The Flaming Lips xmas movie, “Christmas on Mars,” is pretty much the music films equivalent of Chinese Democracy.
The film has been in the works since at least 2002, filming was allegedly completed in 2005 and for several years now Wayne Coyne would tell anyone who would listen: “it’s coming, it’s coming!”
Last year Coyne told everyone that it was coming out Xmas 2007, but apparently the Oklahoma weirdos have missed their yuletide window once more.
However, Coyne told Billboard today that we should see ‘Christmas’ come March, aka the SXSW Film Festival.
“It is coming,” Coyne promised Billboard. “In fact, it’s better than ever. Because it’s taken so long, we’ve become better filmmakers. There’s better computer effects. I think it will be much better.”
But at least he’s well-aware of the films Chinese Democracy-like reputation and tardiness. “At the five-year mark it already felt like it was absurd,” he said. “Now, even though it’s six years, we still say five. If we say six years, people will think we’re lying. But it has built a little bit of an urban legend about itself. I talk to people, strange as it may seem, who think they’ve already seen it ’cause we’ve been talking about it for so long. So that’s working.”
The film features cameos from former Blue’s Clues host and Lips associate Steve Burns, actors Adam Goldberg and Elijah Wood, Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, SNL’s Fred Armisen and tells the story of Major Syrtis (The Flaming Lips’ multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd) during the first Christmas on a newly-colonized Mars. The Lips’ bassist Micheal Ivins plays an engineer, and the band’s manager, Scott Booker, plays the “colony’s busy psychiatrist.”
However, the Lips’ track record with this film is awful, so don’t be completely surprised if they miss their March window as well. Clips of the movie that are already out (see trailer below), are very reminiscent of David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” (at least very much for a sound design perspective). Deeper background information of the film can be found at the Flaming Lips site with behind-the-scenes photos and the aforementioned trailer.
According to the always dubious Wikipedia, two instrumental tracks from the forthcoming movie soundtrack, “Protonilus Death March” and “Syrtis Major” were released as a 5000-only picture-disc EP late in 2004. The track “Xanthe Terra” was released as a B-side to the 2-part European single release of “Do You Realize??”
Christmas on Mars trailer
Yet Another teaser trailer (4 min)
Watch: Lips Bassist Michael Ivins talks “Christmas On Mars”
Meanwhile, Pitchfork has a preview of the Flaming Lips’ new track for the Dane Cook comedy atrocity, “Good Luck Chuck.” Veritable soundtrack whores these days, the Lips’ track is typically wackily titled (“I Was Zapped by the Lucky Super Rainbow”) and charateristically pseudo-weird. According to the Billboard article the band has also written a theme song for a new Disney cartoon that will be announced soon.