Elfman always had a recorder on him at the time in case ideas struck on the fly, so he used it on the airplane to begin composing the “Batman” original score. The composer would take frequent trips to the airplane bathroom to play ideas that were coming to mind during the trip.

“I start running in the bathroom [and hum phrases] and I go back to my seat, and I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” Elfman said. “Ten minutes later, back in the bathroom. 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.” Related ‘Wednesday’ Star Gwendoline Christie Made Tim Burton ‘Want to Hide Under a Table’ During Their First Meeting The Best TV Scores of 2022 Related 51 Directors’ Favorite Horror Movies: Bong Joon Ho, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, and More The 15 Best Vampire Movies Ever Made
Elfman continued, “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.” Eflman made headlines in May for admitting he was “terribly unhappy” with how his “Batman” original score was used in the theatrical release of the movie. Elfman said the version of the score used in the Burton film obscured the gravitas of the orchestra. In other words, he was “reasonably happy” with the score itself, but not with the transfer of the music to film. “They did it in the old-school way where you do the score and turn it into the ‘professionals’ who turn the nobs and dub it in,” Elfman said. “And dubbing had gotten really wonky in those years. We recorded [multi-channel recording on] three channels — right, center, left — and basically, they took the center channel out of the music completely.” Elfman’s “Batman” score won him a Grammy Award. The composer is returning to superhero movies by working on the music for Sam Raimi’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.