How Michael Giacchino Turned a Greatest Hits Album Into a Soundtrack for Basement Tiki Bars

Michael Giacchino, one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and prolific composers, certainly has enough material for a greatest hits album. He’s created the brilliant scores to “The Incredibles,” “Up,” “Lost” and 2009’s “Star Trek” (among many, many others). An album with cues from these titles (and others that he’d composed), would do gangbusters. But he didn’t want to do just another greatest hits album.

Instead, he thought about his uncle Pete, who lived outside of Philadelphia. Uncle Pete, you see, owned an appliance store.

“He also sold stereos, and at the stereos were those big console stereos which we love. And RCA would send him tons of these demo records for the customers, so they can understand how great it sounds. Inevitably, we would go visit the store on weekends, and he would always give us albums to take home,” Giacchino explained. Soon enough, they had a giant collection of records, including exotica albums by pioneers like Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. “I grew up listening to those albums and I love them. I have such a huge space in my heart for them. And I still listen to that music today.”

The music, Giacchino said, “takes you and put you in a place that feels like it’s a fantasy.” When he started thinking about putting together a greatest hits album, he was reluctant to simply recycle tracks from earlier albums, since it’s very easy to just do that on iTunes or Spotify (“You can make your own greatest hits”). Giacchino thought, Why don’t we do something different?

He wanted to replicate both how Uncle Pete’s albums were produced – “one of those albums that shows us what stereo can do, to have things and hard left and right” – but also in the sensation that the records provided.

“This idea of exotica at the time, that was people who couldn’t get a go on trips would be at home in their basement bars listening to this music, there’s just something about that that I love,” Giacchino said. He issued an edict: “Let’s create something that people can listen to in their basement bars at home and have had this journey with it.”

He found a willing partner in Mutant, the new label formed by key personnel from Mondo, who jumped at the chance to release the album. “I was like, ‘Listen guys, I’m about to pitch you the album that no one ever asked for. I’m the only one who wants this album, just because I think it would be fun to do,’” Giacchino said. Thus the album, “Exotic Themes for the Silver Screen, Vol. 1,” was born.

The 23-track album, which lasts for a little over an hour, had a structural framework, with every cue from a project he completed between 1997 and 2011. This would allow for some of his earlier projects, like a video game based on Steven Spielberg’s “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” and some of his lesser-known scores, to get the spotlight. (Including things that a greatest hits album would have probably glossed over.)

“I was like, I want to hit something from either every film or like at least franchise that that that that I’ve done,” Giacchino said. This includes games like “Medal of Honor” or TV shows like “Alias.” There’s even a tiki-worthy version of his theme to Disneyland’s Space Mountain attraction, which was already pretty groovy.

Sometimes he would choose a main theme “and that worked out great.” But other projects, like the Wachowksis’ “Speed Racer,” required a different approach, since Giacchino didn’t write that main theme. “There’s a couple of tracks in here that might be fun to translate into this style,” Giacchino said of the “Speed Racer” score. He ended up picking “Casa Cristo,” “because my kids were obsessed with that movie and they’re specially obsessed with that scene in the movie.” They would make him play the track when they were driving in the car and act out the scene. “There’s a lot of memories that go into what was being picked,” Giacchino said. “It’s really more of a scrapbook for me than it is anything else. In a way these represent a life lived and not just a not just a job, not just something that was happened to be at the time.”

Giacchino is insanely busy at the moment. He’s scoring Marvel’s “Fantastic Four” movie, which will be released next year (you might have heard some of an early cue during the Marvel Studios drone show at San Diego Comic-Con or during the Marvel music panel at D23), and Matt Reeves’ sequel to “The Batman,” due out in 2026.

And he’s developing projects of his own to direct, including a remake of giant ant classic “Them!” for Warner Bros., something that he thought would be quicker. (“When I’m doing film scores, I can just jump in, jump out, do it. I thought, for some reason that, Oh, movies are going to be the same thing. No. It’s like molasses,” Giacchino said.) He’s also got “Exotic Themes Vol. 2” on the way, which he teases will include titles like “John Carter,” “Lightyear” and (of course) “The Batman.”

The second volume was Mutant’s idea, which he seemed, at least initially, to question.

“I was like, Yeah, I like that idea. I think that’s really fun. Let’s put one out. Let’s see if anyone even bites on the weirdness of this whole thing and then go from there,” Giacchino said. The response, so far, has been strong, which makes him feel better. “I thought I’d be the only one buying this album or wanting this album. I almost made it for my own tiki bar in a way. But hopefully people will be able to take this thing and if they have small bars at home, played it there and have a drink and relax and just remember some TV show or movie that you loved.”

“Exotic Themes for the Silver Screen, Vol. 1” is available wherever you stream your music and in a handsome vinyl edition from Mutant.