1964 Version
Vic Mortensen, quoted by John French, Beefheart: Through The Eyes Of Magic, 2010, p. 58
See, he (Zappa) told me he was working on a screenplay called Captain Beefheart and His Girlfriend Sue. Sue was Don's mother. Then there was something about "grunt people." But the first thing he told me about was Captain Beefheart and his Girlfriend Sue. Now this is before I had even met Sue.
FZ with Peter Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book, 1989, p. 54
Shortly after moving into 'Studio Z,' I heard about an auction at the F. K. Rockett Studios in Hollywood. They were going out of business and dumping some scenery. For fifty dollars I bought more scenery than I could fit in the studio, including a two-sided cyclorama—purple on one side for night, blue on the other side for day—a kitchen, a library interior, a building exterior—everything I needed to make a cheap movie. Every piece that would fit through the doors was dragged in, set up and repainted.
I ended up sleeping in the set for Billy Sweeney's Laboratory. In the back of the studio, next to the toilet, I built a totally implausible, two-dimensional, cardboard rocket ship.
I painted all the sets myself and wrote a script based on the people and facilities available at the time: Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People.
The Ontario Daily Report ran a feature story on me and my project in its Sunday centerfold—about how a weird guy in Cucamonga was trying to make a science fiction movie called Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People. It was probably that story which caused the San Bernardino County vice squad to take an interest in me.
[...] I put out a casting call for local people to play in the movie. A man came to audition for the role of the asshole: Senator Gurney. I later found out that he was a member of the San Bernardino County vice squad, sent to entrap me.
FZ, interviewed by Bill Forman, BAM Magazine, January 16, 1987
I had a recording studio in Cucamonga, California. I went to an auction at a place called the FK Rocket Studios in Hollywood. This was 1962. And for $50, I bought a whole bunch of movie sets. They just wanted to get rid of this stuff, and so I trucked it out of there and brought it back to Cucamonga and decided—well, what the fuck?—I'll make an independent movie. So I set up and tried to shoot a movie out there and the name of the movie was Captain Beefheart Vs. The Grunt People.
Paul Buff, liner notes for Cucamonga, Del-Fi, 1997
He had turned the whole studio into his vision of the B-movie spaceship. I remember him vividly getting excited about it—asking for any junk electronics I had, and taking meters and painting them day-glo orange and putting knobs all over a board and painting it with different day-glo colors. The last time I was in Studio Z, to go to the bathroom you had to go out of the cockpit of this ship and crawl down tunnels underneath and come out in the bathroom.
Patrice "Candy" Zappa, My Brother Was A Mother, 2003, p. 52
Frank took over long time friend Paul Buff's Pal Studio in Cucamonga and renamed it Studio Z. I had always wanted to see the infamous studio and one day I got my wish. I was home from school one day, nursing a fever and sore throat (gee, I still got colds even though my tonsils are gone) when Frank burst in the front door! I just knew he was there to brighten my day, by golly. "Hi Candy, how are you, what are you doing home from school? Get dressed, I'm taking you to the studio." [...] We hopped into his mustard-colored 1963 Chevy Bel-Aire station wagon and off we went to Archibald Avenue and Studio Z. I was in awe as soon as I walked in. Being a sheltered Catholic school girl, this was awesome indeed. Frank showed me the props that he had built for a movie he had written called "Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People." There was what looked like a spaceship facade and a mad scientist's laboratory. Frank had finished the sets by 1964.
Dee Ridpath, "Cucamongan Can Put Your Name In Lights," The Daily Report, Ontario-Upland, September 20, 1964 (reproduced in Greg Russo, Cosmik Debris: The Collected History And Improvisations Of Frank Zappa (The Son Of Revised), 2003, p. 37)
Cucamongan Can Put Your Name in Lights
Budding Playwright Seeks Local Talent to Help Produce Space Fantasy Film
By DEE RIDPATH
CUCAMONGA—This West End community boasts the only recording studio between El Monte and Riverside, and the only movie production studio west of Hollywood.
It is a "way out" place.
The studio is at 8040 Archibald Ave., in the village.
Frank Zappa Jr., of Frank Zappa Enterprises is the "movie mogul." He is a 23-year-old student of the lively arts.
A budding playwright and songwriter, young Zappa lives at 314 W. G St., Ontario. He is president of the organization.
His aim is to provide San Bernardino County with a major movie studio.
He has written a movie which he is planning to produce from the Cucamonga studio.
It is titled "Captain Beefheart."
Low Budget
It will be an extremely low budget picture, by the standards of Hollywood—only $50,000, an amount which Zappa says should attract local investors.
The average Hollywood-style low budget picture starts at twice that much, Zappa says. With the location of his studio in an area unrestricted by ordinances and unon requirements that have developed in the major movie centers, he can make it with much more economy, he believes.
Zappa is not jumping into the experiment without experience. He has worked in the movie and music industries for the last five or six years. He is a graduate of Chaffey College and has worked in Hollywood. He has been in films and also has worked in the directing end of the business.
He has written the scores of several movies.
The latest project was writing the score for a movie titled "Run Home Slow" which was finished about a month ago. It is yet to be released, Zappa said.
