FRANK TALK

New film Eat That Question all about Zappa

Frank Zappa made a career of being untraditional, and director Thorsten Schütte chose to honour the iconoclastic composer with an equally original documentary. Eat That Question is a curated collection of Zappa’s television appearances with assorted rehearsal and performance footage that loosely chronicles his decades-long career.

Zappa’s music — a blend of jazz, rock, classical and musique concrete — served as a platform for his politics, and making songs like Penis Dimension put him in constant conflict with institutional opponents. These included the Parents’ Music Resource Center, against whom Zappa battled in court over their proposal for the now-ubiquitous Explicit Content sticker, and Royal Albert Hall administrators, who abruptly cancelled one of Zappa’s concerts over his lyrics.

As a documentary, there’s a clear sense from the jump that Schütte isn’t the one in control. Throughout every condescending or trite question, Zappa’s wry grin and brilliant answers display one man’s fight against a culture of bureaucratic and institutional wrist-slapping. His intelligence and self-awareness ensured he had control over his own image, even from beyond the grave.

Leaving the film in Zappa’s hands is a brave choice, it also leads to some of the film’s weaknesses. The lack of any additional filmic elements (no talking heads, no voice-overs, not even a single caption) offer little clarity or coherence.

Any clues of chronology for the not-yet-initiated are found only in Zappa’s subtly changing facial hair, and while that could be an inspired choice to continue confounding the public as Zappa did, it isn’t exactly an audiencefriendly tactic.