When composer-turned-filmmaker-turned-comic-book-writer Michael Giacchino was a kid, he was mad about monsters. Still is, of course, but growing up in New Jersey, he didn’t miss creature double features with his brother and fell asleep soundly to the Universal Monster movie scores. While some kids read about the adventures of men in capes, Giacchino gravitated toward monsters on the page.
Years after directing and scoring Marvel’s delightful one-hour special Werewolf by Night, he’s returned to Jack Russell’s world of monsters. “Werewolf By Night: Blood Moon Rise” — written by Giacchino and art by David Messina, plus featuring a story from Jason Loo — hits comic book shelves on July 30th. It’s a one-shot, but Giacchino hopes to pen more adventures.
Recently, with a big ‘ol Bigfoot head behind him, Giacchino spoke with Daily Dead about his love of Werewolf by Night, writing his first comic book, and why he hasn’t scored many horror movies.
After all these years, what is it about “Werewolf by Night” and [the character] Jack Russell that still excites you as a creator?
Michael Giacchino: I still have the book and record from when I was a kid. I played it endlessly. It was a little 45 [rpm] and had the story on it. They didn't call it “Werewolf by Night,” but it was “Werewolf.” I loved them. I don't know, it just never left me. When I get to play in that world, there's some part of me that’s 10 years old again. You can have fun with it, but you can also create emotional storylines if you want, as well. There's just something really freeing; you get to be creative in a way that in other areas you don't.
Imagination can run loose.
Michael Giacchino: When you were a kid, your imagination was everything. It ran everywhere. Every time we would watch a movie, then we would go outside and reenact a movie. I think that this is a nice way for my brain to get that back into my soul. Really, that’s what it felt like writing this comic book – it’s playtime. Writing music or directing can feel like play, but it's also saddled with all of the other work responsibilities that go with it. Not to say there wasn't responsibility for the comic book – there was – but it felt different. I could write whatever I wanted and then we were going to draw it.
What was the overall vision for the art in “Werewolf by Night”? What did you and [artist] David Messina want to accomplish?
Michael Giacchino: David did an incredible job. One of the first things I said, “I love the early editions of the early issues of ‘Frankenstein's Monster’ that Mike Ploog did. They were colored in such a cool way that they were just using bold backgrounds, even pinks and purples that you wouldn't normally associate with that type of comic or character. Let's dip into that. Let's get bold with our images. Let's be stark with the graphicness of it and the silhouettes. Have fun with the colors.” I was so appreciative that they dove in and did all of that.
Also, being my first comic, I had no idea how specific I would have to be in my script. My script is almost storyboarded, basically, in terms of the angles. David added so much to what I did, just took what I was hoping for and turned it into something that I was so thankful to get.
You both get to create a new version of Dracula, too. How’d you want to continue his story in the world of “Werewolf by Night”?
Michael Giacchino: I didn't think that they were going to let me. One of my favorite issues of “Werewolf by Night" is when he goes to Dracula's Castle with Topaz. I thought, oh, it'd be neat to do a follow-up in some way. Some of the images in the beginning in Jack’s dreams are actually images from that original story from way back. If anyone rereads that original story when Jack goes to Dracula’s, they'll see this ties back into that. It’s the seventies [version of] Jack Russell character, so it's not the one we did in Werewolf by Night for TV.
At the same time, I thought, why don't we also do a story about him when he meets Man-Thing and how he got to know Man-Thing? And then, of course, I thought, well, it's a werewolf, so what if we had Dracula? I totally expected them to say, “Yeah, that's too weird. It's way too weird for us.” But they didn't do that. They were just like, “Let’s do it. You want to do Dracula? We'll do Dracula.”
It's funny, when Man-Thing first popped up in the issue, I laughed thinking, God, Michael Giacchino really loves this creature. He's drawn so lovingly too. What qualities make you care as much as you do about Man-Thing?
Michael Giacchino: [Laughs] He really is. I do love Man-Thing. It's such a sympathetic character as well. It's not unlike that relationship between Han Solo and Chewbacca. You have this powerful being, who doesn't express himself in the way that humans do or the way that we normally will – except Jack still understands him. There's something really cool about that.
Man-Thing has this inherent wisdom. I like the pairing of Jack, who can tend to lean into his anxieties, paired with someone like Man-Thing – the calming force of the relationship outside of when he needs to turn everything on fire. There’s just something about that that keeps making me want to explore that storyline even more. That's why at the end, I wrote “the end” with a question mark. I was like, “I'm doing this again. I want to do another one.”
Being your first comic book, how’d the reality of writing a comic compare to the expectations you had?
Michael Giacchino: I had no idea what it was going to be like. There's not a lot of time and everyone is working towards the same goal. It doesn't have the luxury of a film schedule or an animation schedule. It's on a budget, on a timer, and you have to get it done. I guess in my head I always thought that, oh, they're just drawing and having fun and whatever. Never really putting two and two together in terms of schedule and the mechanics of how they did it, even though I sort of know from my readings about Marvel.
But that was freeing in a way, because you were just throwing down ideas and people were just like, yep, let's go with that. No hemming and hawing on every little single detail. It was about being creative, sticking with your gut, and moving it forward as best and as quickly as you can.
What’s a note like from Marvel?
