Grand Theft Parsons David Caffrey USA/UK 2003
For a mediocre film based around a subject I have little interest in, Grand Theft Parsons boasts an impressively emotive opening, scanning a wall display of country rock musician Gram Parsons’ life to the man’s music. Within seconds Parsons is lying dead on a motel bed and roadie Phil Kaufman is on the way, honour bound to fulfil a pact made by the friends. The pact between the men as Kaufman recollects was ‘the survivor would take the other guy’s body out to Joshua Tree, have a few drinks and burn it’. As a kind of Rock and Roll bequest, Kaufman has to first steal the body then dodge Parson’s father, ex-wife and the cops on the trip.
Johnny Knoxville is certainly the man I’d choose to play a roadie and in Grand Theft Parsons he under-performs adequately as Phil Kaufman, road manager to Parsons and later Joe Cocker and The Rolling Stones among others. Knoxville needs to do little beyond swigging a few beers whilst letting his latent charm and beard do the talking. As the star of Jackass he has performed weekly acts of dumb stupidity, which fleshes out his characterisation with the touch of legend that select few roadies acquire. Knoxville does so little that the rest of the cast enliven the film, letting Michael Shannon and Jonathon Slavin annex the production. Robert Forster also lends a little crimpled authority to the show. Naturally a roadie would be the star of a road movie, and based on Phil Kaufman’s recollections of his personal cremation of Parsons, Grand Theft Parsons cruises along the yarn of how Parsons was laid to rest. The usual desert scenery rattles past, as does the utterly unsubtle cameo from the real Kaufman. An additional entry to the recent run of retro-biopics, Grand Theft Parsons adds to the canon of American tales surrounding stars after their death. Like Liberace the fun wasn’t over with the final breath.
