Michael Giacchino - Man on a Mission

The Story of Emmy Award-Winning Film/TV Music Composer MICHAEL GIACCHINO's Musical Journey Through the Worlds of Interactive Games (The Lost World), Hit Network Shows (Alias and Lost) and Hollywood Blockbusters (The Incredibles and next summer's Mission: Impossible III).

	By Erik Philbrook

There is a hushed silence as film composer Michael Giacchino listens to the playback of a delicate piece of music he has just recorded. He is not alone. The quiet belies the fact that he is sitting in the darkened mixing room of 20th Century Fox's Newman Scoring Stage with about 15 other people; assorted assistants, engineers, producers, me. Beyond the glass, on the soundstage, an orchestra with 55-plus musicians listens along. As the music plays, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson and other actors can be seen on two large video monitors sharing a bittersweet moment in a scene from the upcoming release, The Family Stone. Everyone in the mixing room shares a collective feeling of being exposed. The emotional moment is so raw, it is almost uncomfortable, and it achieves exactly what music and film ought to: it's incredibly moving. The music ends. "That's great," says Giacchino. And everyone exhales.

With his boyish good looks, goatee, untucked shirt and sneakers, Giacchino looks like your average film nut, which he is, ever since growing up hooked on cartoons and making his own super 8 movies in Edgewater Park, New Jersey. It's easy to imagine him standing in a long line to see Star Wars for the tenth time. But instead of just obsessing over the work of his film idols, such as Steven Spielberg, he is now working alongside them as one of today's most successful composers. For almost ten years Giacchino has been steadily building an impressive career in the worlds of interactive games, TV and film. His use of a live orchestra on DreamWorks' 1998 The Lost World game raised the artistic bar for the whole medium. His first TV series, Alias, was a smash. His first-ever film score, for 2004's animated hit The Incredibles, was a big, brassy tour de force of cool, orchestral jazz. In September, he won an Emmy for his music to Lost, one of today's hottest TV series. And next summer, his music will be heard in an almost sure-fire blockbuster, Mission: Impossible III.

As someone who once dreamed of being a filmmaker, Giacchino is in love with the art of storytelling. And how this South Jersey boy rose to be the toast of Tinseltown is a great story in itself. I recently sat down with him as he talked about everything from his childhood passions (Tom & Jerry, Benny Goodman, Louis Prima) to his noble mission to keep all of L.A.'s most-talented session musicians working as much as possible.

You initially wanted to be a filmmaker, not a composer. Tell me about that?
When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. In particular, I loved animation and would love to have been an animator. But I made tons of super 8 and 8 millimeter movies. My dad gave me his camera, so I spent my childhood making movies with the kids in the neighborhood as actors.

GIACCHINO CREDITS Film •Mission: Impossible III (2006) •Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2006) •The Family Stone (2005) •The Muppets Wizard of Oz (2005) •Sky High (2005) •The Incredibles (2004) •The Trouble With Lou (2004) •SIN (2003) •Redemption of the Ghost (2000) •Los Gringos (1999) •My Brother the Pig (1999) •Freight (1998) •No Salida (1998) •Buffalo Soldiers (1995) Television •Lost (2004~) •Alias (2001~) •Phenomenon (2002) •Semper Fi (2001) •The Others (1999) •Teen Angel (1998) Interactive •Mercenaries (2004) •Call of Duty: Finest Hour (2004) •The Incredibles (2004) •Call of Duty (2003) •Secret Weapons Over Normandy (2003) •Medal of Honor: Frontine (2002) •Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) •Medal of Honor Underground (2000) •Muppets Monster Madness (2000) •Medal Of Honor (1999) •Warpath (1999) •T'ai Fu (1999) •Metal Fighter (1998) •Small Soldiers PSX (1998) •Squad Commander (1998) •The Lost World PSX (1998) •The Lost World: Chaos Island (1998) Concert •Camden 2000 ~ A commissioned concert piece in 3 movements performed by the Haddonfield Symphony

You were obviously musically-inclined. What were your musical pursuits?
What I realized years later was that I would spend an inordinate amount of time cutting music to the films. In the beginning, when I just had 8 millimeter, there was no sound, and I would spend so much time lining up my cassette recorder, patching together cues from tons of different soundtracks that I had collected over the years and from my dad's classical albums. I would patch these together and do whatever I could so that when certain things happened on screen it would coincide with what was happening on the tape.

