At the height of the 2020 pandemic, when live music had all but ceased to happen, The Flaming Lips came up with an idea for performing shows. an idea they were uniquely prepared for. Frontman Wayne Coyne had long been using a clear polymer “space bubble” to walk atop crowds at festival shows and he wondered: what if everyone, the band and the audience, was in space bubbles? What began as a drawing Wayne posted to Instagram soon became something the band were actually going to try to pull it off. And they did, after a couple postponements, in 2021.
“The Flaming Lips Space Bubble Film”, co-directed by Coyne and Blake Studdard, tells the story of how the shows came to be and how they did it, as well as serving as a concert film of the shows themselves. It’s successful on both fronts, though the documentary is more fascinating as Coyne takes this “it’s so crazy it just might work” idea into reality, featuring interviews with Coyne and the rest of the Lips, Coyne’s wife Katy Weaver, band manager Scott Booker and Oklahoma City mayor David Holt. It answers such questions as “what if you have to use the bathroom?” and “is there enough oxygen in those things?” and more with lots of great footage of those truly special shows.
It’s good that all shows aren’t like this now but we’re glad this showed it was possible.
The Fat Angel Sings 