Interview: Dan Heath, Co-Composer of the “Big Eyes” Song

Posted on January 13, 2015 at 8:00 am

Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes” is based on the real-life case of Walter Keane, who said he was responsible for the hugely successful “big eye” paintings of children in the 1960’s, and his wife Margaret Keane, who, as determined in a court case, really painted them. It is a haunting story with an appropriately haunting theme song, co-written by singer Lana Del Ray and her frequent collaborator Dan Heath. He talked to me about how they worked together and what he learned from writing for reality television.

This is a story that began with an image and then became a drama and then you take it into a third dimension with music.

It began with Lana singing a melody into my voice memo on my iPhone. And then I took that and started building on it after having seen the film because I wanted it to blend in with the score by Danny Elfman as well and be a bit seamless. And I started building up chord changes, and the progression, and the textures and the layers and the strings and the bass and all that stuff based on the melody she was singing. And really my favorite part of the song is the bridge where it sort of breaks down and she ends up saying “it’s amazing what women in love will do.” It’s such a pretty part because it’s a kind of descending pizzicato line and then it kicks back into this sort of epic chorus. But it was really nice to get to make the chorus so big because it’s quite dramatic and I like the dynamic range of the pieces. It was subdued in the verses and sort of explodes into this sort of epic thing in the chorus where she’s singing “with your big eyes and your big lies.” The process of writing was actually really good fun. We got quite a bit of creative freedom on it as well so there weren’t too many boundaries and it felt like we just got to do what we love to do which was amazing.

How did the score influence the way that you composed or orchestrated the song?

I’m a massive Danny Elfman fan and I’m a huge Tim Burton fan as well and I think whatever those two get involved together is just magic. And so that was a good place to start. Listening to the score, I did get different cues from different parts of the movie. It wasn’t like I was sort of referencing. I just sort of got a vibe from it and feel from it and based on that vibe and feel, I definitely got a lot of inspiration from the film and the music in the film.

What was the first instrument you ever learned how to play?

Piano actually. I started playing by ear when I was around five or six and when I was a bit older I started taking lessons and then got pretty serious about playing piano and really just getting good at it. By ten I think I was disciplined enough to practice six hours a day. That’s was the first instrument that I learned how to play and that’s what I write on today. My piano skills just aren’t what they used to be but I still compose on the piano.

Did you grow up in a musical family?

My dad is not really that musical but he got me into a lot of good music when I was growing up. He got me into the Beatles and the Who and the Kinks and Abba. My mom was a classically trained pianist as well so she had more music on her side. I have to say that there was always a lot of music going on at home when I was growing up and I also got to see a lot of musicals growing up as well like “Phantom Of The The Opera” and Cats and “Starlight Express” and “Les Mis” and I always really enjoyed going to those things because they are really cool. And I went to a music oriented school when I was growing up as well. I was in the orchestra and I played a lot of classical music back then as well sort of like rock from the 60’s 70’s and 80’s music. I got introduced to Led Zeppelin when I was about 12 years old and that flipped my world upside down because it was incredible music. It still is. The first album I ever bought was that Batman soundtrack which Prince did a lot of songs on. And I used to listen to that like every night before going to bed I liked all the song and then I loved Guns n Roses Appetite for Desctruction. The first album that really just like sent me into a different place was Led Zeppelin IV, which was just incredible.

How did you start working with Lana Del Rey?

She used to go out with my best friend in the world about 10 years ago. I was living in Boston going to school at the time and I would go down and visit them in New York and that’s how I met her. And then over the years we stayed in touch and she used to play me bits and pieces of music she was working on and I used to play her bits and pieces of music I was working on. And then one day before she signed her record deal with Interscope we wrote one of her singles called Bluejeans and it was our first writing experience together ever. So it was a real success that we got to write that and it did so well and that sort of launched me into the songwriting world.

When you’re working with her are you thinking about her voice? Are you gearing it for her?

Totally yes, the stuff I write for her is different from the stuff I write for anybody else. I think the stuff I write for her has got a lot more of a cinematic feel, and it’s very magical and very ethereal and very emotional. I have just been working with her for a few years now, so I think I’m starting to get what she likes and what she doesn’t. But normally like if I really like something, she really likes it too which is really cool. It is great because we’re a good team.

You did cues for reality shows for a while, right?

I was very grateful for it at the time. You know, getting to do music and getting paid for it as well. It kept the lights on and it kept the rent paid.

I would imagine that it was actually quite a learning experience.

It did get my technical chops up a lot on how to deliver styles. It’s definitely worth a lot doing it. I was writing about three or four pieces of music a day sometimes in all sorts of different styles. There is comedy, there is tension, there is suspense, there is action and all that sort of stuff. You are turning out cues so quickly that I definitely learned a lot. I would say especially in the work ethic area, just knuckling down for a good ten hour day writing music.
It did the job and it was a great learning experience too and as I said before I’m extremely grateful that I had that because it did keep the lights on and did enable me to write music, get paid and also focus on my own stuff when I wasn’t doing that.

