1. Richard Elfman was born on March 6,1949 and is an American actor, musician, director, producer, screenwriter, journalist, author and magazine publisher.
17 Facts About Richard Elfman
1. 2.
When Richard was four, his family moved to the Crenshaw district, where Elfman excelled as a track champion at Dorsey High School, subsequently becoming an amateur middleweight boxer.
3.
Richard Elfman moved to Paris in the early 1970s to perform in theater as well as to record music in London.
4.
Richard Elfman performed at London's Roundhouse under the auspices of Savary's mentor, Peter Brook of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
5.
Shortly after his stint with the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, Richard Elfman acted in and directed a stage production of Igor Stravinskys L'Histoire du soldat, which won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Production.
6.
Richard Elfman made a film titled, Bloody Bridget in 2024, a horror musical.
7.
In 1972, Richard Elfman returned to Los Angeles and formed his own troupe, the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, where he served as its creative director and percussionist.
8.
Richard Elfman retrospectively described the Mystic Knights as a "commedia dell'arte ensemble", featuring upwards of fifteen musicians playing as many as thirty instruments, performing only recreated pieces of music from the 1920s through the 1940s as well as avant-garde originals composed by Richard Elfman's brother Danny.
9.
Richard Elfman left the Mystic Knights in 1979 to pursue a career in filmmaking, after which Danny assumed creative control of the band, eventually shortening the name to "Oingo Boingo" and transforming it into an 8-piece rock band, which found success throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
10.
Richard Elfman's first directing project was the cult musical film Forbidden Zone, which was shot over a period of three years and released in 1982.
11.
The film itself was a surreal black and white film version of the Mystic Knights' theatrical show starring its band members and friends; notably, Danny Elfman appears onscreen as Satan, singing a modified version of Cab Calloways "Minnie the Moocher", while Richard appears, singing the 1920s song "The Yiddishe Charleston".
12.
In March 2010, Richard Elfman premiered a colorized version of Forbidden Zone at New York's Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with a Tim Burton exhibition, while a stage musical adaptation, Forbidden Zone: Live in the 6th Dimension, ran at the Sacred Fools Theater Company in Los Angeles from May to June 2010.
13.
Facilities allowing, Richard Elfman, an accomplished grill-master, throws a barbecue after the show.
14.
Richard Elfman sometimes participates by playing characters in these live performances.
15.
Richard Elfman became a writer for Buzzine magazine, eventually becoming its film editor and then editor-in-chief.
16.
Richard Elfman has two more novels slated for publication in 2024.
17.
Richard Elfman is presently engaged to write and develop animation projects for FilmHenge and The Apiary group.