Gram Parsons, the 'father of country-rock music', died aged 26 in 1973 after a drugs overdose. His road manager Phil Kaufman, stole Gram’s body following the funeral and cremated it in the Joshua Tree desert, Southern California, which he later revealed were Gram’s wishes. This is all true. Now, take this basic premise, add Johnny Knoxville as Kaufman, Christina Applegate in an invented psycho-bitch-girlfriend role and a chase-movie theme and you've more or less got the strange, but charming beast, that is Grand Theft Parsons.
The movie tracks Kaufman's attempts to secretly steal and cremate Parson’s body, after he hears of his death. He finds a flaked-out, anal-retentive hippy named Larry (Michael Shannon), who owns a flower power-style hearse in which he can take the body. Meanwhile, Applegate plays a girlfriend of Parsons, Barbara, intent on getting her share of the will and stopping Kaufman. Parsons' father Stanley (Michael Forster) is also on their trail, trying to find out who's stolen his son's body.
Knoxville is a suitably hulking, chilled-out presence as Kaufman, and his on-screen charm is such you feel warmly supportive his crackpot pact with his dead friend. Shannon is a gift as the unbelievably tense hippy and Christina Applegate turns her eyes into black holes of greed to play the one-dimensional Barbara.
The script occasionally lags, but it is funny and sharp in just the right places. It's a small film, both in running time and scope, and where it initially feels too jumpy and fractured, you soon warm to its temperamental charm. A curious hodge-podge of fact and fiction is likely to bother true Parsons fans and confuse everyone else — but that aside, this celebration of rock'n'roll and friendship is an entertaining ninety minutes.
