Hot Burrito

Irish director David Caffrey talks with Joe Griffin about Grand Theft Parsons, a film which takes as its subject the corpse-napping of former Flying Burrito Brother Gram Parsons.

David Caffrey's third feature, Grand Theft Parsons has had a rough road from script to screen. Thankfully, casting problems, financial worries and the thorny legal issue of making a movie about real people have all been overcome. I met up with him at the recent Dublin International Film Festival to talk about filming one of rock 'n' roll's most enduring myths: The theft of Gram Parsons's corpse by his road manager Phil Kaufman.

JG: First, can you tell me about Kaufman himself? I saw his name on the opening credits.

DC: That's right. He has a co-producer credit. It's something of an anomaly, the old co-producer credit, because sometimes people do a tremendous amount of work and sometimes they're barely involved. It was just something we were doing to secure his rights; it was one of the stipulations. He was incredibly pro-active in promotion, and he loves the film, so that was a very big plus.

Was he a technical advisor onset? How involved was he in the shoot?

He wasn't massively involved with the shoot. He's actually in it himself, at the very end he's leaving the courthouse - that's the real Phil Kaufman - and I'd met him tonnes of times. He'd come on set, and he's just a great character; constantly helping us out and ringing old friends. And the jacket that Johnny Knoxville wears in the film is the actual jacket that Phil wore when he brought Gram's body out to the desert. There were lots of little touches of authenticity in there.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 98