The money he has gained through working in the industry in Los Angeles County has been invested in the studio at Cucamonga.
"It will be a fabulous investment," he said.
So far he has about $22,000 worth of equipment at the local studio including stereos, stage settings, screen properties and canned music ready for the market now.
Writes Script
The young artist also has written the script for the movie the company is planning to film here. It includes the minute details of the planned film as well as the cast of characters and their dialogues.
"We are seeking local talent," he said, "to help produce the film. We want that type of person who appears funny among his friends, but who has never decided to take the step to filmdom."
Captain Beefheart is to be an adult comedy-fantasy.
The space age will never be the same again if the film is produced.
The story revolves around a group of pixilated people who journey to the moon in a fantastic series of comedic occurences.
A boy is frustrated because he lives on a horse ranch, but has never been allowed to ride a horse.
He eventually winds up in the clutches of a janitor who is frustrated because the spacecraft factory for which he performed his duties has been closed because of a series of unsuccessful attempts at building a ship to send to the moon.
The frustrated janitor, through his own determination, builds himself a moonship that works and is eventually flown to the satellite.
The plot thickens when the moonship makes its landing on the moon.
The moon also will never be the same after this fantastic crew lands there.
The crewmen get involved with the people on the moon and there's a cry of havoc across the land.
But to go further might tend to reveal the ending.
That would ruin what so far appears to be an outlandish fantasy.
"It's a way out," says Zappa.
It sure is!
Movie 'Mogul' Ponders Problems
Sitting in sound studio in Cucamonga, Frank Zappa Jr., a fledging film producer, thinks about the many problems connected with his dream of producing a comedy-fantasy film about a trip to the moon made by a frustrated youngster and a janitor disturbed by firm's inability to build moonship.
Here's the Moonship . . .
. . . and a Moon Maiden.
COQ Magazine, February 1974
[The vice squad] came to me because my studio received a lot of publicity in the Cucamonga area and I was attempting to raise money to produce a science-fiction film called Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People. They had a whole big spread on the studio in the Sunday papers.
FZ, liner notes from The Old Masters Box One (1985)
Besides working on the hideous little rock opera [I Was A Teen-age Malt Shop], I was trying to raise money for a micro-budget sci-fi film called "CAPTAIN BEEFHEART vs. THE GRUNT PEOPLE." [...] Captain Beefheart was a character I invented for the film. His name derives from one of Don Vliet's relatives who looked like Harry Truman. He used to piss with the door open when Don's girlfriend walked by and make comments about how his whizzer looked just like a beef heart.
Captain Beefheart, The International Times (IT) #26, February 16, 1968
I was out in the desert five years ago and i was sitting in a car and we were all stoned. Frank Zappa and I and a bunch of other guys were there. Frank doesn't turn on at all . . . but anyway, I was just sitting there and I started laughing and I had thoughts of this name and I laid it on everybody in the car and Frank says: "Ah! Like you know, that's great, we'll make a movie." So he said: "We'll make a movie and we'll call it 'Captain Beefheart Meets The Grunt People'." So we started work and we studied the script for a year and we wrote a thing and something happened and the movie fell through. It doesn't agree with the things I think now—changed so much in that length of time. It's a good movie though . . . tear on the dotted line, paste up rockets . . . it was really going to be far out.
Geoffrey Cannon, "Frank Zappa: He Observes Our Extremes, Absurdities," The Guardian (from Charleston Gazette, August 15, 1970)
Paul had built a five-track tape deck, revolutionary in those days, and had gone broke. Frank had $1,500 from a film, and bought Paul out.
He also had bought some film sets from F. K. Rockette Studios on Sunset Boulevard, which had become bankrupt: $5,000 worth for $50. They were 12 feet high, so big that everyone thought they could not be moved.
Frank dragged them to Cucamonga. "To the people who lived in that town it must have been like a Martian had arrived," says Frank. Sardonic chuckle. Work began on the only film that could be made, logistically, using the crazy sets: "Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People." (Take my word for the logic: the complete explanation takes 30 minutes to tell.) So Frank Zappa became the movie king of Cucamonga.
He had unlimited recording time, with his own studio, but no money. For nine months he ate a diet of peanut butter, instant mashed potato, coffee and honey. "I was definitely in a chemically altered state," says Frank. The potatoes and coffee were stolen from a blood bank van which was passing through. (Blood bank van? "Yeah," says Frank.)
Skip Heller, in the liner notes for Life In The Time Of 8040 N. Archibald
Jim Sullivan, who worked on the [Jeepers Creepers] show, has claimed that FZ wrote some incidental music for the show. This is quite possible. However, no definitive document exists, musically or on paper, to tell us what this music was or if any recordings survive. Sullivan, by the way, has a copy of the Captain Beefheart Meets The Grunt People script and visited the sets that FZ built for the unrealized production. he said in an interview that FZ wanted him to produce the film, which does not seem unreasonable, given FZ's financial condition at the time, and that he had never produced a film. Sullivan said the sets were so tiny that two people could barely fit on them, but allowed that FZ could have been a great film maker.
