An Intriguing Trailer Offers A First Look At Frank Zappa Documentary
A variety of new and archival interviews with friends, family members, and collaborators will also help paint a full picture of Frank Zappa’s life.
A new trailer offers a captivating first look at Alex Winter’s forthcoming Frank Zappa documentary.
Touted as the first “all-access” documentary on the extraordinary life and work of the pioneering artist, Zappa will be available on-demand on November 27, with a one-night-only theatrical event on November 23.
When it came to footage for Zappa, the artist’s late widow, Gail, offered Winter and his team unfettered access to a trove of unreleased material from the artist’s vault, including never-before-seen interviews and movies, unheard recordings from concerts and studio sessions, and incomplete projects.
A variety of new and archival interviews with friends, family members, and collaborators will also help paint a full picture of Frank Zappa’s life. Among the many interviewees are Gail Zappa; Mothers of Invention multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood; guitar virtuoso Steve Vai; author, musician, actress, and Zappa-family-nanny, Pamela Des Barres; and Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington.
Winters, whose directorial credits include The Panama Papers and Downloaded, shared that Zappa was his most ambitious project to date. Before the film could even be made, many of the deteriorating items in Zappa’s vaults had to undergo archival preservation – which was a two-year process in itself.
In his director’s statement, Winter wrote that he and producer Glenn Zipper set out “to tell a story that is not a music doc, or a conventional biopic, but the dramatic saga of a great American artist and thinker; a film that would set out to convey the scope of Zappa’s prodigious and varied creative output, and the breadth of his extraordinary personal and political life. First and foremost, I wanted to make a very human, universal cinematic experience about an extraordinary individual.”
He continued, “Frank Zappa was not only a creative genius, but also a great and eloquent thinker who articulated the madness of his times with extraordinary clarity and wit. A legitimate maverick who lived and worked amongst other extraordinary people in historic times.”
Winter added that Zappa offers “a thoroughly modern exploration of a man whose worldview, art and politics were far ahead of their time, and profoundly relevant in our challenging times.”
Zappa will premiere during a one-night-only theatrical event on November 23, and will be available on-demand on November 27. For more information, visit the official website.
Listen to the best of Frank Zappa on Apple Music and Spotify.
