Interview

GO: Everything is on YouTube now. You don’t even have to have a reel anymore. You can just send people a link.

MJ: This little girl did a video of a song that I did a few years ago for the Underworld [2003] soundtrack. She did this video of herself in her room at night, singing to this song, and it’s just so wonderful. I had to put it up on my website—it made me feel so good that here’s this teenager who’s totally vibing out and getting all dark to my music alone at home. I could just imagine her mom shouting from downstairs, like, “Claire, are you listening to that song again?”

GO: Is that a song that was on your album [The Divine Comedy, 1994]?

MJ: No. A friend of mine named Danny Lohner does a lot of soundtracks now. He used to play bass in Nine Inch Nails, and we’ve been friends for, like, 15 years. He occasionally asks me to do some singing for him. Last week I did a song with him for the new Underworld: Rise of the Lycans soundtrack. It’s a remix of a Cure song, so I actually got to sing with Robert Smith, which was really cool.

GO: I’m always listening to the soundtrack from the Wim Wenders film The Million Dollar Hotel [2000] with U2, Daniel Lanois, Hal Willner, and Jon Hassell. You sing on it. That’s one of the great, underrated records.

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MJ: Oh, that’s a good one.

GO: Salman Rushdie wrote the greatest lyrics for Bono to sing on “The Ground Beneath Her Feet.”

MJ: That really is just an amazing group of people who got involved to do that soundtrack.

GO: Oh, here’s my son. Oscar, come here a second. This is Milla—can you say hi to Oscar?

MJ: Yeah.

GO: Oscar, this is Milla. She was in that movie that we were watching yesterday. I let Oscar watch part of Resident Evil, and he’s totally freaked out now about zombies. So could you tell him that they’re just a bunch of ham actors?

MJ: Hi, Oscar.

OSCAR: Hi.

MJ: How’s it going?

O: Good.

MJ: Did you get a little freaked out watching that movie?

O: Yeah.

MJ: You know, it’s all makeup. You know what, Oscar? We might shoot another Resident Evil, and if we do, you should come on set so you can see how they make the zombies. You can go to the makeup trailer and check it out.

O: Well, only one zombie freaked me out.

MJ: Which one was that?

O: Um . . . the guy with half a face.

MJ: You’ve got to see how they make all that stuff. They use corn syrup for blood and all this other makeup . . . You would totally laugh as soon as you saw it being done. You’d never be scared of movies again, because it’s all really funny. When we shoot the next movie, you’ve got to come down and take a look, okay?

O: Okay.

MJ: [laughs] Cool. Nice talking to you, Oscar.

O: Bye.

GO: I think the zombies were just an excuse. He didn’t really want to go down to the basement to get some vegetables.

MJ: When we shoot the next Resident Evil he’s got to come on set to check it out.

GO: Yeah, he could have been one of the zombie kids who ate the anchorwoman.

MJ: The zombie kids were a little freaky.