As most of our readers probably already know, Warner Bros. Records has announced the 500-pound gorilla of all soundtrack releases: THE DANNY ELFMAN & TIM BURTON 25TH ANNIVERSARY MUSIC BOX, the definitive audio-visual tribute to one of the most popular composer-director collaborations of all time. The Music Box, which runs $499.99 plus shipping (and tax, depending on where you order from) can be pre-ordered from www.burtonelfman.com and will begin shipping in mid-late December. The contents include 16 CDs, with the following contents:

1. PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE - Original score tracks (32 cues)

2. BEETLEJUICE - Original soundtrack CD (minus the 2 Belafonte songs), plus 22 bonus tracks

3. BATMAN - Original soundtrack CD plus 16 bonus tracks

4. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS - Original soundtrack CD (minus the Tom Jones song) plus 11 bonus tracks

5. BATMAN RETURNS - Original soundtrack CD (minus the song "Face to Face") plus 8 bonus tracks

6. THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - Original soundtrack CD incorporating 9 bonus tracks

7. MARS ATTACKS! - Original soundtrack CD (minus the Tom Jones and Slim Whitman songs) plus 12 bonus tracks

8. SLEEPY HOLLOW - Original soundtrack CD plus 5 bonus tracks

9. PLANET OF THE APES - Original soundtrack CD plus 5 bonus tracks

10. BIG FISH - Original soundtrack CD (minus the pop songs) plus 23 bonus tracks 

11. CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - Original soundtrack CD plus 17 bonus tracks

12. TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE - Original soundtrack CD plus 17 bonus tracks

13. ALICE IN WONDERLAND - Original soundtrack CD plus 15 bonus tracks

14. ODDITIES AND ENDS - 7 tracks from ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: THE JAR; 4 tracks from FAMILY DOG; Suite from THE WORLD OF STAINBOY; 13 tracks from THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: THE ART OF TIM BURTON; 6 unused score demos from the EDWARD SCISSORHANDS ballet; 6 demo themes from 9; 5 versions of Futterwacken from ALICE IN WONDERLAND

15: CURIOS AND CURIOSER: SONG DEMOS - 19 tracks from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS; 5 tracks from CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY; 5 tracks from TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE

16. NOTES AND NOTIONS: ORCHESTRA-ONLY VERSIONS - 12 tracks from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS; 5 tracks from CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY; 5 tracks from TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE; 4 bonus suites

The set, which comes in a specially designed box featuring a working zoetrope and a music chip playing a specially recorded Elfman composition, also includes an hour-long DVD featuring an extended conversation between the composer and director in which they discuss at length their 25-year collaboration; DANSE MACABRE: 25 YEARS OF DANNY ELFMAN AND TIM BURTON, a 250-page book written by Jeff Bond and designed by Matt Taylor, featuring interviews with over 80 collaborators and peers including composers Steve Bartek, Carter Burwell, Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Philip Glass, James Newton Howard, Deborah Lurie, Mark Mothersbaugh, Lennie Niehaus, Thomas Newman, John Powell, Marc Shaiman, Edward Shearmur, Howard Shore and Alan Silvestri; and a specially designed (with Burton-esque artwork) USB flash drive containing MP3s of all 16-discs worth of music.

Richard Kraft, Danny Elfman's agent and the executive producer (with Laura Engel) of the Music Box, discussed this groundbreaking film music collection in an e-mail interview:

Who had the original idea for this project, and when?

Towards the end of last year, Warner Bros. Records approached my partner Laura Engel and myself to brainstorm ideas. They showed us some magnificent box sets they had put together for other artists. It was truly inspiring to see how the work of an artist like Neil Young could be re-examined through the possibilities afforded by a truly ambitious box set. They showed us projects by them and other labels that were beyond delightful, including an AC/DC collection housed in a box with a functioning guitar amp! All of a sudden, the conventional and limited mindset of what is or what isn't a record project exploded. These were works of art and works of art that allowed for projects that would be inconceivable and infeasible under the paradigm of the ordinary to suddenly have the possibility of life and reality.

