A Labour Of Love ("what the fuck am I doing?")
200 Motels, from VHS to random access (chapters) DVD. This attempt began at the beginning of June and is now complete. Each scene is annotated as it was in the original script. The bandwidth-limited audio track has been tweaked to a wider spectrum without introducing processing noise. It is in AC3 format, nominally stereo, but not “expamded” into bogus stereo. The original tape was mono and so is this – with the exception of partials in the +7500Hz range which were doctored a bit to create some ambiance. The bass was boosted.
The video, originally filmed on video tape and transcoded to 35mm, had the chroma increased and the brightness reduced. Most of the artifacts have been eliminated, but a few remain. The movie was filmed in 8 days on a budget of less than $700,000 – still a lot for an Indie in the early 70s. Contemporary critics called this movie Zappa’s “Heaven’s Gate,” but Darwinian forces in the movie reviewer market place had pretty much eliminated them by the time “Star 80” was released. I bet they hated that, slinging burgers while a real stinker was pulsating on a marquee probably right across the street. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. You can put lipstick on a pig, but only a pervert would want to kiss it – and he’s probably do it without the lipstick. To reduce book costs, some genius sold the original 200 Motels videotapes for $4,000. It was probably erased and used a few times to film some porn. All the outtakes and additional material were lost forever.
The cleaned-up video file took 18 hours to render on my 2.2GHz Pentium system. Menus were added with Nero software. Each chapter on the main menu play the first 10 seconds. You get this effect by checking the “animate” box on the “Buttons” selection of the the “Chapters” menu. It’s cool.
I suppose, with a little more effort, I could have used the "real" stereo tracks from the MGM/Rykodisk (now unavailable!) soundtrack and got better sound. But, like a stupid little artist, it was not my goal to make a production. My goal was to enhance, to the highest degree possible, the viewing of an inarguably flawed but nevertheless enjoyable moment of Zappaology.
I’ve come to appreciate this movie a great deal more as I’ve pored over individual frames. The overall structure has revealed itself. It is of minor metaphysical import but still as worthy a statement as any made by Danielle Steele. Neither is it King Lear, but we’ll talk about him later. The blog has been slow the past 6 weeks while this project took shape. Now it is nearly finished – still needs a little dusting. It is geeks like me that get shit like this out to the people who really love it. This ain’t the best, but it will do for now. I hope the Zappa Family Trust releases something that is better. Then I will buy it and destroy all these silly little squiggles in the sand.
1:14:32 AM 
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