Happy Danny Elfman Season to All Who Celebrate

We can be like Jack & Sally if you want to (but idk if I recommend it).

Looking back, it was my nascent crush on Jack Skellington that led me here. He’s the trope codifier, you know?

Like, as young as 5-years-old, I was talking with my friend Leah about the cute ~*older boys*~ on the bus like, “He’s my Jack and I’m his Sally.” And man, when you decide a singing, claymation skeleton will be your definition of prince charming, you’re making a choice. Like, “Okay, so I’ll just…never have a normal life, aaaaaand exclusively pursue passionate, impulsive & occasionally skeletal-looking musicians. Sounds good!!” 😊❤️

That pursuit drove me from my New Jersey, suburbs you know? I yearned for my own eccentric, dark genius, but the alt boy offerings at school were lackluster. Like, there were clusters of punk kids hanging outside the 711, sure; we’d loiter and drink cherry slushies until my parents’ hard midnight curfew hit. But I knew something more was out there and figured I’d find it in New York City, where the creative genius archetype was a’plenty. I finally packed my bags for Greenpoint at 24, ready to let this happily ever after effortlessly unfold.

That was in 2015. Unfortunately… 🙃

Unfortunately, everything’s been *kind* of a nightmare, right? The toxic air and tangerine skies, the myriad horrors that greet us everyday on Instagram, giving up 2 years of our lives to a plague, just a few vague examples. Our apocalypse-a-week landscape and my very exhaustive pursuit of genius eventually led me frustrated and confined in my apartment. This is no fairytale. Sure, the mourning doves greet me on my fire escape and a mouse lives in my kitchen walls, but none of them offer to dress me in the A.M., which is fucking rude. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just currently top of mind, since it’s Danny Elfman Season in Brooklyn.

[oh, cue the theme song]

Danny Elfman Season—you might know it by its Christian name, October—is marked by a couple of things. Loosely, it’s the celebration of all things Danny Elfman, who most people know as as the composer behind 94.6% of Tim Burton movies. We’re talking Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and obviously Nightmare Before Christmas where he provides the singing voice of Jack.

Now, he doesn’t consider himself a genius. “Stravinsky was a genius,” he says in this aptly named “sexy E! interview” from the ‘80s, adding he identifies more as hard-working and intense, and he’s sooOOoOoooOOoo depressed about not living up to the greatness of his idols.

BUT UH, consider the following:

• Came up with the Batman theme song—the one that pulsed throughout the entire ‘90s franchise and animated series—after seeing “five minutes of [footage of] Gotham City.” lol alright.

• Wrote the The Simpsons theme song in his head, made the demo and had it approved. Yes, The Simpsons, the [quickly Googles] longest running American animated series, sitcom, and American scripted primetime television series. Casual! 

• Contributed significant tracks for John Hughes films—you know, the ones that defined 80s youth culture—including the title track for “Weird Science.” Which…granted, Weird Science is like the 4th best Brat Pack flick. But Anthony Michael Hall’s mating dance to “Wild Sex in the Working Class” in Sixteen Candles lives rent-free in my mind.

Stravinsky be damned, Danny Elfman is the underpinning of significant pop culture monoliths, and there’s always more to be discovered. When discussing this with my brother he was like, “Oh yeah, the guy who did the song for Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” to which I very eloquently responded, “Shut the fuck up, really?” Yeah.

So I think about [gestures broadly] all that around Halloween. I watch my little Tim Burton movies, I swoon over the scope of his brilliance, and I blast Oingo Boingo on repeat, oblivious to my surroundings. 

Wait, should we talk about Oingo Boingo, too?  

My high school boyfriend Harry, who reads all my articles—hi Harry—introduced me to Oingo Boingo with a coy, “Who does this sound like?” And wouldn’t you know it: it sounded like Jack Skellington if he had a 26-person ‘80s new wave/ska/punk band that very liberally used the xylophone. I was intrigued, but not sold, until I found a vinyl of Nothing to Fear in my 20s. From there I was like, “Oh, this guy fucks.”

