Zappa.com

In an interview in 1993 Ben Watson asks this:

I don't know if you want this known or talked about but there was a letter from Terry Gilliam being passed around on Friday night [it . referred to a film script Zappa had written and showed to Gilliam]. I was wondering if you'd like to say anything . . .
-FZ Talk about being flattered!

Did you ever watch Monty Python or see Brazil?
-FZ Yes - Brazil's my favourite movie.

It's one of mine, definitely. I always liked his things in Monty Python more than the sketches - his graphics.
-FZ Yah. He's so funny it's hard to imagine he's an American.

What kind of project is it?
-FZ Well I wrote a screen-play and I was looking for someone to direct it. I've been working on it for years.


My question is.......what screenplay is Frank refering to??
MAN! Wouldn't that be something if Gilliam did it??

Could it be what is contained in the "Them or Us" book?

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I'm not sure but I don't think I've heard anyone talk about this on the forum.

Can anyone enlighten us?

Terry Gilliam doing a Frank Zappa screenplay??!!!
COME ON!!! THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME!!!

Another brief mention...

"A third bootleg box-set was planned but like many of Zappa’s projects ranging from a musical entitled ‘Hutchentoot’ to a screenplay intended for Terry Gilliam to direct it never came to fruition."

http://www.abctales.com/story/clinton-m ... upholstery


Also, this, from the Criterion forum...

"Gilliam has said that Zappa submitted an original screenplay to him once for consideration. Terry said it was a television script, not a movie script, and declined (though he thought at the time FZ should find a deal to make it for the then-wide open wasteland of cable television.)"


And, finally...

"Like the books of the late great Kurt Vonnegut, the Zappa canon is loaded with cross-references that definitely add to the fun. Inside Them Or Us (The Book) we get mentions of stupid girls named Debbie, the stench from an accordion, poodles dogs & sofas (naturally), and great swathes of words from Billy The Mountain, Hunchentoot, Joe’s Garage Acts I & II, Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch and Thing-Fish. It’s odd then that someone who often dismissed his own lyrics as mere decoration for the wondrous music what he wrote should believe that they’d make a decent film script. And that’s essentially what this is, in its original computer print-out dot matrix font (complete with the odd typo), a facsimile of 1984’s self-published tome presented in conventional paperback form by the UK’s Pinter & Martin - in a binding that won’t fall apart! Frank would later update, edit and truncate this ‘story’ and present it to a bemused Terry Gilliam as the Dwell screenplay; Gilliam (probably justly) declined to helm such a vehicle. For those of us unlucky enough to have witnessed Bunny Bunny Bunny at the Roundhouse, it’s clear that Frank was no Bergman. Certainly not a Mike Leigh or Woody Allen. Maybe not even an Ed Wood…light years away from Michael Bay. And that's an awful lot, girl. But he did write some entertaining songs. And this book (narrated in part by Francesco Zappa) is still pretty diverting, if not an easy read. Definitely a must-have for the hard-core into Frank’s conceptual continuity...er, concept. Bonzer dog-doo, with a fried egg on top of spam."

http://www.idiotbastard.com/reviews.htm

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That's what came to mind with me as well. I used to own this book a long time ago and what I recall is Frank just kinda pasting together some of the lyrics from different songs (Greggary Peccary, Billy the Mountain, Thing-Fish, etc.) plus some additional stuff to form some sort of "story". I don't remember it being particularly satisfying in any way though I do wish I would have hung on to it as the last time I looked it was going for $250.00 online.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

Well, they re-released it a couple years ago - I believe the dimensions of the book are smaller. The original, that I bought back in the '80's was big and thick, almost like a phone book. The new one is $11-12 new on amazon and the old one is listed for $140 new and $70.00 used. Interestingly, there is one customer review of the book on amazon and it's by P. Bird. I am 100% sure this is Pauline Butcher (Bird) the woman that used to be FZ's secretary in the '60's and wrote the recent book Freak Out: My Life With Frank Zappa. Well, anyway what's kind of weird is she just blasts the book because 1)it's just not very good and 2)the pornographic content. She just seems baffled that FZ could produce such smut and that FZ apparently only saw women as sex objects. I could understand this reaction from a conservative Christian woman who might be encountering Zappa's work for the first time but I just find it strange that she would be so offended by some of the explicit sexual material that FZ wrote so long ago now.

No, the "ignorant man's smut" and "women as only sex objects" is the liberal and enlightened dogma too. "Sensitivity training" and all that other shit too is shared ground with the "conservative Christians". So they agree!

Fuck it! Nobody's uniquely precious!

--Bat

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