Spa Weekend Composer on Salacious Scene, Distinguishing Genre Work

Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies | Tagged: Spa Weekend

Spa Weekend Composer on Salacious Scene, Distinguishing Genre Work

Spa Weekend composer Philip White spoke to us about one of the film's more salacious scenes and how comedy is more difficult than other genres.

Published Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:16:08 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• Spa Weekend composer Philip White breaks down the film’s signature hand massage scene and its escalating erotic comedy.
• White reveals how Spa Weekend balanced spa-like textures, modern synths, and precise tonal shifts for key scenes.
• The interview explores why comedy scoring is harder than drama, requiring exact timing to sell jokes without intrusion.
• Philip White also explains how Spa Weekend’s sensual trailer scene had to top the hand massage musically and emotionally.

Composer Philip White has learned a lot on the job since emerging in the scene in 2006, working in several genres, including fantasy, horror, action, drama, and comedy, in several high-profile projects, including the live-action hybrid Smurfs films, Supernatural, Dallas reboot, Ray Donovan, Agent Carter, Bates Motel, and Lost in Space remake. His latest, the Black Bear comedy Spa Weekend, follows four childhood best friends (Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Anna Faris, and Michelle Buteau who have grown apart as adults and try to enjoy a weekend at a spa where chaos ensues. In part two of our interview, White spoke with Bleeding Cool about his standout and most challenging sequences in the film, including the infamous salacious hand-massage scene, and how he approaches genre work. The following contains spoilers.

Spa Weekend Composer Philip White on the Infamous Hand Massage Scene and How Comedy Is More Difficult Than Other Genres

Bleeding Cool: Was there a standout or challenging sequence for you to score?
White: We wanted to create a spa, an escape kind of sound. I mean, how would you describe that? Well, with the instrumentation I described, but not leaning too much into sounds that would place it in the Caribbean or Hawaii, or make it sound too country. Some of those shifts or some of those adjustments were fairly subtle voicings on the pedal steel, just changing the voicings a little bit. You would think the use of steel drums would be appropriate, not as much, because that very much places it in the Caribbean world. At the same time, trying to incorporate the fact that it's a contemporary movie with contemporary sounds, and these ladies are middle-aged. What might they be listening to today? So, touches of modern synths, getting that balance right between the modern synths and the other elements.

One moment, which was very important to the movie early on, they wanted to nail this right, and it took some time for us to really dial it in, was the scene where one of the ladies is getting a hand massage; it becomes extremely erotic and sexy towards the end of this. The joke is… There are a few different jokes and beats that happen throughout that scene, and so, getting that right, there's a joke about, like, "Oh God, I feel like I'm in a Sade video," so of course, I had to do my due research and be like, "Okay, what is that actually?" It's been a few decades since I've heard Sade, so there's a nod to that. There's another part which feels extremely emotional, not dark necessarily, but just intense. For the last third, it's just a full-on orgasm. We played with, like, "Do we just try, like, a full-on 70s kind of porn-style music that would be recognizable to enough people? Or do we shy away from it and not make it so over the top?" It's obvious what's happening, but in the end, we thought the guys wisely thought it was just funnier to just lean into that, so that's what we ended up doing.

Immediately following that was the sex scene in the trailer with the lead guy, Kai (Adam Demos), but that had to feel more of a culmination than what came before. So, dialing that up appropriately with synths and with everything else was also important. If what came before during the hand massage was very stylistically specific in each of those sorts of three sections, what comes after had to… "sound like an orgasm," for lack of a better way of putting it, and not just one that you would trigger with a hand massage. It took a lot, but I'm so happy with the way everything turned out. It was really great, and it works well in the movie.

How do you compare doing comedy to your other genre work?

Comedies are definitely harder, a 100 percent. You don't want to step on anybody's delivery. It's so easy for music to ruin the moment, and the instinct, a lot of times, is to let the joke land dry. A lot of times we did that, but I feel there's a lot more finessing of instrumentation and everything that you do compositionally to sell the joke when it needs to and get out of the way when you need to, much more so than in dramas.

I feel with drama, one of your roles, at least, is painting a holistic environment for the drama to play out, and sometimes that's enough. Sometimes you don't need too much more. It doesn't need to be so finely calibrated beat by beat, but with comedies, in order to make them feel sharp, they need to be that finely tuned. Comedies are definitely hard, but they're so satisfying, and when they land, the comedy just comes alive, and it's quite satisfying. In terms of shifting between genres, I love it. That's what keeps everything interesting and fresh. As it turns out, I've done more comedy features. I certainly love to do a dramatic feature, so I'm a little more accustomed to it. Then again, I've also worked on 'Supernatural' for many years, and it was mostly dramatic, with comedic moments.

Spa Weekend is available in theaters.

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