Amazing Spiderman: Yipes!

[Stacy Davidson]

No Danny Elfman this time? Not cool. Here's what MovieHole.com and CountingDown.com reported:

(Elfman said) "I'm not working on Spider-Man 3. I'm out of that. I won't miss not doing it. Spider-Man 2 was a miserable experience", Elfman tells the site. It's like my connection with Sam got completely severed. As far as I'm concerned, he went to sleep, somebody put a pod next to him and when he awoke, he wasn't the same person I'd known for a decade.

"He went from right there number two on my list of favorite directors to the exact opposite of what I look for in a film experience which is everything I could do on Spider-Man 1, I couldn't do on Spider-Man 2. He got so intensely attached to the temp music that I couldn't even adapt my own music close enough. Let me put it that way. I couldn't get close enough to me, least of all anybody else who was in the temp score.

"It's the first time I've ever walked from a director in 20 years and hopefully the last time I have to turn my back on somebody but it became like intolerable. And I've been on some heavy duty films, so to say that, it had to be pretty bad. I've been in war zones you couldn't believe in 55 films but this is the first time I said, 'I've had it. It's just not worth it. I'd rather go back to waiting tables than to do Spider-Man 2 again, to have to have the same experience."

This is not too surprising if you have heard his commentary on Planet of the Apes (highly recommended), because one of his biggest peeves is when a director is too attached to his temp score. His feeling is, if you like it that much, you should get that guy to do it. Even in its HIS music, if the director is too attached to it and can't explore other directions and let it become a unique score, then he isn't interested. He does not like re-hashing old ground. At least he tries to stay away from it, which is understandable for a guy who has scored over 50 films and still struggles to come up with original ideas every year. The man knows his boundaries.

-s