Michael Giacchino: They know those characters better than anybody. I was thinking, should I bring Topaz into this? I love that character. For my first comic, I was like, “I want to use everybody. Let's get everyone in here.” And they were like, “Hey, your story works so well with the three characters you have right there.” I originally had Topaz, but I thought, oh, you know what? You're right. We’ll save her for a future issue.
It was about focusing. I think the lesson was in a short form of art, focus is always the best thing that you can do. Make it focused, make it clear, make it simple. Generally, that’s a rule for everything, but it was especially clear that that was a big rule for what we're doing here.
Even though you’ve done scores for some of the most popular characters in comic book history, are you someone who gravitates more toward characters on the fringes of pop culture?
Michael Giacchino: Always. Even if you had put up in front of me and said, “Do you want to do a movie about Iron Man or a movie about this little-known guy, Jack Russell?” I would absolutely pick Jack Russell, because there's something about people forced to live on the fringe of life as opposed to somebody like Tony Stark. I find those characters interesting, but not as interesting as the people who are dealing with these internal problems on top of feeling like another. There's something that I can sympathize with in that story.
Doctor Strange, I'm like, okay, that's a fringe character. That's someone off to the side. I enjoyed doing Spider-Man. He's definitely not a fringe character, but in terms of someone who feels separated or outside of the normal world, that is Spider-Man. Batman's great because Batman is like, “Justice League, sure, I'll help you, but I'm not going to live with you and not going to be at the office with you.” Keeps himself separate because there's something there that makes him feel like he doesn't quite belong. I love bringing those elements into the stories whenever I can.
Given your love of monsters, it’s surprising you haven’t scored many horror movies in your career.
Michael Giacchino: I haven't.
How does that happen?
Michael Giacchino: I think because they don't really make monster movies the way they used to. Horror is big right now. Everything is horror and everything is real, and I'm not a big fan of stabby movies, like guys going around with knives and killing people. Never my thing.
But monster movies I loved because, again, they were centered around a character who was broken and then persecuted for being broken, which was always so confusing to me. It goes back to the original King Kong. I first saw that and could not, as a kid, wrap my head around why they wanted to kill this thing. Why did they do this horrible thing, take him away from his home? Why were the planes shooting?
I tend to be attracted to stories more in that vein. There is no werewolf who wants to be a werewolf. I like stories about vampires that are like, “I didn't plan for this. This was not my choice. I didn't want this.” It's not often that they do those sorts of monster movies, so there hasn't been a whole lot of opportunity.
When you are writing “Werewolf by Night,” do you listen to film scores for inspiration?
Michael Giacchino: Sometimes, yes. I listened to a lot of older ones. I did listen to some of Max Steiner’s King Kong, The Mummy, Curse of the Werewolf – and actually, “Curse of the Werewolf” was the name of the [Marvel] book and record. That's what they called it instead of Werewolf by Night.
Even when you were watching those movies as a kid, were you responding strongly to the music?
Michael Giacchino: I had a lot of soundtracks growing up, but never in a way that I was like, “Oh, I want to write music one day.” The soundtracks were a way that I could relive those stories, because they would be on TV, then they would be off, and that was it. If you'd missed it at that particular time, then you weren't going to see it. You could see it in reruns, but you always had to look at the newspaper and see when they were going to be. But if I had the soundtrack, I could relive the stories. I could imagine the movie again in my head, so I spent so much time as a kid listening to film scores while I went to bed.
Which ones?
Michael Giacchino: King Kong, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters, and Poltergeist. It just goes on and on. Anything that I could get, I would. I had a record that had famous monster music – a combination of stuff that I would also use in the movies that I would make when I was a kid.
I never thought about writing music until much later, but the storytelling aspect of the soundtracks of that period were so solid. It's different now. There's a lot of music that is background music or a loop that continues for a while. It's more mood, and that can be fine, but the stuff I grew up with was super story-oriented. You could hear it and understand what was going on in the movie without even seeing the movie.
Why is that? Why the change?
Michael Giacchino: I think a lot of directors are afraid. They think people will be put off by it or think it's silly. I think there are ways to do it right where you don't overpower what's happening. You just have to be smart about it. I think people do want the theatricality of these kinds of stories. You saw Werewolf by Night, that was full of big stuff and no one seemed to mind. It's all about marrying it with the right sensibility, with the right picture, with the right sequences. All of those things have to be done so it feels like one idea. I think that that's not something that a lot of people do; they'd rather just cut and cut and have a piece of music that can play behind the whole thing no matter what. Sometimes that can be amazing, but I really enjoy the more operatic approach when the music is a character in the story.
What are some of the monsters in your future? What other stories do you want to tell?
Michael Giacchino: I'm working on Them! I'm directing that for Warner Brothers, which is a giant ant movie and one of the first giant monster movies. It was actually out before Godzilla. It was also tied into nuclear, what happens when you don't use it properly. That was in 1954. Here I am again doing another monster thing.
[Laughs] Good for you.
Michael Giacchino: There's just something really fun about it. I don't know, maybe I just want to share that love that I have and that I remember having as a kid with some other kid out there. Maybe we can get some other kid hooked on some monster stuff, too. I do think if you understand the monsters in all of these stories, it means that you are somebody who can be empathetic to other people who are different. I think that's an important story to tell.
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WEREWOLF BY NIGHT: BLOOD MOON RISE #1
A film journalist with over a decade of experience writing for Slash Film, The Credits, and High Times Magazine.
A film journalist with over a decade of experience writing for Slash Film, The Credits, and High Times Magazine.
