Si il y a un compositeur qui s’y connait en musique de super-héros, c’est bien Danny Elfman. Après avoir composé la musique de Dick Tracy (1990), Darkman (1990), Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Men in Black (1997) et Men in Black II (2002), il n’est pas étonnant que Sam Raimi l’ait appelé pour composer celle de Spider-Man (d’autant plus qu’ils avaient déjà travaillé ensemble sur plusieurs films).

Logiquement, les deux compères se sont ensuite retrouvés en 2004 pour le second volet, Spider-Man 2. Mais vers la fin de la post-production, des rumeurs sur les forums de sites spécialisés commencent à circuler: rien ne va plus entre Sam Raimi et Danny Elfman. Ce dernier aurait même claqué la porte avant la fin du projet, et aurait été remplacé au pied levé par Christopher Young (rumeurs corroborées par le générique de fin du film, ainsi que par la fiche IMDB qui liste 7 compositeurs différents !).

Évidemment, cela n’augurait rien de bon pour l’opus suivant, et c’est sans surprise que l’on apprenait il y a quelques mois que c’était finalement Christopher Young qui allait en composer la musique.
Hop, avance rapide, nous voici en février 2007. La post-production de Spider-Man 3 arrive à son terme, et j’apprends par un copain qui travaille pour Christopher Young que c’est à nouveau le bordel et que celui-ci vient d’être mis de côté par les grands pontes de Sony Pictures (qui produit et distribue le film). Visiblement, la collaboration aurait de nouveau foiré entre le directeur et le compositeur, et les studio executives auraient décidé d’y mettre de l’ordre une bonne fois pour toutes.

Elfman étant l’un des compositeurs les plus côtés en ce moment, et étant connu pour sa gentillese et sa flexibilité, j’étais assez intrigué par cette histoire. Et comme il est toujours bon de suivre le business dans lequel on travaille, j’ai fait quelques recherches et je suis tombé sur l’interview suivant (désolé, c’est en anglais), assez révélateur sur le “nouveau” Sam Raimi.

Daniel Robert Epstein: I read how you’re not going to work on Spider-Man 3. Do you want to comment on that?

ELFMAN: Let me put it this way, there is no amount of money that anybody could offer me to do Spider-Man 3. I would sooner go back to bussing tables.

DRE: I look on the IMDB and I see six people credited with the music on Spider-Man 2. Did that contribute to your feelings?

ELFMAN: It’s all about how the production went completely insane at the end. It was the worst film experience I’ve had in 20 years. It was all pure insanity, it was all completely needless and in the end they went nuts trying to imitate every single note of their temp score. If I think somebody’s obsessively attached to a temporary score in any way I’d stay away
from it. But this was the worst I’ve seen times ten and I’ve worked with some pretty anal directors. Warren Beatty and Martin Brest are not easy people but this was taking anal retentive to a new extreme.

DRE: It’s odd because Sam Raimi is a guy you’ve been working with for 15 years.

ELFMAN: Sam was not there. He was there, but he was not the Sam that I knew. As you said, I’ve known Sam for almost 15 years. It was my fifth movie with him and all I can say is that the person who was there at the end of Spider-Man 2 was not Sam. I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t Sam. It was as close to living out Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as I’ve ever experienced. There’s a lot of micro-managers out there. Tim Burton’s a micro-manager musically in his own way and there’s moments where he’ll get real obsessive over like a certain cue. But we work it out. Never in 20 years have I come across a situation where I couldn’t work it out. For a director to be a micro-manager is nothing new. If anything I would say most of them are. But to get to the level where you don’t need a composer, you just need a musical arranger to adapt note for note as close as possible. There’s nothing for me to do as a composer here.

DRE: Would you work with Sam again?

ELFMAN: Not if I can help it. It’s too bad because Sam was at the top of my list. He was actually even easier than Tim Burton to work with and we’d never had a disagreement. To see such a profound negative change in a human being was almost enough to make me feel like I didn’t want to make films anymore. It was really disheartening and sad to see the way it ended up. The end of Spider-Man 2 was a self-induced hysteria. It got to a point where I couldn’t even adapt my own music close enough because two thirds of their temp score was Spider-Man 1. If I varied from one note it was like a self-induced hysteria.

DRE: That’s bizarre.

ELFMAN: They wanted this one cue that was basically from Hellraiser and I was like “I can’t get any closer and I’m not going to imitate [Hellraiser composer] Christopher Young. Go fucking hire Christopher Young.” So they hired Christopher Young to do a cue like Hellraiser and he couldn’t get close enough to Hellraiser so they ended up licensing the cue from Hellraiser.