Film

In addition to a visionary oeuvre melding jazz, electronica, hip-hop and beyond, Flying Lotus has been quietly building a film/TV career over the last decade. For the 2021 anime Yasuke, he not only scored the series but executive produced, providing plot and character concepts for the series. Prior to that, you may have missed his directorial debut, Kuso, a 2017 body horror flick starring Hannibal Buress; hell, even if you saw it, you might not have known he was involved, as the director was credited simply as “Steve” (his real name is Steven Ellison) on the project.

Now, on his second feature-length film, Ash (out now in theaters and eventually on Shudder), he’s fully aligning his artistic pursuits under his Grammy-winning moniker. Flying Lotus is the director, executive producer and composer of Ash – plus, he acts in the film, alongside stars Eiza González and Aaron Paul, as one of the crew members on a blood-soaked mission to set up life on an alien world in a future where earth has become unlivable (hard to imagine, right?). Melding surreal science fiction, slasher, whodunnit and psychological suspense, Ash is a tightly executed thriller that also grapples with some weighty question: Is there a future for humans on other worlds? What happens when you can’t trust your senses? Is it worth sacrificing the truth just to survive?

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The direction is assured and economical when it needs to be while also evoking Kubrick and Nolan in its more disorienting moments. Speaking to Flying Lotus days ahead of the film’s release, it’s strange to learn that the music, of all things, seems to have given FlyLo the most trouble on Ash. In fact, he wrote an entirely different score for the movie that he decided didn’t work, forcing him to start over in the post-production process.

While we may hear parts of that other score eventually (more on that later), the music that does accompany Ash perfectly suits the action, mining the relentless terror of John Carpenter’s music in some scenes, the majesty of Vangelis in others and even the expressive soundscapes of Jean-Michel Jarre.

From learning his post-production “superpower” to the shot from a famous horror movie he cops to lifting, here’s what Flying Lotus had to say about his new project.

Directing a movie is a huge undertaking and accomplishment, so congrats. How did you come to this project?

The people who I worked with on Kuso — that put it out and helped me get distribution for it, XYZ films — they’ve been kind of repping me ever since. We’ve been trying to find a good project to work on — you know, gently. They would send me material and oftentimes it was just not right for me. When this one came around, after I had just done Yasuke, they were like, “Hey, are you interested in this? We’ve been trying to get this thing going for a while.” And I was like, “Guys, how could you not have sent this my way before? It’s totally up my alley!” It’s got all the things that I’m after, and it’s also one of those things where I would also hate to see someone else do it and not do a great job with it. So I got in the mix and just started coming up with some ideas and drawing pictures and throwing them back and forth. They got into it with me and I’m really grateful.

When you signed on for this, was it just a given you would do the score, too?

It was more so like, “Hey, you’re also thinking of doing that, right?” I’m pretty sure people were thinking that was going to happen.

What was it that attracted you to this story? What about the script made you think you had to do this?

It struck me out the gate. It had all the signs that directors talk about. You couldn’t put the script down; you started coming up with images in your mind; and like I said, you just start seeing someone else direct it and not doing a good job with it, and [that idea] frustrates you to the point where you’re like, “You know what? I got to do this.” I love the genre, and I love the idea of doing a film that was a bit more commercial leaning, but where I still have room to experiment and play. It was the perfect thing for me. It’s so hard to make a movie; I wouldn’t just jump on any gig just because it’s an opportunity.

The script is interesting, because when it starts out, you think you have it figured, but as the movie progresses, so much more is unraveled.

Yeah, man, it was a lot of fun. It also reminded me of some of my favorite survival horror games. I think it’ll resonate with all the gamers, hopefully. That’s where I come from with this for sure — a lot of first person-y things and lot of video game references. A lot of people ask me about cinematic references, but I always lean more on games and play a lot of video games when I’m working on a movie: Resident Evil, playing Silent Hill, the old ones, over and over. A lot of the indie horror games, too. I started borrowing more from that world because it felt like a road less traveled.

So the first film you directed was credited to Steve, but this one is credited to Flying Lotus. Why?

I guess it’s just taking ownership of the name. They even asked if I wanted to call it “a film by Steven Ellison” or whatever. And I was just like, “I gotta ride it. I’m Flying Lotus, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, man.” It’s time to just let it be what it is at this point.

As a composer, when did you start coming up with musical ideas for this. While reading the script?

