Singer-songwriter Michael Penn recently scored Melvin Goes to Dinner, the new movie from Mr. Show co-conspirator Bob Odenkirk. Comedian David Cross, Odenkirk's partner in Mr. Show, makes a cameo in the film as a self-help cult leader.

"It was a matter of finding the right tones," says Penn, who also did the scores for Boogie Nights and The Anniversary Party. "Bob liked the idea of having some acoustic guitar arpeggios for main themes."

The film revolves around a dinner Melvin has with his "loud and seemingly happy" friend Joey and two women. "The character pieces have specific identifying characteristics," says Penn. "For instance, the 'Joey' piece of music is a weird sort of waltz that's meant to sound old and kind of fucked up. I actually degraded the quality of the way certain things sounded to make it sound like it was coming off old 78 records."

For a scene with the David Cross character, Penn channeled some bearded Texans to get the mood just right. "They'd picked out a ZZ Top song that had the perfect vibe but had these annoying lyrics distracting you from the scene," says Penn. "I recorded essentially the same kind of song, but I made the vocal unintelligible and distorted. It's pedal to the metal."

Penn's other recent projects include producing much of the new Liz Phair album. He originally did the whole album, but several tracks went by the wayside when Phair later teamed up with pop hit-makers the Matrix (Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears). "We tried so hard to make an inexpensive record, pulling favors for very little money," Penn says. "I guess when she got some extra dough, she decided to write with the Matrix. I didn't know if any of my stuff was actually going to survive.

"Liz is so wonderfully perverse," Penn continues. "I think she looks at working with the Matrix as like a performance art project, and they are remarkably good at what they do. It might have bothered me if she had gone with somebody more like me, but this is apples and oranges."

Penn is also forging ahead with a new album of his own, his fifth, that he expects to be completed sometime "before we find weapons of mass destruction."

COLIN DEVENISH
(June 20, 2003)