For clarity, I’m not romantically attracted to the literal 70-year-old man Danny Elfman is today, nor the CLAYMATION SKELETON that is Jack. But I would let ‘80s Oingo Boingo Danny Elfman ruin my entire life. Beyond flexing that deep, theatrical voice, he has this wonderful, emphatic physicality in his performance. And the persona he embodies is always half Frankensteinian monster, half sexy wounded brat prince, 100% outsider, 100% my type (I’m not good at math, btw)

Sometimes it’s expressed in tiny flourishes, like how he bitterly croons “I used to eat little girls like you for breakfast/I used to fly high up in the sky” in “Gratitude.” PSH, say less. Sometimes it’s more overt. In “Private Life,” he describes isolating in his room, wondering what goes on out in the world and “what makes them run so scared.” And in “On the Outside” he talks about, you know…being on the outside looking in. All to say, I’m like, “Ooooh, he’s deeply talented *and* a misunderstood, self-loathing lone wolf? Sign me up.”

“Cinderella Undercover” is always on my mind, though. It’s an old Oingo track about the loss of innocence; how once upon a time Sir Elfman believed in fairytales, but now that’s been replaced by shooting in the fields, the threat of nuclear war, drug panic, and Cinderella joining the CIA. There’s a charming version on “Boingo Alive”—the sexy little laugh at the 3:20 mark is gold—but I love the 1981 demo. It’s frenetic and frantic, paranoid and somehow so of-this-moment.

It makes me feel passionate, dear reader. I aim to feel passionate again.

But back to Jack Skellington…

My love for Jack Skellington thrived during the “Hot Topic is going to sell a shit-ton of Nightmare Before Christmas merch” surge of the early aughts, but only in my last rewatch did I recognize the *slightly* detrimental impact he had on me. Jack is very much a Danny Elfman stand-in—intense, curious, amazing at what he does, Halloween-embodied, and ~*so misunderstood*~. But he does lack a certain, uh, groundedness, making him more akin to the garden variety crushes I entertained in my teens and 20s.

Sally the Ragdoll = me in this scenario. Like, her conflicted crush on him and patently ignored Good Advice sums up the struggle. She believes he’s talented, but she’s reasonably like, “Idk, Jack, maybe don’t try to culturally appropriate a holiday you don’t fully understand because you’re going through a mid-life crisis. Maybe just like, take a beat, go to therapy, and don’t put the entire community’s efforts and economy in jeopardy. I do not see this working out for any of us.”

[raises 3rd glass of orange wine] Men love it when you tell them what to do with their art, by the way.

To be clear, “Jack’s Lament” is my favorite song on the soundtrack. The strings are gorgeous, D.E.’s voice is clear as bell, and the sadboy angst is…believable. Despite the fame and praise of being the pumpkin king, he’s sick of life as is, and nobody would ever understand. Naturally, Sally’s hiding around a gravestone like, “oooh, Jack, I know how you feel.” SMASHCUT TO: me at 24, excusing another certifiably problematic guitarist’s bullshit because ~*hE’s SeNsiTive.*~ FFS, MG, love yourself more.

Look, it works out in the end because Sally is, in fact, the voice of reason and missing ingredient in Jack’s (undead) life. But I don’t know if I want to play that role right now. It would feel much more rewarding to lean into my own creative lunacy again. I want something new.

That’s the thing [sips on 3rd glass glass of orange wine]. I get it. I still moved to Brooklyn in pursuit of eccentric genius, believing I’d found my own pumpkin king and prince charming. I believed it would save me from the doldrums and fix my whole damn life. CLEARLY, life had other plans. Everything’s a nightmare and sometimes I feel so fucking insane, like this whole world is beyond saving. Nobody worries where I am at midnight now, and up until recently, they didn’t need to. But it’s time to leave the house.

So Danny Elfman led me here, and I don’t regret it. Because loving him—or the idea of him, rather—has taught me so much. I’ve learned you can make a career out of being an outsider. How it’s worthwhile to be passionate and intense about your art. That commitment to brand, strength of voice, and the right creative marriage will get you far. And that if you feel inspired, you should get out of your comfort zone and go for something new, even if it tanks the whole community.

In the end, I had it all wrong. I just needed to find the Jack Skellington inside of me. 

…wait.

…wait…

…well, you get the point. 

As always, I remain,

The One & Only,

Mary Grace