Working for a legacy feature film company on a studio lot is probably as close as I will come in this lifetime to attending Hogwarts. A time warp of art, magic and ideas, the Fox Lot in Century City was originally Movietone City. unto itself, with streets and avenues, a post office and a hospital. It has the time worn charm of the glory days of studio film and Los Angeles. In October of 1990 I got a job working on the Academy Awards campaign for 20th Century Fox Features. I had worked on the Fox lot in Century City before but not like this.

Each stage and each building holds a unique history as host to dozens of successive productions. Stage 9 was built in 1928 and since then has been home to  “Sherlock Holmes” (1939), to Otto Preminger for “Laura” (1944) and again for “River of No Return” (1954), “No Business Like Show Business” (1954), “The Fly” (1958). Then to television series including “Peyton Place” (1964-1969), “Batman!”(1966), “The Ghost and Mrs Muir” (1968-1970),  and then eleven years as home to “M*A*S*H” (1972-1983) including the “exterior” shots which were done there indoors instead of on the Fox Ranch. Then it was home to “Hooperman” (1987-1989) before hosting “NYPD Blue” from 1993 through 2005.  And that is ONE stage — they are all like that.  “Edward Scissorhands” was shot on Stages 14, 15 and 16 (see map section below) with some exteriors in Florida.

I was reporting to Booker McClay in Building 89.  Booker was a semi-retired veteran from the glory days of the studios and feature film. Booker was a fountain of knowledge about both the studio and life and a great guy to work with. He seemed to be very well connected to the old guard on the Lot and he got me a parking place right by Stage 11 so things were already much better than my prior gigs there when I had to park on Motor Ave and walk about 15 minutes to the Lot.  Booker, I soon found out, could get almost anything he wanted.

Booker took me aside early in the gig and told me ‘I am slowing down a bit and I have had a stroke but I would appreciate it if you don’t make me feel like an old man.’  I asked if I had said or done something that did that. ‘No, but don’t start.’

I got a desk in the Domestic Publicity department and was pulled into the other promotions that were under way. It was 3 weeks before Thanksgiving and all the big films were due to open. There was an odd film in the mix, held back until after Halloween with the hope it would be less misunderstood during promotion. As part of Fox’s deal with Tim Burton, he got to make a film that no studio seemed to want and he got to hire Vincent Price.

The film was only testing well with girls 14 to 18 who already knew Johnny Depp from his role on “21 Jump Street.”  No one else seemed to get it.  Some people thought it was a horror film, others thought it was going to be like “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It is a tough film to reduce to a 30-second ad or a simple one-sheet graphic. They were still wrestling with how to promote the film when I started.

It got worse. They screened it for test audiences in Orange County California and infamously the audience cheered when Johnny Depp’s character gets beat up by Anthony Michael Hall’s bully character. In post screening interviews, one young man told us he had cheered the bully because “that fag stole his girlfriend” and that’s probably not what Tim Burton had in mind.

I had heard all this stuff and read the script but I hadn’t seen the film.  Booker put me into a screening on the Lot for people connected to the film. The screening was in Zanuck which is same theater that the final audio mix had been done in.  The sound quality was absurdly good. You could hear the snowflakes falling all around you.

The music was almost all done by Danny Elfman who is my favorite contemporary film composer.  Danny Elfman’s first hit record was a kind of punk song called “Nasty Habits” and it really showcases his masterful use of instrument voice. Even in his punk music he utilized the kind of orchestration, horn fills, strings and odd percussion, that one might associate with film scores from the 1930s. His best known tune now, in 2016, is probably the theme from “The Simpsons.”  back in 1990, Tim Burton had just worked with Elfman  on the first “Batman” with Michael Keaton.

Reading the script gave me the dialog but overall much less of what comes across in the movie than almost any other script I have ever read. And of course, the music isn’t in the script at all.  As the searchlight opening and the Fox theme played I was hoping to love the film. I had seen a couple of the other films that were going to be released and wasn’t that in love with any of them. It is so much easier to help promote a film if you really are moved by it. Elfman’s music starts right away, probably before the image, and it was enchanting. It was like hearing a Mozart piece that I had never heard before.

It starts with a celesta, the same instrument that is used to voice the Sugar Plum Fairy theme from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”. Then a cello comes in, full and a baritone. then a rush of string, as if a single snowflake has become a magical storm.  There is something vaguely eastern european about, a kind of melancholy klezmer-esque melody.   Then when you think Elfman has filled out the spectrum and wrapped you in the full tonality of the orchestra and has nothing left to add, the sweetness of a choir swells up and takes center stage,  just vocals singing “ooooohhhh’s”. Then it’s all of those, all at once. Around the 2 minute mark it feels like Maurice Jarre’s “Dr Zhivago”, a minute later it starts a rollercoaster ride of climbing tenderness and vulnerability followed by crescendos of epic orchestration.

I was glad I had read the script because it was immediately apparent that the music was going to an engrossing distraction.  Elfman’s orchestrations have haunted me ever since that night. I love to play the soundtrack of this film to accompany the first snowstorm of the year, or any snow storm really.

The film opened on December 14, 1990.  (more to follow…)