Spa Weekend Composer on Infusing Chaos, ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ Vibes

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

Spa Weekend Composer on Infusing Chaos, 'Beverly Hills Cop' Vibes

Composer Philip White (Supernatural) spoke to us about scoring the Black Bear comedy Spa Weekend, playing into scenarios, and more.

Published Sun, 13 Sep 2026 08:16:08 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• Spa Weekend composer Philip White breaks down how he scored the comedy’s spa calm, chaos, and emotional turns.
• White reunited with Jon Lucas and Scott Moore after Jexi, taking the lead as solo composer on Spa Weekend.
• Instead of four separate themes, Spa Weekend gives Mel a wild 90s house-and-guitar sound against a relaxed spa vibe.
• White also teases subtle Beverly Hills Cop-inspired touches as Spa Weekend shifts from friendship comedy to jailbreak chaos.

One of the biggest challenges for composer Philip White had for his latest film in Black Bear's Spa Weekend is to not only draw the audiences into the chaotic story of Mel (Isla Fisher, Jane (Leslie Mann), Sophie (Anna Faris, and Coco (Michelle Buteau) in Spa Weekend, but also bring authenticity to the setting without taking them out as the goal of a spa is to declutter your mind of all your worries into a state of relaxation. The film follows four childhood best friends who have grown apart as adults and try to enjoy a weekend as Coco books them at a spa, as chaos ensues in part thanks to the wildcard Mel, who wasn't initially invited but came thanks to Sophie, who felt guilty. White, who also worked on Jexi (2019), Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, and Supernatural, spoke to Bleeding Cool about reuniting with writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, taking charge of the score, balancing the character themes and score, and more. The following contains some spoilers.

Spa Weekend Composer Philip White on Crafting Score for Zany Romp

Bleeding Cool: What intrigued you about 'Spa Weekend' and how'd you get involved?

White: I got started because the directors, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, I'd worked with previously on 'Jexi' (2019), and the way I got involved with that was through my long-time mentor and dear friend Chris Lennertz, who had worked with him on 'Bad Moms' (2016). He had history with them, and he, at the time, was getting really busy, so he thought, "The only way that he could do it was to bring me on board, and so we ended up doing 'Jexi' together as co-composers," and we had a great time. I so appreciated that opportunity, and cut to 2024, when I was looking at the trades, and I noticed that the directors were thinking of this new project or developing it.

I reached out to my agent; I reached out to Chris too and said, "Hey, what do you think about either?" since, in this case, my career had grown. Chris is also getting a lot busier doing more high-profile things. My agent and I asked, "Do you think you might be able to…how involved do you want to be? Can it be more of a solo project for me?" Chris graciously was like, "Absolutely! It should be Philip," and we wanted to include him in some way, so he's listed as "executive music producer" on 'Spa Weekend.' Thanks to him, I led the charge as a solo composer. I'm very grateful to him and the directors for their faith in him and me in the whole process. Long story short: I knew them from 2019's 'Jexi,' and here we are.

What do you enjoy most about working with Jon and Scott as creatives?

As creatives, first, they're the nicest guys, just sweethearts, extremely accommodating. I so often would come in, and they had great ideas and were supportive of the whole process. Also, [they] wanted to make sure that everything was going in the right direction and had a lot of great suggestions. Every cue was improved by their notes, so I'm immensely grateful to them, and fortunately, we also got started, I would say on the early side. I started working on this last summer, around late last spring, which was great because it gave us more time to create a score we could all feel really happy about and not feel overly rushed.

Early on, I started playing around with different themes and ideas, different parts of the movie that they felt needed the most support for music; they wanted to nail that down. It was great, and I started maybe at the end of April in earnest, maybe mid to late May, and finished recording at the end of August. We were done in early September of last year, so it was great.

What went into the process of capturing the theme for each character, or did you lean more on the situations they found themselves in?

The story centers around these four ladies who have been childhood friends. One of them is the black sheep of the group, always getting into trouble, and a bit of a chaos agent. The other three friends decide to book a spa weekend on Jane's birthday, and there's this question of, "Do we invite Mel?" They say, "She's a bit of a wild card. Let's not. Let's just go, the three of us, to a spa and have a great time." Sophie invites Mel secretly, and what happens is Mel crashes their weekend, makes a mess of everything, embarrasses the three others to no end, and they end up in jail [laughs].

We realized, "Okay, there's probably not really room for individual themes for each of the four characters," but what we ended up deciding was a general sort of spa island vibe for most of the movie. We thought that it was important for Mel to have some kind of a signature, so we decided with our music editor, Nevin (Seus), who was great for Mel's entrance. They put in the temp score this wailing guitar, which comes out of nowhere. The score to that point does not suggest that at all. It always seemed really funny, so it worked. What we ended up doing for Mel, and only her, was that she's really a 19-year-old Ibiza party girl trapped in a middle-aged body and still behaves that way. We thought, "Well, what if her sound was like 90s house beats with synths à la Too Unlimited or maybe a little later, the party rock anthem, and along with wailing electric guitars or perhaps grungy guitars, to help highlight her swagger, which is a completely different vibe from the rest of the movie, but ended up really working. That was Mel's sound.

As far as the "spa sound," we wanted to have elements that evoke the setting where they were. Unfortunately, spa music does not lend itself very well to storytelling. It's very much in-the-moment music to allow you to zone out, so it doesn't really work. It's not very "forward-moving," shall we say. We still wanted to evoke some of it, but obviously the music still had to help move the story forward. I thought it would be a good idea to bring in a vocalist to have that sense of oohs and aahs and the spaciousness of a spa setting: wordless, no lyrics, just the relaxation of ah, along with instrumentation that had "fizz," for lack of a better way of putting it, just levity and lightness, ukuleles, marimbas, acoustic guitars, mandolins, and not a lot of steel drum. We didn't want it to be too Caribbean. We also had a little bit of pedal steel guitar. Again, just little touches here and there, because we didn't want it to sound too Hawaiian per se or too country. Little touches of that helped sell the idea of a retreat, but not necessarily placing it in a specific locale, even though the assumption is it's somewhere in Southern California. That was the sound of the spa.

Further on, later in the movie, as the relationship between the four ladies becomes more focused and more fraught. It was important to have the emotional support of a string orchestra, so we did have some strings towards the end. There was one part of the movie where the girls went to jail. They've been some of them have been released on bail, and they come back. They discover they're no longer welcome at the spa, so they must break back in. There was something about the way that it was shot that reminded me a little bit of 'Beverly Hills Cop' (1984), so there are little hints of Harold Faltermeyer's touch. It's very subtle, maybe not that subtle for film music geeks, but I felt like I had to pay a little bit of homage to it, because it made me think of it. Maybe not for everybody else, but it was fun to do.

Spa Weekend, which also stars Adam Demos, is available in theaters.

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