Sympathy for the Monsters 

For many television and film fans, Michael Giacchino’s music has scored the 21st century. To his music, the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 clung to life in Lost; Carl and Ellie’s love story blossomed before our teary eyes in Up; Remy the rat became Remy the chef in Ratatouille; young Spock met his older, wiser self in Star Trek; and, just this summer, Spider-Man saved himself and New York City in Brand New Day. In each town, island, and galaxy he has rendered in music, Giacchino has shown an open curiosity and a devotion to questioning assumptions. A cinephile since his youth, Giacchino was destined to work in the movies. And though he’s had a chance to work across many genres, multiple media, and alongside a few of his heroes, his adventurous spirit and passion for directing drive him to take on new, ambitious projects. 

Tonight’s program opens with an abridged preview of Giacchino’s first musical, Headless, a rocking take on Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. For Giacchino’s foray into musical theater, he teamed up with songwriters Kate Anderson and Elyssa Samsel. The trio met in 2017 at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event while Giacchino was promoting the film Coco and Anderson and Samsel were promoting Olaf’s Frozen Adventure. They instantly clicked, as Samsel tells it: “It was all meant to be.... We found out fast that we had the same sense of humor.” The trio has collaborated on a few projects since their fortuitous meeting; Headless, however, was in the works long before they met. 

“I’ve been obsessed with Sleepy Hollow since I was a kid, when I lived in New York City,” Giacchino said. “I would spend my weekends just getting on the train, going up to Sleepy Hollow.... I started getting to know a bunch of the people at the historical society and the guys that worked at the graveyard—at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery—and I would get all these stories and all this information. I was just obsessed with it.”  

Giacchino’s career is marked by a genuine interest in the misunderstood. It’s why he loved monster comics as a kid, and it’s why a ghost story of a Revolutionary War soldier searching for his head captivated him long ago. Though many artists have adapted the tale of the aspirational Ichabod Crane and the tragic Headless Horseman, under Giacchino’s empathetic and playful direction Headless opens a new chapter for the Sleepy Hollow residents. “Washington Irving was a cheeky writer,” he said. “[H]e would take great liberties, and we’re taking that as a clue to how we should handle this version. We’ve been taking great liberties with his material, and having a lot of fun, and trying to modernize it in a way that feels like something audiences can relate to.”  

Asked how the three artists see their roles, Giacchino said, “We decided to just be like a band.” The trio shared responsibility for the composition and lyrics. Their refrain throughout this project was “What would Alex Timbers do?”—citing the Tony Award-winning writer and director behind the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and many other Broadway hits. The team was drawn to Timbers’ blend of traditional theater, rock ‘n’ roll showmanship, fast-paced talking directly to the audience, and plenty of subversive winks. “I think we’re really pulling all of those ideas and stuffing them into [Headless] as much as we can,” Giacchino said. 

Through a selection of songs, tonight’s audience gets a sneak peek at the full production to come. As the director, Giacchino is plotting ambitious visuals: “Hopefully big, loud, and in your face.... Musically, it’s going to be a combination of The Beatles and Green Day.” Headless shows Giacchino’s strengths—his ability to blend horror with humor and old tales with new sympathies. Anderson said, “I’m really excited about the sense of fun that this show has. Even though it has dark, spooky undertones and has some emotion to it. It’s really a lot of fun.” 

Following intermission is Giacchino’s directorial debut, Werewolf by Night—well, his formal directorial debut. A director since childhood—his Super 8 never left his side—Giacchino fell out of practice with the craft as his career as a composer took off. He missed being behind the camera, so he started making shorts with friends, such as Patton Oswalt, and posted them to YouTube. Marvel President Kevin Feige, who had worked with Giacchino on Doctor Strange and the Spider-Man movies, noticed the shorts and approached him, asking, “So, do you miss making movies?” After Giacchino answered with an emphatic yes, Feige explained that there was a burgeoning streaming service (Disney+) in need of new stories. He offered Giacchino the opportunity to create something that would be totally his own. 

Werewolf by Night is the story that monster-obsessed Michael Giacchino and his brother, Anthony, were drawn to in their youth. While their friends were busy snatching up Spider-Man, Superman, and Avengers comics, the Giacchinos were glued to the screen watching Creature Double Feature broadcasts from Philadelphia. Whenever he’d find himself in a comic shop, Michael had a standing order to pick up any monster-themed piece. 

Werewolf opens on Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal) and four other monster hunters gathering to mourn the loss of their leader, Ulysses Bloodstone. The funeral turns into a competitive hunt, the winner of which it to become the new leader of their coalition. Jack is not all he seems to be however. As an homage to the TV Special Presentations of the director’s youth—like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown—Werewolf is a tight 50 minutes, and the music harks back to the scores of Giacchino’s favorite monster movies (Godzilla and Frankenstein, to name a couple). It also shares a kinship with one of his previous monster scores: Cloverfield. Both scores feature an ethereal soprano voice, and asked about this common thread, Giacchino said: “I think there is something very pure to that texture, and I want to evoke something that’s pure about the character, so it’s not just a ‘GRRR’ every single time we see the werewolf or Jack. I feel like there’s a real purity and a real honesty to a single voice.” 

This tender empathy is the lens through which Giacchino wants us to view his monsters. “Monsters are just people with problems. None of those monsters want to be what they are, and they certainly don’t want to be called a monster. It’s this awful label that’s been given to them.” Except for moments of self-defense, the monsters of Werewolf never display violence toward the other characters. 

Does Giacchino see his directorial and composition work as two distinct paths or more as a united effort? “I like to think of them all together,” he said. “I don’t like to bifurcate things. I think this town has an awful history of pigeonholing people. There are probably people in this town who are very confused as to why I directed something: ‘That’s the music guy; I don’t understand.’ Those are the things that are hardest to overcome for artists who want to do more, who can do more.” 

Like his characters, Giacchino experiences the friction of the external world’s preconceived notions grinding against a truer sense of self. Tonight, the creator and storyteller instructs us to put away the pitchforks and torches and approach his characters with open minds and open ears.

— Tess Carges & Robert Alexander