Tom Petty’s band Mudcrutch taps Sean Penn to direct grim Anthony Hopkins-led video

Mudcrutch, Tom Petty’s reformed early band, has released a new video for its song “I Forgive It All,” but if you’re looking to start your day off with kittens and puppies you’ve come to the wrong place.

Co-directed by Mr. Sunshine himself, Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, and starring Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins as a seemingly wealthy Westsider saddled with debilitating regret, the clip for Tom Petty’s song is a stark look at the polarities of Los Angeles.

The video is shot in black and white, and sees Hopkins’ character cruising down Sunset Boulevard in a vintage sedan. His window is down, and we travel with him through Beverly Hills and West Hollywood as he spies seemingly wealthy people doing brunch and shopping.

As the clip rolls, Petty’s bittersweet ballad offers a message of forgiveness to an unknown other. Written from the perspective of a man returning on horseback to his birthplace, the song traces a vague narrative that might or might not be about a man coming home to die.

That vagueness is deliberate, Petty told The Times’ Randy Lewis during a recent interview in advance of “Mudcrutch 2,” from which “I Forgive It All” is taken. The album came out in May.

“[W]hen I’m writing, I really try to write a skeleton, not really nail it down too much,” said Petty. “I’ll write a pattern and some lyrics, then we really just take it from there and make it into something. There’s no elaborate demos or extreme instructions. You just see what it turns into and then follow that.”

Penn and co-director Samuel Bayer transformed that skeleton into a video that carries Hopkins’ mystery man and his car to skid row in downtown Los Angeles. The viewer watches as he walks through the area, dressed in well-tailored clothes and moving confidently.

He passes addicts and homeless people as Petty sings, “People are what people make ‘em, that ain’t gonna change/There ain’t nothing you can do, nothing you could rearrange.”

In May, Mudcrutch put its money where its message was when it opened its recently concluded summer tour with a pair of benefit shows for the Midnight Mission charity and shelter in skid row.

There’s a lot of terrible music out there. For tips on the stuff that’s not, follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit