of Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films and the Fifty Shades of Grey series. He’s written multiple theme songs for television shows like Tales from the Crypt, Batman: The Animated Series, Desperate Housewives and, maybe his most famous composition of all time, The Simpsons. Danny has also been commissioned to compose several classical pieces, not associated with any film or show. So far he’s written a serenade, an overture (to a non-existent musical as he put it), a concerto and a piano quartet. Later this year, we’ll be able to enjoy his work in the fourth MIB movie and he’s already logged in a Doctor Dolittle film that’s slated for next year. We wish Danny a happy birthday and can’t wait to hear where his music will take us next.

September 24 - Brad Bird

On this day, in 1957, Phillip Bradley Bird was born in Kalispell, Montana. Since his grandfather was CEO of the Montana Power Company and his father was in the propane business, you might have thought that Brad would have had leanings toward a career in energy. You would have been wrong. Brad decided pretty early in life what he was going to do with his and it had more to do with using electricity rather than producing it.

On a family trip at the age of 11, Brad was taking a tour of the Walt Disney Studios when he met Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's Nine Old Men. This meeting prompted him to turn to his family and announce that he would be part of Disney's animation team some day. For most 11 year olds, that would have been the end of it. Brad returned home and actually began working on a 15 minute animated film. And it only took him two years to complete it. By the age of 14, Brad was getting mentoring from another of the Old Men, Milt Kahl. It's no surprise that Disney would eventually give him a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts. It's also no surprise that one of the people Brad made friends with at CalArts was a student by the name of John Lasseter.

After graduating, Brad of course went to work for Disney. He contributed to The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Then he got fired. But that was okay, it happens to the best of us (right Tim Burton?). Brad moved into television animation. He did an episode of Amazing Stories. He co-wrote the movie *batteries not included. Then, in 1989,  he started working at a little animation studio called Klasky Csupo. One of the first assignments Brad got was taking these one minute filler animations on The Tracey Ullman Show and developing them into a full half hour stand alone program. For the first eight years of its life, Brad helped develop the look of The Simpsons and even directed a few episodes. Some might also recognize that Klasky Csupo was the company that produced The Rugrats. Brad was an animator for the pilot of that show as well.

In 1999, Brad's feature directorial debut, The Iron Giant, was released by Warner Brothers. The movie was a huge critical success (it still has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and a huge box office failure (it only managed to earn 31 million dollars on an 80 million dollar budget). Because Warner had decided they were getting out of the animation game, the studio basically did the equivalent of heaving Giant out of a moving car and squealing off. Zero marketing, zero caring, zero anything. Which of course meant that Giant would become a cult classic. Nevermind the fact that it's also a great movie. Again, the movie's financial woes were okay: that's when Brad made the move to Pixar.

The first project Brad pitched to his old friend now new boss, John Lasseter, was a superhero flick. It would be the first Pixar film to be mostly populated by human characters, which are much harder to animate than animals or toys. Brad got the go ahead to write, direct and act in the movie, so he wrote, directed and did voice work for his second feature film, The Incredibles. This time around, Brad achieved both critical and box office gold. And like any good director, he saved (in my opinion) the best character for himself, Edna Mode. That's right. Edna is voiced by a guy and yet she's still fabulous! You may have also noticed that Mr. Incredible looks a bit like Brad. Supposedly, he didn't realize the animators had done that until too far into production to change anything. Supposedly.

After The Incredibles, Brad went on to write and direct another Pixar hit, Ratatouille. He became part of the senior creative team at the studio, overseeing such gems as Up, Toy Story 3, Brave, Monster's University, Inside Out and Coco. At some point in there he got the opportunity to direct his first live action film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol for Paramount. That led to a second live action movie, Tomorrowland, this time for Disney, which he also wrote, produced and did some design work. Then, earlier this year, he finally released The Return of Edna Mode, more popularly known as The Incredibles 2. It was worth the 18 year wait.

Brad's work has earned him numerous Annie Awards, Oscars, Golden Globes, Saturn Awards and BAFTA Film Awards. He reportedly has several project ideas in the works. I'm pretty sure that whatever the future brings for Brad, he's going to need more shelf space in the den.