What are you working on next?

I’m working on my own EP right now which is really cool. I’m doing four tracks and all of them are going to be quite film-score-y but all of them are going to have original vocals and melodies and I’m working four different singers for each track. And so I’m really excited about that. I’m also going to be working on Lana’s new album. And I’m working with these very different singers, trying to get some good songs oout of the door. And hopefully I’m going to be doing a film this year as well, my own film, which I would love to do I am not sure where or how yet but that’s my hope.

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Composers Interview

How True Should a “Based on a True Story” Movie Be?

Posted on January 2, 2015 at 8:10 pm

What does “based on a true story” really mean? The Washington Post had a front-page story titled, “‘Selma’ sets off a controversy amid Oscar buzz,” describing the objections by Lyndon Johnson administration insiders to the way he was portrayed. They say it was his idea to go to Selma, that he supported Dr. King’s efforts, and that he had nothing to do with the FBI’s surveillance and J. Edgar Hoover’s sending tapes of King’s supposed affairs to Mrs. King.

Historian Michael Bechloss has posted this handwritten note made by King for his conversation with LBJ:

Martin Luther King handwritten note on keeping “national attention focused on Selma”: #KingCenter pic.twitter.com/VjQ9gBgzh0

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 4, 2015

Vox’s Matthew Yglisias has responded to the criticisms from those who object to the portrayal of LBJ’s views and actions.

And now my friend Jen Yamoto is summarizing objections to “Selma” and to other “based on a true story” films “Foxcatcher,” “The Imitation Game,” “Unbroken,” and “Big Eyes.” Some of these are the concerns of those trying to make sure that those who take their “history” from Oscar-worthy feature films at least begin to question the capacity of any dramatic work to be accurate in conveying historical events. But some are just sniping by competitors in the Oscar race.

As Jen writes:

Oscar voting opened Monday, and like clockwork, the haters have come calling. As Deadline’s Pete Hammond wrote on Monday, ’tis the season for controversy over fact-based awards contenders: Now, Bennett Miller’s real-life Olympian tragedy Foxcatcher and Tim Burton’s art exposé Big Eyeshave joined MLK Jr. drama Selma, the Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game and Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken in ducking for cover over accuracy issues in mixing fact-based stories with narrative structure.

Even the most scrupulous accuracy will still reflect choices of perspective, tone, and emphasis. The best we can hope from any work of art is that it is the beginning, not the end, of an inquiry into the subject.

The Guardian takes on the portrayal of Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game.”

Movie critic Ann Hornaday has an excellent piece on this subject in the Washington Post. She wisely concludes:

if the Gotcha Game is here to stay, we can at least agree on some new rules. And we can begin by adjusting our own attitudes toward fact-based films and their inevitable nit-pickers. Rather than the dualistic one’s-right-one’s-wrong model, it behooves audiences to cultivate a third eye — a new, more sophisticated way of appreciating both the art and the reality that inspires it.

The Real Story: Walter and Margaret Keane and the Big Eyes Paintings

Posted on December 26, 2014 at 3:16 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht<a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-keane-nephew-20150102-story.html" target="_blank"></a>tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4WhmP7Agc0

Amy Adams as Margaret Keane Copyright Weinstein Company 2014 — Copyright Weinstein Company 2014

The strangest parts of the story of Walter and Margaret Keane in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes are true. Perhaps the strangest of all is that the paintings — at the time thought to be painted by Walter Keane but ultimately proven to have been painted by Margaret Keane — were so wildly successful. In large part that was due to Walter Keane’s prodigious talents as a self-promoter. But it was not until he had Margaret’s paintings of the sad-eyed children that he had something that was promotable.

As shown in the film, Margaret Keane took her daughter and left her first husband. She met Walter Keane, also divorced, at an art fair in 1955. He told everyone he was the creator of her paintings and it was not until after they were divorced in the mid-60’s that she began to tell the truth.

While in the film Walter is played by German actor Christoph Waltz, who has an accent, in real life Walter was an American, born in Lincoln, Nebraska.

As noted in the film, Margaret Keane, now 87, still paints every day and she has an art gallery where fans can buy her work. In an interview with the New York Times, she was still asking herself how she could have allowed her husband to take credit for her pictures.

Ms. Keane’s trajectory was in some ways a product of an era when women were encouraged to follow their husband’s lead, no matter the path. Although she had been painting since she was a girl, Ms. Keane believed a female artist wouldn’t sell as well as a man. She never doubted her talent — she paints to this day at her home in Napa and sells work at Keane Eyes Gallery in San Francisco — but her newfound confidence paralleled the rise of the women’s movement and an acceptance of outsider and pop artists. Deeply private and now a Jehovah’s Witness, she has an unlikely story placed her in the middle of a profound cultural shift.