Laura and I instantly thought of the historic collaboration between Tim Burton and Danny Elfman. Laura remembered that 2010 was going to be the 25th Anniversary of that partnership. As soon as that was said, ideas started to bounce around the room. Anything was possible. The only goal was to dream up the ultimate version of whatever we could imagine. It turned into a fever dream of ideas. And not once during that meeting did any of us pause to even consider the daunting possibilities of actually pulling any of this off.

The next stop was to approach both Tim Burton and Danny Elfman with the idea. After they endorsed it, Laura and I then followed the parallel tracks of working with everyone on the creative side of things while also tackling the business and licensing side.

How long did this set take to produce, from original conception to end product?

It will have been about a year-long journey. Right about the time things really started to happen, Tim and Danny's biggest success, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, came out to gross over a billion dollars and become the fifth highest-grossing film of all-time worldwide. The excitement and energy of that only fueled the project further.

You took the unusual step of soliciting suggestions for the box's content from film music fans on internet Message Boards. What effect did these suggestions have on the final result?

Those suggestions were invaluable. Once Danny has finished a project he really clears his mind about it. He doesn't go back and re-listen or re-watch anything. He also doesn't archive anything. He literally had no organized archive of anything he has ever done. So it fell upon his assistant, Melisa McGregor, and I to dig through random box after random box pulled from storage to find anything. The input of people on the message board really helped suggest things to go looking for. We were also very fortunate that fans had materials that Elfman and even the studios did not.

The goal of this project was to do the most ambitious, most exciting box set of film music ever. Knowing what fans were wanting was a really crucial part of making that happen.

The Burton/Elfman boxed set was released by Warner Bros. Records. While many of the director-composer team's collaborations were released by Warner Bros. Pictures, including the BATMAN films, MARS ATTACKS and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, others were produced by such companies as Disney (THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ALICE IN WONDERLAND), Sony (BIG FISH) and 20th Century Fox (EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, PLANET OF THE APES). Was it difficult to license the music from other companies, and if so how were these difficulties overcome?

Is there an expression that means "more than excruciatingly difficult?" Warner Bros. Records is not Warner Bros. Pictures. Everything contained in the Music Box had to be licensed with the film's studio, the original soundtrack label and with the music's publisher. Sorting this all out was a major undertaking for Laura and me, and the legal team brought in to clear it all. Keep in mind, each of the original albums is still in print, so getting compilation rights for all of them was whatever that phrase is that transcends "excruciatingly difficult." The reason it was able to happen at all is that every head of music at each of the studios embraced this project. There is an enormous amount of affection for Tim and Danny amongst them and they all wanted to see this dream project happen. It really helped that this was conceived as something extraordinary and not just another extended score repackage. The whole package caught everyone's imagination.

Some scores in the boxed set such as BIG FISH have been augmented with literally dozens of bonus cues while others such as PLANET OF THE APES feature only a handful. Was this due to licensing restrictions, or because it was felt that some of the scores simply didn't need to be so greatly expanded?

BIG FISH in particular was originally released with a lot of missing score cues because much of that soundtrack was originally filled with songs. This project allowed for the opportunity to dig into the variety and richness of that Oscar-nominated score. Some of the earlier scores like BEETLEJUICE were originally created as LPs with their own time limitations. Again, this Music Box allowed for us to finding a great amount of fantastic music that was never previously released. And because this is such a unique and extreme production it liberated a number of seemingly impossible soundtracks to become realities to license under these special circumstances

How much input did Tim Burton have in the selection of music for this collection?

Tim deferred to Danny regarding the music selections. Burton made wonderful contributions with regard to the visual components of the project, including rediscovering four pieces of music-themed art he had created years ago for an abandoned Disney project, TRICK OR TREAT, to use on the exterior of the Music Box.

Some pre-existing songs which were integral to the films -- the Belafonte songs from BEETLEJUICE, the Slim Whitman song in MARS ATTACKS! -- were included on the original soundtrack releases but were omitted from this collection. Was this because of licensing issues, or because they were not Elfman compositions?

Since this was an Elfman/Burton Music Box, the decision was made to only include Elfman compositions.

Was there any material that you or Mr. Elfman wanted to include on the set but were unable to due to the condition of the tapes?

Fortunately, everything we wanted to include was in good condition.

