Flaming Lips – The Movie

Exclusive: Wayne Coyne reveals new album direction and the ‘plot’ of the band’s first feature film.

14 July 2008 - Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne told 6 Music that judging by early recording sessions, the new album from the band has decidedly disparate influences.

“Some of it sounds like John Lennon,” Coyne enthused, speaking at the VH1 Honours The Who concert in Los Angeles (12 July) “But if he got together with Miles Davis and they went back in time, but there was a supercomputer that they could figure out how to work!”

“We’ve done [finished] a couple of songs, but we have a handful of other songs that I know have a good vibe to them. We’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but we’ve been trying to find the right combination of song and mood. But I think we’ll get there.”

"It sounds like John Lennon if he got together with Miles Davis and they went back in time"
- Wayne Coyne

After seven years in production, The Flaming Lips first ever full-length feature film, Christmas On Mars, has also been completed and according to the band, will get its long-awaited release on DVD this winter.

“We never knew when we were gonna release the movie for sure, “Coyne continues, “We started making it in 2001, but we always knew were gonna release the [2002] Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album before that came out.

“But then after Yoshimi came out, we never got to go home again. So luckily we were interrupted by popularity – or whatever you want to call it. And luckily we were able to get back to it and I think its better now that we didn’t finish it that early because computers, technology, skill level, bravery and all those things, just changed for us. I think we’re able to do something a lot more interesting, a lot more emotional and a lot more weird. It’s just been made better because it took us so long.”

As for the plot, it seems to reflect the band’s surreal and psychedelic character. As Coyne explains:

“There’s an abandoned space station on Mars, where there’s a baby being born that happens to be coinciding with Christmas - the baby’s accidentally being born on Christmas Eve.

“There’s a major disaster, the oxygen generator breaks, they don’t know if the baby’s gonna survive, but my character [a green-faced Martian] shows up and through some magical thinking, some great things happens.”


Matt Everitt