Frank Zappa was a singular composer, band leader, social satirist and cultural provocateur who recorded a staggering 62 albums before his 1993 death from cancer at the age of 52. He is worthy of several film documentaries chronicling his life, although even several might not do full justice to his multifaceted life and legacy.

A labor of love by German-born director and writer Thorsten Schütte, “Eat That Question” does a sound job of letting Zappa — who attended both Grossmont and Mission Bay high schools — speak for himself.

“Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words” Rating: R When: Opens Friday Where: Landmark Hillcrest Cinemas Running time: One hour, 30 minutes

The iconoclastic musician and fiercely outspoken opponent of censorship does that very well in this 90-minute film. In between archival concert footage of him and a number of his genre-leaping bands, he eloquently addresses an array of topics in interviews that span a 30-year period.

These range from a 1963 appearance on “The Steve Allen Show,” during which the then-22-year-old Zappa performed his Improvised Concerto for Two Bicycles, Pre-Recorded Tape “and the musicians in back,” to a 1993 interview on “Today Show” filmed shortly before his death.

Schütte clearly knows his subject well, although there are some glaring holes in the film’s narrative. There’s also an assumption that the general public is reasonably conversant with its subject. As Zappa tartly observes in this film, that is unlikely.

“I’m famous,” he notes, “but most people don’t know what I do.”

What Zappa did was to create a musical universe all his own. He made and released more than 62 albums in his lifetime, followed (so far) by at least 40 posthumous releases.

Zappa was equally skilled at composing and performing cutting-edge classical music, lovingly crafted doo-wop homages, blues, jazz, reggae and any rock hyphenate you can name (and several that you probably couldn’t).

Or, as he told this writer in a 1984 Union-Tribune interview: “Put yourself in my shoes. If I wake up and want to write a cowboy song, I can do it; if I get up the next day and want to write an opera, I can do it; if I want to write a heavy metal song the day after that, I can do it. The rock stuff is the simplest, because it only requires eight guys. But in the `serious' music world, where you have to pay for all those members of an orchestra, it requires such massive amounts of money that it's ridiculous.”

Whatever the style, Zappa made each unmistakably his own. He was undaunted by the fact he only scored a single Top 40 radio hit in the U.S., 1982’s “Valley Girl,” which featured his oldest daughter, the then-teenaged Moon Unit, on vocals. (By contrast, Zappa’s “Bobby Brown” was a hit abroad, even though — as he tells an interviewer in the film — U.S. radio wouldn’t touch the song because of its sexually frank lyrics.)

Zappa fondly recalls on camera his musical epiphany as a teenager, which took place when he heard an album by the visionary French composer Edgar Varèse. (That epiphany took place while Zappa was living in La Mesa, although the film does not mention where he lived at the time.)

No matter its lapses, fans will likely find “Eat That Question” worth the price of admission for its concert footage alone.

Clips shown range from various editions of his pioneering band, The Mothers of Invention, to a 1992 performance by Germany’s Ensemble Modern, whose fiery performance of Zappa’s deviously challenging “G-Spot Tornado” has its notoriously hard-to-please composer beaming with approval.

Some of the musicians shown playing with various iterations of his band include now-deceased keyboardist George Duke, French violinist Jean Luc Ponty, drummers Chester Thompson and Chad Wackerman, and ibraphonist and marimba player Ruth Underwood. If San Diego guitar and keyboard wiz Mike Keneally, a key member of Zappa’s final touring band, is shown in any of the concert footage, I was unable to spot him.

Reflecting on his prolific repertoire of genre-leaping music, Zappa advises an interviewer in the film: “Consider that the whole body of my work is one composition.”

Yet, while he only scored a few hit albums, Zappa profoundly inspired his listeners and their sensibilities. A key example is “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, although no mention is made of him in this film.

There is, however, footage of Zappa being given a hero’s welcome in Czechoslovakia in 1990.

His music from the 1960s onward was a key inspiration for that country’s first democratically elected leader, Vaclav Havel, and a generation that grew up under the oppressive Communist regime that Havel and his compatriots peacefully overturned.

The most famous Czech rock band, which was outlawed by the communist government, took its name, Plastic People of the Universe, from a song on Zappa’s 1967 with the Mothers of Invention, “Absolutely Free.”

The film shows Zappa signing papers — at Havel and the then-fledgling Czech government’s request — to serves as the country’s official cultural emissary and economic adviser for its dealings with the United States.

Zappa was clearly tickled to do so. Alas, there isn’t even a hint of what happened soon thereafter.

Two weeks after Zappa’s Prague visit, then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker came calling and had his aides tell Havel that Baker — and, by extension, the U.S. government — would not look kindly on any Czech partnership with Zappa. The Czechs, wary of losing foreign aid, complied and quietly scuttled their deal with Zappa.

Baker, it transpires, had a grudge against Zappa, who had mocked Baker’s wife during the 1985 Parents Music Resource Center congressional hearings. It’s a fascinating back-story to the Czech government’s aborted partnership with Zappa. But “Eat That Question” makes no mention of the connection, even though it includes some of Zappa’s testimony at the PRMC hearings.

Whether this omission is due to budgetary constraints, or a lack of research by director-writer Schütte, is unclear. Equally disappointing is the lack of a single reference to the fact that, in 1991, Zappa seriously considered a run for the presidency as an independent candidate.

“My main qualifications,” Zappa told me in a 1991 Union-Tribune interview, “are that I don't play golf, I don't take vacations and I do think the U.S. constitution is one hell of a document and that this country would work better if people adhered to it more closely.”

The film includes a number of people who sings the praises of its charismatic subject, but the words of Zappa himself resonate the strongest. Here a few choice examples from “Eat That Question”…

“An artistic decision based on whether you’ll make money is not an artistic decision, it’s a business decision.”

“There’s no emphasis in schools in the United States on preparing people to live a life that has beautiful things in it, things that might bring them aesthetic enrichment.”

“Let’s face it: I sit on toilet seats, and so do you. The only difference is that someone took my picture” (on one and made it into a popular poster).”

And, most fittingly for a movie called “Eat That Question”: “Being interviewed is the most absurd thing you can do with anybody. It’s two steps removed from the inquisition.”

(The film’s R rating is, presumably, because of its periodic profanity. In a memorable scene, Zappa explains why he doesn’t believe in the concept of “dirty words.”)

george.varga@sduniontribune.com