The twenty-five year collaboration between Danny Elfman and Tim Burton is just one of many of the composer-director partnerships that have enriched the history of film music, including such famous teams as Herrmann & Hitchcock, Delerue & Truffaut, Morricone & Leone, Mancini & Edwards, Williams & Spielberg, Shore & Cronenberg, and too many others to name. As a film music fan, what other collaboration would you most like to see receive the definitive Elfman/Burton-style treatment?

I know I was inspired by some of those deluxe packages from my early days of soundtrack collecting. I loved those old MGM box sets like "THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM" with their fancy packaging and hardcover programs inside. When I was twelve I remember my brother and I saving up for months to buy two different 3-LP box sets celebrating Warner Bros. Pictures' 50th Anniversary. They came in elaborate shiny, silver-covered boxes with individually designed inner sleeves and a booklet. When they finally arrived we poured over them forever. Other records would show up and get filed away and pulled out occasionally, but these glittering boxes got their own shelf... they were that special.

I also remember the excitement of discovering some elaborate multi-disc Morricone imports. I vividly remember the ritual of going to the post office to get an international money order, then sending it off to overseas praying we had included enough postage, then racing every afternoon to our mailbox to see if they had arrived. When they did come, they weren't just another soundtrack. They were something to cherish. We would listen to them over and over while leafing through their glossy booklets.

I have always loved film music for its emotional journey. And once-in-a-while the presentation of the music created its own emotional experience. The tactile experience of folding open a cover or pulling out a bonus feature could create sensations that will forever transcend clicking my mouse on my iTunes Library to conjure-up a series of digital bytes. For me, there is something different on a primal level between merely owning a piece of vinyl or an interchangeable compact disc or maintaining a computer library of digital information and that of possessing a Treasure Box.

For me, I have always taken delight when something expands beyond the conventional. Two-record sets, gatefold covers, bonus singles, picture discs and things like that have always held a special place in my heart. When the soundtrack specialty market started I loved that the re-definition of the conventional expanded even more. There were now multi-disc sets, expanded scores, composer box sets. Labels like Rhino were doing amazing things like the Hanna-Barbera Pic-A-Nic Basket or that 3D "Brain-in-a-Box" Sci-Fi collection which were so playful, creative and imaginative. I have always relished anything that screamed, "Think outside the box."

Recently I was so blown-away and inspired by FSM's 20 Score/12-Disc MGM Treasury and Varese's SPARTACUS.

The SPARTACUS release in particular was a huge inspiration for the Burton/Elfman Music Box. Robert Townson saw new possibilities of how to present film music in a non-cookie cutter way. It was such a bold idea to create a DVD documentary of other composers reflecting in detail on another composer's score. And I was beyond fascinated by hearing film composers as diverse as Lalo Schifrin, Dave Grusin and Alexandre Desplat putting their own interpretations on Alex North's music. But what this release really did for me was it ignited the notion that film music can be treated in as diverse and imaginative a way as any other style of recorded music. It wasn't just AC/DC or Elvis or Beatles fans who could be treated to something elaborate and celebratory and special. Film music is now something that warrants serious respect. It's not for nothing that the New York Times broke the story about this Music Box.

And I hope this Music Box helps inspire others to tackle the impractical and the impossible. Personally, I would donate a kidney for the Spielberg/Williams collaboration to be explored with a similarly robust treatment.

In your opinion, what makes the Elfman/Burton partnership different from other great composer/director teams (besides their hair and their beautiful movie star wives)?

Both Tim and Danny have hit a chord on a massive scale, a global scale. Their 13 films together have grossed over $3.5 billion dollars worldwide. And this has been done by not ever pandering to conventional thinking. Every one of those films is a unique, risky, some would say "foolhardy" artistic expression. We are talking films about an oversize kid looking for his bicycle or a boy with scissors for hands or a stop-motion animated musical where the lead character is a skeleton with no eyes. It has been movies based on a series of 1950s trading cards. It has been a superhero film (staring a comedian) that was dark and brooding when superheroes were supposed to be bright and comic book-colored. These are elaborate extensions of vision. Tim and Danny are fearless. They can tune out the chatter and static about what is the norm, and forge unique works of art. And because these works are so specific and outrageous, I feel audiences have embraced them for exactly those reasons. Normal is available every day.

