'k. So filmmakers:

The thing you have to keep in mind is that "filmmakers" at the level you interact with them are begging everything they can for free from everyone they meet. And if they get it for free, they treat it like it's worthless. And if they're paying at all, they treat it like it's all the money in the world and lean on you as if they gave you their firstborn. They probably weren't assholes when they started, but they're assholes now, that's for sure.

And as a composer, you have to keep in mind that the minute they opened up Premiere (because it's always Premiere now, because God is dead), they slapped some bullshit soundtrack they'll never be able to afford and they've been swapping out John Williams for Phillip Glass for James Horner for Mark Isham for fuckin' Gary Jules and their "vision" of the project is now "fuckin' Gary Jules but just different enough that I won't get sued."

They probably even told you that they liked your music. They probably told you they were interested in your "vision." They probably told you they were excited "to hear what you come up with." They were lying. They might have been lying to themselves as well as you - and they're probably so far up their own colons that they don't even understand where things went so wrong - after all, weren't we all on the same page (before you had any creative input)? But as it is now, the scenes only work when you use the soundtrack to The Piano or Perfume or Requiem for a Dream or whatever makes their black little auteur hearts swell and their tiny little auteur pricks grow stiff. And you know what? You're not Clint Mansell. You're not Tom Tykwer. And that means you will always and forever be wrong about anything and everything you do because they have a vision and you, my friend, are not living up to it. And that's your fault because they're an auteur.

You know what your real problem is? You were willing to burn your every creative minute in the service of someone else but you weren't willing to do it for yourself. Now that you've burned all that time for someone else you require external validation to justify the expenditure whereas if you'd cooked off that time for yourself you could play it back and go "hot damn."

Never give someone something for free and expect them to act like it's worth something. I once spent two solid fucking weekends polishing a USC audition tape for a friend of a friend. They legit yelled at me when I said I needed to make dinner for my kid because this shit is important. They got their fucking files, they got them on time, and they emailed me a gift certificate for $15 to Cheesecake Factory. And then they called to make sure I got it. Because they wanted to show me how grateful they were.

I made that chick sound like Sarah McLachlan. Because I'm good at what I do. And she didn't get into USC because you know what? She's not. But I wasn't doing it for them, I was doing it for my friend, so the Cheesecake Factory gift certificate was just the icing on a shitcake I was able to throw at him so that he knew down to his very bones that he rolls with assholes (and not to bring them my way ever again).

Make stuff for YOURSELF. Make it the way YOU want it. Don't depend on anyone to validate your efforts because they won't. You have to stand behind it and say "this is worth something" or else it's just someone else's means to an end and you will never, not in a million years, not ever, be that soundtrack they fell in love with their sophomore year when they still thought it was cool to bumper their obsessive swimmy out-of-focus too-long takes between the Academy leader and "fin."

Sometimes they just want a giant spider.