Merrick here…

Yeeeaaaaaaoooooohhhhkkkkaaaayyyyyyy…….

The Great NACHO LIBRE Score Drama of 2006 seems to have been, at long last, clarified and settled. This via a message from Danny Elfman’s Agent, which is sited below.

A big thanks to everyone who has written in about this over the past few days, and to Richard Kraft fort clearing things up!

Here’s ScoreKeeper with the details…

Greetings! ScoreKeeper here with what I believe could be the final word on the whole NACHO LIBRE scoring fiasco.

Danny’s agent, Richard Kraft, has responded with the following statement:

"Danny Elfman has not removed his name from Nacho Libre. He elected not to take a "Music by" credit. Danny Elfman was brought in to do a replacement score for the film. The final mix of the movie includes about 2/3rds of the score Elfman composed with the other third comprised of music retained from the first score (composed by Beck) as well as other music. For this reason, Elfman chose not to take a "Music by" credit on the film or advertisements. Instead, he decided to take credit for the cues he composed in the End Titles to properly identify his contributions to the final film."

This seems to me to be a very admirable thing on Elfman’s part. Situations like this arise all the time in the film music industry and for many different reasons you’ll often just see a “Music by” credit and that’s that. It doesn’t always reflect the true contributions of those involved.

The end credits of NACHO LIBRE seem to reflect the most accurate acknowledgment of those who participated in the scoring of a film that I’ve seen. This could set a precedent for future films who encounter similar situations. If not, it is highly conceivable that such confusion could easily arise again.