Bear was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk with House of Horrors about his current and upcoming projects. 

Jonathan Stryker:  You were born in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  What was life like growing up in Florida? 

Bear McCreary:  I actually grew up in a town near Seattle, WA.  It’s called Bellingham, WA and it’s the last town before the Canadian border.  It’s about the farthest you can go and still be in the continental United States.  Although it was a great place to grow up, there really weren’t too many opportunities to score films there. 

JS: Really?  Nobody is knocking down doors in Bellingham, WA to score films?

BM:  No!  (laughs)  So, I had to come down here to Los Angeles to pursue my career in scoring films.

JS:  Did you go to the movies often?    

BM:  Yes I did, but I was so young and I was taken to movies before they really meant anything to me.  One of the first movies that I saw that really blew me away was BACK TO THE FUTURE.  Sometime later I caught up with WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, and the Alan Silvestri score was just wonderful.  It hadn’t even occurred to me that both of those films were scored by the same person.  I just remember thinking, What is this crazy music?  I just thought it was great.  And then I got into the sort of epic sci-fi scores, like STAR WARS and STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE and similar films of the 1980s, all that stuff caught my ear at that time.  I basically started seeing as many movies as I could, and eventually when I was in high school I started listening to the older classic scores from the golden age of cinema and that sort of cemented my love of the medium. 

JS:  When you were a child, home video was really starting to take off as a viable medium for people to watch movies.  VHS rentals were all the rage.  Did you grow up seeing a lot of these influential films on videotape?

BM:  Well, it is true that I did see quite a few movies on video.  But it was really about going to see these films in the theater that really made me love movies.  Seeing them on video was something that I did simply because you could watch them over and over and watch them on your own time and there was something really cool about that.  But I really prefer to see movies with other people in a theater.

JS:  I agree.  I’m grateful to home-video because now we can own and watch our favorite movies over and over again, but at the same time I really do prefer to see movies projected in the theater on film.  And I love the audience paticipation, getting people riled up during Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS was such an experience!  (laughs)  My friend and I had the whole audience yelling and screaming, and there is no substitute for that.  I’ve really only seen a handful of films in my life where I felt a connection to the other people in the audience.  STAR WARS being one, of course, and SUPERMAN THE MOVIE to a certain extent.  And I miss that.  I wish that there was more of that.  Elmer Bernstein is one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of our time, with a filmography almost as long as Ennio Morricone’s who scored over 400 films.  How did you come to work with him? 

BM:  I actually met him when I was in high school in Bellingham.  He owned a yacht out there, and I ended up meeting through him through a mutual friend. I managed to get him to listen to some of the music that I wrote.  Later on I discovered that people sent him demo discs all the time, but he didn’t have much free time so he didn’t really listen to them.  But he made a special exception just for me.  He was impressed by my music, and that began a 10-year relationship that lasted through the time that I spent living down here in Los Angeles.  Initially I sat in on some of his classes that he taught at the University of Southern California, and this was even before I had the chance to even take them.  Then, I started working for him over a couple of summers by detailing and categorizing all of his scores and manuscripts, and he had boxes and boxes and closets full of this stuff.  I had to organize all of his work by year, by film title, etc. Then a few summers later I did some orchestrations for him.  For example, I took the KINGS OF THE SUN, which was a film that he did in 1963 with Yul Brynner.  The recordings had been long lost, the actual orchestral scores had been long lost and the only thing that really remained were his original handwritten pencil sketches.  So I went through and re-orchestrated the entire film and put together concert suites for him which he performed all over the world.  In fact, one of the last recording sessions that he ever did just before he passed away was a recording of KINGS OF THE SUN based upon the re-orchestration that I had done.  It’s actually part of the Film Music Collection box set that is available now.  It was so cool to have the opportunity just to be able to look at his sketches.  I mean, forget about being able to re-orchestrate the music, just to be able to go through these years worth of documents was really quite something to see.  I would be flipping through all these documents and I would spend many an afternoon looking through the scores to GHOSTBUSTERS, THREE AMIGOS, and ANIMAL HOUSE.  It was just amazing seeing this incredible music that came together.  Just to see his original material was an incredible learning experience.

