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Zappa was not just a musician: he also acted as a diplomat and even a voice actor for porn films, so it's almost needless to ask whether he made a film... for those still wondering, the answer is yes, and more than one... "200 Motels" is the only one worth noting. This doesn't make it a milestone, but it certainly offers a glimpse into the universe of that madman Zappa; it was 1971...
Starting with a script barely more than a draft, the film received enough funding for five days of shooting and, more importantly, to hire the London Symphony Orchestra so that the film's music could be performed by the same orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall (a concert that never occurred, due to the usual censorship...); assisting the completely unprepared Zappa on the more technical side of directing, we have Tony Palmer, famous at the time for editing images of the Vietnam War with a Rock music background.
The screenplay - though it would be more accurate to call it a sketch - revolves around the disorientation of musicians during a long tour, with lengthy travels, discussions, but above all, nights spent in ever-different motels;
The cast is worthy of a provincial funfair: what remains of the orchestra (many musicians fled once they saw the obscenities they would have to sing, play, and endure); the Mothers of Invention, excellent musicians but lousy actors; Theodore Bikel, the only professional actor of the bunch, who learned the hard way that it's always a good idea to read the script before accepting a role; a hilarious Ringo Starr playing Zappa and Keith Moon playing a harpist (the harp was left on set by the real harpist, who fled after a few hours of shooting), Pete Townshend was also supposed to participate, but he woke up late on the day of the shoot; rounding out the cast are a bunch of authentic groupies playing themselves.
The filming turned out to be a disaster, the script was too flexible, and the amateur acting inflated the already existing confusion that Zappa had created, incapable of managing film production and too egocentric to accept help from Tony Palmer, who was essentially reduced to a cameraman; the dialogues were so vulgar and the ideas so outlandish that the entire cast felt a sense of shame towards the Genius, an embarrassment that became unbearable when it was time to play and shoot a lengthy suite centered on the importance of penis size...
The music is undoubtedly the best part of the film, orchestral lunacy, and perfect rock tracks, mingling madness and intelligence. Zappa was simply delighted to have such an orchestra available to play his most eccentric pieces, without realizing what a mess of a film he was making. The money ran out, time was not enough, so it wasn't even possible to shoot all the planned material... The production had to pull all sorts of strings to get the very annoyed Tony Palmer to take care of the editing to give a logical sense to the filmed material, also because the film was shot on video (to save costs), and he was the only one capable of handling this format. The video signal was thus processed in a way never seen in cinema before and transferred to 35mm film (this is a first for the film), giving us low but peculiar image quality and moments of decidedly interesting visual psychedelia. Added to this is an incredible editing of the musical numbers, frantic and fast, very ahead of its time.
Innovative from a visual point of view and decidedly good from a musical perspective, we're left with a vulgar and decidedly confused story, badly acted and senseless. There are some amusing ideas, perhaps a bit too self-referential but nonetheless effective, along with a beautiful animated sequence on the importance of oral hygiene and serious music—a bit too little to venture into an hour and a half of such a film... "200 Motels" is not exactly the film I would recommend to those looking to get into the master's work, nor to anyone who is less than an ultra-convinced Zappa fan. I would instead recommend it to scholars of experimental cinema, lovers of the most brazenly freakish art, and those suffering from insomnia; let's forget about the perfection of his musical works because here Uncle Frank proves to be not up to the task, and this is, all in all, reassuring as it shows he was human.
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