Flaming Lips finally release film

By Georgie Rogers
6 Music news reporter

The Flaming Lips have released seven albums on Warner Brothers since 1992

A film by psychedelic popsters The Flaming Lips is released this week after seven years in the making.

Set on a space station, Christmas on Mars was shot in the back yard of the singer Wayne Coyne's home in Oklahoma.

But Coyne's not keen for comparisons to be drawn with the long wait for the new Gun N'Roses album.

"That's all they do - make records," Coyne said, when asked whether the film's long production time puts it in the same league as Chinese Democracy.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, Coyne said: "I don't think I'm at all like Axl Rose... in my defence, it's not like he's trying to make a film while he's making records and stuff. I've done two or three records in between making Christmas on Mars."

The Flaming Lips released 2002's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and At War With The Mystics in 2006.

I think the worst thing that could happen is I could do this thing, spend seven years making it and it just be boring

Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips frontman

Coyne has described the storyline as: "There's a baby being born on the space station and it happens to be on Christmas Eve. My character is this alien super being who shows up in a giant spherical ship. And I'm green."

He said there was plenty of scope for retakes because his house was the set.

"It left me a lot of freedom to screw it up and redo it if I needed to."

The Flaming Lips' singer explained how his foray into world of movie-making began.

"Like a lot of rock bands, you end up making a lot of music videos," Coyne said. "And for every video that we would make, that a VH1 or MTV would play, we would make 10 of them that were just crazy, arty, dumb films.

"But I have to say, to my surprise, people are not as fascinated or obsessed with Christmas as I am."