Michael Penn

I recently had a conversation with musician Michael Penn, maker of critically acclaimed albums, composer of P.T. Anderson films, husband of Aimee Mann. He's as intense as his brother Sean, if all those Charlie Rose interviews I've watched are any indication. For our purposes here we kept it light - the catalyst for our chat was IFC's comedy mini-series "Bollywood Hero" after all, for which wrote three songs. But in an amnesiac age where the most common catch phrase is going forward, Penn is an artist with a crisply realistic view of history (and the brand of "monopoly capitalism" we've been practicing since 1947), he's wary of the lowered bar of the present ("once upon a time there was the notion of the hi-fi and people really cared about the integrity of sound, and now people listen to music on their fucking phones"), and I really hope that voices (and...

I recently had a conversation with musician Michael Penn, maker of critically acclaimed albums, composer of P.T. Anderson films, husband of Aimee Mann. He’s as intense as his brother Sean, if all those Charlie Rose interviews I’ve watched are any indication. For our purposes here we kept it light – the catalyst for our chat was IFC’s comedy mini-series “Bollywood Hero” after all, for which wrote three songs.

But in an amnesiac age where the most common catch phrase is going forward, Penn is an artist with a crisply realistic view of history (and the brand of “monopoly capitalism” we’ve been practicing since 1947), he’s wary of the lowered bar of the present (“once upon a time there was the notion of the hi-fi and people really cared about the integrity of sound, and now people listen to music on their fucking phones”), and I really hope that voices (and aesthetics) such as his thrive in our future.

Read the interview.