What music would you use?
It was sometimes classical. But a lot of it was soundtrack music. I remember in particular using cues from Star Trek II, James Horner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which has a lot of classical stuff, Superman. whatever I had. Later I realized that was maybe the flashpoint for the whole thing.

So you were consciously exploring the relationship between the music and the images?
I do remember seeing Star Wars and realizing, holy cow, that is the most amazing thing. And the Star Wars soundtrack album had the liner notes, which explained what the instruments were doing in each cue, and what the themes were, and how this all worked. As a ten-year old kid, that was my first kind of under-the hood look at an orchestra and at what individual instruments do.

Did you study music?
My parents loved music but they weren't musicians. So my musical training as a young kid was limited to piano lessons. I was not the best student; I was awful, never practiced. But I was always interested in just messing around on the piano.

When did you start writing music?
It wasn't until high school that I actually started writing. I was in a lot of the school plays and musicals, and there was a lot of down time during rehearsals. I would go into the orchestra pit and mess around on the grand piano. That's when I started really kind of just coming up with musical ideas and writing, and then doing the same thing at home.

Yet you still went off to college to study film
I went to film school in New York City at the School of Visual Arts. I wanted to make movies. I went for four years and graduated from there. And again, with the movies that I made there, I would try to either write music for them or find the music that works best for the things, because I didn't have access to instruments. I had an awful Casio thing. And it wasn't like today where you have these great synthesizers on which you can do your own scores. So whenever I would hear these things, they sounded awful. I would always go looking for real recordings of stuff. I was always attracted to live music and live recording. That was really the only music that I loved. Growing up, my dad had these great Louis Prima albums, great Benny Goodman albums, classical stuff, show tunes, soundtracks, all kinds of things. I was raised on a diet of live musicians.

"I loved Benny Goodman growing up. He was one of my favorites because he was a guy who was doing jazz, but he was always able to tie melody into his compositions in an amazing way." — Michael Giacchino

I also think a part of my musical training had to come from my steady diet of cartoons, and even just watching television at the time, because everything was live music then. All the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, in particular, like The Jetsons, The Flinstones, where they started doing amazing jazz orchestral scores on TV. They were mostly small ensembles, but just smartly written, and well orchestrated. I remember all those music cues. I can hear them in my head; they're all familiar to me, because I just kind of grew up with them. I think a lot of it just came from listening to music. You can keep going back to the Warner Brothers stuff, you know, with Carl Stalling, and then even more so for me, the Tom & Jerry cartoons. Scott Bradley did all of those; the music in those cartoons is amazing, just unbelievable.

Actor Luke Wilson, writer/director Thomas Bezucha, conductor Tim Simonec and Michael Giacchino at The Family Stone recording session.

What was your first job out of college?
When I graduated, my first job was at Universal Studios in New York City. I was an unpaid intern in their publicity department. I then met people across the street at Disney's New York office, and they had a job opening, so I went over there. That's where I met Michael Scrimenti, my boss - he was a manager of field promotions for Disney and he knew that I wanted to do music.

At that time I had made the shift from filmmaking into music, and I knew that's what I wanted to do. And Michael said to me, "If it's music you want to do, why don't you go to Juilliard? It's right down the street." He even arranged to have Disney pay for it, because they had a continuing education program. So I did that for almost a year I guess. And then Disney asked me if I wanted to move to California, so I did that. And then my boss out there basically offered me the same type of thing. He encouraged me to go to UCLA, take the extension classes. So I did that, and learned more about orchestration, which up to that point I had just done with tons of self study, just reading books. That was a great experience.

