The Fearless Freaks (The Wondrously Improbable Story of the Flaming Lips)
July 2005 Reviewed by: Joseph Taylor Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Wayne Coyne, the leader of Flaming Lips, walks through a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Oklahoma City and stops to say hello to three men sitting at the corner of a sidewalk. "Yeah, that’s Bradley," he tells them, pointing to a cameraman across the street. "He’s making a film of me. I’m in a band and he really likes our band. It’s like weird rock and roll. When we were young, I think we took too many drugs." Oklahoma City’s working-class neighborhoods and the drug culture of the ‘70s form the backdrop for The Fearless Freaks (The Wondrously Improbable Story of the Flaming Lips). The cameraman that Coyne was pointing to is Bradley Beesley (also an Oklahoma City native), who shot a music video for the band in 1991 and has since filmed hundreds of hours of them in the studio and onstage.

Beesley’s story of the Flaming Lips weaves together current interviews of band members Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins with performance footage from the band’s career, as well as home movies and photos from each musician’s childhood. The Lips started out as a punk band, with Wayne’s football-star brother Mark on lead vocals, and from the beginning they exhibited a taste for the kind of unusual stage antics that mark their concerts today. Some of them, especially those involving fire, look mighty risky in the confines of a small club. One amusing stunt involved an onstage motorcycle, which the band miked and revved up at points during their performance, filling the club with smoke and carbon monoxide.

The Fearless Freaks doesn’t really follow the Flaming Lips’ move from punk to the slightly loony avant pop they now perform. It may be that they themselves don’t know how they got there. A key to their independence and eccentricity is their families. Coyne’s is likeably strange, as is often the case when you cram a family with six kids into a typical suburban house. Coyne and his four brothers started the Fearless Freaks, and they combined drugs and sports into a sometimes-bloody event in their neighborhood. The drugs took their toll; one of Wayne’s older brothers was a crack addict at the time this film was being prepared (the bonus audio commentary notes that he has since rehabbed).

Steven Drozd’s family has endured three suicides and his older brother’s incarceration, and Drozd himself was a heroin addict for five years. In one harrowing section of the film, he talks about his addiction as he prepares to shoot up, his syringes and other drug tools arrayed in front of him. Happily, Drozd kicked heroin soon after that scene was shot and he looks healthier in later interviews. But it’s Coyne who is the centerpiece of The Fearless Freaks and he’s charming and likeable. He and his wife live in a modest home a few blocks from where he grew up -- no rock star mansion or entourage.

The bonus footage on the second disc includes performance footage from 1988 through 1995 and a short, impressionistic documentary about the making of Clouds Taste Metallic (1995). The audio commentary provides clarification of some things that are hinted at in the film. The film quality varies, depending on the source, but the recent scenes are well shot and capture the feel of Coyne’s neighborhood. The two-channel sound also varies, but is, for the most part, what you should expect from a documentary.

• Go Back