monitorTHIS! - December 2008/January 2009 - (Page 53)

spew that can come out of someone’s ever thought it could be.” mind, this would be that.” Although the movie’s end result was In a nutshell, Christmas on Mars always somewhat gauzy, Christmas in details the Red Planet’s first colony, Mars was not seriously intended for which is attempting to create a syntheatrical release. But at the beginning thetically birthed baby. The colony is of summer, Coyne showed the film in threatened by a catastrophic mechania specially designed surround-sound cal failure, which causes depression circus tent to gauge reaction, and the and hallucinations among the crew positive feedback spawned the idea until the arrival of a benign alien beof limited-run, arthouse/rock club/ – wAy n e c o y n e ing (played by Coyne), who “heals” museum showings, which have been the equipment on Christmas Eve, in enthusiastically received. time for the Christmas birth of the “I wanted to see if it actually worked child, who may be the savior of humanity. You don’t have or if it was just some kind of freak-out thing, that if you to be Joseph Campbell to glean the archetypal imagery, weren’t seeing it on LSD or something, you wouldn’t give but Coyne frames it in a larger context. a s*it,” says Coyne. “The feeling everybody got was, ‘Well, “To me, it feels like a combination of human determi- this is just a movie.’ You could watch it and not know nation and having faith that some good luck and magic who the Flaming Lips are and say, ‘That’s a weird movie, comes along, and we can believe that our world can be but that’s cool,’ so we kept pushing it as just another a great and wonderful place,” says Coyne. “And here I thing you could be entertained by. It really turned into am, being Obama-ish again, but it really requires a lot of its own thing.” determination and hard work, but you gotta have a little While Coyne trumpets the completion of Christmas of that magic. If you don’t believe in fantastical things, on Mars (which features the Lips, former Blues Clues your life will never have fantastical things happen in it. host Steve Burns, Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen But I’m more than certain that the audience will grasp and veteran oddball Adam Goldberg), he also keeps the their own meaning and, to me, that’s almost better than magnitude of its accomplishment in perspective. “These things, to me –and I think I learned this even if I try to set in stone some meaning for it.” Shot primarily in black and white with a narrative as after making our second or third record back in the mid loosely linear as life itself, Christmas on Mars bears a ’80s—you’re never really done with them,” says Coyne passing resemblance to 2001 and cult classics like David reflectively. “You do them, then there’s the marketing, Lynch’s Eraserhead and other out-there fare like Repo Man then you talk about them, and I’ll forever run into people and Liquid Sky, but with the heart and humor of It’s a out there, other filmmakers and fans of the Flaming Lips, Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz. While Coyne doesn’t and we’ll be reinterpreting and talking about it, if I’m directly claim particular influences, he’s glad we live in lucky, until I’m dead. When people see Christmas on Mars, an age where such comparisons can be understood by hopefully it’s just another molecule of understanding, more than just the cultural cognoscenti. and if you like the Flaming Lips, this lets you feel good “When we used to speak of underground movies, there about liking them. Again, like really was a disconnect,” says Coyne. “There is no limit Obama. When he talks, you just anymore. It wasn’t that long ago, before the internet feel good about liking him.” or Netflix, that you simply didn’t get to see them. I am relieved when we talk about Eraserhead or Liquid Sky, that christmas on mars is available are artifacts from the past, that people can relate. To now from Warner Bros. even have those films mentioned, as if my film could fit somewhere in that pantheon, that’s as wonderful as I It comes as a great relief that I beat Axl Rose and Chinese Democracy by seven days or so. [ dec 08 / jan 09 + monitorthis! + 53 ]

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