AWARD WINNING COMPOSER DANNY ELFMAN TO BE HONORED
AT THE 15TH ANNUAL PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL AWARDS GALA

Elfman to Receive Frederick Loewe Award for Career Achievement in Film Composing

The 15th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will honor Danny Elfman with the Frederick Loewe Award for Career Achievement in Film Composing at the festival’s annual Awards Gala, it was announced by chairman elect Earl Greenburg. The Awards Gala will be held on Sunday, January 11, 2004 at the Palm Springs Convention Center, which will also honor Kevin Costner, Anthony Minghella, Richard D. Zanuck and Jim Sheridan.

Greenburg commented, “Danny Elfman’s music doesn’t just accentuate and complete a scene, but elevates it to new artistic heights. Throughout his career Elfman has become one of the most distinctive and original voices in Hollywood through his unique and imaginative work.”

Elfman launched his career in the L.A. rock scene as front-man with his rock group Oingo Boingo. Elfman made his film scoring debut with the Tim Burton comedy Pee Wee's Big Adventure and then expanded on that palette and created a fiendishly dynamic title cue and score for Tim Burton's life-after-death black comedy Beetlejuice, essentially laying the musical groundwork for most of the comedy scoring of the late '80s and creating a style that is still widely imitated today.

After almost exclusively scoring comedies, he and director Tim Burton worked on the fantasy / thriller Batman, which became one of the decade's biggest hits. Elfman had defined a genre and scored numerous comic book-hero films that followed including Batman Returns, Dick Tracy and Sam Raimi's Spiderman. For the Burton-produced musical The Nightmare Before Christmas, Elfman not only composed and produced the score, but also wrote ten songs and provided the singing voice for central character Jack Skellington.


In the latter half of the 1990’s, Elfman brought his unique vision to a diverse group of high-profile film projects including Black Beauty, the Stephen King melodrama Dolores Claiborne, Dead Presidents, Mission: Impossible and the biggest hit of 1997, Men in Black, winning him one of his two Oscar nominations. His second nomination was received for his work the same year for the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting.

Other work includes adapting Bernard Herrmann's score for Gus Van Zandt's remake of Hitchcock's Psycho, re-teaming with Tim Burton for Edward Scissorhands, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes and his collaboration with Burton continues with Big Fish, which is their 10th film together. Elfman also collaborates with director Sam Raimi on A Simple Plan, Spider-Man and its sequel The Amazing Spider-Man to be released next year. Most recently, Elfman once again impressed audiences and critics with an original score for the film musical Chicago, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.