200 Motels

This movie is about how touring on the road with a rock and roll band will make you crazy."--Frank Zappa's only line of dialogue in 200 Motels. "That was the most awful boring piece of shit I ever saw."--A Friend.

200 Motels is the first movie by the well-known and somewhat demented Los Angeles rock star and composer Frank Zappa. It is also a record album that purports to be the soundtrack to the film, but only sometimes intersects with the movie in a rather disordered way. Taken together, they are either Zappa's view of modern America or else just another scheme he has contrived to waste the time and money of America's youth. In either case, the film has alienated me from my friends and given me a minor case of dandruff.

I really liked 200 Motels. It is clearly the work of a depraved and cynical (not to mention greedy) mind. Zappa's bizarre perspective so thoroughly permeates the film that most of my friends (who decidedly hated it) think me a bit depraved for liking it.

In both outlook and musical style, 200 Motels is an updating of the 1931 Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Instead of Brecht's thieves and prostitutes, however, Zappa gives us rednecks, rock stars, and groupies who populate a movie set that at times is supposed to pass for a small American town. ("Centerville--A Real Nice Place to Raise Your Kids Up.") The rock stars are, of course, the Mothers of Invention, all of whom portray themselves, except for Zappa, who rarely appears in the film, but is sometimes represented by a Frank Zappa dummy and sometimes by Ringo Starr, who plays Larry the Dwarf disguised as Frank Zappa. In this unchallenging role. Ringo once again displays his utter (though in this case appropriate) lack of range and feeling as an actor.

The backdrop for Centerville is so unconvincing that the actors frequently talk about going over to the fake bar to get a fake beer. The Mothers live perpetually in fake motel rooms, where they have long moral battles about whether or not to steal the fake bath towels. The town seems to be run by Rance Muhammitz (played by Theodore Bikel, a real actor), who is either a TV quiz show moderator or a Nazi officer or the devil. It's hard to tell which.

The town is also the home of the Centerville Recreational Facility, a detention camp for classical musicians, who are described as a socially unproductive and financially worthless class of people (portrayed in the film by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra). Surrounded by a high wooden fence that is topped with barbed wire and vigilantly patrolled by Nazi soldiers carrying rifles, the orchestra is forced to perform pop music (i.e., Zappa's score), since that is more lucrative.

The movie has no plot at all but several sub-plots, none of which ever develop into anything. There is a love interest between Motorhead Sherwood, an actor who appears to suffer from some brain malfunction, and a vacuum cleaner that isn't really a vacuum cleaner but is actually some guy dressed up like a vacuum cleaner who never talks but merely inhales. There is another guy who wears a nun's habit and is supposed to represent a groupie who has taken an overdose of barbiturates and ascends to Heaven. There is Jeff the bass player who drinks a vile foamy liquid, freaks out, steals his entire motel room, packs it in an empty beer bottle, and deserts the group in order to start a solo act.

If there is any theme to the whole film, it is that rock and roll musicians on tour are reduced to desperate paranoia. The only thing the Mothers ever talk about is getting drunk, getting laid, and getting paid. They all hate working for Zappa and think he is ripping them off. They are sure that he has their rooms bugged, so he can steal all their ideas, pervert them, copyright them, and claim them as his own. (At one point we actually see Larry the Dwarf, disguised as Zappa, transcribing a tape of the band into a music notebook and then perverting it by pouring coffee all over the page and hitting it with a blunt object.) The band is afraid that Zappa is watching everything they are doing and that he will make them repeat it in the movie. Yet at other times they complain to the audience that he is in the background somewhere, directing them and making them say absurd things.

To make things worse, the musicians are all doomed to endless frustration. They never get paid, all the beer they drink is fake, and none of the groupies will have them, because touring has made them such pitiful wrecks. As Janet the groupie says when she first sees them. "Pop stars are so depressing when they been on the road for a long time and they finally get some action...."

By far the best actors in the film are Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (also known as the Phosphorescent Leech and Eddie), who used to sing lead for the Turtles. They helped write the film and do almost all the vocals. It's weird to see them in this sordid film and realize that they are the same people who used to sing "Happy Together" and "I Know She'd Rather Be With Me."

Zappa's score for the film utilizes the entire orchestra most of the time and owes quite a lot to Stravinksy and Berg, as well as Kurt Weill. Although much of the music is impressive, particularly such numbers as "This Town is a Sealed Tuna Sandwich" and "Penis Dimension," it is also just plain ugly. The words to these numbers are real funny, if you go in for Zappa's type of humor, but they are frequently inaudible, so it is advisable to listen to the album carefully before seeing the movie.

There are also several rock songs in the film that tend to be inferior to the best of Zappa's work. Unfortunately these numbers are accompanied by psychedelic, out-of-focus visuals of the Mothers playing. The result is boring.

Reaction to 200 Motels was pretty extreme, with a lot of people in hysterics and a lot of people walking out in the middle. If you like the Mothers live, you'll probably like the film, since it is basically Zappa's stage show, augmented by a symphony orchestra, a chorus, dancers, animation, and a cast of dozens. If you find Zappa a drag, particularly his more narrative albums like Absolutely Free and We're Only In It For The Money, you will probably be bored still by the whole thing. If you do want to go see it, you should do so soon, before all the copies of the film destroy themselves in embarassment.