How was it dealing with Gail Zappa? In a statement you are very diplomatic in calling her “notoriously discerning.”

I’m a Gail fan. Does that mean I agree with her on everything? I’m the guy who made the Napster movie. But she was not an unreasonable person at all, and that’s what gets misconstrued. You have to remember the times that she grew up through. Specifically, she ran the Zappa business. She was navigating a very complex and treacherous landscape, which is what the music industry is, and she had learned to be fiercely controlling and independent in order to keep the thing alive.

Where did the idea of selling the Zappa house for $9 million come from?

It’s a bargain! In the Zappa family, the kids are all grown up and have their own lives. With Gail no longer here, there’s nobody there [at the house]. So we proposed to them that if this thing is going to get sold anyway, why don’t we make it part of our campaign? For the real giant Zappa fans out there, they’re going to get the house that has the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, the house that has the vault in it and all this incredible history. They were there from 1968 on.

What happens to the $9 million if somebody buys the house? Does it go into the making if the film, or does that money go to the Zappa family?

It goes to both. We would give big portion of that to the family for the value of the house, and then do everything we need to do toward making the archive safe and making the movie we want to make. This would allow us to start the movie immediately.

What do you want the film to portray?

Frank is someone that a large part of the population absolutely adores, and probably a healthy part of the population doesn’t like at all. That’s really compelling to me. There are so many paradoxical aspects to him that represent the paradoxical nature of that period of history. On the macro side, I love what that allows me to do as a documentarian. But on the micro side, I’m just really fascinated by who he was.

How will what’s in the vault help you make the movie?

Because a lot of it is personal. It’s not just outtakes from records. He would record video around the house. If NBC Radio came over to get one sound bite, he would set up a video camera and record the entire interview. No one has ever seen that stuff. It’s all down in the basement, and there is tons of it.