Danny Elfman freaked out flight attendants while composing ‘Batman’ score

Music composer Danny Elfman has something interesting to share about how his iconic score for 1989’s ‘Batman’ came into existence. It involved freaking out several flight attendants.

Appearing on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Danny Elfman talked about his career as he stumbled onto Batman and said how hilarious and awkward it was to score for Tim Burton’s film.

The award-winning musician explained that he had flown out to London to visit the set and see a bit of the film for inspiration. The flight back to Los Angeles is when things got wild.

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He said, “That hit me at the worst possible time. On the way home, the thing fucking hits me. And it was like, what do I do? I’m on a 747. How do I do this? I am going to forget this all. I’m going to land and they’re going to play some fucking Beatles song, and I’m going to forget everything.”

“I start running in the bathroom [and hum phrases] and I go back to my seat, and I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Ten minutes later, back in the bathroom,” Elfman said. “And then back to my seat and then back to the bathroom, because I couldn’t do this with the guy sitting next to me.”

At one point, Elfman opened the door and was greeted by a flight attendant who wanted to know if he was okay and did not seem to believe it when Elfman reassured he was not up to anything. “Ten minutes later, I am back in the bathroom, And I open the door and this time there are three flight attendants,” he said. “And they were probably going, ‘What the fuck he is doing so frequently? You can’t do that much blow. You can’t shoot up that often. What is he doing in there?!’ And I piece by piece was working out the Batman score in my head.”

However, in a different interview, Elfman had said that he was “reasonably happy” with the mix of the score, his 10th, but disappointed with the dub, or how the music was transferred into the film.