FZ: I'm finishing a movie that I started 14 years ago. [...] Right. This movie was begun before we did 200 Motels. [...] I left it alone for a number of years because the material itself was tied up on a lawsuit and it was locked up in a vault under the control of another person. And when the lawsuit was resolved I got all the material back and decided I would finish it off.
Interviewer: When do you think you'll have it completed?
FZ: Ah, probably sometime next year. Because I don't work on it 24 hours a day, you know, I have other things that I do that I earn a living from, so this is kind like a hobby.
Interviewer: It's like a toy.
FZ: Well, it's not a toy because eventually it will turn into a PRODUCT, but, uh . . . [...] That's offensive to call working on things like these a toy! What kind of an attitude is that? [...] It's gonna be called Uncle Meat.
Interviewer: Could you explain the story line?
FZ: Well, sure, no problem. There's a guy who is played by Don Preston who turns into a monster, and there's a girl who is played by Phylis Altenhaus who, in one role on the film, she plays my assistant editor, and on another role in the film she plays a character named Sheba Flieschman, a girl who is in love with a man who turns into a monster. Sheba Flieschman also likes to have men rub her body with hamburger meat on a shower. And the monster also has another character, a character he plays named Biff Debris, and Sheba Flieschman and Biff Debris finally meat each other in a pool hall. And they pick each other up and they go to Tropicana motel, where they perform this little ceremony. Before Sheba Flieschman gets to have her body rubbed with hamburger meat in the shower, Biff wouldn't go in the shower unless she wears the special clothes, he likes to take showers with women who wear white t-shirts, Levi's, and a little brown belt with yellow ribbets in it. And unless she wears this he wouldn't go in the shower, so there's an extreme shower scene where she wears this and she keeps them in a plastic garbage can in the refrigerator [...]. And then after this whole thing he hypnotize her with a hamburger bum, it goes like this, and she's hypnotized, and under the influence of this hypnosis she looks directly into the camera and says, "Because you got me hot with this hamburger meat I'm going to show my deepest appreciation and I'm going to go to the Hollywood Ranch Market and I'm going to buy some cleanser and some scouring powder and clean your bathroom." She's hypnotized, like a zombie, and she goes, "The cleanser . . . The cleanser . . . " And she walks out of the bathroom to the Hollywood Ranch Market—by the way, that place doesn't exist anymore, it burnt out about six years ago. [...]
Interviewer: Have you ever done any acting?
FZ: Not much, BUT, recently I, just for a laugh, I played the role of a hunchback on in a fairy tale that was completed about three days ago, on a show called Faerie Tale Theatre which was produced by Shelley Duvall, and airs on Showtime cable network here in the United States. I don't know if they have distribution outside the US [...]. I think that they probably would be trying to export this thing, but . . . It's a whole series of fairy tales. The first one that they did was "The Frog Prince" and it starred Robin Williams as the frog. He was really great. And, things are all done on video, they use a lot of video effects. Mick Jagger did the last one that was on the air, he played the Mandarin in "The Nightingale," and . . . So I got to be a hunchback in a story called "The Boy Who Left Home To Learn About The Shivers."
Interviewer: Did he?
FZ: Eventually, yes. He found out about the shivers in one of the more humorous scenes in the thing.
Interviewer: Do you have any lines in it?
FZ: Yeah. Hear Here are my lines, "Huh huh huh . . . " And, "Ooooh . . . heh heh . . . "
[...]
Down on this dub room which is on the ground floor, just as you walk in the door at Compact, and someone said, "Hey, did you know that you can actually edit in here?" And since [...] of time, it was pretty cheap. I said, "Hey, why don't we just shoot a television special tonight?" So I called up Thomas Nordegg who works for me and is a video fanatic, he brought his little Hitachi camera over, and we plugged it right in, and started interviewing anybody who looked through the door. And we spent thirteen hours in the dub room that night.
[...] people from the facility intercut with these tapes that I was cutting out from various musical things and, the original Dub Room Special was totally crude. There was no dissolves on it, it was just punched on it