Michael Giacchino Was a Crazed 9-Year-Old 'Star Wars' Geek

But Giacchino admits that he was “pretty adverse" to rock 'n' roll. “I hate to admit it," he told me the other day, “but I was listening to a lot of stuff that my parents had. I loved Benny Goodman, Louie Prima, 'West Side Story' and 'The Jungle Book.' To me, Benny Goodman is a genius. His clarinet solos aren't random. They're so melodic that you can actually sing back the solo, note for note. You can keep that solo right inside you."

When people talk about their favorite film composers these days, Giacchino's name is usually near the top of everyone's list. Discovered scoring video games by J.J. Abrams, he's emerged as one of the most versatile composers of our time, not only working on most of Abrams' TV projects, including “Alias" and “Lost," but a variety of feature films, such as Abrams' “Star Trek" and Pixar's “Ratatouille" and “Up," the latter of which has earned Giacchino his second Oscar nomination for best score.

I've been doing an informal series on Oscar nominees and the influences that shaped their work, so I recently checked in with Giacchino to hear about the music and composers who made a big impression on him. Like most people of his generation, the 42-year-old composer was indelibly influenced by one movie: “Star Wars."

“I was 9 when I saw it, and this little red light went off in my head that said, 'That's what I want to do!' “ he recalls. “I remember everything about it. My family was on vacation in Cape Cod and my older brother had gone to see the film first and he came home and said to my sister and me, 'You've gotta see this film!' He really couldn't even describe the experience -- he kept fumbling around, trying to figure out how to explain it. But we went and it was just a totally exhilarating, emotional experience. I loved everything about it, especially the triumph of good over evil, and how the characters were always finding ways to take care of each other during all their adventures."

I asked Giacchino if he noticed the music, or was simply swept up in the story. “Oh, I definitely noticed the music," he says. “I made my dad buy me the soundtrack album, because in those days, the only way to relive the experience of the film was to get the soundtrack. I'd sneak tape recorders into movie theaters, record the sounds of the movies and then listen to them at night on a little speaker I'd rigged up in bed by my pillow. I was always into the story that a film told, and sometimes the soundtrack album would take everything out of order. So I made my own tapes, so I could always be sure to hear the story in the right sequence."

There were plenty of other films that left a big imprint on the young Giacchino's imagination, in particular “Raiders of the Lost Ark," “Planet of the Apes" and “2001," which he sheepishly admits that he first saw on TV, not on the big screen. Being a composer, he even remembers that Stanley Kubrick, after hiring the great Alex North to do the music, threw out all of North's music at the last minute and ended up using Kubrick's original temp track of classical music.