Music for TV's Lost is found at Burbank's O'Henry studios.

Through my time at both Disney and Universal I realized that producers were people who hired the composers for films. When a job came up at Disney Interactive for a producer's position in making video games, I thought, wow, if I get that, maybe I could hire myself to write music for the games that I'm working on. So I got a job as an assistant producer over there. I was able to then just start - once they got to know me - submitting my own work. It was such an eye-opener in the sense that I really understood that this business is so relationship-driven. If I had just sent my CD's from the outside, no one would have ever listened to it.

So you basically had on-the-job training as a composer?
Working on those games led me to a job producing at DreamWorks Interactive, and again, same thing � allowing myself to write scores. By that time I had some other friends who were producing. So they just kept asking me to write music for them.

Gaming is now a billion dollar industry, but were there big budgets for game music at that point?
Everyone assumed at that point it was all going to be synthesized, sampled music. When we were working on The Lost World video game, Steven Spielberg was also shooting The Lost World film at the same time. One day they said, "Steven's coming tomorrow; can you throw together some music? We're going to show him a presentation of everything we have so far. We'd love to add the music in the style that we want for the game." So I did a few cues for this meeting, but I wasn't in the meeting. I remember being up in my office and the phone rang. It was the producer. He said, "Steven wants to talk to you. He heard the music, and can you come down right now?"

Venerable Hollywood arranger Jack Hayes with Giacchino at The Family Stone session.

That was the biggest shock of my life, because here was a guy I had admired since I was a little kid, and that's who I wanted to be. I ran downstairs, and there he was at the bottom of the stairs. And he said, "How are you doing, Michael? Nice to meet you." And we had this nice conversation about the music. He was very complimentary. And his last question was, "So, when are we recording this?" And I asked, "Recording?" He said "Yeah, we're going with a live orchestra." I remember looking at the CEO and the CFO on the other side. And Steven said, "We are recording this live, right? And they were like, "Yeah, we are. Right, Michael?"

Sounds like a scene out of a movie.
Exactly. Steven, like a lot of us doing this, grew up listening to live music, so he understands the difference. [Motioning with his hands] What happens when you take something from this stage to this stage, what life it really gives. For someone who's worked with John Williams all these years, he gets it. That was probably for me the biggest break ever, to be given that chance. Now, our orchestra wasn't huge. I think we had a 40-piece orchestra. But it was enough to give me that experience to start working with orchestras.

After that auspicious start, what happened next?
After that, Spielberg filmed Saving Private Ryan, so they created the game, Medal of Honor. And they asked if I wanted to do the music for it? Absolutely. I did it. And we had a 65-piece orchestra. Then Medal of Honor Underground came around. We had a 75-piece orchestra.

You really had a unique opportunity to master your craft with a full orchestra.
Exactly. In the old days, a lot of these guys, Jerry Goldsmith, even John Williams started in TV. And there was so much for them to do. TV to me is like a boot camp for composers. And it can either beat you up or make you a lot stronger. For me, I found it was the greatest way to just exercise my composing muscles, because each week I had to deliver. And the challenge is just to deliver the best thing you can in a short time period.

Speaking of TV, how did you make the leap from games to TV?
I only got to do TV because J.J. Abrams, who created Alias, played the video games I worked on. He - and his friends who were producing the show. I got an email from him one night completely out of the blue, which said, "Hi, my name is J.J. Abrams. I wrote Armageddon, Regarding Henry and I created Felicity. And I'm about to do a new show for ABC. Would you want to come in and talk to me about working on it?"

So I called him, and I went down and met with him. And we really got along instantly and have become really good friends. I also found out we had very similar childhoods as far as growing up and the things we listened to as a kid and the things we did. We had a lot in common. That's what got me onto Alias.