JS:  I love his reworking of the Bernard Herrmann score to CAPE FEAR, and I love what he did for SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.  Another of my favorites is Jerry Goldsmith. 

BM:  I met him once, and it was great.  He’s definitely one of my heroes.

JS:  His scores for THE OTHER, THE OMEN, ALIEN, and POLTERGEIST are among the best of the genre.  How did the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles come to be your university of choice? 

BM:  I did a lot of research when I was in high school, and I basically wanted to find out what the number one school was for studying film music, and that’s the one that came up.  So, that’s where I went from 1997 to 2002.  I got my degree in Composition and got a minor in Recording Arts.  I was also active in their film scoring program.  To say the least, I was insanely busy the whole time I was there.  I actually scored over 30 student films there, too.  These films provided for a better learning experience than anything I could get in the classroom.  Just collaborating with people and dealing with the types of questions on a daily basis was invaluable.  One of the interesting things about it was that I told myself even though it was frustrating and hard, that once I got into the big leagues I wouldn’t have to deal with this kind of crap.  And the funny thing was when I got the chance to see Elmer and other composers at work, they were all dealing with the exact same questions from directors that I was dealing with from the 19-year-olds in school!  So, I realized that it didn’t get any better, but this is the way it is.  And the thing that was obviously cool about this was the fact that all the experiences that I had all ready gone through working on student films would now be totally relevant to working in the big leagues. 

JS:  That must have come to quite a shock to you. 

BM:  At that point my life it certainly was a shock to me.  It was actually a relief afterward because I realized that everything that I was doing on short movies would be relevant to the much larger projects that I would eventually take on.

JS:  I think that the same is probably true of the Roger Corman school of filmmaking.  Some of the actors and directors and film editors who cut their teeth working for Roger Corman learned how to get a film done on time and under budget.

BM: Exactly.

JS:  Directors like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jonathan Kaplan and Allan Arkush all started working on ultra low-budget films and ultimately ran into the same issues on bigger movies.  How did you come to score the new version of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA? 

BM:  Bob Kane, from my association with composer Richard Gibbs (he scored the pilot miniseries), I worked for him when I got out of school.  I was his assistant and I also wrote queues for him when we were working on projects that had an intense deadline – and BATTLESTAR was no different, trust me – and I had developed a relationship with the BATTLESTAR filmmakers who Richard knew, and when it came time to do this series Richard went back to doing feature films and I got to pick up right where he left off.

JS:  Your music to BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is much different than Stu Phillips’s score to the 1978 series of the same name, which is symphonic and bombastic in a John Williams sort of way.  Are you a fan of the original series? 

BM:  I'm not a fan of it only because it was just a little bit before my time.  It was off the air by the time I was born in 1979 and when I was old enough to watch TV it was gone completely.  But, I am fan of the music and I firmly believe that Stu Phillips’s score is the reason why the show has remained in the hearts of so many fans.  I really believe his music elevated that show.  The acting was good, and the effects were good, but I really believe that it was that music that elevated the show to that level where people really remember it.

JS:  If you look at STAR WARS and you take away John Williams’ music, what do you really have?  My introduction to film music began in a big way with STAR WARS.  Was Alan Silvestri the composer you really were taken with? 

BM:  It's hard to say.  I would definitely say that Alan Silvestri and Danny Elfman were my greatest influences.  And John Williams as well.  Alan Silvestri was the first really big composer I noticed.  BACK TO THE FUTURE and PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE really piqued my interest. 

JS:  I love James Horner’s music, too.  He’s done an incredible amount of films.  I love WILLOW in particular, and ALIENS  of course.  The first movie I saw with the score with BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS.  I saw that in a theater in 1980.  I remember being quite impressed with the music at that time.  Are you a fan of horror films? 

BM: I am, actually.  And it's been great to have worked on a few of them so far, such as REST STOP and WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END.

JS:  What are some of your favor of horror films?

BM:  I love the horror films of the 70’s: THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN, those kinds of films.  The horror films of the 80’s generally don’t do as much for me.  I love the EVIL DEAD films are great.  THE OMEN is a fantastic score. 

