Flaming Eels Out Of Your Butt

Excerpts from Pitchfork's interview with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne:

Pitchfork: What movie do you think Embryonic would go well with?

WC: The movies that triggered some of the imagery while we were actually making Embryonic were these two weird movies that are sort of about S&M and obsessive sexual freak-out behavior: The Night Porter, this Italian Nazi movie, and Last Tango in Paris. I must have been considering these elements of pleasure and pain and masochistic shit. Why not? I'm an adult, I can do that.

Pitchfork: Wasn't Last Tango in Paris pretty controversial when it came out?

WC: Yeah, the most controversial scene is when Marlon Brando has that woman put butter on her fist and stick it up his ass. Even though you don't really get to see it, that's always kind of brutal. It's not like watching stuff on the internet now, where people actually do these things, which isn't really fun at all. But the way they do it-- with good lighting and nice-looking people and good music-- it's still disturbing. Context changes everything. You know, when you stick things up your ass, context takes precedent. [laughs]

Pitchfork: Do you watch those kind of videos online?

WC: No matter who you are, you'll run into somebody who'll be like, "Jesus, you gotta see this video!" and there'll be some woman squirting eels out of her ass or something. In some ways I think it's funny. We live in good times; we can watch something like that and get on with our day. I mean, I don't want to have a woman squirting eels out of her butt while I'm there, but I'll watch it on video for 20 seconds.