You were able to use a live orchestra on Alias, which was uncommon, was it not?
Abrams really believed, as I did, that one of the things we loved about TV as a kid was that it had live music. I told him we should really do this with live orchestra every week like they used to do. At that time there were a couple of shows doing so, and we could point to JAG and, obviously, The Simpsons. It was absolutely clear to me that live TV music was about to be killed off in a way. It's just so much cheaper to get a guy with a synth. Not that there isn't good music with synth. But my goal was to work with live players.

Did Abrams have the power to make those decisions?
He did. He went to them and said, "Look, this is how we want to do it." And at that time, I think the union had just come up with an agreement which allowed for a low scale payment on your first year of a series. So we could try it out and see if it worked. And the network said "Okay." We started recording every week for the show.

You must have felt like a kid in a candy store.
It was the greatest thing in the world. I loved it. I was able to just practice my orchestration and practice being with an orchestra and getting familiar with everything that goes on.

Was this a similar-sized orchestra to what you used on The Lost World game music?
Yeah, it's about 35 to 40 players depending on the episode. I also found that it was a really great challenge to just make that size work. You know, your first inclination is to get a 60-piece orchestra. But I looked at it and I said, this is going to be interesting for me, to figure out how to orchestrate things correctly and how to make things sound bigger than they really are. To this day I love the sound of a 35- or 40-piece orchestra.

We also thought about our orchestra setup and decided that we don't need the whole orchestra around to achieve it. We can create a sound for our shows. We want strings, a bassoon, alto flute and french horns, and that's it. That's Alias.

How is the orchestration different on Lost?
Lost has strings, trombones, bizarre percussion, and a harp. That's it. We never bring in extra instrumentation, or say "Oh, we need a trumpet." That's the challenge, and that's one way I can keep it interesting for myself.

From the moment you receive the actual footage of an episode, how much time do you have to write and record the music?
Lost usually happens over a two-day period. I can write and I can orchestrate it all in two days. And I usually orchestrate it as I write. It just makes it easier, because I love the process of orchestrating. Again, it's about learning the orchestra, what it can do, and what the instruments can and cannot do.

For Alias I generally need about three days because it is more music heavy. Sometimes on Lost I don't even look at it until I have two days, and then that's when I'll work on for it. I'm so used to that kind of last-second drive.

Is writing music for the second season of Lost any easier?
It's easier in the sense that I feel like the show has a sound to it now. I thought about that for months before actually working on the original series, because the context of the show is so different from anything that's on TV right now. I didn't want it to just sound like, "Okay, they're in a jungle." Well, in some conversation that came up, someone suggested I use Shakuhachi flutes. And I was like, "No, no, no; none of that stuff. None of that jungle woodwind thing."

So it's just about coming up with an idea — all right, what's going to be something that you can use when you need to pull heartstrings and something that you can use to really make people uneasy? And trombones are great because they can do these bizarre effects. They really have this shrill quality that, when you're using them in a high range, can be really scary. And with strings you can cover all.

I think the idea with Lost was just to be as simple as possible. That's what I wanted to do, and put the story first, the characters first, the acting and all of that first, because they have such a great cast. It's so amazing how little music you really need to make things work.

Sometimes if you just repeat a note for 13 bars, it's not about the music at that point. That's just telling you a tone for the conversation that's going on onscreen. And it really draws you into what they're saying more, rather than being back there and moving around and showing off.

Do you actually listen closely to the dialogue when you set about writing for a scene?
Absolutely. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that I wanted to be a filmmaker growing up. It's so important to me.

You know when to stay out of the way.
Exactly. It's so important to me that the story is up front, and that I find the right moments to be big and the right moments to just either not be there at all or be there very subtly. So I had these tendencies always to look at things from the eye of making the film itself.

The two series you've worked on are two of TV's most critically-acclaimed hit shows. Do you think you've been incredibly lucky?
I think those two shows, they stand out. And I think a lot of it comes from people like J.J. and the producers Bryan Burk, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. These are guys that gather people around them who they believe in, and then actually let them do their work. Both of these shows are not micro-managed to the point where a single producer has to have his thumbprint on every single thing. They don't hear the cues for the episodes until it's in the dub. They don't come listen to any mock-ups—none of that. They send it to me, and they allow me to just kind of make choices.