What is your personal favorite of all the previously unreleased material included on this set?

My favorite is the unused score Elfman composed for an EDWARD SCISSORHANDS ballet. It is a stunning work. I had not heard it since he first composed it and rediscovering it was a revelation. I am also very fond of the additional music from BIG FISH and BEETLEJUICE. And hearing the Original Soundtrack to PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE was a real walk down memory lane.

I'm also a big fan of the demos and orchestral-only versions of the NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS songs. I have always loved them, so these offered a fresh way to hear them anew. And, with a lot of arm-twisting, Danny allowed us to include a number of his early work tapes and demos featuring some pretty funky 80's synth sounds. But the joy for me in those is hearing unexplored, early ideas, and hearing just how clear and complete Danny's vision is even in demo form.

The 250-page book included with the set, DANSE MACABRE: 25 YEARS OF DANNY ELFMAN AND TIM BURTON, seems to be the first full-length publication dedicated to a composer-director team. What is the most surprising revelation film music fans will learn from this book, and was there anything that surprised even you?

I was really interested in the story of how Prince actually composed an entire score for BATMAN. The story is told by the very people involved including Tim, Danny, Warners Head of Music Gary Lemel, music editor Bob Badami and producer Jon Peters himself. The advantage of a book this expansive is that you can really go into detail about what really happened behind the scenes of these scores.

We also decided to cover Elfman and Burton's early years before meeting each other. So there is a great history of Oingo Boingo and of Tim as a student filmmaker. Another decision was to track each other's careers even when they weren't in collaboration. So the is a lot of insight and interviews with filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Guillermo del Toro on working with Elfman on their films. And ED WOOD and SWEENEY TODD and some abandoned Burton projects are also covered in the book.

The book itself is something very different from conventional liner notes. I have always had mixed feelings about liner notes. When they are good they're good, but when they are bad they are horrible. I hate liner notes that aren't even worth the effort of dislodging them from their jewel case. And for that matter, I hate CD-size booklets in general. We decided right away that this project presented a unique opportunity to chronicle a composer-director team in a way that has never been attempted. It was a subject worthy of a real book, so a real book is what we chose to undertake. I have always loved Jeff Bond as a person and a writer. And I have always wondered what he would create given such a major creative undertaking.

Initially his instinct was to interview a handful of key people to tell the story. If you haven't guessed, I love excess. If you can interview five people, why not go for 50? So Laura and I put together a list of 100 people who could best paint a picture of Tim and Danny. Actors like Michael Keaton, Paul Ruebens, Helena Bonham Carter and Catherine O'Hara, directors like Ang Lee, Taylor Hackford and Paul Haggis, behind-the-scenes people like editors and production designers, people on the music team like engineers and musicians, collaborators like Twyla Tharp and composer peers like Thomas Newman, Alexandre Desplat, Alan Silvestri, Carter Burwell, Marc Shaiman, Michael Giacchino, Ed Shearmur, Mark Mothersbaugh, Jon Brion, John Powell and Philip Glass. Of the 100 names, Jeff was able to interview almost 85 of them. Working against crazy deadlines, he was able to use these interviews to write something that so transcends the typical, "Then he wrote this.../And on this cue he uses this theme.../And the next scene in the movie is.../Let me tell you how great all this is..." type of liner notes. If Jeff was going to be telling the story of ED WOOD then he should talk to Howard Shore. If he was going to talk about the changes in the style of the Nolan BATMAN films, then he should talk to James Newton Howard. If you are going to say the producers of BATMAN wanted Prince and Michael Jackson to score the film, then it was important to interview Jon Peters directly about it.

Also, I think soundtrack collectors have frequently gotten the short end of the design stick. Too often just throwing in a few stills from a movie has been the sorry excuse for visual materials (I should know, I did it all the time when I was grinding out a record a week in my days at Varese). For this, Elfman dug deep into his photo library to discover a great number of never-before-seen images. Cool stuff from his childhood and the early days of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and even personal photos from his very first PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE scoring session. And Tim Burton opened up his art archives to provide a great array of amazing sketches and drawings. We wanted a large, 10"x10", 260-page, fine linen-wrapped hardbound book with gold foil stamping that someone would be proud to leave out on their coffee table.

