The Flaming Lips' Christmas Movie May Finally Be Coming

It was perhaps the most depressing moment in Toronto's music year: On night one of the Virgin Festival on Toronto's islands, organizers were saddled with scheduling issues all day, and The Flaming Lips' set was cut to just five songs. The sad look on Wayne Coyne's face said it all, and the crowd could hardly believe it.

About nine hours earlier, however, the Lips singer was in a much better mood as he ran the media gamut and posed for pictures. The band have been on the road since early spring promoting At War With The Mystics, a record that broke their recent string of universal acclaim. But the band are hardly as disappointed as the critics.

"At War With The Mystics is a very strange record," Coyne says. "It's got very strange production.

"I think the secret is that we really are a weird band, and sometimes we make music that sounds very mainstream, sounds very normal. But I think, for the most part, we are a very weird band.

"So to be able to headline festivals like this and to be able to talk to MTV and Rolling Stone and stuff like that, that's all kind of an accident that happened while we were out there making our art. I'm amazed that we're still able to put out records, so I could be no more pleased."

The Lips are well aware that people are listening, because regardless of album sales, they have one of the best live shows on the planet. As such, they've flaunted their politics at some shows, notably Lollapalooza, where Coyne urged the crowd to cheer to end the war in Lebanon. Coyne is confident, though, that he's preaching to the choir when it comes to his views.

"I think anyone who has a brain at all, and especially the people at Lollapalooza or a festival like this one, we all think the same things already. It's not like we're telling you the news.

"Music has really served us well. The things in our lives that we can't control, the things in our lives that may overtake us, the things in our lives that may destroy us, we sing about them. And I think sometimes that's all we're really doing, coming together and thinking about stuff, whether it's about love or about death or about George Bush, we just sing about things that we don't understand or are frustrated about or things we're exuberant about. I think that's all we ever do. I wish I could stop the war, but I can't. But I don't expect our music to stop wars."

As in almost all Lips interviews, the conversation eventually leads to what seems like a never-ending string of updates about Coyne's labour of love, Christmas On Mars, the film that he's been shooting with members of the group, friends and actors for much of the last decade.

In the past year, ChartAttack has had filmmaker Brad Beesley (who directed the awesome Lips doc, The Fearless Freaks) and Lips guitarist and star of the film, Steve Drozd, drop hints about the status of the project. The movie's mad genius has the last word, however, and the word is: more than likely next year.

"I think by spring, I'm gonna have a version of it done for the South By Southwest festival," Coyne says. "I say a version because it's my movie and we own all the music and I own all the film and I can do whatever I want to it.

"So if two years from now I want to add another scene, I'll just do it. It's utterly a work of art, so I don't know if it'll truly ever be finished, like all works of art. But you have to abandon it at some point and say, 'Here it is.' So I'll be doing that at some point."