WIM AND VIGOR

German director Wim Wenders still hasn’t started work on putting Bono’s “Million Dollar Motel” movie script onto the big screen, but he’s gotten the U2 singer to provide a duet with Sinead O’Connor as the key song for his current project, “The End of Violence.” The song will cap a soundtrack collection that--typical of Wenders films--features a top-notch roster of rock figures, including a Michael Stipe-Vic Chesnutt pairing, the first new piece of music by German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk in more than a decade and a previously unreleased song by the late Roy Orbison.

The collection, put together by Wenders, film music supervisor Sharon Boyle and Outpost Records co-head Mark Williams, also includes contributions by Los Lobos and its Latin Playboys spinoff, Tom Waits, DJ Shadow, Eels, Mavericks singer Raul Malo, Spain, Whiskeytown and Medeski, Martin & Wood. Ry Cooder, who did the haunting music for Wenders’ “Paris, Texas,” is doing the score.

Bono delivered his song, which will either be titled “I’m Not Your Baby” or “The End of Violence,” to Wenders in L.A. shortly before U2 opened its “PopMart” tour in Las Vegas on April 25. Tapes of the song, said to be an aggressive, up-tempo number, were then shipped to London for the addition of O’Connor’s vocals.

Besides the title, two things remained to be determined: which mix will be used (the favorite seems to be one done by Howie B., the English techno figure who worked on much of U2’s “Pop” album) and whether the track will be billed as by Bono with O’Connor or as U2 with O’Connor. The music was performed by the members of the band.

This makes three straight Wenders films with musical contributions by U2, following “Until the End of the World” and “Faraway, So Close.”