Laura was obsessed with getting Johnny Depp to write the foreword to the book. He agreed to do it as soon as he was asked; however, he was shooting the new PIRATES. As the deadline came pounding down on us, we started to panic. Laura, being Laura, kept pounding away with friendly reminders. Then, at almost the last possible printing moment, we received it. Johnny had clearly taken his time to write something very heartfelt, poetic and personal. That was one of the nicest days on this project.

Whose idea was it to incorporate a zoetrope into the Music Box?

For the design of the book and the actual package, Warner Bros. engaged Matt Taylor, who won the Grammy for "Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package" for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium. It was so great to work with someone like Matt, who was also nominated for Grammys for "Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package" for HIM's Venus Doom and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. His background was in working with musical artists who wanted to express themselves via extraordinarily special visual packages. This was especially important since Tim Burton himself is such an influential visual artist. This needed to be a Box Set that would fit in with the esthetics of someone whose exhibit at MOMA drew the largest attendance of any living artist (and third only behind Picasso and Matisse). So, as you can imagine, the challenge of coming up with something extraordinary was paramount for this to happen.

Matt's ideas for the package were consistently insane. At one point we were seriously considering a giant drawered wooden music box with piano rolls, a hand crank and revolving cylinders. The problem was that it in reality it probably wouldn't have been ready for delivery until Burton and Elfman's 50th Anniversary!

The artistic challenge was how to convey Movies and Music in a way that also evoked the notion of an antique Treasure Box. Matt came up with the idea of a spinning zoetrope which perfectly captured the nostalgic feel of something tucked away in a long-forgotten attic. And since zoetropes are all about bringing drawn or still images to life, it echoed back brilliantly to Burton's early days an animator. When we presented an early prototype of the zoetrope box to Danny, his first thought was that it had to somehow play music. So we came up with the idea of embedding a musical chip into the actual box. Danny loved the idea so much he went off and wrote four different suites of music arranged in the style of vintage mechanical music boxes. This might be the first box set where the box plays its own music.

The whole idea was that this was going to be something that wasn't going to get tucked away and filed on a bookshelf between "Edelman" and "Eidelman." This was going to be a centerpiece of someone's soundtrack collection. Something that could only come around once every quarter-century.

These days some DVDs are released enclosing a digital copy of the film. The Elfman-Burton set is, as far as I know, the first soundtrack collection to include its own digital copy, with the entire musical contents of the CD set included in MP3 form on a Burton-esque looking flash drive. Do you think this will become a common occurrence?

It's interesting you should ask that. There was a huge debate about whether to deliver this music via CD or USB. One thought was that CDs are going to be eventually phased out and this Music Box should live forever as easily-loaded digital files. The other thought was the idea of holding an entire library of physical CDs, all designed to be part of a collector's set featuring Tim Burton artwork was too cool to pass up. Being the glutton that I am, I asked, "Why not both?" So we decided to include a USB flash drive with MP3s of all the stuff on the CDs. Matt loved the idea and started designing various USB Skeleton Keys. As the kind of guy who loves to open a present and find lots of cool little things inside, especially dimensional objects, I started to froth at the mouth in anticipation.

I think how we will be receiving recorded music is going to continue to change radically over the next few years. Personally, I have gotten none of the emotional connection with CDs that I once had with LPs. As soon as I receive one I rip it into my computer and shove the physical CD in a box crammed with other abandoned compact discs, usually in cracked jewel cases. Eventually, those boxes end up hogging up space in storage. This disconnect to the physical aspect of soundtrack collecting was something we really tried to address and remedy.

Who directed the enclosed DVD, featuring the discussion between Elfman and Burton?

It was a real group effort. The DVD was produced by Derek Frey, who was the Associate Producer on CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, SWEENEY TODD and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and Allison Abbate who produced THE IRON GIANT, CORPSE BRIDE and THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX, along with Laura Engel, myself and Special Treats, a British company that shoots a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff for films like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and ATONEMENT.

We knew we wanted to include some sort of documentary DVD as part of the set. The initial idea was to just throw together a bunch of pre-existing behind-the-scene videos of Tim and Danny. But that didn't seem unique enough for this project. So we thought about getting the guys together and letting them tell their own story about the history of each of their collaborations. The problem was that Tim lives in London and Danny in L.A. Fortunately, Danny was going to be in Europe to judge the Venice Film Festival, so Laura and Wendy Griffiths from Warner Bros. Records and I got to go on a field trip to London to shoot this at Air Lyndhurst Studios. On September 12, we spent an evening with Tim and Danny and a camera crew to film "A Conversation with Elfman and Burton." I showed up with a stack of questions and tucked myself behind one of the cameras and started geeking out asking all those things I ever wanted to know about Tim and Danny but had never gotten to ask.

For two-and-a-half hours we went through every film from PEE-WEE through ALICE. The guys were funny and insightful. And as it was unfolding I started to flash back. When I was a kid my brother and I would come to Los Angeles to interview film composers like Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Rosenman, John Addison and Miklos Rozsa for Soundtrack Collector's Notebook out of Belgium. Now, all these years later, I got to sit with Elfman and Burton and play soundtrack nerd/interviewer all over again.

Racing to meet our delivery deadline, the footage was shipped to editor Adam Shell, whom I had worked with on FINDING KRAFTLAND. Laura and I stayed in London to attend Alexandre Desplat's HARRY POTTER sessions while Adam got the videos to start his cut. I called him wondering how it was playing. Adam likes film music but isn't an obsessive fan, so his opinion of what we got was really important to me. I was so relieved when he told me how fun and fascinating it all was to him. When I got back from London, Adam and I finished up the cut. As we did that I thought how much I would give to find a similar historic document of Hitchcock and Herrmann or Fellini and Rota sitting around walking down memory lane of their careers and collaborations.

There are rumors about a scaled-down, CD-only version without the bonus material, or about selling all the discs as individual CDs. What can you tell us about that?

Warner Bros. Records is handling the sales, promotion and marketing on this and doing a fantastic job. I have heard of no plans for them to make anything other than the full Music Box including all the CDs, USB, book, DVD, box and zoetrope. I do know the deals we made with the various studios and record companies were for this Music Box configuration only. Every one of these films' Original Soundtrack is still in print from various companies. We were able to obtain the rights to expand and release them specifically because they were being coupled together as part of this specific overall package and not being released individually.

Going back to Warner Bros. Records, I could not love these people any more. They have been supportive of this project from Day 1. As you can imagine, this has been an enormous undertaking on their part. I look back at my days of running Varese Sarabande Records so fondly. It was a wonderful, small-scale operation doing amazing things. This experience has been like that on steroids. It has been so fun working with a team of top lawyers and designers and people in production, digital commerce, editing, clearance, web design, publicity, marketing, promotion, packaging and all of the other different individuals who make up a well-run, international corporation. Everyone there has treated this like their favorite pet project and given it all the time, creativity and resources something this ambitious needed. In some ways it felt massive how many people were working on this and at other times it felt exactly like being back at Varese in terms of the heart, commitment and passion people were throwing into this.

Where are things currently with the project?

As we speak, Danny Elfman is finishing up his final liner notes that are going to be printed as inserts inside each of the 16 CD sleeves. The tin box is being manufactured. It is really elaborate. I just saw samples of it with raised and embossed illustrations. The book is heading off to the printer. The CDs have been edited, sequenced and mastered. The credits are being shot for the DVD. Warners has started taking pre-orders. An explosion of press and publicity is underway. And Laura and I are nervously waiting for Tim and Danny's Music Box baby to be born.

Perhaps more than any other soundtrack CD collection, the Elfman-Burton box is physically impossible to store on a CD shelf. Where in your home will you keep yours?

Great question. It is going to go on a coffee table in my library. It will be a great conversation piece and something fun for guests to play with. I'm actually planning on putting some extra formatted and cut pieces of paper in it so my friends can create their own animated zoetrope strips while spinning it and listening to the music chip.

And when I eventually end up the remains of the day, I clearly now have the perfect place to store my ashes!