The film attempts to portray the craziness of life on the road as a rock musician, and as such consists of a series of unconnected nonsense vignettes interspersed with concert footage of the Mothers of Invention.

[5] Ostensibly, while on tour The Mothers of Invention go crazy in the small fictional town of Centerville ("a real nice place to raise your kids up"), wander around, and get beaten up in "Redneck Eats", a cowboy bar.

[8] However, director Tony Palmer (on his 2009 reissue of 200 Motels) claims that all elements of the script derived from Zappa's trunk's worth of material were completed during production.

[10] United Artists' press kit for the film stated "For the audience that already knows and appreciates THE MOTHERS, [it] will provide a logical extension of our concerts and recordings.

[14] The soundtrack to 200 Motels was released by United Artists Records on October 4, 1971, and features a combination of rock and jazz songs, orchestral music and comedic spoken dialogue.

[18] A show was produced in 2018 in France (Festival Musica Strasbourg and Philharmonie de Paris), staged by Antoine Gindt[19][circular reference] and conducted by Léo Warynski.