Tester Cartoon: April 2009

Richard Elfman on Forbidden Zone 2: The Forbidden Galaxy and memorable music:

"Ma and Pa Kettle leave the depressed Dust Bowl with their kids, Stinky and Petunia, and drive their old jalopy down to Crenshaw in South-Central Los Angeles. Stinky is a hyper-active 12-year-old, played by a hyper-active 50-year-old; Petunia is a lumbering 13-year-old slut, played by an actress over 18 (hopefully); Ma is a corn-cob pipe-smoking inbred, and Pa is a craven, drunken carnival geek…with a bad disposition…even before his carnival job folded after the last dust storm. Together, they hope to find a better life in California. Unfortunately, the little shack they rent has a basement connected to the Sixth Dimension.

Daughter-in-law Jenna Elfman will do a surrealistic aerial dance routine (did you know Jenna’s a professional dancer?); I think I’ll get brother Danny to reprise his Devil role, singing a knockout version of “St. James Infirmary Blues,” and we’ll shoot the “Crenshaw” scenes in Ghana. Crenshaw will look like a cartoon version of 1910 Harlem, but everyone will be INCREDIBLE dancers and acrobats - from the Ghana National Dance Company.

Forbidden Zone 2 will have all the ABSURDITY and balls-out zaniness of Forbidden Zone 1 but with more technical tools and a greater budget to play with. I can guarantee that Forbidden Zone 2 will have unforgettable musical numbers. It will employ the MUSIC FORMULA that we used for the songs in Forbidden Zone 1. I’m going to share a secret with you…

Richard Elfman’s secret formula for unforgettable musical numbers: Use memorable music rather than serviceable music!

“SERVICEABLE MUSIC” isn’t particularly original on its own, but it works well serving the vehicle it is written for. Example: Chicago, with musical numbers by Kander and Ebb. I remember really loving the stage show, but by the time I got to my car afterwards, I could barely remember the melodies. Other than the catchy lyrics of “All That Jazz,” most of the music kind of got mish-mashed together in my head. Why? Because it wasn’t really original music. Instead, it was an expertly crafted concoction of existing musical cliches…but it still worked well in terms of driving the show. It just wasn’t memorable music, which would stand on its own, independent of the show. Same with the film version of Chicago - and I LOVED the film. Great performances, great staging - but while the musical numbers worked so well on the screen, they didn’t make you run out and buy the album afterwards. Ironically, my brother Danny did the background score to the film (between the musical numbers), which, in my - perhaps biased - opinion, his incidental music was more original than the actual singing/dancing parts. (Please note that composers Kander and Ebb did do very original and memorable music for the show Cabaret, the song “New York, New York,” and others).

“MEMORABLE MUSIC” is music you hear once and are marked for life. Like an itch in your head you need to scratch, you must go buy it…or at least you crave hearing it again. And after the show, you REMEMBER it - that is the key - you remember it. I’m talking Three Penny Opera, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof… Edward Scissorhands, Nightmare Before Christmas…or Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” and Josephine Baker’s “La Petite Tonkinoise” (Frenchy’s classroom song). At the risk (no, probability) of sounding pretentious, may I add “”Pico and Sepulveda” and “Bim Bam Boom”… and almost anything Danny Elfman writes.

I first saw the 1931 film version of Three Penny Opera when I was 18. I remember walking out of the theater and stopping in my tracks - Kurt Weill’s music had marked me for life. I turned around, walked back into the theater, and saw the film again. By the way, I believe that composer Kurt Weill had a key influence on Danny as well, along with film composer Bernard Hermann - who often worked with director Alfred Hitchcock - and Nino Rota, who composed so masterfully for director Federico Fellini.

There’s an infinite amount of memorable music that has never been tapped. As opposed to serviceable music, memorable music doesn’t age. It’s good forever. All those terrific songs from O Brother, Where Art Thou? had been gathering dust for over half a century before the gifted musical supervisor/composer T-Bone Burnett found them for the film. However, finding someone to write new memorable songs can be a bit trickier. It helps when you find that your younger brother, who had no musical training - or even much musical interest as a kid - turns out to be Mozart (yeah…I’m biased)."

Really hope this movie happens.

From Buzzine.com: