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American Dreamz Picture 5
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American Dreamz Production Notes "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." - Andy Warhol
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 Cover Your Ears- The Music of American Dreamz“If these people know nothing about talent, there's not much I can do about it, is there?”
-“American Dreamz” hopeful Iqbal Riza
To capture the essence of an “American Idol”-type competition, the music of American Dreamz needed to replicate the uninspired compositions often sung by many of the amateur performers on the actual singing contests that have become sensations in countries around the world.
To write some original “bad” songs for the “American Dreamz” competitions, the filmmakers brought in composer Stephen Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), with whom they had previously worked on In Good Company. To get in the appropriate mindset, Trask proceeded to immerse himself in musical styles that were most definitely not to his taste. By listening to and studying gooey pop music, he felt he would be able to find inspiration for creating lyrics and music that wouldn't be just bad, but believably bad.
“It was very embarrassing,” laughs Trask. “When I would go to the record store where I regularly shop, I actually felt compelled to explain what I was doing. It was just too humiliating to be buying all this really popular, disposable pop.”
Trask found that the contestants on each season of the hit series “American Idol” chose the same pop song selections time and again. Shockingly, the audience listening and voting for their favorite “Idol” contestants never seemed to tire of the same sentimental tunes.
“I tried to get inside a songwriting style and to write well…but from somebody else's instincts,” remembers Trask. “The idea was not to write badly, but to write well from what I think of as bad instincts.”
Relying on this method to compose a song proved to be difficult for the composer, and there were many times when he had to toss away a composition because it was just too good. “When I brought the first draft of `Rockin' Man' (sung by a spoofed long-haired rocker in the film) to play for Paul,” the composer shares, “his first comment was that it was great. And he was right, it was too good.”
To aid in reviving his “bad” instincts, Trask went through popular song titles and started noticing that many infamous pop-rock titles were not only pedestrian, the songs lyrics were repetitive. For example, he found the compositions including “I'll Never Stop Loving You,” “I've Never Felt This Way Before” and “You Are My Life” managed redundant phrases that stretched over the same melodies, again and again-perfect for what Trask needed to accomplish.
As producer Liber was trying to figure out how the very expensive proposition of retaining the rights to many well-known songs would fit into the film's budget, Trask surprised Liber by suggesting an unconventional partner who would alleviate costs and help in writing some of the tunes: Paul Weitz.
Weitz assured Liber that he would help write the songs and meet their production deadline. The skeptical producer gave Weitz and Trask eight weeks to write, and, in typical fashion, they were done on time.
“We wrote, `Let's Not Be Friends' together,” Trask relates. “It started off with some lines that Paul was just singing-a simple melody and lyrics. We also wrote `Mommy Don't Drink Me to Bed Tonight,' as well as `Rockin' Man'-which is sure to be a Grammy winner…”
Weitz and Trask felt anything too original would have been inappropriate for the film. To continue the emphasis on all things plain, all three songs were given an almost identical instrumentation-the same sounds, the same big snare with the never-ending reverberation and the same sax solo.
Luckily, the Depth of Field team had some actual vocal talent with whom to work: the multitalented Mandy Moore. Weitz reflects of his chanteuse as the irrepressible Sally Kendoo: “I knew Mandy was a pop star, but I had no idea if she could actually sing, or if a 50-year-old soul singer was doubling for her voice. And then she came in and recorded Steven's “Dreamz With a Z,” and I realized she had just an incredible voice.”
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