After musician Gram Parsons overdosed in a Joshua Tree motel room in September 1973 (later dying in a Yucca Valley hospital), his best friend and road manager Phil Kaufman intercepted the body at the airport and took the remains back out to the desert for a celebratory cremation. Director David Caffrey, working from a rather slim screenplay from Jeremy Drysdale (which Caffrey also worked on in the developing stages), has apparently done his research on this true incident, and yet he hardly shines any light on the legend of Parsons (we aren't even given a hint as to Parsons' final hours). Caffrey's foremost goal is to play up the comic chaos surrounding the stealing of a corpse (this is most likely what got the production funded in the first place). With Parsons' frazzled girlfriend in hot pursuit--hoping to get her hands on the money Gram promised her in a scribbled note--and Parsons' father wanting to take his son back to New Orleans for a proper burial, Caffrey leaves no time to theorize why an immensely talented artist would want to obliterate himself. It's a movie made up of mercenaries. Caffrey's token gesture of good will, to include Gram Parsons' music on the soundtrack, fails to transcend the general feeling that nobody was there for Parsons in life or in death. *1/2 from ****