The courtroom drama in real life unfolded as it does in the film, with Keane representing himself and making outrageous statements. In the real case, the judge at one point required him to be gagged, which is not shown in the film. But it did end up with both Keanes seated at easels in the courtroom and told to paint something. Margaret still has the painting she did in court that day on her wall. Its title: Exhibit 233.

Citizen Keane: The Big Lies Behind the Big Eyes is by the journalist who wrote the first major expose of Keane’s lies.

Walter Keane’s nephew has spoken up in his defense, saying that his late mother, who was married to Keane’s brother, saw Walter Keane paint and that he produced Big Eyes paintings before he met Margaret. But he does not say that he ever saw his uncle paint, and has no evidence that he was Walter, and not Margaret, who did the paintings. Walter’s daughter from an earlier marriage says that her father was not the controlling man portrayed in the film and that the Big Eyes were his idea, though Margaret did the paintings, referring to her as his “artistic apprentice.” No one outside the family has disputed the findings of the court, however.

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The Real Story

Big Eyes

Posted on December 24, 2014 at 5:14 pm

In Woody Allen’s 1973 film “Sleeper,” set in a decadent future, Diane Keaton plays a superficial socialite who tries to think of the highest compliment she can give to an amateurish painting. “Oh, it’s Keane! It’s pure Keane!” she exclaims. Audiences of that time would recognize that reference to Walter Keane, responsible for the wildly if inexplicably popular “big eyes” paintings of sad-looking waifs. When the concept of “kitsch” (cheap, popular, low-brow, and corny “art”) first came to the United States in the 1970’s, the Keane images were often used as an example.

Note that word “responsible.” Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) was “responsible” for the success of the paintings but he was not responsible for producing them. It was revealed in a dramatic trial that while Walter Keane claimed credit as the sole artist behind the paintings (and prints and books), he had never put a brush to canvas. Every one of the paintings was created by the only artist in the family, his wife, Margaret (Amy Adams).

Director Tim Burton, whose film about notoriously awful movie director Ed Wood is one of his best, has created another very good film about very bad art. Like that film, “Big Eyes” is highly stylized, with heightened period detail exaggerated to reflect and comment on the art that it depicts. At one point, in some distress, Margaret pushes a shopping cart through a grocery story, seeing the big eyes in the faces of everyone she looks at.

This film also draws on the 60’s era beginning stages of the women’s movement to anchor the story. Margaret took her daughter and left her first husband at a time when most middle class women were expected to stay home and defer to their husbands. She arrived in San Francisco at the dawn of the “consciousness raising” era, at the epicenter of movements advocating more focus on individual needs and personal fulfillment. But Margaret still thought of herself as powerless in her relationship with Walter, in part because it was her nature and the way she was raised to defer and get along, partly because she was dependant on him. She married him in a hurry because her ex-husband was threatening to sue her for custody at a time when single mothers who left their husbands and had to find jobs had very few rights. “I’m a divorcee with a child,” she tells a friend. “Walter is a blessing.”

It was also partly because she loved him, at first.

Margaret was pretty good at painting the pictures, but Walter was undeniably a world-class genius at selling them. He was very good at marketing up: he sold to movie stars and appeared as a guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He got a commission for a mural at the World’s Fair. And he was even better at marketing down. When he noticed that people who could not afford the paintings were taking home posters from the gallery, he realized that there was an opportunity there. “Would you rather sell one $500 painting or a million crappy reproduced posters?” Pretty soon there were Keane images for every budget, with the originals in an art gallery and the copies in stores, alongside kitchen utensils and t-shirts.

Margaret signed her work “Keane,” and Walter slipped easily into taking credit for it. He told Margaret (correctly) that no one took women artists seriously and that (also correct) that he was willing to do the kind of glad-handing and public appearances that she is not. So, she stays locked in her studio painting all the time, increasingly isolated, finally even from her own sense of who she is.

The eerie look in the big eyes of the children in the paintings begins to seem haunting. Margaret realizes that she has to leave another husband. And she has to tell the truth.

Tim Burton has a story with the grotesquerie built in, not just the outlandish images but the turbulence of the era. Waltz has the showier role and delivers as a man whose ebullience mutates into a grandiosity from which there was no return. Adams, as the woman whose passion for expression grows — finally — into the ability to speak for herself with her voice as well as her brush.

Parents should know that this film includes some disturbing themes including emotional abuse, broken marriages, fraud, some sexual references, and brief strong language.

Family Discussion: Who was responsible for the success of the big eye paintings? Why did Walter lie and why did Margaret let him?

If you like this, try: “Ed Wood” from the same director

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