Flaming Lips Documentary to See Release in March

Underneath the fuzzy animal costumes, three-piece white suits, and syringes of brown liquid lie The Flaming Lips. With a busy year behind them peppered by a wide spectrum of newsworthy endeavors, it might be argued that it's the perfect time for Wayne Coyne and his Oklahoma trio to be the subject of a documentary film covering their travels and travails. And so they are! Entitled My Life With the Fearless Freaks, and directed by longtime friend of the band Bradley Beesley, the doc will be available on DVD on March 23rd via Shout Films.

Breesley's aim with Fearless Freaks was to uncover the influences and life stories that helped to shape the innovative band. Comfortable with the voyeuristic and oftentimes invasive lense of the camera pointed at them, The Flaming Lips apparently allowed for many intimate, previously undocumented aspects of their lives to be captured for the film. Speaking to Rolling Stone recently, Beesley said: "I've got some pretty intimate footage of Steven [Flaming Lips drummer] using drugs and talking about how drugs destroyed his life, as they're destroying his life. It's not like a VH1 thing where the guy talks about shooting up like ten years ago. I was capturing it literally as he was shooting up."

Beesley also talked about his intentions for the film: "I started in Wayne's neighborhood and really tried to tell the story of how he grew up because he has so many older brothers that were a huge influence on his life... They shaped the music that he listened to and his early career drawing, and playing guitar, and going to concerts, and doing drugs." Beesley's attention on the Lips' roots as letterhead to his film can be found in its title My Life With the Fearless Freaks-- the Fearless Freaks being the name of Coyne's youth football team.

Coyne said of the revealing documentary: "It's a cool film... When you get to appear inside someone's life I don't think it would even matter who they are. I think if you followed anybody around for 11 years and talked to their relatives and were there when poignant things in their life happened, it wouldn't matter who you are, it'd be interesting." Good point, but the cynic in me says we wouldn't pay to see it.

Anyway, Fearless Freaks also features a plethora of cameo appearances from admiring artists, including Liz Phair, Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue, Beck, and Jack White. In addition, outtakes from the highly anticipated Flaming Lips film Christmas on Mars (now slated for December 2005, just two years later then expected) will be among the special features, along with the obvious draw of four original songs.

Meanwhile, we'd like to unload some cool new news about the upcoming Lips album presently scheduled for release in 2005, and not have to just recycle its working title-- At War with the Mystics-- and previously announced song names like "Space Bible" and "Mr. Ambulance Driver", but what with that court injunction prohibiting us from making stuff up, and the fact there there's been no news out of the studio, we'll just have to leave it there.