I think they do that with their editors; they do that with their writers. I think that — not to say that it's an uncontrolled environment, because they certainly keep a lid on the way in which it's done, and everyone has to understand what our mission and our tone should be �but there is this freedom they give which allows for more creativity than perhaps on other shows.

Have you found that because of the success of these shows and their use of live music, that other shows are following suit?
It's interesting; this year a few other shows are coming on line that are using live orchestra on episodic dramas. We'll see if it sticks. There's a lemming mentality in this business. If a guy jumps off the cliff and it works, everyone is going to jump off the cliff. We'll see what happens. Music's not going to make or break your show. But I would be happy for all the unbelievably talented musicians in this town.

It's so sad to know that in the old days TV was the big funnel for which everyone ended up in movie work. It was like this great cycle that just kept happening. It's not like that anymore. People are fighting for those film jobs. The few games that get recorded here, and the films — that's it for musicians. So when a TV show comes along that is a weekly thing for them, it's a real blessing. For me, I love it when I get to see as many people working as possible, because it's the only way to expose some people to music in the same way I was exposed to it as a kid.

Do you feel that the quality of many TV and cable productions, as well as the directors and the actors involved, are getting better?
I think there are more great TV shows than ever. They talk about why people aren't going to the movies as much as they used to. I read an article in The Hollywood Reporter that said maybe part of the reason is that TV is getting so good, and TV is becoming more like film.

Let's talk about a truly great film that you scored, The Incredibles. How did you get involved?
You know what it is? I'm so extremely attracted to good storytellers. The only reason I'm here doing this, is because I love storytelling. J.J. Abrams is a great storyteller, and has an amazing vocabulary of how to tell a story using movies. Brad Bird is the same. When I first heard about The Incredibles, long before I was ever offered it, I remember thinking, "Oh my God, I want to do that movie, because I knew through The Iron Giant what kind of storyteller Brad Bird was. And these are the kind of guys I love to work with. But I remember thinking to myself, they'll never let me score that movie. That's a giant Pixar movie. They'll get Randy Newman, who is also so good at what he does, because he himself is a great storyteller.

I had no hopes of ever getting that job. And I had friends who worked at Pixar. But a friend said, "Why don't you just put together a CD and I'll try and get it in front of Brad.

Did you know what kind of music he was looking for?
My friend kind of knew a little bit of what he was looking for�kind of that 60's sound in film, the jazz orchestra thing. I had been toying with that in Alias episodes for the last couple of years and I happened to have these cues that were in that vernacular and sent it on. The time period was very long. It was one of those agonizing marches to see if it would ever come to fruition. But eventually I did get a call that Brad wanted to meet with me. The other thing about Brad is that he has a tendency to find people who he just believes in. And he takes them in.

So when I went up and met with him, we began talking about animation. And since I was a huge animation fan to begin with, we had this long conversation about everything we loved growing up, old Hanna-Barbera animation, old movies, all this stuff. It was clear that we really were going to get along very well. So they said, "Well, why don't you take a couple of scenes from the film and show us what you would do with it?" So I took these scenes, which was probably about eight or nine minutes of music, and I wrote them. And I showed them — we had one meeting down at my place where we just talked about everything, worked out some themes. Then they went away. But when they were supposed to come back to listen to the final mock-ups, I was thinking to myself, you know, I should just hire an orchestra and record this thing, because I really wanted to put my best foot forward.

At that time I was thinking, it may not work out, and I could lose money. I talked to my wife, and she said, "Just do it, go do it." So I did it. I went in on a Saturday. A lot of the guys that I'd been using on Alias came in for me.

