200 Motels

200 Motels is a 1971 movie featuring Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, produced at Pinewood Studios, England. Directed and screenplay by Tony Palmer and Zappa. Actors included Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel and Keith Moon. A double album of the soundtrack was released in same year.

Film

If someone were to record several albums worth of material with a live band and a large orchestra, both separately and together whilst simultaneously filming a movie as if a television special; if that could be done, it would be a fair description of 200 Motels. The low filming budget involved a reputed $600,000, a seven-day shoot and 11 days editing; these factors contributed to the sort of insanity which the movie attempts to evoke musically. Although the movie's central theme is about "life on the road" for a touring rock musician in the late Twentieth Century, thematic references to Mephisto, Kafka, Kubrick's , work re-education/concentration camps and an innovative animation sequence are featured as part of the zany video/musical collage.

Related Topics:
Album - Orchestra - Rock - Twentieth Century - Mephisto - Kafka - Kubrick - Animation - Collage

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The film includes the Mothers of Invention and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the actor Theodore Bikel and rock-stars Ringo Starr as Larry the Dwarf and The Who's drummer, Keith Moon in drag as a nun. The plot is either nebulous or nonexistent as a narrative but as a series of vignettes and production numbers it is unlike anything else released in film at the time.

Related Topics:
Mothers of Invention - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - The Who

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

According to Zappa only a third of the script he wrote ended up being filmed. The director, several actors and a bandmember quit in the middle of production. These calamities accounted for changing things radically at the last moments. The movie was all shot on videotape and transferred to film after editing, a cinematographic first. There will probably never be a re-mastered or re-edited version as all of the original master tape and the unused scenes were later erased and sold as bulk video tape.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~