Venture down the zigzagging stairway to Danny Elfman's home in the hills above Malibu, and you might think you've wandered into a storyboard for The Nightmare Before Christmas. A dinosaur skull is perched on a coffee table in the living room. A human skeleton from Peru sits in one corner. A shrunken head is encased in glass downstairs. "Halloween is the night I live for," says Elfman. "When Christmastime rolled around when I was a kid, I became depressed."
Even without his ghoulish tastes, there was little doubt that Elfman was the man to turn Tim Burton's holiday fable into a...