Right from the start, Frank Zappa had a weakness not only for music, but also for filmmaking. But it was only in 1971 that he finally managed to convince MGM to provide funding for a joint movie called 200 Motels, a surreal story about a touring band that tries to weather the usual adversities of life on the road: frustrated band members, anonymous cities, local rednecks, groupies, drugs, you name it.

200 Motels is a bizarrely psychedelic rock opera and a serious piece of multimedia art. The innovative movie - shot on videotape and later transferred to film by using state-of-the-art technology - had a sustainable influence on the aesthetics of later rock videos.