Providing the film’s distinctive score and putting Roald Dahl’s Oompa-Loopah lyrical chants to original music for four special songs is multiple Oscar and Grammy Award nominated composer/musician Danny Elfman. Although not a musical (no one but the Oompas sing), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory includes four scenes in which the Oompa-Loompas recount, in song, the woeful misadventures of the unruly children on the factory tour. All the Oompa-Loompa vocals are performed by Elfman, formerly lead singer of Oingo Boingo. Using Dahl’s own words from the book, he tailored the pieces stylistically to each child – Violet, Augustus, Veruca and Mike – whose bad behavior sets off alarming consequences and illustrates a moral lesson.
“The challenge was to give each song for each child its own distinct feel, and have each one go to a completely different place,” says Elfman. “Augustus Gloop was inspired by big brassy Bollywood production pieces. For Violet, the gum-chewer, I threw back to a retro 70’s funk feel. For Mike Teavee, I needed something frenetic and hyperactive like he is – the short attention span, video game, rock kid. Because Veruca goes down the garbage chute and all the lyrics were about fish heads and such, Tim suggested we contrast that with a really sweet sound, so we went in a 60-ish kind of hippie/happy love-psychedelic direction.”
For the song’s lyrics, Elfman went directly to the book. “I wanted to stay as true to Roald Dahl’s words as possible. In the book, they were written more like extended chants than songs, but his lyrics already had a wonderful rhythm to them. In the end, I had to do a lot of editing, but I think I was 95% true to the book, with just a bit of tweaking here and there.”
The creative collaboration between Tim Burton and the multi-talented Elfman is one of the longest-running and most successful director/composer relationships in the industry, beginning with Burton’s 1985 feature debut, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and spanning 20 years to include such memorable titles as Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Sleepy Hollow. Of Elfman’s seven Grammy nominations, four were for Burton films (Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Planet of the Apes and Big Fish), with 2003’s Big Fish also bringing him the most recent of three Oscar nominations.
For Burton, “his music has always been a guidepost, a way to help define the various elements of a story and draw it all together. In a way, he’s like another actor in the film.”
“The great part of working with Tim on the music was that he kept throwing me off center by suggesting different styles of music that I wasn’t expecting, but we had worked together enough times so that I knew I could do a lot of crazy things without shocking him,” says Elfman. “Likewise, his ideas have so many times led me to places that I wouldn’t have thought of but that remain my favorites. In particular, on the songs for Charlie, Tim and I worked very closely together and I’d have to say, I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun working at all. It was truly and wonderfully nuts!”
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