Absolutely, right out the gate. I had this crazy, cosmic concept for the music. It was something I started chipping away at from the very beginning. I really wanted to get this new sound: I was pitching to the producers, I was playing it to people, sharing it. When we got to the edit room, none of it worked. It was a totally different sound than it needed to be. It was music for another movie, basically, that wasn’t the movie that was being presented to me. I learned a huge lesson there. I think if I would have gone along with that original idea it would have still been interesting but would have been very wrong for the movie. I learned to listen to the movie and let the movie show you what it’s supposed to be, and to remember to take that step away from it. I think some people get this vision and they’ll just stick with it to the end. Sometimes you need to be able to adapt to the work that is on the timeline.

What was that other soundtrack like? What sonic reference point would you compare it to?

I really don’t like to talk about it, because I’d still like to do it at some point, but I’ll just say that, as a reference point, I was going to do something more like [Miles Davis’] Bitches Brew. It’d be a little different, but it just didn’t go.

How quickly did you figure out the score that ended up in Ash?

It took a while to figure out, but thankfully, I have a lot of reference points from different films. Right out the gate, we had to throw a temp in the movie, so I was able to play with what I thought it needed to sound like for a little while. And while we were in the edit I would sometimes write a queue for something, because I didn’t want to have the temp in that moment. I did the majority of the work when I was in New Zealand finishing post-production on the movie.

Does it feel like different parts of your brain, the composing, directing, editing?

It is now becoming part of my directing process, because I have more confidence in what I can do in the edit while I’m shooting. The editing part of the process, the post, is honestly where I come to life. As someone who sits in front of Ableton all day, it’s real close, editing a film and doing sound design and all that. It’s right there. That’s my superpower zone, the post.

What is it like to act alongside people you’re also directing?

It’s really nerve-racking. But the beauty of this movie was we all ended up doing our scenes on day one together. In a way, we were all nervous; we all had the jitters and were trying to feel each other out. And that was actually what the scene needed — it was a way for us to start building for the greater movie. To put myself in that position, I was able to empathize better with what the actors are feeling, because I know what it’s like to be on the other side of it.

What was it like directing Aaron Paul? Are you a Breaking Bad fan?

I’m just an Aaron Paul fan. He’s a such a great actor and a great human. He was super, super essential in the process. Just his energy on set and how he would lift the crew and the cast. He’s just an incredible human.

Without giving anything away, I will say there was a particular scene where the score really evoked John Carpenter – that relentless, repetitive, terrifying electronic sound.

That makes me happy. Some of those weird dissonant chords, there’s some of that in there for sure. I was thinking of him so much in the process. One of the movies that I did watch over and over right before production was the original Halloween. I even lifted a shot from that movie — if you’ve seen Halloween, you’ll know the shot. I was trying to get in his spirit toward the end, because he did a lot of his soundtracks alone with very minimal equipment and not a lot of time. When I was in New Zealand, I tried to think like him. I even hit him up: we talked a bit, and he was just so cool, man. He gave me some pointers, we were talking sh-t. But yeah, he was super influential. Vangelis was super inspiring. Akira Yamaoka from the Silent Hill series was super inspiring. I listened to the Cliff Martinez soundtrack from [the 2002] Solaris. I listened to a bunch of Berlin techno, really dark techno. And Angelo Badalamenti, there’s some of him in there.

Speaking of Angelo, you worked with David Lynch on “Fire Is Coming” in 2019. Do you take any particular inspiration from his directing style?

One thing I’ve learned is to be more confident in the unknown and the surreal and how a thing feels versus what a thing means. And not having to always explain a thing or why. Giving people some mysteries to chew on for a little while.

What was the hardest scene to direct?

Dude, my worst day on set was the medbot, the extraction medbot scene. I didn’t know if it was going to work. The whole movie depends on that sequence working out. There was a lot of faith that had to be put into the CG element of it, and we had no time. And that was also the day Aaron was done filming, so he was like, “Alright, that’s the last thing I got, right? I’m out of here.” It was that feeling of, “Oh, Aaron, no, don’t go!” [laughs] Then feeling like, “Dude, I don’t know if we got it with this medbot thing.” But now I have a bit more confidence in the post process and the things that that can be achieved.

Well, it’s tough to direct or act in a scene where CGI makes up a big portion of it.

To be honest, because we’re a small movie, I was just worried that our FX team wouldn’t be able to pull it off in a realistic way. Just because I didn’t know! So I was really, really nervous about that. Had a little freak out, but came back, got it done. But there’s some really great FX stuff there. I was just blown away when I saw that. That’s my favorite stuff that they put together.

And of course, it’s a small budget. But the scene absolutely does work.

It was a lot of love and a lot of support from people who had heard of my music and wanted to try a project that would be a little different. It’s nice to go a little crazy.