Flaming Lips' Freaky, Martian Musical Finally Touches Down

As frontman for the Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne always makes sure his audience gets the most whiz-bang for its buck. At live gigs, that means trotting around inside a giant hamster ball while dozens of Santas and aliens shimmy onstage. And this holiday season it means a feature film. After seven years, Christmas on Mars, Coyne's sure-to-be cult classic, is ready to touch down on October 28. Shot in his native Oklahoma City, the shoestring sci-fi flick is the story of colonists on the Red Planet who are having the worst Yuletide ever. A Christmas baby—who may be the only hope for humanity—gestates in an artificial womb, but the colony's oxygen and gravity systems are failing. Can the savior be saved? Wired talked to Coyne about his directorial debut.

Wired: Christmas on Mars has been in development since 2001. During that time, all three Spider-Man movies came out. What took so long?

Coyne: People have been comparing it to Chinese Democracy. But I beat Axl Rose, because we've already been showing it. I'm embarrassed when you say it like that, though frankly, only the first Spider-Man was any good. The other two were slammed together in the basement while they were collecting money through the front door. They stopped making art, whereas I kept making art, so that's my defense.

Wired: You play a messiah-like Martian with superpowers. Is one benefit of being the director that you can give yourself the best part?

Coyne: I didn't know what my character was going to be in the beginning. I just said, "Oh, I'll be the alien." I made myself one of the great heroes. Someone's got to do it.

Wired: You've said this movie is a cross between 2001 and Eraserhead. Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch are pretty unstable chemicals to be mixing on a first effort.

Coyne: Lynch felt utterly brave following his obsessions. Do that and your movie will at least please you.

Wired: Is it true some of the screenings have been shut down by the cops due to noise?

Coyne: I did a couple of previews in my yard. I've lived in this neighborhood since I was 11, so the police know me. We made it until the last five minutes of the movie. Then they said, "Wayne, that shit is too loud."

Wired: How loud?

Coyne: We've done extensive enough tests to know that we're on the verge of destroying you. Which is what we want.

Wired: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander sent back soil tests showing that life could exist on Mars. You packing your bags?

Coyne: What I fear is that 20 years from now, the International Space Station will be complete, they'll want to have some inauguration party, and we'll be one of the bands that plays. It would be cool, but how horrible would that be to sit on top of that rocket, blasting into space with all our shitty equipment?

Wired: You'd let that keep you from becoming the first band in space?

Coyne: Well, when it becomes a real thing—think about space suits. This weird attachment goes up your ass and you gotta piss and shit inside this thing. There's a reality that overrides the blunt fantasticalness. I hate being on a 10-hour flight to Germany, let alone a three-week space mission.

Wired: Aaron Sorkin is working on a Broadway musical based on your album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Does that mean a lot of karate-chop-and-talk hallway sequences?

Coyne: I've thought about that a billion times. He's a smart and energetic guy. With me and him together, it's either all possibilities exist or none do.