Frank reveals details of next film venture

By Roy Carr

New Musical Express, November 27, 1971

WITH his "200 Motels" movie currently in the centre of a storm of controversy, Frank Zappa has already completed the script for a second film which he plans to put into production early next year ... titled "Billy The Mountain." The story (according to Zappa) concerns a mountain which falls in love with a tree named Ethell growing out of his side. Ethell persuades Billy to take her on holiday, with the result that the mountain starts walking across America – destroying half the country in the process!

Said Zappa: "The film opens with God deciding to make a home movie. While He is waiting for the winged holy children to bring it back from the lab, He falls asleep and has a dream and it is this dream that constitutes the bulk of the picture. Other characters in the movie include a phased-out Byzantine Devil called Old Zircon; Studebacher Hoch who lives at the back of a market and wears a red and white tablecloth as a cape; and a Government agent named Little Emil who attempts to deal with the mountain which, by this time, has turned into a volcano."

Meanwhile, Zappa is planning to record one of his concerts at London Rainbow Theatre on December 10 and 11 for subsequent release as a live album. He currently has available nine albums of unissued Mothers Of Invention material, and he plans to start releasing these in March – they will be issued in three sets, each of three albums.