Finding Our Way To Planet Ash: A Conversation With Flying Lotus

Flying Lotus is no stranger to a cosmic hellscape—especially from the director’s chair. The second feature length nightmare of the Grammy-winning artist is ejecting folks from their theater seats nationwide. Ash, set for a wide theatrical release on March 21, stars Eiza González (Baby Driver, 3 Body Problem) as Riya, who wakes up to the result of a mysterious cosmic massacre of her research team. The crew is left in pieces except for a man named Brion, played by Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad). Per a release, when he arrives to rescue her, “an ordeal of physical and psychological terror ensues.”  I’d also add “bodily chaos” to that pot to be real and up front.

If you’re familiar with the work of Flylo, you should understand that there is no limit to the amount of insanity he’ll squeeze into a project. We had the opportunity to geek out with the Ash director/composer to learn more about the project, explore the growth of his filmmaking, and get to the bottom of his science fiction influence.

AFROPUNK: I want to start with a quote. This is a tagline from Cronenberg’s 2002 film Spider, which goes, “The only thing worse than losing your mind is finding it again.” After reading this script, what were your initial thoughts on how to blend in survival horror with memories lost in your direction?

Flying Lotus: I think the script was like a puzzle when I got it. It felt way more puzzling on the page than it turned out in the end, but I found that to be so inspiring. Just to feel like it was something that wasn’t necessarily complete yet. The bones were there, but there was something it needed.

Filling in those gaps, you know, a lot of it was visual, a lot of it was sound, but I think it’s the most fun stuff to play with. It’s like playing with perception and playing with memory and who we are, what we were, who we want to be, and who we wish we were. All that stuff- that’s what we deal with. That’s a point of relation for the general audience in sci-fi, and this movie specifically.

AP: I’d love to talk about the importance of collaboration on this project, because with your first feature, Kuso, even with your preferred support systems around, that’s you, down to the DNA. Producing, directing, writing, editing, handling sound design and score… probably a bunch of other stuff, but that’s like 26 hats on your head. Even with sharing the workload this time, the film is still an unapologetic work of Flylo. The script came to you, but this world was ultimately created by you. What was the process like to translate your idea of the world of Ash to your production designer, Ross McGarva?

FL: It was a lot of fun to work with these folks because I had been sitting on the script. I’d had it already for about a year and a half before we even started thinking about production. So, I’ve been beating this stuff up with every kind of sketch, like, using Unreal Engine to come up with little ideas and things.

I had a bunch of things already that we knew weren’t going to be in the movie, you know? Like, okay, look… we just can’t build these corridors just like Alien, okay? We can’t do it. We’re going to make this feel a little bit different. There were certain things that, because I had a bit more time, I got to build the lore and to do a little bit of the work ahead of time, but I think when it comes to the crew, folks were always just a little bit more inspired to do something that was sci-fi and world building. Something that they could contribute, something they hadn’t done, or some new thing that they heard about that they want to try. You know, sci-fi is perfect for that. I think everyone saw this opportunity to experiment as well, because we had a very limited budget. We’re like “what are we going to do to set us apart, and how are we going to compete?”.

Then you got Alien: Romulus… I was like, “oh, man, there’s going to be an Alien: Romulus?! Man, what am I going to do? How am I going to- what!? What am I going to say? And it’s Fede (Álvarez)? Like, what am I going to do?” [laughter]. I was just having my own crisis when all that was going on. How do I do my own thing, you know? And what can I say in this with such little resources?

AP: Well, that might be Fede, but this is Flylo, and this is a whole different ball field. When watching this, you can feel that everything in the film has layers to it, even costuming. Can you describe working with Aitor Throup on costume design to help fuel the point of view of the story?

FL: There were very limited folks that I was able to work with that I knew ahead of time, and we had some really interesting prospects for costume design, but I knew Aitor. We’ve worked on some things together, and always wanted to work on some cool stuff together. His sensibilities are similar, and he’s just one of those people where, like, he thinks up a backstory for a jacket, you know? Like, a jacket has a backstory- a zipper. “These zippers in this way represent the heart being crossed out” [laughter]. He’s just so poetic in the way he approaches things, and I feel like that’s how I think of music, and that’s, that’s how I think of films. I just hadn’t met anyone who has that kind of poetic sense of thinking about clothes and fashion, and I just love them, and we had to bring him in.