JS:  Have you seen David Schmoeller’s TOURIST TRAP?

BM:  No, I haven’t. 

JS:  Pino Donaggio wrote a great score for that film, and for Nicholas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW.  One of the things that sort of annoyed me about the 1980s was the fact that so many movies were abandoning full-fledged scores in favor of popular music to take its place.  So, the scores than I grew up listening to, these great movies and amazing orchestral scores, would now sort of take a backseat to just having popular music on the soundtrack.  And this is also reflected in the soundtrack albums of the day.

BM:  You’re right.  In a way, it was the beginning of the end of the melodic horror film score, which I think all through the 1990s and even up to the modern day has just reached an incredible point where the horror music is just sound design, and after the first 20 minutes of the film or so the music is – all the cards are on the table, you know?  It's as dissident and angular as it is going to get. It almost sounds like a jackhammer outside of your window.  Honestly, I was very hesitant to do a horror film for this reason, but I talked to the director of REST STOP and asked him if we could try something more melodic and thematic and I mentioned these films from the 1970s.  He himself actually referenced DUEL, the Steven Spielberg film.  So I said that this was a really cool place to start.  And he was really excited by the prospect, so it turned out to be a really fruitful experience.  REST STOP turned out to be one of the most fun projects I’ve yet done.

JS:  I love Billy Goldberg’s music for DUEL.  It's a very minimalistic score.  I don't even think it appears for more than 15 minutes in the film in total and it's a shame because to my knowledge it's never been available as a soundtrack album in any way shape or form.  But I think what it was just great.  Really creepy.  Your score for REST STOP is delightfully creepy and also poignant, and I’m glad to see it available as a soundtrack album.  How did your approach to this project differ from that of a weekly series?  Did you have more time to do this score, or was there still a deadline?

BM:  I was on an extremely intense deadline.  That's just the bane of Indie medium to low-budget projects.  There's no getting away from that.  The main difference was that I had to develop the material in ways that were different from what I am used to.  On BATTLESTAR, I can plant a musical seed that pays off later.  For example, if I know that there's a storyline (or two) that's going to be headed in a certain direction I can squeeze in certain ideas and themes early on and have them come full circle toward the end of that story arc.  The payoffs can come later in the next episodes or next season.  But in the film, it's totally different.  You have a 90-minute story, and anything that you want to do with those themes you have a very limited amount of time in which to do it.  And in a way it's more fun, because I can really take that material further.  For example, Nicole’s theme, which is in almost every single queue for REST STOP, as is the driver’s theme, because it was such a small self-contained film, it there was the cat and mouse theme prevalent throughout.  The driver’s theme and Nicole’s theme are constantly at war with each other in music.  But, in the TV show that has an entire story, so I can be a little more subtle about.

JS:  Have you seen WOLF CREEK?

BM:  No I have not.

JS:  Oh, my God.  What a movie!  François Tétaz wrote a score that is very creepy, tense and ominous.  It’s available as a soundtrack album.  I would highly recommend seeking this one out. 

BM:  Definitely.

JS:  How does your score to WRONG TURN 2 differ from Elia Cmiral’s score to WRONG TURN? 

BM:  When I was ready to score WRONG TURN 2, Joe Lynch the director told me to hold off and not watch the original; I hadn’t seen it.  He didn't want my score to this film to sound just like the original score in the original film.  WRONG TURN 2 is a full orchestral score and is much different from the original: it sounds a little bit like REST STOP with bluegrass music, mandolins, banjos, and other instruments.  We also used dissonant synthesizers and vocals.  Ironically, it's similar REST STOP in its instrumentation, but it's also nothing like REST STOP.  The soundtrack CD is now available. 

JS:  What is your favorite film score? 

BM:  TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Elmer Bernstein. 

JS:  How many soundtrack albums do you own? 

BM:  Over 2000.  I have collected soundtracks since I was a kid.  And then you get to a point where you forget which ones you have! 

JS:  What is next for you? 

BM:  I’m scoring two new television series: EUREKA and TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, which airs in January on Fox.

JS:  Great!  Looking forward to hearing those as well.

BM:  Thanks!