With a background in classical music, a yen for the absurd,
and a desire to disrupt the status quo, rock musician Frank Zappa was a true
iconoclast. The bandleader and activist now gets the documentary treatment in
Thorsten Schütte’s “Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in
His Own Words.”
Spanning both Zappa’s solo career and his time with his band,
The Mothers of Invention, up until his death from cancer at the age of 52, the
film is made up almost entirely of archival interview footage with the
musician. It’s a method that’s a bit ironic considering that at one point we
see footage of Zappa explaining that “being interviewed is one of the most
abnormal things that you can do to somebody else; it’s
two steps removed from the inquisition.”
Zappa was critical of the media (once describing rock
journalism as “people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for
people who can’t read”) and bristled at its portrayal of him, lamenting that
“the more abstract and weird they make me look, the less access I have to
people who might agree [with the message] if they heard it.”
Without any additional commentary or background, the film
doesn’t quite function as a complete portrait of the artist, and if you’re not
already familiar with Zappa’s avant-garde music, this probably isn’t the best
way to go about acquainting yourself. A bit more context might have helped,
particularly in building a case for Zappa’s lasting impact on modern music. But
that seems appropriate for a man who claimed to be unconcerned about the legacy
he left behind; to him it didn’t matter whether he was remembered after his
passing. Still, Schütte’s film paints a vivid
portrait of the man himself, putting us inside the uniquely opinionated and
politically-minded headspace of a cultural icon.
This article appears in Aug 3-9, 2016.
