How the Mars Volta Rock Doc ‘Omar and Cedric’ Burns Down the Genre and Gets ‘Lost in Space Into Some Other Quantum Reality’

At the heart of maximalist rock outfit The Mars Volta are two friends: guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The pair met as El Paso high-schoolers obsessed with punk music, and soon began a creative partnership that lasted through multiple bands, scores of albums and hundreds of explosive live shows.

The centerpiece of their creativity is a constant search for fresh sounds and ideas, and the new film about their friendship — “Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird” — pushes the music documentary format forward as well. The film, out in select theaters Wednesday via Oscilloscope Laboratories, was directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, who took the job as a fan of the duo’s work since their breakout as members of post-punk group At the Drive-In. The pair had been interested in telling their story via hours and hours of candid video footage Rodríguez-López had recorded since his childhood, and Davies knew that he could remix the visuals in a way that would match the band’s creative spirit.

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“By filling the gaps of the story with impressionistic footage, the film lacks form,” Davies says. “It was like, ‘Well, it can’t have any form, then, because sometimes it’s incredibly raw. Here’s an album session, and sometimes it’s like, Here’s a bird in various colors, just flapping its wings while I was talking about taking drugs.’ I suddenly realized to take that pressure off of us and be like, ‘Well, fuck form, I don’t care.’ Some people have told me, ‘Oh, it’s a bit different.’ That’s why I like it. It’s not regular. I just used footage by any means necessary.”

The result is a film that mirrors the restless spirit of its subjects while breaking all of the rules of traditional documentary filmmaking. Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala lend some narration, but their talking heads are never seen. The images are often metaphorical vs. a straight-ahead depiction of what’s going on. While there are some touchstones that come with the rock lifestyle — burnout on the road, drugs, friends lost along the way —the musicians are more interested in digging in on topics like insidious masculinity in the rock and roll scene, as well as their desire to bring their heritage and culture into the music.

“Nobody was embezzling money,” Rodríguez-López says. “Nobody slept with someone’s partner. It’s not that type of stuff. It’s just all the embarrassing stuff that we all go through as people, which is to say, we are born in a state of ignorance and we work our way towards knowledge and we make mistakes along the way.”

Looking at the finished product, the musician says it gave him a cosmic appreciation of his journey.

“The film became this mirror and form of therapy for us to look back at all the things that happened with … I don’t wanna say detachment, because that sounds strange,” he says. “But you get to look at it as, ‘That’s a different me. That’s a different person that existed of me in some other quantum reality, now lost in space into some other quantum reality.’ Now I get to look at that person and observe and learn and get to decide who is that other me that I get to meet from the future.”

Beyond the film, Rodríguez-López is also sharing his art in another medium, with the release of his first collection of photography, “Hunters in High Heels,” out Jan. 7 via Akashic Books. Documenting a mix of life on the road and his creative process, the pictures are dense and busy, showing a mind always in search of meaning.

Rodríguez-López says that his love of photography comes from his mother, who loved documenting his family with a still camera.

“It’s the closest thing I’ve ever felt to the feeling that you can disappear,” he says. “If you’re looking at the world just through the viewfinder, this interesting thing happens. You have to focus, you have to decide what you’re looking at. I think it’s amazing because in life we could pretty much just look anywhere. But taking a picture, you have to decide, ‘What is the thing that I’m seeing?’

“Before it was normal that everyone had a camera on their phone, there’s this strange thing that happened because it’s not like how it is now,” he continues. “I would always go up to people and say, ‘Oh, can I take a picture of you?’ They become so aware of the lens itself — not you, but the lens and their position to it — that you disappear as a person. I really like this because I’m such a shy person. It’s such a wonderful way to be in society, but to sort of not exist as a person.”

Watch the trailer for “Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird” below.