Christmas Comes Early for the Flaming Lips

Joining the cult-filmmaking ranks of Frank Zappa and Neil Young, the visionary Oklahoma rockers the Flaming Lips — specifically lead singer Wayne Coyne — have finally unwrapped their long-rumored “Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips.” Seven years in the making, the 85-minute science-fiction head trip makes its New York premiere Friday in a new, and appropriately unconventional, movie space.Cinema Purgatorio, the Manhattan-based outfit devoted to promoting the indie-est of independent films, has custom-designed a screening room inside the Kraine Theater at KGB Bar on East 4th Street. Equipped with a “Zeta Bootis Mega Supersonic Super-Sound Surround System,” the theater will host an open-ended series of screenings of “Christmas on Mars,” often at unusual times — like 7 a.m. — with ticket sales and showtime updates via cinemapurgatorio.com.Theater personnel will wear Santa Claus outfits, and the audience is encouraged to do likewise.“This is, for sure, a goofy presentation,” the founder of Cinema Purgatorio, Ray Privett, said. “It’s not a conventional cult-movie release. Today there is a system of how you make a cult movie — a certain style of production, distribution, exhibition, and criticism. And — God bless — a lot of good movies go through that circuit. Plus, in other cities, we’ll play some venues from that circuit. But in New York, and in other ways, we’re mixing things up.”Mr. Privett, who screened the documentary “The Fearless Freaks Featuring the Flaming Lips” in 2005 when he was programmer at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, has long been a fan of the band. He had tracked the progress of “Christmas on Mars” for several years. After learning it was nearly ready to go, he struck a deal this summer with the group and its record label, Warner Bros., to present the film theatrically in New York and other markets.The film, co-directed by Mr. Coyne and George Salisbury, takes place on a space station on Mars, as Major Syrtis (Lips drummer Steven Drozd) suffers disturbing hallucinations and the colonists puzzle over the arrival of a seemingly benevolent alien being (Mr. Coyne, with prosthetic antennae jutting from his forehead and a Mona Lisa smile creasing his lips).Actually, the space station is a futuro-Byzantine set constructed by Mr. Coyne in his Oklahoma City backyard. Home appliances, aluminum foil, vacuum-cleaner hoses, white paint, and extensively repurposed electronic equipment occupy a mise-en-scène that appears inspired by every outer-space movie ever made. Not a scene goes by without the anticipation of a cameo by Keir Dullea (perhaps best known as Dr. Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”), though the improvised, low-budget design and tongue-in-cheek dialogue take inspiration from John Carpenter’s 1974 lost-in-space spoof “Dark Star.” Sample one-liner: “Cosmic reality, it’s a real motherf—–.”Or, perhaps, given the psychic overload experienced by Mr. Drozd’s increasingly untethered astronaut, “Christmas on Mars” is really a thrift-shop “Solaris.” Syrtis’s hallucinations include fetal atrocities and a vulva-headed marching band, realized through homegrown special effects that would please fans of “Eraserhead”-era David Lynch. These distractions are obstacles in the major’s mission to find a new Santa Claus to replace the last crew member to go bonkers.As plots go, it’s a bit … spacey. Scatological jokes abound, and it’s easy to imagine how the endless downtime inside the Martian encampment is much akin to spending countless hours on a tour bus rolling between cities, as the Flaming Lips have done for almost three decades now. Yet, for something so clearly made on the cheap, the film’s pleasures reside in its aesthetic achievements, notably its beautiful, high-contrast black-and-white cinematography (with occasional color interludes) and an ambient sound track by the Lips, surely best reproduced over the Kraine Theater’s surround-sound system.As with all so-called cult cinema, “Christmas on Mars” appeals to the faithful and acquires its magic by unspooling (or being digitally projected) in a ceremonial arena.“Religiously speaking, cults usually break up the norms around them,” Mr. Privett said. “Think of the Bacchae long ago, or the Heaven’s Gate cult from a decade ago. When the Heaven’s Gate cultists tried to board a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet, that was breaking the norms. Maybe we’re doing something similar.”“Christmas on Mars” runs between Friday and September 30 at the Kraine Theater (85 E. 4th St., between Second Avenue and Bowery. For more information, visit cinemapurgatorio.com).

Christmas Comes Early for the Flaming Lips

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