So you took a risk and it paid off.
It was really great. They came down and listened to the stuff. And I think using the live orchestra helped, because it showed how badly I wanted to do it. It was also a way of presenting these ideas in a much closer format than if I had just done synth mock-ups, because jazz orchestra with synth mock-ups suck.

Finally Brad called me up and said, "Do you want to do the movie? I want to hire you for this." He also said, "I have to warn you; it's going to be the hardest job you ever took. I'm going to ride you." And I said, "I expect that. That's why I'm here." And that was it. We went to work on it and had the best time.

Sounds like he had a firm grasp on the music that he wanted.
He did. But even more than that, he had a very clear idea of what his story was. And because he knew what his story was, he also had a very good idea of where the music should go, how big it should be.

The music for The Incredibles is incredible. You must have felt that your whole life had prepared you for this project.
It was like saying, you know, all that stuff that you loved growing up, go have fun with it. No one does that style of music anymore. And it was rampant in the 60's. It really was a voice. In particular thanks to people like Henry Mancini and John Barry and these guys who worked on the huge stuff. I always felt that music is as valid a storytelling tool now as it was then. And Brad believed the same thing.

Did you go back and listen to some music from the 60's for reference?
I thought that I was going to have to go back and listen to just tons of things and get tons of ideas. And there were a couple of things I listened to. But I found real quickly that it was just already in my head. I just knew it.

Who are your top three heroes as film composers?
Well, I have a top 50. There are are so many. Max Steiner's one of my favorites. King Kong has got to be one of my all-time favorite movies. People always ask me this question. It's very hard. I have favorite filmmakers that I love — Stanley Kubrick and obviously Spielberg, and just different guys who I think say these really interesting things.

Those directors also use music in a great way.
Maybe that's why I love their films so much, because there's a lot going on in that way. I tend to think more in terms of certain filmmakers and what they do uniquely in their movies. That's the thing that leads me then to what composer worked on a film, like "OK, Maurice Jarre did this." John Williams obviously was the flashpoint for me growing up, with Star Wars, as far as film music goes. And that led me into all of the Lawrence of Arabia's. I kept going back and finding what other film music was great. Jerry Goldsmith is fantastic. I love Henry Mancini.

There are a lot of the usual suspects, but also just these kind of random individuals, like Benny Goodman. I loved Benny Goodman growing up. He was one of my favorites, because here was a guy who was doing jazz, but in a very melodic way. He was always able to tie melody into his compositions in an amazing way. Even when he would just solo, they were melodies in themselves. I always loved that. I loved Louis Prima, Glenn Miller.

Tell me about some of your other recent projects.
I did an Albert Brooks movie called Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. It comes out in January. Albert Brooks is one of my heroes. I remember the first film I saw at film school was Real Life. And that was his first movie. From that point on, all of his movies have been huge events for me. So when I heard he was making this thing, I hounded him. I met with him, we got along, and he was like, "All right, you want to do the picture?" That film is all Indian music, with elements of Middle Eastern music.

Tell me about the music for The Family Stone, which you just completed.
I went from doing 60's superhero music, to the Indian music, to this, which I guess you would call a dramedy. It's got these very heavy dramatic moments, but is also a very funny movie. And it allowed me to be very spare.

It's very easy to get pulled into just doing these huge, sweeping melodies all the time, because they feel like that's the emotion of the movie. But when you have something that is really well-written, well-acted and well-directed, that's the emotion of the movie. Music is just a little blanket you lay over it that's hopefully not too thick. It's very easy for it to become a giant quilt. I find I get drawn in when things get much smaller.

So now you are working on Mission: Impossible III with J.J. Abrams. How is that going?
It's great because we have a shorthand now, and we can kind of finish each other's sentences. We really do understand and believe in the same things as to how to approach the story musically. I'm so thankful for that because I can have fun doing the job. And I only do this because I love it. We try to have fun sessions. If this ever becomes an oppressive environment, I don't want to do it anymore. When you're a kid you do things because you like to do them. That's how I feel now. I'm so glad and lucky to be working with people with a similar passion for what they're doing.