Alex Winter's "Zappa" -- WARNING: SPOILERS!

The first time I lost my shit watching Alex Winter's documentary Zappa was when Ruth Underwood played "The Black Page" on piano. Hearing Frank Zappa's most daunting composition played as part of a loving reminiscence (by a musician who recalls Zappa's performances with the Mothers of Invention at New York's Garrick Theater as transformative and was a regular collaborator from 1972-77) put a new spin on it -- quite a trick to pull off with a piece of music I first heard in 1976, at one of the shows recorded for the Zappa In New York album. There are a few moments like that in this film.

When I first read that Winter -- an actor best known for his work in the Bill and Ted franchise -- had taken on this project, I was skeptical. Well, shut my mouth and open my mind. Apparently, the way Alex sold the project to Gail Zappa (Frank's wife and head of the Zappa Family Trust until her death in 2015) was by telling her that he planned to focus on Zappa the composer, which was in accord with her wishes. In return, he got unlimited access to the legendary vault containing Zappa's archives, a treasure trove of audio and video material, which Winter makes masterful use of in his retelling of the often-told story. 

Comparisons being odious, Thorsten Schutte's 2016 Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words had attempted to examine Zappa's life and work without using any of his music -- a fool's errand (in the same way as John Ridley's 2013 Hendrix biopic Jimi: All Is By My Side was). There's plenty of performance footage in Zappa, much of it previously unseen, and Winter uses Zappa's music (the song "Oh No," for example) to frame the narrative. 

I've been a Zappa fan for 50 years now, since my best buddy from middle school and I memorized the lyrics from a shitty Mothers of Invention compilation in MGM's Golden Archive Series (released after label president Mike Curb dropped all the "drug associated" acts from the label) the way we used to memorize bits from Firesign Theater records. I bought Weasels Ripped My Flesh -- a collage of live improvisations and studio tracks that Zappa compiled after breaking up the original MOI -- when it was new and hated it, but I couldn't stop listening to it, and it became my eventual gateway into free jazz and 20th century classical music (and the title track, two minutes of feedback noise that I would fly across the room to turn off, got me in training for the Stooges' "L.A. Blues"). Winter highlights Zappa's obsession with editing film and tape as one of the cornerstones of his creative process.

In recent years, my Zappa fandom has waned somewhat. The realization that the music (Zappa and the Who in particular) that I thought of as special and unique as a youngster only proves that I was absolutely typical of my age, gender, and place has diminished some of its luster. While the misogyny and homophobia of a lot of Zappa's lyrics don't negate the value of his total oeuvre, they do disincline me to listen to much of it, in the same way ex-Mother Roy Estrada's conviction for sexual abuse of a child (in my city, no less) disinclines me to watch Baby Snakes (the film of a '77 Zappa performance at New York's Academy of Music in which Estrada is featured); the backstage scenes with the sex doll are particularly creepy in this context. 

The lumpen Noo Yawk audience in Baby Snakes, obsessed with "gross outs" and guitar solos, is my cohort. But Winter reminds us that Zappa used the money he made off commercially successful records like Sheik Yerbouti (which was released after I got off the bus) to finance recordings of his orchestral music. A recurring theme in Winter's Zappa is that Frank just wanted to hear the music he wrote performed accurately -- an expensive hobby, and one fraught with frustration. Contemporary pop psychology would classify him as obsessive-compulsive or on the autism spectrum, and he was traumatized by his 1965 arrest (for "conspiracy to commit pornography") and the 1971 onstage attack that left him in a wheelchair for a year. But his response to life was to create.

Winter's interviews with musicians -- besides Underwood and her ex-husband Ian, there's early Mother Bunk Gardner, Zappa inspiration and '70s collaborator Johnny "Guitar" Watson, '80s band members Steve Vai, Scott Thunes, and Mike Kenneally -- illuminate both Zappa's creative process and his interpersonal relationships. But most telling are Gail Zappa and Pamela Des Barres on Zappa's family life. Frank openly screwed around a lot on the road, and one gets the impression it was an arrangement Gail acquiesced to but didn't embrace. Even more poignant is Des Barres' recounting of the circumstances that led to Zappa's recording the song "Valley Girl" with his daughter Moon. Winter shows the letter Moon wrote to get her father's attention, and it's a heartbreaker: "Hi! I'm 13 years old. My name is Moon. I've been trying to stay out of your way while you record..." Zappa's work-focused singlemindedness came at a price.

After he had forsaken working with musicians in favor of realizing his music using the Synclavier (an early digital synthesizer), Zappa was unexpectedly approached by the Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based new music ensemble, who were interested in performing his work. The recording of the resultant concerts, The Yellow Shark, was released in November 1993, a month before his death at 52 from prostate cancer, and serves as a fitting epitaph. In Winter's film, footage of Zappa conducting the Ensemble Modern in a 1992 performance of "Get Whitey" (one of my favorite pieces, coincidentally) is interspersed with images of the composer with his family, signaling that his life was winding down. (That was the second time I lost my shit watching.) His response to a 20-minute standing ovation: "It's better than if they threw things at the stage." Then Winter shows him sitting alone in a large, empty room backstage.

Zappa came late in life to politics, cutting his hair and donning a suit to testify before Congress against censorship -- a brave and futile gesture from one who considered himself a "practical conservative;" the Parents Music Resource Center was still able to implement warning labels on records, and I wound up voting for Ralph Nader in Y2K because Al Gore's wife was one of the PMRC's principals. Perhaps Zappa's finest moment came in 1990, when he visited Czechoslovakia (where he was viewed as a symbol of freedom) at the request of President Vaclav Havel, who named him "Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture, and Tourism" (a designation that was subsequently withdrawn at the behest of US Secretary of State James Baker, whose wife was another PMRC principal). The third time I lost my shit watching was when Winter showed footage of Zappa's June 1991 appearance with a Czech ensemble -- the last time he played guitar in public.

I can't be objective about this film, but my wife, who isn't a fan, says it's the best music documentary she's ever seen, and that it gave her a better appreciation of Zappa and his work. Can't argue with that. The pacing and focus are flawless, although I'm sure fanboys will find something to crab about, and two hours and nine minutes flew by like a heartbeat. Definitely one I'll want to see again. Kudos to Alex Winter for doing a -- sorry -- most excellent job.