Mike Patton “Bungles” the Creature Noises in “I Am Legend”
When the mutated victims of a plague come after Will Smith in “I Am Legend,” the malevolent noises they make all come from Mike Patton.
“It just fell out of the sky, to be honest,” said the former lead singer of Faith No More and Mr. Bungle. “The only thing I can cite really is, I had a friend who was working on the movie, and he probably threw my name in the hat at some point, because a lot of the sound people were frustrated with the sonics, the sounds of these infected beasts.”
If anyone could summon the sound emanating from formerly human creatures, it was Patton. As the frontman for the experimental hard rock band Faith No More, Patton became a star with “Epic,” a 1989 hit that melded majestic heavy metal and progressive rock with old-school hip-hop.
But “Epic” only skimmed the surface of Patton’s musical ambitions and abilities. Before, during and after his tenure with Faith No More, Patton led Mr. Bungle, a band prone to Frank Zappa-esque musical twists that could incorporate Middle Eastern melodies, avant-jazz workouts and Beach Boys harmonies — often within one song.
He went on to form the adventurous metal band Fantomas with members of the Melvins and Slayer, started his own influential record label, Ipecac, and collaborated with producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura on two genre-bending hip-hop projects, Lovage and Peeping Tom.
And somewhere in the middle, Faith No More scored a mellow hit with “Easy,” an extremely Faith-ful cover of the Commodores ballad.
This bizarre resume led the producers of “I Am Legend” to Patton, 39. He was called in to remedy a common problem with the creature sound on big-budget movies.
“Apparently from what they tell me, everybody uses these stock … sounds of pitch-shifted animals, basically. They layer them to varying degree, but he just cited 10, 20 movies that all used that formula — pigs, horses, whatever,” Patton said before letting out a combination horse whinny and pig snort. “They wanted something that was a little more human and a little more organic. I said, ‘Well, I’ll do my best.’ I didn’t know how it would pan out.”
Patton was invited to a studio in Los Angeles where “looping” takes place — the process of re-dubbing dialogue and sound in films. He stood in front of a giant screen as the filmmakers played raw footage from “I Am Legend.” He improvised the noises based on what he saw, but Patton said the images flashing on screen were almost comically unfinished.
“I was trying to embody these creatures that weren’t even creatures yet,” he said. “Like, on the screen, what you’d see was 30 guys in motion-capture suits. Literally, you’re watching 30 human beings in tights, trying to be scary.”
Patton is known for working on four or five projects at once, and his latest wild swing into new territory includes writing the score for a 25-minute film noir titled, “A Perfect Place.” The music ranges from horror themes to free jazz workouts and off-balance Al Jolson-style crooning. In short, Patton is in his wheelhouse.
“That is kind of all over the place, because the director told me from the get-go, not only did he want me to do the score, but all of the source music, like, every time anybody walks in the room or turns on a radio,” he said. “He wanted me to take one theme and milk it to death, which is an old technique, but fun and challenging. The movie is 25 minutes long, and I probably wrote 40 minutes of music.”
Patton is currently strategizing for the next Peeping Tom album. The last one included a collaboration with Norah Jones on the extremely non-Norah Jonesy song, “Sucker,” and while he has a list of new Peeping Tom partners, he’s playing it close to the vest.
“As ugly as this is, I have my superstitions,” Patton said. “If I start talking about it, it’s not going to happen. There’s a lot of leg work that needs to be done, and I don’t want to put the hex on it.”
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