A lot of times musicians are treated really badly in this business. They’re generally not invited to premières, or even to cast-and-crew parties. And you don’t see their names in the end credits. It’s pretty much the only job on the crew where you gotta practice twenty or thirty years to be able to do what they do. Yet so many other people get to see their names up there, including, you know, the guy who brings the doughnuts. Not to diminish the guy who brings the doughnuts! We like him, too! But the musicians are a huge part of what makes a movie work. I always tell them, “Listen, I can put all these black markings on this page, but without you guys all I’ve done is mess up a piece of nice white paper.” So I try to make them feel appreciated. And we try to have fun doing what we do. I want this to be as fun as when I was ten years old, when “Star Wars” had come out and I was playing those LPs all the time and I’d decided I wanted to make movies for a living.
-Michael Giacchino
Read here, at Alex Ross’s blog Unquiet Thoughts.