It was a weird learning curve for everyone, because he was in Europe, we’re in New Zealand, but he finally made his way over, got in the fold. Everybody loved him, and we all loved working together and trying stuff out. You know, come on. Making space suits and space jumps? Honestly, there was a point where we’re like, “we got to just call this movie ‘jumpsuit the movie’, because we were spending so much time trying to figure out the jumpsuits and the spacesuits”, it took up a lot of our lives.

AP: I hope that you have one of them displayed in the crib.

FL: Oh, you know I do. You know I got mine.

AP: Perfect. All right, so Gareth van Niekerk, handled your foley and sound design, but you, as the composer of this film, I know that sound in general is very important to you. I could be wrong, but I feel like even the little intercom noises and gadget jingles, I feel like that’s you, but how was that collaboration? 

FL: Yeah, I did those intercoms! The thing about the sound designers, these two great guys, Gareth and Ben. They were both just killing. I was doing a lot of music in New Zealand in a little suite, a little cubicle, a small room, but their room was right next door. So, we’re throwing ideas back and forth at each other. They’re also musicians, so I’m like, “yeah, this song that I’m doing for the scene’s in G minor, so why don’t you put your sound effects in G minor?” It was crazy on that level, just geeking out, like, trying to do stuff in the same key, you know, “the alarm is going off over here”. “Well, all right, what BPM is the alarm? Because I’ll make the track in the same BPM as the alarm going off”. A lot of stuff like that. “The lights are flashing at what tempo?”, “All right”. It was so fun. We just geeked out the whole time. I think it might have been the most fun part of the whole movie.

AP: Feels like nerdy, horror kid summer camp.

FL: Oh, yeah. Nerd heaven.

AP: I love the fight sequences, specifically that POV.

FL: That POV one [laughter]!

AP: It’s so chaotic and disorienting. It really helps sell just the general theme of confusion. How did you do that? You stuck a camera on the stunt person’s head?

FL: Yep, exactly. Right on her head. I think that we used my camera that I brought from home [laughter]. That was my little Sony camera, and it looked great! That was like the first day or two of filming. I think when we did that, it gave the crew a shot in the arm like, “alright, we’re doing some fun stuff on this project”. It was a really, really fun way to kick it off and get everybody into the vibe of this movie.

So, yeah, we had it on a stunty. Her name is Elodie Pretorius. She was a superstar on the movie. She did all the Eiza stunts, and she just threw herself all over the place. They got to give the stunties an Oscar. We’ve got to talk about it. Give the stunties an Oscar, please. They deserve it.

AP: Bruised and battered for our entertainment.

FL: You know what I’m sayin’?

AP: I was soaking that up- it was wild. Your art in all modes is very reactionary, and this third act is a wild ass boy. You clearly were having the time of your life making it. Can you talk a little bit about your experience just directing that last third chaos and the practicals and the blood everywhere?

FL: Because we’ve had this back and forth with these two characters, it just had to reach an explosive point, literally, you know? It just had to hit the boiling point. I always pull from video games as my influence too, aside from films, and I always loved the Resident Evil series. 

AP: I knew it!

FL: It’s like, all right, you killed the boss, and then it does another thing, and it mutates, and it’s like, come on! Like, [laughter] how many mutations?! How many times are you going to do a thing? Just stop and die already! I just, I love that feeling. Like, how far can we push this guy, you know?

AP: I love that you just said that because I’m sitting there on my couch watching this damn film, and it reminds me- I just replayed Resident Evil 8, and there was that time when everyone on the internet was like, “oh my god, Lady Dimitrescu, she’s so hot, she’s so beautiful”. It’s kind of like this film, because it’s very beautiful. It’s aesthetically stunning, and then it just mutates once, and then I am no longer in love. Now I’m a little disgusted, again and again and again.

So I mean, at this point, you’re just a master of the existential dread of future dystopias, and I am really looking forward to the next hellscape that you trap us in. Are you going to stay in the future dystopia? Because I do think that you have a home here.

FL: Hey, if the audience wants me, I’ll stay.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.