Danny Elfman Wrote Two Entire Beetlejuice Scores, Including One We Never Heard
Danny Elfman is one of the most prolific composers in cinema history. More to the point, the man tends to touch things that turn into gold. Heck, most composers would consider themselves beyond lucky just to have the "Simpsons" theme song to their credit. And that's just one of many, many things that Elfman was responsible for that will outlive all of us. Next to that, he's also got his many collaborations with director Tim Burton. Their work is synonymous with one another's dating all the way back to the '80s with some of their earliest hits, such as the much beloved "Beetlejuice." It turns out Elfman did a lot of extra work on that movie, in particular. So much so that there's an entirely different soundtrack that we've never heard.
In a recent interview with GQ, Burton was breaking down his career's worth of collaborations with Burton. While talking about the legendary score for "Beetlejuice," Elfman revealed that he originally composed quite a bit of music purely based on the script for the 1988 film. Ultimately, none of that music actually worked once he found out what Burton had cooked up on set:
"I wrote music before I saw a rough cut of anything. I had a little extra time, and I thought I'd get started. I read the script, and I wrote a bunch of music, all got thrown away. As soon as I saw it, I was like, 'Oh, this is not the movie I was imagining in my head. This is something else completely.' And Michael Keaton brought this energy, and that's what I'm latching onto, that it's really intense, but it changes, changes, changes, changes on a dime because that's what he is."
'Tim just let me go crazy'
Michael Keaton is an Oscar-nominated actor with many amazing roles under his belt, but his performance as the title character in "Beetlejuice" is a gigantic part of what makes the movie work. It's easy to imagine that character in many different ways just seeing it on the page. It's also easy to imagine that seeing what Keaton decided to do changed everything.
Once Danny Elfman saw the footage, he got to work on composing the music that we would all come to associate with the film. Speaking further, the musician explained that Tim Burton let him go wild with next to no restrictions:
"Tim just let me go crazy and run amok. And I was like, 'Great. If you're game, I'll just go nutty the whole time until you tell me to stop. Until you tell me that I've gone too far.' And he almost never told me that I've gone too far, fortunately, which is one of the reasons I love working with him."
In the end, everything worked out for the best. The film was a big hit and an enduring classic. So much so that we're getting a sequel all these years later, with Keaton reprising his role. But what of that soundtrack that we never heard? Is there any chance we could ever hear it? It's unlikely but, then again, if there's a way to monetize it, it doesn't seem totally impossible. At the very least, it would be fascinating to hear what could have been.