Geoff Boucher: You’ve worked with Tim Burton on more than a dozen film projects, including some of his signature films — the two “Batman” films, “Beetlejuice,” Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Edward Scissorhands” — and I’m curious how your collaboration has changed through the years? Either in rhythm or approach?

Danny Elfman: The joy of working with Tim is and always has been his unpredictability. I never know how he is going to react to something. People say, “Oh, you’ve worked with him so long, you must know when you write something that he will love it.” It’s quite the contrary. I’ve never found the secret, magic key. He started unpredictable and he is extremely unpredictable for me still. In that is also the joy. Over the years, his favorite stuff has often been the stuff I played for him as an afterthought. He gravitates to the areas that others directors do not allow. Like the character Edward Scissorhands having a theme which is almost Eastern European Jewish. A lot of directors would have said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, Edward’s not Jewish and he’s not from Europe.” Tim doesn’t ask these types of questions. He responds completely viscerally to everything and immediately likes it or doesn’t like it. I have to figure out why. Honestly, after 25 years I can’t say that he is any easier for me to work with or any more predictable, and that actually is what I look forward to the most in our collaboration.

Read the full interview at latimes.com.

Photo Credit: Danny Elfman at his home in Hancock Park in 2003. (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)