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Jack White’s ‘Rome’ Track Turns Into a Frantic Animated Video

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Did you remember producer Danger Mouse and film composer Daniele Luppi put out a “sumptuous” Spaghetti Western-inspired album last year titled Rome that we swear is unrelated to the rebooted Sublime? Yes, this happened! And now there’s a new video for its Jack White-assisted track, “Two Against One” (via NPR).

In keeping with the sense of an enviable LinkedIn connections list that hangs over the album, Danger Mouse and Luppi’s visual collaborators are of the first rank: Chris Milk (director of unforgettable videos for Kanye West, Arcade Fire, and Cee Lo, among many others) and Anthony Francisco Schepperd (director-animator of Adult Swim fame). Their video puts a shape-shifting cartoon grotesquerie in front of the track’s internally conflicted Ennio Morricone-scape. “I’m already fighting me, so what’s another one?” White yowls coolly against the trippy backdrop.

Given the project’s deep debt to movies, there’s a chance Rome would make more sense as a theatrical feature-length film. Well, good news: Milk tells NPR that he and Danger Mouse, plus producers Anthony Bregman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Megan Ellison (True Grit), are working on creating just that. Unlike the animated “Two Against One” video, the Rome flick would be live action, according to Milk. The current video apparently is the “fever dream” of the tale’s villain and gives us his backstory; for more hints at the broader narrative, you can interact with the protagonist’s “lucid dream” over at www.Ro.me. Or just stay tuned — “More to come soon,” Milk promises. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend them your eyes.