A Film About Frank Zappa Has Broken Kickstarter's Doco Funding Record

A film about the life and work of celebrated experimental icon Frank Zappa has officially become the biggest crowdfunding effort for a film in the documentary genre after raking in more than $US900,000 (about $1.2 million) in pledges. 

At the time of writing, Who The F*@% Is Frank Zappa, directed by now-seasoned doco director and one-time Bill & Ted star Alex Winter, sits at an eye-popping $US906,966 in pledged funds, well surpassing its original goal of $US500,000 and ultimately besting the previous record of $US859,425, which had been held by a film project about American scientist and pop culture icon Bill Nye. The documentary has also raised a further $US35,000 outside of Kickstarter.

Why so much cash? Well, there's a catch to Winter being able to make this film — although he was granted complete, unfettered access to Zappa's extensive private 'vault' by his since-passed wife, Gail, as well as the full blessing and support of the Zappa family, Winter and his team "have to catalog, save, digitize and preserve a vast archive of unreleased audio, video, images, documents and more".

"The archive exists on every conceivable form of media; 35mm, 16mm film, 8mm film, sound tape, VHS, 3/4", D1, Betamax etc," the film's website explains. "We'll use state-of-the-art transfer and conversion technology to digitize and preserve the archives, and we'll do the entire thing with the help and supervision of Joe 'Vaultmeister' Travers, resident Zappa expert and — to date — keeper of the Vault for the Zappa Family Trust." 

Winter enlisted Travers to oversee the entire preservation process, a vocation in which the Vaultmeister has engaged for several years now, "but there's only so much he can do alone, so he's been really encouraged to see how many of you are excited to step up and get involved in saving even more of this material".

The filmmakers go on to acknowledge in an FAQ that, even if they do not hit their revised stretch goal of $US1 million, much of the vault will still be saved to the best of Travers' and the Zappa Family Trust's ability, while "outside the family, there will always be investors who understand the value of saving the vault contents and selling them".

We'd prefer the movie, though.

Winter, who has previously dipped his toes in documentary waters with Downloaded (about Napster) and Deep Web (about the hidden internet), is making the film with assistance from Travers and in collaboration with producer Glen Zipper.

There are a tonne of great rewards up for grabs for pledgers, and there's really not that long left to add to the pile (the campaign ends in 47 hours from now); see the film's Kickstarter campaign page for a full rundown of the whys and wherefores of the project as well as all the potential rewards that await those willing to put a few bucks into the kitty.