“There might be a couple of people who think of me as a composer... an isolated minority, perhaps,” Frank Zappamused to a German journalist in 1970, in between flicks of his cigarette. “Some people think that I’m some sort of political rebel.” Then, in a jarring moment, he turned and stared directly into the camera. “Isn’t it strange, the fantasies that people have?” he asked.
He had a point–especially considering the many illusions that had gathered around him during his long career, which spanned the height of the countercultural 1960s through the censorship-friendly 1980s. With his imposing stature, burning stare, and radical sounds that seemed gathered from Mars, Zappa’s life begged to be mythologized. The questions around him began circling from moment he assembled the Mothers of Invention in 1964: Was this renegade making such unholy noise a hippie? Was this undefinable thing he was creating anti-music? What kinds of drugs was he on? Did he step on baby chickens? And did he really take a shit onstage one time and eat it?
Zappa took some of these answers to the grave when he died of prostate cancer in 1993. However, a new documentary,Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words, attempts to parse Zappa’s mysterious life and music. Through archival interviews and rare concert footage, director Thorsten Schütte lovingly slips off Zappa’s mask a bit, speaking to both Zappa disciples and dilettantes alike.
The documentary jumps into Zappa’s zaniness immediately. Instead of relying on the usual documentary tropes–childhood photos, heartfelt testimonials from famous fans– the documentary splices together his most outrageous television interviews. When Zappa was in front of a camera, he made viewers feel as though they were sharing a secret with him; here we see that power evolve in full force, from his quippy early days in the Sixties onward. (When asked then if he harbored a deep cynicism, he replied, “And I wish some other people would catch it.”) Through the Seventies, Zappa became more rash, showing his impatience with vacuous questions. (“You’re the packaging type, aren’t you?” he goaded one interviewer.) And in the Eighties, he crusaded against the music censorship craze, testifying in the Senate hearings on rock lyrics that eventually led to the parental advisory labels on albums.
While Eat That Question shows how Zappa cleverly played the media’s confusion about him, there are moments when it becomes apparent that he was bothered by his perception as a freak, and that it prevented him from sharing his views. “The media keeps me from getting my point of view across,” he griped. “The more abstract and weird they make me look, the less access that I have to a normal channel of communication with the people who might benefit from what I have to say.” Still, even when saying something deliberately inflammatory, he remained cool and charming onscreen.
Eat That Question, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, is particularly interesting in its scant incorporation of those closest to Zappa. It’s only interested in Zappa’s appraisal of himself, and doesn’t speak to his children, nor his late wife, Gail (who died last year). The only external insights come from fans in candid, man-on-the-street conversations. The structure benefits Eat That Question because it presents Zappa’s life from a consistent outsider-looking-in perspective, instead of being emotionally tinged by those who knew him.
Presenting Zappa in his own words is a daunting challenge, and Eat That Question rises to it. However, Zappa remains guarded, even when he’s talking about himself. “In order to do press, there’s no way that I can sit here and be a normal human, because being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things you can do to somebody else,” he told Channel 4 in 1983. “It’s two steps removed from the Inquisition.”
Ultimately, in presenting inquisition after inquisition, Eat That Question proves entertaining but reveals few new truths about Zappa–and he probably wouldn’t have minded the outcome. As we see in one of his final interviews, well into his cancer treatment, he was asked how he wanted to go down in history. With a long, sad smile, he replied, “It’s not important to even be remembered.”