Mark Mothersbaugh will whip up his own take on the iconic theme song from Popeye for a new 3D CGI animated feature, Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy, which will air on Fox this fall to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the spinach-swilling sailor.

The former Devo frontman is no stranger to providing music for animated films and shorts, having contributed music to the Rugrats franchise for years, though he admits the new Popeye feature presents its challenges. "First off, we're talking about a sea chantey," he says. "Right there you're kind of running up against a few logistical and aesthetic concerns. It isn't 100 percent understood or appreciated by the culture that we're in right now, but maybe Pirates of the Caribbean and Master and Commander have sparked a new interest in salty dog culture. And we'll see if adding a kind of Dadaistic approach to the chantey might be just what it needs."

That approach includes modernizing the popular theme "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man." "With any luck it will sound like Devo meets Beck meets OutKast meets Popeye," he says. "At least that's the goal."

The new film isn't Mothersbaugh's first run-in with Popeye. A few years back, he restored music to more than 200 old episodes of the show. And a Devo obscurity, "Can You Take It," took its name from an old Popeye short. "All of these things just kind of coalesced into a big Popeye boil that had to pop."

In addition to the theme, Mothersbaugh has also scored the feature, which will also be released on DVD on November 9th. "I'm all set for the sea," he says. "I've been eating fish all week. And drinking rum, a lot of rum. We're also making hardtack in the garbage can out back. Maybe we'll poke a few eyes out. So we should be ready."

Mothersbaugh has been plenty busy scoring live-action films as well. The new Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen features his original music, and he's been working with director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) on The Life Aquatic, marking the fourth time they've collaborated.

Mothersbaugh and Anderson's working relationship is unorthodox by film industry standards, with the former privy to Anderson's screenwriting process, which provides initial inspiration for his music. Anderson then incorporates the music into his shoots, often listening to it on headphones while the camera rolls. "It's all about him having some foresight," Mothersbaugh says, "because he has more free time to think about music before the shooting begins than after. Music is so often an afterthought in films. Wes has a different take: He's worked it into his method. He should be making his way back from the shoot Italy . . . no doubt via an old three-masted schooner."

ANDREW DANSBY
(February 19, 2004)