You’ve heard all about the Flaming Lips’ long-overdue, much-discussed film, “Christmas On Mars” which finally showed its face this year at rock festivals after seven long years in the making (we gotta hand it to them we figured it would never come to pass).
Those who have seen the film in person or simply clips online know it’s a strange, surrealist trip that basically makes no fucking sense.
Don’t believe us? Frontman Wayne Coyne says as much. “If you were to watch a David Lynch movie with someone, you’d experience these moments where music, story and abstract bullshit came together, you’d understand it, but you couldn’t explain it to somebody else. It’s like an unspeakable language.”
Coyne also said audiences don’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, chinstroke or what when they see this oddity, so he’s been coming out before the film trying to coach audiences in the right direction and oh yeah, telling them to get stoned so they can hang with the film’s obtuseness.
“I’ve been doing these introductions, like, ‘cheer, laugh and smoke pot!’ I don’t think people have any idea what the film is. Is this funny? Is this serious? Is this weird? Once people understand it’s all that, I think it’s a great relief.”
The Lips original score for the film will be included on the eventual DVD but may or may not be released on its own writes the Hollywood Reporter.
“Elements of it sound very much like Bernard Herrmann in a room with Igor Stravinsky, and they hashed out, you take this scene, I’ll take this scene,” Coyne said without a trace of modesty citing soundtrack and composer icons.
As opaque as the film is, Coyne says his audience knows what they’re getting into when they show up for midnight screenings at rock festivals. “They’ve taken their acid or their mushrooms, drank three or four Red Bulls, and they’re really in it for the long haul.”
It remains to be clear if narcotics and hallucinogenics will be delivered with the DVD when the Lips finally get around to releasing the movie to a public that has better things to do then camping out at hippie rock festivals and wait til four in the morning to get a glimpse of Kanye West. Last we heard the DVD comes out at Christmas time, naturally, but if that’s Xmas 2008, or Xmas 2013, is anyone’s guess with them tardy Flaming Lips.