Plot
Gram Parsons, a prominent figure in country rock music, dies from drug overdose.
Phil Kaufman (played by Johnny Knoxville), who his road manager, steals Parsons’ corpse to take it to the desert and cremate it, as promised to the deceased.
However, Kaufman has to deal with various people to do this, such as Barbara (played by Christina Applegate) who is Parsons’ former girlfriend, and Stanley Parsons (played by Robert Forster) who is Parsons’ stepfather.
He hires the yellow psychedelic hearse of a druggie hippie (Larry Oster-Berg, played by Michael Shannon) to transport the body, which makes things even more complicated.
A traveling corpse as the lead character
If you expect to see a human lead character in this movie, you will get disappointed.
It is Gram Parsons’ dead body that steals the show.
Phil Kaufman may be the person who still runs the show backstage, as he did when Parsons lived and toured as a music performer, but the latter’s greater-than-life personality and fame continues to surround and affect anyone getting close to his dead body.
This finally climaxes with the cremation of the body in the desert, where it is burnt, which reminded me somehow of the Burning Man event that also takes place in a desert location.
Anyway, although the whole idea of a stolen dead body wandering in a coffin at the back of a hearse is macabre, all the people involved finally get accustomed to its presence, and Kaufman even has a farewell vision of his dead friend.
This hovering sense of familiarity with the dead is very different from how dead people are presented in horror films.
This is not a horror film, but rather a lightly macabre comedy with the aim of making people reflect subliminally on life and death, as well as on human relationships, specifically focusing on absurd situations that take place after someone has passed away.
So, the purpose of the movie is not to make viewers scared of a corpse.
I don’t know if it’s only me, but I have to admit that I felt some sympathy for that corpse.
It belongs to a famous person who couldn’t find happiness in his fame, and even after dying, his dead body keeps wandering about, until he rests in peace at a place where he felt that he really belonged.
This is a perception of death that goes beyond mourning, in an effort to become one with the universe, and it is a proper ending to the life of someone whose songs were just a way to vent his philosophical and personal pursuits and unanswered questions.
Rating: 77/100
